Work Text:
Peter has always preferred watching to participating. He’s always felt as though there’s a sheet of glass between him and other people, a distance that cannot be crossed, which is only fostered and encouraged by his family. He has no interest in television, and reading is difficult at best, but watching all the petty little dramas unfold around him? That, he can do happily for hours. Content to listen to his tutor completely forget he’s there and begin muttering about her lover, his siblings squabble over toys until one admits that she thinks the other is more favored than her, listening to his uncle’s meetings as he drifts unseen and unheard through the halls at night. He’s barely here, just a pair of knowing eyes and keen ears.
He knows things. Sees things. Things no one thinks he knows. Things no one thinks he sees. He knows they’re going to send Judith away a week before she does. Maybe even before they do. He may not be able to read the words that seem to squirm around in his textbooks, or grasp the maths his tutors drone at him as though they’re teaching an empty chair, but he can read the disappointment in the air. The tension between his parents as they pass, the way his father begins to hang around the children for a few days before one vanishes. He hears his mother speaking to someone late, late at night when everyone else is asleep. Mother is already beginning to forget Judith’s name.
He grows to hate the way Wright looks at him, then the way Elias looks at him. Smug, like he knows an amusing secret. He kisses Elias anyway, in the end, because he hates being looked at by anyone anyway. Why should Elias’ cold, cold eyes be different. His mouth feels distant, too, like Peter is dreaming about kissing him. He figures that’s about as good as it’s going to get.
When Peter is old enough, he is taken below the house and shown the truth of things. He’ll admit he’s been curious, in his idle way. Passively so, as he’s always been about everything, like a floating pair of eyeballs rather than a real person. He sees, he hears, he knows things. He doesn’t feel much. Perhaps the right scrap of gossip or a nasty secret stolen from in town will fill him up. Perhaps the true way of his family will, the awful god they all secretly serve.
His god chews on him for a good long while before it spits him out, as though it finds something rotten or sour or unpleasantly toothsome to him, but he survives and his family must honor that. He’s a real Lukas now, even though it took longer than anyone can remember for him to come back from the other place. Partially, it felt like he belonged there. Partially, it felt like he was being made to belong there.
One of the benefits of delegation, Peter thinks, is that none of his crew ever know what their captain looks like. Taddeas does all his recruiting, and Peter simply drifts among the men, taking shifts here and there, speaking very little and hearing very much. He doesn’t take meals in the mess, can barely stand the noise and the smells, but he’s around enough for no one to be suspicious. He is simply another forgotten face. He’s good at being that. Sometimes he feels like the nasty little things he hears among the men sate him better than the sacrifices, but he doesn’t want to take any risks.
One fool befriends the rats. Begins to turn Rotten, and it makes its way through the gossip all the way to a late night shift where two crewmen don’t notice a third getting coffee.
“Gone completely mental,” one says. Peter doesn’t take well to names, and faces are difficult, but he thinks this one might be the Ratman’s friend. “Completely mad. He’s obsessed, keeps saying they talk to him.”
“There’s more rats than there was yesterday,” the other says. Peter doesn’t know this one at all, thinks he’s new. “Tellin’ you. Not babies, neither, big ones. All milky white and weird.”
“Something needs to be done,” the first man says. “He’s been having such troubles since we got underway, I thought if I could just talk to him…”
Peter takes a sort of sick delight in sending Ratman away. Derrick. He doesn’t know why he knows, but he knows Ratman’s name is Derrick. If he thinks about it, sometimes, he still knows how many rats Derrick has left before he’s out of food.
Archivists, generally, have been very unkind to him. So when Elias’ new pet project follows Peter back to his hotel, he doesn’t feel at all bad for cornering the little shit.
Peter pins the rude little man by the lapel. It’s been a while since presence alone didn’t cow someone into submission, he’s quite missed a bit of rough stuff if he’s being perfectly honest. A bit of a tussle here and there to feel like he’s connected to his body in any meaningful way, like he’s not just a scrap of fog drifting off someone’s shoulder.
Jonathan Sims has always been alone. Sure, he had a family, once, but he was much too young to remember much. All trying gives him is a sting of phantom grief for a life he almost had. And sure, his grandmother raised him, but as soon as he was old enough to fix his own food he was essentially on his own until she needed to sign something or pay dues. For most of Jon’s memory they’ve mostly just drifted around the same house like ships passing in the night. She never wanted him, and she’s never been subtle about it. No one has ever wanted him. Just ended up with him and moved on as soon as they could.
He was nearly eaten by a horrid Web creature at eight years old and the worst part was that it made him realize that no one would have missed him. He’s still sure, skulking around the dusty old Archives, drinking in horrors and stewing in how isolated their victims become, that no one would miss him if he simply vanished.
It stings, deep in Peter’s guts, in a way he thought he’d stamped out a long time ago. He wants to recoil, makes to shove the Archivist back against the wall and away from him, but a trembling hand grabs his wrist. Peter, fool that he is, meets Sims’ searchlight eyes, big and pretty and manic.
Those eyes. Those eyes. Like dark mirrors. Like deep, empty pits. Those eyes take in everything and give nothing back, see right through him and make him feel so, so alone. They see everything he is, and he is nothing.
It’s familiar, in the most awful way.
“You’re like me,” the Archivist breathes. Reverent, terrified.
Peter wishes he didn’t know what he meant. Wishes he wasn’t right.