Chapter Text
Peter Alexander Walter The First, Colonel Peter Alexander Walter Sr. He did not raise his children particularly religiously. Perhaps Peter — that is, Peter A. Walter III — should be glad for it. No church on Sunday mornings beyond the holidays when his mother would take them. No sitting in pews tapping his feet in frantic boredom every week, only a select few days of the year. And not recently, of course. Not recently.
His mother buys into God above.
His father doesn’t. Or perhaps wishes he doesn't. His father though— Peter’s always been able to tell his father wasn’t raised how he raised them. He had always been able to tell his father was— was raised against God's sight, set against His altar. A man cannot despise religion so much without being burnt by it, firsthand, Peter surmises.
He’s glad, perhaps, that his father never shared the sentiment of God with his sons. The certainty of absolute religion. He is glad, he supposes, his father never claimed, in factual science, there to be a God above.
His father says, and has always said, that the only true higher force is Science. Do not believe in anything that tells you otherwise, he says. If it cannot be proven by physics, chemistry, math or reason, then it does not exist, and does not matter.
But well.
But, well.
Prayer is an addictive concept. A balm against helplessness. The idea— the idea that things can change, can get better, that hope in of itself can manifest by words to something above in an outcome favorable, can change the dreadful circumstances he finds himself.
You cannot pray to the concept of testing hypotheses and theories. You can only dig your heels in, chalk your hands, and grip tighter to the climb up from the put.
You cannot pray to methodology, to proving, to the act and continuance of what Science is.
You can only reason around misery.
And what is he, even? Truly? These days? A veteran of the Great War, shaken by it, addled in the head by it. The faradic current they applied to his hands didn’t stop how they shook the moment he left the military hospital after his collapse. The Veronal the doctors had given him for the sleeplessness had worked for a spell, but only that, a spell. What started as waking refreshed had turned to feeling like he hardly woke at all, handwriting degrading, feeling confused, ataxic, Ignatius telling him to stop taking them, this was between semesters, then, a summer one, neither of them were in classes. He had intended to agree, he had agreed, but he kept on anyway when he laid shaking and sleepless in the bed.
It helped him sleep. He needed it to sleep. And certainly he slept on it - but worse yet was how terrible he felt when he did not take it, at night, and that had scared him worse than the night terrors do.
He’d thrown the bottle down the plumbing, eventually, perhaps a bad idea, given the fact Ignatius had been terrified to leave his side, the next three days. He had been shaking, physically shuddering, after a day without, breathing off and odd. He’d gotten hysterically upset, at one point, sobbing and shouting both at once, swung between the two, so upset about the situation he could do nothing but sob and shake, or so angry at Ignatius for not letting him leave to go buy more, it would fix this, and he was so overly tired, unable to sleep, unable to lay down, hardly, despite Ignatius’ best attempts to soothe him, and it had—
He hadn’t slept for days not on it. Had gone properly out of it, exhausted. And he’d gotten a ludicrous fever off and on from stopping so suddenly, and—
And well.
He has not been sleeping since the shuddering cravings stopped. He has not been sleeping. He wishes he could rest. He wishes he could take him of 1917 by the shoulders and shake him, tell him to do anything but go, the robots would understand, he was so young, then.
Do not go, it will ruin you, he would say, take the consequence, play that you are as ill as your brother, or make your brother see the physician in your place, you are near identical no one will know, it will ruin you, peter, you will be ruined, by going.
And he has not slept. Not well. Not last night. He had given up after hours of laying in bed. Left their college apartment without Ignatius waking to pace campus until morning. He had managed hardly an hour the night before.
He cannot sleep anymore. He could not sleep after the war. He could with the pills. But he could not study with the pills, nor could think with the pills, and he’d rather his mind than a night's rest. He’d rather his mind than anything else.
He is lucky he stopped quickly, after only a four months or so of them.
He had been stuck on them, despite the doctors insistence to him it wasn't heroin, or morphine. They had said it would help him sleep.
And it did.
But it ruined everything that wasn’t sleeping.
And pacing about campus has made him think too much. And Ignatius may be worried, at home, at home waiting for him, but—
That has led him here.
Here.
He isn’t on campus, any longer, he left the grounds some several hours ago. Tired of his usual path he walks, tired in general, tired in every aspect a man can be tired in.
And he has found himself at a church.
And he has come to pray. Perhaps. Because he is at a point where Science seemingly cannot answer the fact he does not sleep, because what Science gave him was grains of medicine that made him sleep, but ruined his awake.
And—
And he does not know how to start praying, not truly. His mother taught him, perhaps, once upon a dozen years ago, but..
But that was then. And he is an atheist. He is an atheist among stained glass windows. And worse than, perhaps, he is a man with male lover waiting for him at their home.
But he is a man standing in a church. And he has not slept. And he does not quite recall how to sleep, or how he ever managed it, without pouring dreams of bullets shells and blood mixing with machine oil on his hands.
He should not be here.
He steps forward into stained glass light anyway.
If it cannot be proven by physics, chemistry, math or reason, then it does not exist, and does not matter, says his father. And God cannot be proven by any of those.
But sometimes…
Sometimes Peter thinks he found God in those trenches. Sometimes he thinks he might have found God in that hell of bullets and mud. In the decomposing air, in the rats that would gnaw cold fingers to the bone.
Sometimes he thinks he found God in those trenches. Other times all he thinks all he found was that Death is a pile of corpses, and that they all want you to join them in it too.
When was the last time he was in a church? Christmas, perhaps, when he and Peter were 12, right before they became to old and complaining of the concept, too sharp on the idea it was nonsense to attend. Or perhaps it was his mother's much younger half-brother's wife's funeral, several years ago. He knows the longest he ever was in a church was for a marriage of his mother’s cousin when he was smaller.
It was all funerals and marriages, holidays and deaths.
Still. He was baptized a Catholic with his brother. Though they never did attend the schooling.
He doesn't know the inside of a church. He doesn't know where to stand, where to go, and he knows, he knows if any soul here knew perhaps with what he slept with at night, a sodomite, they would toss him to Saint Peter, (another Peter, fitting, perhaps) to be turned away, struck down from his gates to the pit of corpses below.
He learns, after asking, some silly sentence of being new in town, something about wanting a place to pray, that there are prayer rooms to the side, and it's awkward, he's certainly they must see right through him. He is nonsense sounding, he knows he is, he is tired, he sounds mindless, when he is tired. And he is a baptized catholic, turned atheist, turned sodomite under stained glass, come to pray to a God he is certain is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
But Peter sits.
He sits.
And he stares at the cross before him.
And he has never been a religious man. He never will be, he thinks, he’s inherited his fathers skepticism, the book cannot be true. His knowledge of the chemical and physical has wrung any belief he may have ever had out of him.
But the men in the war with him often were religious, he remembers one, once, a man, his name— his name nearly escapes him, and that thought sends panic so nauseating through him Peter nearly gags.
Arden? Archie? Abel? — Abel. a young man, Abel is correct, Peter knows, grasping it tight, perhaps and he'd—
Peter had been fond of him. Perhaps.
He had been bright when they crossed paths. Only here and there. An up and coming officer, Abel had been. A bright young man.
Peter had thought him handsome, flavored by a sinner's tone.
Peter had thought him so very handsome in his uniform, with his darling wide smile, and his manner of a laugh, even in the grimmest of the situations. Peter had thought him handsome.
And he has been so bright. So very bright. Until that last time they saw each other.
It had been one of those rare times Peter was pulled far and up to the front. The brink. It had been one of those awful spells of time where the robots were needed as forward as possible, managing gas attacks, finding the injured, and—
and it is terrifying. So close to the front. Bullets whizzing, gas masks on your hip, corpses rotting, not safe enough to recover, flies and death, and—
and he would prefer, he really does prefer, when he is beyond the front trenches, with decent tools, not in immediate mortal peril at every moment.
And the thing is, no matter how everyone above it spins it, his robots are not invulnerable.
His robots, his siblings, are not invulnerable.
This day, on this specific time, Rabbit had gotten himself pinned and shot up. He'd snapped a major gear in his leg, or so Peter had heard back from The Jon. The Spine was getting Rabbit back to safety himself, back to the trenches, or behind the trenches,whichever, but—
Well.
Peter had— Perhaps he’d panicked, a bit, he was trying to get forward enough to— help.
To be at their location.
If he were broken, Peter could possibly, probably, possibly probably, fix him faster than The Spine could drag him back. Swap out gears, get him running, get him safe faster.
Unfortunately it hadn't gone well.
Getting there. To his siblings. Not that he could call them that. Not really.
And he and Abel— Abel had been escorting him forward, just past where the last of the field telephone lines were laid, they were both down in a half-abandoned foxhole, muddied, hell bloody mud under them.
Abel understood it, maybe, trying to get to a hurt brothers aid. At least when Peter told him he had to get closer, he’d been open to getting him there.
But mud was caked up to their thighs now, as machine gun fire skipped above them — bullets skirting dirt from the roof of the pit, hailing rocks and bullet fragments down on them.
Peter had been certain it was it for him.
He couldn't breathe through the rotting blood smell, against the gunsmoke above, the feel of it tangled in his throat like mustard gas, blistering, sickening.
Abel, beautiful bright Abel, as Peter wheezed for air, took both his hands, told him to pray — to ask God to love him, to see him safe, because if a shell skippwhizzed too close they'd be gone.
Gone.
And so he'd prayed, for the first time properly, or tried to, as Abel recited broken our fathers in the face of this.
He found God in those trenches. Maybe.
Or maybe he just found out that the Devil's voice sounds a lot like the whizz of shells.
When Peter admitted, terrible broken voice, that he hadn't a cross to pray to, Abel had shuddered. Dug through his pockets to pull a spare, pressed it to Peter's palm with scraped fingers, told him to wear it.
It was Abel’s brothers, he’d said then. Informed that his brother had been blown up back in the Somme.
Abel told him not to take it off, not until he was home, even if he didn't believe.
Peter had put the thing on. Fingers shaking. He’d put it on.
And they'd lived that, there, or so they thought they might, bullets nearly quieting above them, until—
Well.
Abel peaked out, and seconds later, a shell blasted Abel to gore beside him. And Peter had been tossed back against the crumbling wall, bloodied, and—
And he'd been dead then.
Or Peter sort of thought he was.
Dazed at the body (if what was left of him could even be called that, a body) and how it was all over him. His ears ringing something mad. His vision spotty. Abel's corpse on him. His corpse.
Intestines wrapped around his ankles, brain matter splashed across his arm, heartsblood soaking to his boots.
Another body to rot out here.
Eventually, because it is an eventually, heard two familiar voices bickering closer, stopping over the terrible foxhole, eyes he knew looking down,
"Pete?" said Rabbit, and he couldn't even focus his eyes up on them, not really- but The Spine reached down and dragged him up and out, out of his death,
"What are you d-d-doing out here??" Rabbit asked, and he—
He was broken. Peter had to fix him.
But he had blood all over him. And—
And—
Well The Spine all but carried both of them back, from there, really, and his fingers trembled around the cross clipped his neck, and—
And well.
The war had ended not long later. Really. Not long after at all. Armistice called. Treaty signed.
And years passed.
And he’s nearly done with university.
And now?
Now Peter is in a church.
He is in a church, clutching a gifted cross around his neck,
And he's praying.
And he is praying.
And
And he is in a church
And he has no idea what he's even doing here.
It's far past morning.
Ignatius surely is nervous where he’s gotten.
He still hasn’t slept.
And sitting here, his head spins, perhaps, as he links his hands, lets his head fall and,
and he is so tired.
Dear Lord,
And is that how you start a prayer? He hasn’t done it in so long, and he is so tired blood pounds behind his ears, and—
Dear Lord,
Please allow me sleep without the faces of the dead returning haunt me, lord have mercy upon me, I know I am not a devout worshiper. I know I sin with whom I rest, but let me sleep, lord, without the demons waking me, without sending shadows of the dead.
Let me rest
Please, allow me rest
Let Abel be at peace, let me find reason, let me rest, let me sleep, forgive me and let me rest,
Let me find peace from the corpses, please just let me rest,
I am so tired, I have no idea how to do this, I am falling apart, I have nothing left to reason with, I need to sleep, let me sleep, just, please, let me sleep, just a night, just one night, let me rest, if you are real, let me sleep, please, let me rest,
—And it is nothing, and it feels like nothing, he feels out of sync with his body, with the world, and he is so tired, he has not slept in two days, he—
He folds forward, a sob crushed, silent, from his chest.
He will never sleep again. He will never sleep again, will he? He is doomed to endless nights awake, or the terrors that have him purging whatever meal he managed. He is dying slowly, he will never be what he was, he scraped through his last semester by his nails, he—
He will never sleep well again, will he?
I know you do not exist, but if you do, if against all science and reason, you exist, you must let me sleep, please, let rest, just a night, just a single night
He should leave, he should go home, his eyes are wet, Ignatius is surely looking for him, by now, he left in the middle of the night, he—
He couldn't manage dinner last night. He hardly managed lunch. It's far past breakfast. Hunger is beyond him, when he’s like this, he—
He—
just let me rest, please, I cannot take this, please, please, let me sleep, lord, please. i cannot do this, please,
In the name of the father
The son
And the holy spirit
Amen
And then he sits there, collapsed over his palms, hating himself for being here,
An atheist under stained glass.
He should go home.
He should really, really go home.
…
Ignatius finds him as he’s walking back, his eyes unfocused somewhere between on the path, and the horizon.
“Peter,” and he about jumps out of his skin, as his name is said, as he looks around, and of course it is Ignatius.
Ignatius who looks like he’s left home in a hurry, Ignatius whose frantic expression scares Peter, sort of, in how worried he looks, and—
And Peter crumples, perhaps, as Ignatius takes him close. Or wishes to.
“Where have you been?” Ignatius snaps, arms around him, holding him nearly, immediately, furious, and he—
He doesn’t know where he’s been. Somewhere past everywhere, not quite nowhere. He has been walking, he has been to a church. He has been out of his mind rather than in it.
“I was at a church, at one point?” He says, as Ignatius starts marching him towards home,
“A church. Walter, and why were you in a church?” Ignatius’ arm around his shoulders is heavy, Peter could break under it, collapse to dust. He is nothing, he is— he has never been so tired.
“To pray?” he offers, and Ignatius scoffs at the idea,
“Certainly not, did you get swept in by a preacher? A missionary to steal you from me?” And under the harshness is Ignatius’ panic, and he—
“Is the idea that I was trying out religion so far-fetched to you, Ignatius?”
And Peter scared him. He must have, for him to be this physical in public. He knew he would have, perhaps, but—
“You do not believe in a god, Walter.” It’s harsh,
And—
and no. No he does not.
“And you are all shaking. We are going home, Peter, washing up, and then you will be laying down, I will not be hearing alternate ideas to it. You are laying down until either you sleep, or I am satisfied with the attempt.”
“Ignatius—”
“Peter.”
“Ignatius I am alright, I only—”
“We are going home, Peter.”
And he
He has nothing else to say to that.
…
The closer they get to their apartment, the heavier Peter feels, the shakier he is, the thicker his thoughts are, the more ill he feels.
He is all but hanging off Ignatius’ arm, by the time they reach the entry. An ornament of misery. An acute failure.
Nausea from exhaustion, or perhaps from not eating, his legs aching from walking, feet throbbing in his boots.
Ignatius hasn’t said a word for blocks.
Ignatius all but has to carry him up the few steps.
“I’m sorry,” he starts, leaning against the wall, as Ignatius unlocks the door. Ignatius’ expression is a storm, “I— Ignatius, I…”
“Leave it for now, Peter,” Ignatius steps inside, and Peter steps after him.
He’s unsteady, he feels unsteady. Standing in the doorway. Their doorway. Their home.
Ignatius pulls over a chair. “Sit.”
He does, and Ignatius kneels to the floor, starts unlacing his boots.
Peter cringes. “I can unlace my own damn—”
“And what, tie yourself a noose with the laces?” Ignatius looks up, fire, there, in his eyes, a moment, and— and Peter wilts, looks away.
“You cannot be doing this. You cannot vanish in the night and not come back until— were you even coming back, when I happened across you? Did you even think of me, Peter?”
Ignatius finishes loosening the laces, pulls off his boot, sets it to the side, moves to his other,
“You have been walking since at least three in the morning as I woke up then, to you not here. It is eleven. I waited till past four to go find you. You have been pacing the streets for hours. What, was I supposed to accept you gone? With you not eating, not sleeping, just— vanished?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You are not sorry. You are tired.” Ignatius works off his other boot, sets it aside, he rolls off Peters socks, folds them together, sets them in his shoes, “A church, you said, why a church? What possessed you to end in a church?"
Ignatius stands, offers his arm.
Peter takes it, and he is pulled to his feet on legs that nearly give the moment his weight is back on them.
“I— if, if science cannot have me sleep, I thought— perhaps, perhaps nonscience could,”
“You thought the church would? That their god would place you into bed?”
He doesn’t know.
Ignatius wraps an arm around him, holding him, carrying his weight, nearly, as Ignatius walks him to their bed.
He—
He,
“I’m sorry.” he says to his hands, as Ignatius deposits him to the sheets.
“You are tired. I will entertain apologies from you once you've rested at all. I’m getting you water, and a slice of bread. You’ll be eating it, then I will be staying with you until I am satisfied you have slept, Peter.”
He moves to go, and Peter— Peter grasps after him, catching his hand.
Ignatius turns. Frowning, and—
“Could— you kiss me?” He asks, too desperate, and Ignatius— his expression shifts, away from cold concern to something just, so very tired.
He leans down, takes Peter’s chin, tilting Peter's head up as he himself leans down, pressing a kiss to his lips, soft, quick, tender, before pulling back.
“I’ll be right back, Peter.”
Peter nods, and Ignatius steps out.
and lets himself fall forward over his hands. Over his knees.
The only salvation he has is the ghost of lips against his own.
Ignatius returns, not five minutes later. Coat gone, shoes off. Hair down and around his shoulders.
He holds out a plate with buttered bread, a sliced and peeled apple, and a glass of water. Peter drinks most of it the moment he holds it to his lips.
Ignatius sits beside him. Hand around his back, palm settled against his waist as he eats.
The bread is harder, it usually is, food than water, but once he’s taken a bite, the whole thing is gone in moments, inhaled, hardly chewed.
Hunger is easy to ignore until the single moment it isn't.
He finishes the water to knock it down.
Ignatius takes his plate, sets it to the nightstand before taking his shoulders, turning Peter to face him,
“...You scared me.” He says, looking him up and down, “Terribly, Peter.”
Peter can’t look at him.
“You scared me. I didn’t know where you went, or if you were alright, you cannot do that.”
He doesn’t have anything to say.
He can feel Ignatius’ gaze weighting down on him. He—
“I’m sorry.”
“...Peter…Let me get all that off you,” Ignatius sighs, reaches for his collar, starts unfastening buttons, “You’re in no state to sleep like this. Let's at least get you comfortable, Pet.”
Ignatius undresses him, undoing his buttons, guiding his shirt from his shoulders. Fingers ghosting across his shoulders, his chest, his ribs as Ignatius guides him back to the pillows. He lets his eyes close as Ignatius slips his belt from around his hips, works the pants from his legs, designs him clothesless, before he redresses him in soft sleep pants, of the new style, soft and flowing, nice, new, they went shopping recently, the two of them, and Peter—
Well. if he’s crying, then it is a figment of the fact he’s so tired he can't hardly see straight.
And if Ignatius brushes tears from his cheeks with his thumb, before pulling off his own shirt, kicking his pants to the floor, and changing himself, then it is still that, but clouded by the fact Peter’s so, so tired.
Ignatius draws him to his chest. Draws Peter against his skin. Shirtless, affectionate, holding.
And if the tears turn from slow to more constant, as he breaks against Ignatius, choking, then, as Ignatius pets back his hair, then well,
Then that's the fact he’s so tired that as Ignatius draws the blankets over them, kissing forgiveness into his forehead, he already feels half asleep.
“I’m sorry,” he says, into Ignatius’s neck,
“Sleep, Pet, please,”
And he doesn’t know how, in theory, or in action, but his body might know better than his mind, by this point.
By this point of exhaustion, his body might know over his mind.
Ignatius shifts weight so that he's on him, nearly, weight and comfort and touch, certainty and safety. Comfort in pressure and touch. Pressing him down to the bed.
If he's been nowhere for hours, he is certainly right here as Ignatius holds him.
Soothes him.
And he,
well.
he finally falls asleep.