Chapter Text
It is not love that tightens Elias’ chest when he sees Jon again, an invader at the heart of his ruined kingdom. The sight of him is pleasantly familiar: his dark, intense gaze, the sensitive mouth that’s twisted now with anger. And it thrills Elias to catalogue the unfamiliar as well, new scars and hair curling long by his throat, a faint limp as he walks. All the things Elias missed, these many months.
(He tried to see Jon, just once. Instead he found the Archivist’s eyes looking out of his skull for a horrifying instant, startled and curious, before he blinked the vision away. He did not try again.)
It isn’t love, because how can you love a tool? A well honed weapon or a cunning implement are pleasing, but not beloved. And the Archivist is a tool, a means to an end. Elias has not forgotten that.
It isn’t fear, either, that sets his pulse stuttering, though that feeling coils thick around him. He’s heard the rumors, as they approached: a man who treads the path of fear, saving those he can. A man with hungry eyes and a careful voice. A monster who kills monsters. Elias knows what Jon is capable of, and the knowledge of it feeds their greedy patron.
(Everything feeds their patron these days but none of its glory belongs to him. This world he made was not what he intended. He realized far too late that it never could have been.)
“Elias,” Jon says, and he smiles. Because it is Elias in the end, and that’s right, he thinks. He is Elias for Jon, and he can admit now that nothing of him has ever been the same, from lifetime to lifetime. Elias is Jonah, but not quite, no more than James or Gregory or Stephen were.
In this heart of Beholding, Jon is magnificent. Tired and worn and glorious, thrumming through with fear. He approaches, and Elias stands to meet him. His heart is a jackhammer; his chest bursting.
(None of its glory belongs to him. Of course, of course, it all stands here before him.)
“It’s good to see you, Jon.”
Admiration, he thinks. That’s what surges in his blood and quickens his breath, as Jon’s fingers lift to touch his cheek. Admiration, because Jon’s eyes hold all the fear in the world, and somehow he lives with it. Somehow he goes on. Elias, Jonah, none of them have ever known how to do that. Jon’s voice is oddly soft when he says:
“It’s over. You know that, don’t you?”
(Somewhere, he feels the crude ritual unfolding in Martin Blackwood’s cunning hands, binding the doors of fear shut with silken strands, and he hopes it’s worth it, to save a world with the spider’s threads woven tighter than ever around it.)
“I know.”
(Somewhere, he feels his Detective drive a knife into the husk of his body, and there is the strangest sense of relief in it. The thing he’s feared for two centuries has happened, and…that’s it. It’s done, like lancing a boil.)
Elias can’t help laughing just a little, because really, that’s it?
That’s all it was?
He laughs, and then fits his mouth against Jon’s, a confession and a surrender. Jon’s lips are soft and startled under his, for just a moment. When he pulls away, the twist of his mouth looks more sad than angry.
“Go ahead,” Elias says. “Ask me.”
Jon studies him for a moment, and his hand on Elias’ cheek slides down to curl around his neck, and Jon’s eyes hold all the fear in the world.
“Tell me, Elias,” he says, very gently. “What are you afraid of?”
Elias tells him.