Work Text:
The only comfort the Archivist has in his capsule of solid fog is a journal and a pen to write in it with. He's sure he's finished dozens, enough to crowd around him in rainbow heaps, frozen selves to keep him company. Every time he fills one, though, it's taken away. Taken when his attention lapses for a moment, or out of his hands when he's tried to keep hold of it. He doesn't try to keep hold anymore; the dizzy disorientation of the sudden loss made something yellow pierce the fog in his periphery. He's lost much of himself, but he still remembers enough to know that whatever it is means company, and that it's cost isn't worth paying to try its antidote to his withering solitude.
The yellow's name twists and shatters into mixed-up, nonsensical syllables when he tries to grasp it. The Archivist's own name is a shed relic of the need to present himself to others. His name, he's sure, was what he was to people; the Archivist is what he is. There was someone he followed into the fog. There was someone he left behind. Or maybe those are the same person? Whoever they were, they didn't have names. The only one with a name is Peter.
With nothing in his head or surroundings to write about, the Archivist fixates on the last thing before the fog. He writes it over and over, even though he isn't able to keep the journals and reference earlier versions once he's filled one. He knows his old journals are out there somewhere, though. Every time a new journal appears, it's a different color. At first, he thinks, the change was minor, an alteration of blues slight enough to drive himself mad trying to prove or disprove, in the early days when he paced the perimeter of the deceptively-solid mists that hem him in. Now, turned empty and stupid by the monotony of his surroundings, blue becomes gold becomes green, taunting shards of color that could make his prison less lonely turned into a tool to underscore that loneliness, instead.
Some of what the Archivist puts in his journals is useless. Something deep within insists he's meant to record and be recorded, urges his hand forward through, "I'm cold," and, "I'm hungry," "I'm alone," and, "I saw Peter today."
But his favorite scene to write, the only thing he can put down that seems worthwhile at all, went like this:
The Archivist stood in a place that was black, not white. There were people who used to be there, but weren't there anymore. The Archivist thought one of them was in the fog, so he went inside. The fog was white, and he walked for a long time calling the person's name. The person didn't want to see the Archivist.
Peter found the Archivist. The Archivist asked if Peter could find the person, and Peter said he wouldn't. The Archivist said something about the person being on a throne in the black place, or maybe on the floor. Or maybe someone else, the person he left there. Peter said, "I know! I won!"
The Archivist said, "What was ---" and he said a name, "supposed to get if he won?"
Peter said, "You!"
Then he left, and the fog around the Archivist wouldn't let him walk through it anymore.
-
When Peter comes, it's wonderful. Peter is a person in a way the Archivist isn't and, he knows, Peter even sometimes leaves the fog. He knows it because Peter gives him journals that are red and gold and violet, so different from the limited palette of the fog and the Archivist and Peter that they make the Archivist's eyes hurt.
Peter fades out of the fog like he's made of it, and maybe he is. Maybe that's why he can leave the fog and the Archivist can't. The Archivist is made of the black place, he knows the same way he knows that there used to be people who called him by a name.
Peter says, "Hello, Archivist," and smiles when the Archivist sits on the ground and doesn't say anything. His skin is hungry for Peter, and he's sure that if he can act enough like fog, Peter won't abandon him in favor of it. If he does it right, Peter might touch him someday. The Archivist thinks he might have, before, because he doesn't think he could make up the feeling of hot lips on his, hot hands on his shoulders. If the Archivist pretends to be fog well enough, maybe one day the fog will let him leave, or he'll start liking it like Peter does.
"How are you?" Peter asks, and smiles bigger when the Archivist doesn't say anything. Answering questions is a slippery slope to asking questions, and if he does that Peter will leave. Once the Archivist starts asking questions, he can't stop until there's no one to ask.
"I thought I might go see Martin," Peter says.
"Who?" the Archivist asks. It's a name, he knows, but he doesn't know why Peter said it like the Archivist would know them. The only person the Archivist knows is Peter.
"Goodnight, Archivist," Peter says and smiles, but even though the Archivist asked a question he leans down and pushes his mouth against the Archivist's. His mouth is hot and wet, and when he pulls away the wet makes the Archivist's lips even colder than they were before.
"What's night?" spills over the Archivist's lips right away, because he started asking questions instead of being like fog, but Peter is already gone.
The Archivist gives the question, and the rest of the visit, to his journal, fingers white and quaking through the words from cold.