Work Text:
Pain of the ceaseless watcher wracked through Elias as another statement came close to burning. That statement Martin was holding… It was an important one, one that under no circumstances could be allowed to go up in flames. Martin shouted furiously, listing all the things Elias had failed to act on, the things he could have done but did not. All true, of course. Putting the archivist in danger over and over, but Martin could not learn the true reason. This tantrum had gone quite far enough.
“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” Elias said with impatience, in the tone a teacher might take with a particularly slow and annoying pupil. Martin was looking down at him with a wild expression, eyes full of rage.
“What, like with Melanie? Just that perfect bit of information to leave me a wreck?”
“Yes.” Elias stated, simply.
Martin laughed mirthlessly. Elias had never really stopped to notice before just how much he hated him. It was almost impressive. “Well, I hope you’ve got something better than that pathetic dig at my feelings for John.”
“Hm.” He considered it for a few seconds. “It’s baffling, really. So much loyalty to someone who treats you really quite badly.”
“Is that supposed to be, what, a… revelation?” Martin asked incredulously. He looked away and raised the statement of Albrecht Von Closen towards the lighter, making Elias flinch at the feeling of knowledge being pulled away.
“You know, I really should have gone for that.” Elias mused, interrupting the action. It was more to himself than to Martin, really. Elias had had something prepared for Martin about his mother. Unpleasant though it was, it was not something he would be unable to recover from, fragile though the boy might be. Oh and when Martin goaded him ? That poor boy had no idea what he was getting himself in for. Elias was planning on being merciful, even saving him the indignity of John hearing him come undone as the beholding picked through his mind one revealing thought at a time. But at those words? Mercy became the last thing on his mind. To hell with his plan. “Nothing wrong with a little… improvisation I suppose. Though I’ll have to make this quick. I am very busy.”
“Do it.” The lighter got closer to the letter but did not connect.
Elias chuckled darkly and after one more moment of watching over the wax museum in Great Yarmouth, he turned his eyes to Martin. He dug in, pushing past the embarrassing poetry and sexual thoughts with impatience, searching for the core of all of those fuzzy feelings Martin had for the Archivist. His deep-seated need for approval from authority figures were at the centre, of course. How boring. But there was something there to exploit, no doubt about that.
“He didn’t take you with him.” Elias began. “A part of you hopes that is because you are just too valuable to risk losing, an integral part of his emotional core.” He laughed darkly again. “But you already know, deep down, the real reason he left you behind. The same reason your father left you and your mother, really. You are a burden.” He smiled as Martin flinched. “Again, you were already aware of that fact. You’re always getting in the way, always the one causing unnecessary trouble. ‘It would have to be Martin, wouldn’t it’.” Elias echoed the tape that Martin had hated discovering, recreating John’s accent near perfectly. Elias knew he had spent far longer than was necessary listening to that tape over and over as he beat himself up for being so stupid even John had pointed it out. “Always Martin. And he knows it.”
The beholding cast its gaze far away into Johnathan’s mind then, pulling out a memory that was perfect for this occasion. “Do you want to know how he really sees you, Martin?”
“That won’t-”
“Change anything? We’ll see.” Elias smiled as he drove the memory into Martin’s mind. They both looked through the Archivist’s eyes and he heard Martin gasp. He had been expecting a memory from their first year together, perhaps. Of the time when John was so rude and arrogant that it made Martin feel small and inconsequential, just like his mother made him feel. But to Elias that was such low-hanging fruit, not nearly fresh enough to cut deep. It wasn’t that at all: It was from just a few days ago, a quiet moment together in the Archives.
“Tea, John?” Martin's voice called from the door to the office. No doubt seeing himself through the eyes of John was just a little painful, to be assured that those flaws he was so insecure of were visible if not more pronounced from an upward angle.
John raised his head. “Sure.” He said.
“This isn’t-” Present day Martin said, but Elias cut him off.
“Shhh, you’ll miss my favourite part.”
Martin was returning with a cup of tea, though he spilled it on a piece of paper in his rush to place it before the Archivist. A burst of anger flared inside John that Elias made sure to amplify, to drive that feeling into Martin’s mind. But that was just the icing on the cake.
“For God’s sake, Martin. Be careful.” The Archivist chided. Nothing new there.
“Sorry- Sorry.” Martin said, holding up his hands in rushed apologetics.
The Archivist regarded Martin with pity .
“Not just anger, oh no.” Elias whispered, giving Martin no possible way to escape the feeling. Shutting his eyes would do nothing, but of course he tried. “Pity. Pathetic. He pities you as you walk around the archives giving everything you have to him even as he treats you like an inconvenience. Feel that? He can see the way you look at him. He knows, he knows how you feel and what does he do about it, Martin? Nothing.”
“You can go.” John said with a tired note in his voice. Impatience that was quite different to how Martin remembered the moment flickered inside him.
“You remember him saying that to you? Thinking how considerate he was being, letting you leave and get some rest. Thinking he must care about you, he must have seen the bags under your eyes and sent you home early for the day. Hmmm, it’s a shame. He just wanted you out of the way.”
“Shut up.” Martin said through gritted teeth.
The image changed, a new memory Elias forced into Martin’s psyche. An earlier one this time, just after John was kidnapped by Orsinov. They watched through the Archivist’s eyes as Martin spoke, stumbling over his words in yet more apologies.
“You were so worried after you found out, weren’t you? You’d been angry at him for just stopping showing up to work for a whole month and it turns out he’d been in the dark, desperate for help the entire time. Tied to a chair, at the mercy of the circus.” Elias’ tone was mocking as he spoke Martin’s thoughts aloud, tainted with pure sadism.
John was looking at Martin, watching him flail his apologies at not trying to find him. The Archivist felt a genuine tinge of warmth then, which Elias allowed Martin to see. If only so the following would be all the more painful.
“Do you feel that, Martin? Nice, isn’t it? You were delighted as he said it was not your fault, so reassured. You imagined him crying, pleading in that museum, whispering your name. Desperate to return to you.”
“You don’t get to know that-” The protest was faint.
“Oh but I do. Do you want to know what he was thinking about in that place? Me .”
Elias plucked more thoughts from the Archivist’s mind and forced them into Martin’s head. Like a square peg in a round hole, it hurt the poor man a great deal. John’s thoughts while he was kidnapped had been entirely devoted to drawing the eye to him, to bringing Elias’ gaze to his location so that he could escape. The only one who had a hope of saving him. The name he called out when he wasn’t gagged was not Martin’s, it was Elias’. The reality gave a delicious twinge of jealousy to Martin’s fear.
Elias kept that feeling embedded into the other’s head but retracted the visions. A smug sense of satisfaction washed over him as he focused on present day Martin. He was breathing hard, gritting his teeth against the memories but still doing his best to fight it, even as tears ran freely down his face. But one could not fight forbidden knowledge.
“The truth is, he didn’t even think of you once. Not because he doesn’t care about you anywhere near as much as you do him, though I’m sure that stings . It was because he just thinks that little of you, Martin. When he thinks of you at all. He knew that even if you tried to come after him you’d only end up dead from your own clumsy attempts to be the hero you quite simply are not. You’d mess even that up, probably leading Tim and Melanie to death’s door along with you.” Elias laughed as Martin fell to his knees, feeling the crushing weight of his own inadequacies laid bare in the mind of the one he loved. That fear and anxiety crushing his chest so much it left him unable to stand, shaking in terror. He began to sob into his hands.
“Do you see now, Martin? He sees you as a nuisance .”
As much as Elias would have liked to have kept going, he had other things to attend to. So, he turned on his heel and walked towards the door. “Don’t burn any more statements.” He said on his way out.