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1.
"He's not dead," Simon says, and James resists the urge to throw the milk pitcher at his head. "Since I trust you're aware of that, just ask the boy yourself."
"Yes, I know he's not dead," he answers. "The issue is that he might as well be, and I'd like you to figure out a way to fix that." Simon snorts, and takes a sip of his tea. He's decided in recent years to start leaning into his image as a doddering old fool, and James now has to suffer the indignity of spending time with a man who lifts his pinky while he drinks and has decided to invest in a bowler hat. Combined with the inanity of his actual conversation, James finds himself having to refrain from physical violence.
"Why me?" Simon asks. James can't quite tell if he's being serious or not. He's only met Jakob a handful of times, and his disrespectful son even less, whereas Simon, for whatever reason, has decided to let himself grow fond of the boy. James has never understood it, not even when Simon disrupted his work one day to tell him all about how Mordechai's bloodline had finally produced something worthwhile, someone with the potential to become absolutely marvelous. To the best of his knowledge, the only thing Simon could find that was so fantastic about Peter Lukas was that he enjoyed being on the open water nearly as much as Simon did, though for clearly different reasons.
"He likes you more than me," is what James says instead. Better to mollify someone like Simon, even when he gets on James's last nerves.
Simon smiles. "Oh, I wouldn't say Peter dislikes you," he says, voice dripping with insincerity. "He just finds you unpleasant."
James splutters, feeling himself get hot under the collar with indignation, and Simon laughs quietly to himself, taking another sip of his tea. Peter Lukas, James decides, is possibly the most irritating member of the Lukas family he's had the misfortune of dealing with in the last fifty years, and the boy isn't even here.
"He barely knows me, how in the Hell am I unpleasant?"
Simon shrugs. "Don't be put out, my dear, Peter appears to find the majority of the human race and all humanoid-esque creatures to be unpleasant." It's not as placating as Simon might think it is. "It's the way he is."
"Lukases," James grumbles to himself. "Be that as it may, Nathaniel appears to have decided Peter needs to start being the liaison between his family and the Institute. And if that's the case, I need him to be somewhat available, excluding the predilections borne from how he was raised. I need an involved partner."
"Oh, I'm sure," Simon replies with a sly look. "Fortunately for you, I'm in the mood to grant you a favor." He leans forward suddenly, and his perennial smile widens. There's nothing but darkness behind his teeth, and for a moment James feels overcome with a wave of vertigo. "But I shall collect eventually."
"I'm sure," James says, smiling tightly. "Any ideas on what that favor might be?"
Simon shrugs, and leans back in his seat again. "I've a sneaking suspicion it'll involve me asking you not to maim the lad when he gets on your nerves. I'm enjoying him too much."
2.
"He's not dead," Simon says.
Elias doesn't actually think Peter is dead, but he had left a rather nasty voicemail positing something along the lines a few days ago. And apparently, rather than deal with the situation himself, Peter has elected to send Daddy to solve all his problems. The snideness of the thought nearly stops Elias in his tracks, and he grinds his teeth. If there's one thing he despises about this process even more than the cleanup, it's the occasional twitches and spasms that happen even as he tries to settle down.
"Perhaps he just doesn't like the new outfit," Simon adds, as if he can see into Elias's thoughts. "Though I must congratulate you on this latest acquisition." Off of Elias's raised eyebrow, "I'm being entirely sincere."
"Are you?" he asks.
"I am." Simon grins. "You're finally aging down into your personality."
Elias scowls, and reaches over to tug a chair away from him before Simon can sit in it. It's a petty move, but so is Simon, commenting on his newfound youth. Elias was no fool, and he knew that the Bouchard body had been, in part, an exercise in vanity as much as anything else. But for all of Simon's potential japes, he truly hadn't expected James to start failing so suddenly, or else he certainly would have let the new suit age for a bit longer before taking possession of it. It certainly would have saved him some headaches. Including this one.
"Peter likes it fine," he says. "Not that it's any of your concern."
"I feel as if it might be," Simon adds, walking over and taking the chair back, sitting primly at its edge.
"It certainly isn't," Elias says.
"Oh," Simon says, and his face wrinkles. "Eugh. That's. Eugh."
"What?"
"A servant of The Lonely, deflowered by The Eye?" Simon shakes his head, the way one might if they witnessed someone committing a grave social faux pas. "I'm surprised that a misstep like that didn't have the Lukases declaring outright war."
Elias sighs, deep in his chest. "If you must know, you absolute daffodil," he says, a bit of youthful venom slipping through in spite of himself. "There's been no deflowering." Simon nods as if that somehow satisfies something that needed satisfaction in the first place. "Now, are you sure he's not dead? He's been doggedly avoiding any contact for a good few weeks at this point. Can't see why he'd do that if he wasn't dead."
"Yes, you said, several times," Simon says, fishing something out of his pocket. Elias nearly puts his head in his hands at the theatrics. Peter had to know how ridiculous it was, to just hand his phone over to Simon simply so that he could let Elias know without a shadow of a doubt he won't communicate with him. "I'll be entirely honest, J-ah..."
"Elias," he supplies. He resists to take a crack about Simon's mind going in his age, the switch from James had been recent and Simon had decided to holiday while it was happening.
"Thank you," Simon says, before continuing to scroll through something on Peter's mobile. "Elias, six messages feels a bit excessive."
"I find it's entirely reasonable," Elias shoots back. "I can't have Peter running away like a child whenever things get complicated. There are matters that need to be discussed."
"Of course there are," Simon says patronizingly. "Tell me Elias, have I really been called here to deal with a lover's quarrel?"
"Absolutely not!" Elias says hotly. Stupid, idiotic little Bouchard boy. Bad enough that James had decided to malfunction far too soon and he'd been forced to call on Peter for help. Bouchard had decided, because he was young and idiotic, to take a fancy to the tall, rail thin stranger he'd seen appearing and disappearing from the Institute on occasion, had decided to be idiotic about the myriad ways he felt the grey streaks in Peter's hair suited him despite his age, and think far too many thoughts about the precise shade of the dark, deep blue of Peter's eyes. It had been almost overwhelming, when he had become Elias and been dealt all the thoughts and memories of the boy's life, all while Peter was standing right there, chin lifted and looking almost concerned while trying to appear as anything but.
One heated conversation and an entirely mutual, if somewhat regrettable kiss later, and Peter fucks off on his boat rather than have an adult conversation. It's Elias's fault for finding himself someone too close in edge to Peter, for forgetting how difficult the transitory period can be, for getting caught up in former lusts, for having marginally enjoyed Peter's company thus far and for forgetting all the horrors of of his actual personality.
It's Elias's fault for, that night, knowing all this in the back of his mind and deciding he didn't care anyway.
"And I wasn't the one who involved you in the first place, was I?" Elias says as he shakes the thoughts from his head. Better to ruminate in his own time.
"To be fair to Peter, he didn't call me at all. I decided to drop by on my own for a hello and you started calling again."
Elias doesn't often try to look into Simon's head, had decided fairly early on in knowing him that there lay he path to madness. But he can't help but want to look, just to see if Simon has decided to test out his acting skills and lie. Instead, he sees, for the first time, Peter smiling widely and without any snideness or derision or artifice, genuinely happy, somehow, that Simon decided to intrude on his solitude, and delighted to see him. It's flavored by Simon's memories of all the other time it's been that way, that Peter has always been pleased to see him, has always embraced him the way a son might embrace a father and even, on occasion, said that he'd missed Simon's company.
"Well then," Elias says, spreading his hands. "You've no one to blame but yourself for getting involved in this."
Simon waves an idle hand. "I blame the two of you. The immaturity of youth often slips my mind." Elias grinds his teeth. "You know this family, Elias, and something tells me you are itching to know more about Peter than you already do. You'll get nowhere by pushing against what they've spent centuries cultivating." It's when Elias throws his hands up in the air and decides to open his mouth to begin yelling that Simon holds up a hand. "I did," he adds, "Tell Peter something about the virtues of having to occasionally deal with conversation if he wants anything to get done at all." He lifts a shoulder. "Perhaps the Tundra will make port sooner than later."
"Of course," Elias mumbles. "Given that he's surrendered his phone to you. How positively fatherly." Simon's smile is enigmatic and bordering on slimy, and Elias allows himself a moment to slump in his chair. "Tell me," he says, and he bats down the compulsion beginning to twine its way along his time. It's not the time for it. "Why would it even matter to you, how personal or impersonal any situation between me and Peter would be?"
"I consider myself something of a moral guiding point for dear Peter," Simon begins, and Elias can't help but bark out a harsh laugh at that. "That means if he's getting involved with you, I may feel the need to intervene."
"Really?" Elias can't help but smile. "Morality dictates that a man who regularly practices ritual human sacrifice be watched over by your kindly presence? Is it for the sake of his immortal soul?"
Simon shudders delicately. "Nothing so saccharine," he says. "But I am aware of your track record." The painting he casts his eyes to is one that he painted himself, a favor from long ago in exchange for Jonah Magnus turning over Ex Altiora into his possession. Elias feels his face go blank for a moment, and determinedly doesn't follow Simon's eyes. Really, he should have taken Barnabas's portrait down a long time ago.
"And?"
"I'd rather keep Peter around for a while, if you don't mind," he says. "He'll be a marvelous companion for the ages, and I sense greatness on the horizon."
Mordechai made himself father children, to carry on the Lukas line. Simon has simply given anyone who comes close to his devotion the Fairchild name, no attempt at fatherhood in sight. There's a memory in his head that Elias only barely needs to dip into in order to see. Peter can't be more than ten, and the two of them are staring out at the rolling ocean, the great grey emptiness of it. Simon had his hand on Peter's shoulder and Peter, possibly for the first time in his life, makes no move to brush it off.
3.
"He's not dead," Simon says. It's the first thing he's said since he arrived, minutes ago, bursting through the door rather than crashing through the air the way he loves.
For a moment, Elias almost feels sorry for him. For a moment, he almost feels sorry for them both.
"Simon." He needs to be very careful in how he approaches this. The Lukas family are already in an uproar about Gertrude's interference, and the loss of one of their most promising isn't helping smooth things over at all. Simon getting himself and his ilk involved would only make matters worse, as far as Elias is concerned. And the way he and Simon typically deal with each other will not serve here.
Unlike nearly every other chess match he's ever played, Elias cannot be coy.
"Miss Robinson acted without my knowledge," he begins slowly. "And while I don't disapprove of her goals, I'm more than willing to admit that her methodology was frightful in its execution. She's been reprimanded appropriately." As much as he can, where Gertrude is concerned. Truthfully, better that she keep her gaze outward than on him, and if there need be collateral damage, so be it. But it would do no good to tell Simon that. "It won't happen again."
"Deeply touching," Simon says dryly. "And I'll be sure to hold you to that. But that's not why I'm here."
"This may be something you'd need to discuss with the family," Elias answers.
"The family didn't do this," Simon shoots back, and Elias feels his hackles go up. "You did. And at the very least, if that was your goal, you should be aware that it failed."
"I have no goal," Elias says, standing abruptly. "As I said, I had no part in anything about this. And while I sympathize with your feelings on the matter Simon, this has absolutely nothing to do with me. This was Peter's idea, Peter's plan-" He almost says Peter's mistake, but that would be a step too far. Simon's face is stone.
"He is not dead," he repeats. Something constricts in Elias's gut. It is the surety of the sentence, the way that Simon is absolutely convinced in what he says, like it's the simplest fact. Perhaps if they were different men, Elias would be saying the same thing.
"You're the only one who seems to believe so," he says. "Why should I believe you?"
"I lived," Simons says simply. "Thrown to the very depths of the ocean, and yet here I am. Maxwell is still puttering about. Even you survived The Watcher's Crown, and came out all the stronger for it. There's no reason to suspect that the Lukases would be punished when none of us were."
"That's a ridiculous comparison, and you know it," Elias snaps. He's barely slept in days; his head is pounding all of the sudden. "The fact remains that Peter and his family have had a vastly different relationship to The Lonely than the rest of us have to any of our patrons, and that, quite simply, Peter was the first one of any of us, in a long time, to have that good of an idea, that good of an execution, and gotten that close to succeeding."
Simon is already shaking his head. "I know it," he insists. "He's not dead."
"I can't See him." It hangs in the air, heavy in his implications. "I Looked. I cast myself as far and wide and detailed as I possibly could. He's nowhere. He's vanished. And any time that's happened, it's because the person I'm searching for is dead." He's been scouring for days, his eyes stinging and his body sore and every inch of him screaming for sleep or rest or even a cold compress over his eyelids, checking every crevice and nook and cranny that he can possibly find, just in case. It would do him wonders to get back in the Lukases good graces, if he can bring Peter back to them and prove that this issue with Gertrude was nowhere near as disastrous as they all thought it was. And he would know that Peter wasn't dead.
"There are places even you can't see, Jonah," Simon says.
"Not very many," Elias interjects. He's reminded of newspaper reports of natural disasters, where parents refuse to believe that the child is dead until incontrovertible proof appears, such as a body, and even then some of them still hold onto hope.
He had asked Peter once, when they'd been in a good enough stretch of time that an attempt at knowing more wouldn't send him scurrying back to the Tundra for months, what it was about Simon. He hadn't shaved in a while, and had rubbed a hand over the stubble the way he would when he grew his beard out on his ship, before he came back to dry land and Elias demanded he shave. Elias had waited and, in a feat for him, hadn't even attempted to delve into the static and snowpiles that was Peter Lukas's Lonely warped mind.
"Simon is my great exception," Peter had said after a moment. Simple as that. Peter, with Simon, was the person he would have been if he'd had the fortune to be born anything other than a Lukas, if he'd been in a family much less haunted and devoted to their patron. Simon was the person Peter could, for better or worse, love, look to as a father, as someone he wanted around and desired companionship for, someone he missed desperately sometimes when he thought of it, someone he could always never wait to see again. Elias had made a crack, on a later occasion, about being offended at the premise. Peter had responded by blowing his cigarette smoke in Elias's face, and laughing meanly when he batted it away. Bouchard might have loved the things, but even the smell of it made Elias want to gag.
"I'm me when you force me to deal with you," he'd said easily. "In all my terrible glory."
"Glory is certainly a word to use," Elias had muttered. Peter stuck his tongue out at him.
"Point being, I am very deeply myself," he continued. "I'm entirely me when we're together, no need for anyone else. It's one of the things I'll even admit to enjoying about this arrangement of our's." And Elias had rolled his eyes and proposed another courthouse wedding just for the Hell of it, and left the comparisons at that.
"Well," Simon says, breaking Elias out of his reverie. "Until you can reach those places you've been unable to thus far, forgive me if I won't take you at your word." Elias sighs. "Peter is not dead."
4.
"He's not dead," Simon says, but he doesn't sound particularly vindicated about the fact.
Elias doesn't glance up from his papers, just scratches in some more numbers. He needs time before he responds properly, before he says something inane, or something he might regret, especially in front of Simon. Because Simon was right. Peter Lukas, it turned out, was not dead. Despite failing his god, despite having vanished from the face of the Earth for months, Peter was not dead. Elias was wrong.
"Jonah," Simon begins, and there's a dark quality in his voice that Elias dislikes almost as much as hearing his given name out of Simon's mouth.
"I know," he says. He still doesn't look at Simon, though he does set his pen aside. "Congratulations."
"That's it?" Simon asks. Elias folds his hands and stares very firmly down at his fingers.
"Well, I'm not disappointed that you were right," he says blandly. "Though I will admit it's a bit of a blow to the ego."
"You'll live, deary." Simon's acerbic enough that Elias really should be more polite about this entire exchange, if only to mitigate the other man's attitude. But Elias has a sneaking suspicion that if he so much as gives Simon an inch, he's going to be spinning through the sky for hours, if not outright days, and he has a budget meeting coming up this afternoon that he can't afford to miss. And besides, Peter is...
Peter will make a full recovery. Eventually.
"Well then," Elias says. "I'd consider the entire matter resolved."
It's not. The family doubtless has a god many more things to resolve, and if nothing else, this will stay in several people's thoughts for a while. In his own way, Elias can enjoy that, enjoy how the idea that crossing an Archivist, one of his people ( even if Gertrude is anything but his ) can become a cautionary tale. Simon may chill any attempts to bring about his own ritual until something eventually kills her, which Elias can understand. He's Seen what Simon has seen, when Simon realized that he'd been right and Peter was not dead but merely convalescing. If nothing else, this will give the rest of them a very healthy respect for The One Alone.
Peter's been one of its most devoted acolytes, even from the many Elias has ever seen, and Elias still can't entirely get the image of him, gaunt and half starved and deathly pale, the skin on his his wrists and his arms and his throat and even on his jaw marked by livid, finger shaped bruises, out of his head. He's always known The Lonely can be cruel, but this did almost come close to actually shocking him. His acceptance of collateral damage, it appears, has finally gotten out of his control. It might as well be a miracle that Simon was right and Peter didn't die.
His eyes have been burning for days now, from all the Watching, and his mind feels as if it's on fire. He's not sure what exactly it was that clued him in to all of this in the first place, especially when he hadn't been monitoring anyone involved. But something had drawn his gaze to the home of one Louisa Pierce, who had once been Louisa Lukas before she'd fled her family, and imagine his surprise to realize that Louisa had opened her home to her estranged brother. If he'd dared poke around in Peter's head, Elias could only imagine how much he must have hated it.
If he has been feeling Elias's eyes on him, as protective of his privacy as he is, he hasn't made any sign. But Elias has kept Looking anyway. Just in case.
"I suppose so," Simon says after a moment. "Just wanted to make you aware of all the relevant information. I know how much you like that."
"Much appreciated." Finally, Elias meets Simon's gaze. There's not much expression behind them, and he doesn't move a single muscle. Just looking at him, at the dark fathomless pit of his eyes, is enough to make Elias feel lightheaded and dizzy and almost nauseous. He's the one who looks down first.
Elias has a feeling this debacle will be held over his head for a very long time.
5.
"He's not dead," Simon says, the words halfway out of his mouth before he's even steadied himself after dropping in, the wind still whistling through Elias's flat, rustling up a few loose papers and nearly making him drop his wine glass. "But we might have a problem."
Elias's hopes of getting a moment to relax to himself before his dinner finishes cooking are dashed, but even beyond the disappointment, he doesn't need to ask who Simon's talking about. The man's been taking his self-appointed role as "person who cares about Peter" very seriously, especially now that one of his own favorites met a particularly gruesome demise out in America thanks to Gertrude. That had gotten him another earful that he hadn't cared for, especially while falling through the sky at who knows how many miles an hour while it happened. Between what happened with Peter and now poor Jan, Elias is becoming more inclined to kill Gertrude himself just to stop having to deal with the aftermath.
"So long as Peter's alive, I can't imagine what problem we have," Elias says. "Unless business as usual is suddenly a problem."
"I adore business as usual," Simon says, plucking the glass out of Elias's hand and taking a generous sip for himself. The only reason Elias lets him is that the glass itself had technically been a gift from Simon, a rarity from Murano's heyday, and he's already down one after Peter returned to the flat following the debacle with The Silence and promptly smashed it during the following argument. Because Peter is an absolute child and can't seem to figure out that Elias can't actually tie Gertrude Robinson to a chair in the Institute basement just because she decided to meddle in Peter's plans.
"So then?"
"It's not business as usual," Simon tells him. "The boy's avoiding me."
Elias snatches his glass back. "That's definitionally business as usual," he says. "Peter avoids everyone, you've said so yourself a good many times."
"He doesn't avoid me," Simon insists. Elias hums, and pretends as if that isn't as surprising as he feels it is.
Simon is my great exception. The one person Peter doesn't avoid, or even want to avoid. The only person Peter had even wanted to see when he'd returned to the land of the living other than the sister who had taken him in, and unlike poor Louisa Pierce, was still alive to talk about it.
"Perhaps he's just in a mood," Elias says, draining the rest of the wine. Still, he pours himself some more. "I don't think that's cause for concern."
"You're the one who said you thought you saw him with Maxwell," Simon says, voice thick with disgust.
"I need to stop telling you things," Elias mutters to himself, taking a swig. "Making bad friends also isn't a problem all on its own, however distasteful Rayner is," he responds after he swallows. He understands Simon's sentiments. The Dark has always leaned more to being claustrophobic than anything else, and it was only at the advent of space exploration that Maxwell Rayner and Simon stopped going at each other's throats every couple of years. But Jonah Magnus had once had a fear of the dark as a child, and it had only ever been compounded when he had to spend nights in a room by himself. Elias can imagine that the Lukases and Rayner's cult might consider themselves old friends, as much as a Lukas can have friends.
Not that he's particularly pleased about this development either. He can't See in the dark, and Rayner has taken great satisfaction in the fact as the years have gone on. But Peter goes to great lengths to keep Elias out of his head, so that likely doesn't bother him either.
"That family," Simon says, voice almost startling in its intensity all of the sudden. "Has somehow managed to create someone with an actual spark of real, proper life to him, that they haven't managed to stamp out, no matter how perfectly suited he is to their lifestyle. I refuse to watch it fade away and I will involve you in that if I have to."
"Melodrama doesn't suit you Simon," Elias says blithely. "Perhaps the two of them just want to continue some of the deep space nonsense the three of you started a few years back." He glances pointedly at the door. "Now, if you don't mind. I only made enough food to feed myself tonight."
Yet, when Simon's gone, he decides to call Peter, and keep calling until his voicemail is full and he's forced to pick up and yell at him about it. Elias says nothing about Maxwell Rayner, or what that's about, just tells him to stop jerking Simon around before he gives the old man a heart attack. It appears to work, and Elias doesn't get visits from Simon about Peter's wellbeing for a while.
+1.
"He's dead."
Well. There it is.
Elias sighs, faces Simon, and nods. Just once, a sharp jerk of his chin, but in spite of his advanced age, Simon's eyesight hasn't failed him, and Elias knows he saw.
"Yes," he says simply. "He is." Simon hadn't been asking a question, but Elias confirms it for him anyway. "Jonathan got a bit carried away. For a worthy cause, of course, but nevertheless."
Simon makes a noncommittal noise, and Elias sees that he's holding something in his hand. It's a boat captain's whistle, bronze and hanging on a chain, and Elias can almost See the thin wisps of fog rising off of it like vapor off the water in the morning. He wonders if Peter gave it to him as a gift. Perhaps for Father's Day, Elias can't help but think snidely. And perhaps Simon has decided to use it to try and make him feel guilty, even when Peter had just as much to gain in the new world as Elias himself, and hadn't even had anyone to force his hand. It all happened for a reason, and no whistle in Simon Fairchild's hand is going to make Elias feel guilty about it.
"I've been hearing tell that Peter appears to have died for you." Elias lets his teeth grind together.
"I suppose he did, if one looks at it in a certain light," he says. "I suppose you want to tell me a good deal more about that."
"I shouldn't need to tell you something that's so plain you could see it even without your gifts," Simon says, and for the first time in a long time, Elias hears something of a snarl in his voice. Elias clenches his jaw and says nothing. Not only just to make certain he doesn't rile Simon too badly, but because Simon, annoying as it is, is entirely right.
In the long life of Jonah Magnus, from hundreds of years ago to this very moment, there is only one death that can be laid squarely at his feet. Albrecht would have stumbled on that which he was not meant to at some point even if he had never found himself a British pen pal. Jonathan had always been the cat wandering into the jaws of curiosity ever since he was a small child and Barnabas...Barnabas, for all that Jonah had once loved him, had not been an easy man, and if Mordechai hadn't gotten sick of him and reacted accordingly, someone would have. Gertrude Robinson had seemingly been born to anger those with far more power than her, to the point that Elias had been genuinely surprised he'd had to be the one to do the deed eventually. Jurgen Leitner had been on death's door by sheer virtue of his age by the time Elias had gotten to him; he wouldn't have lasted much longer. And all the rest, all the statement givers and victims and even this recent crop of an archival crew, something or someone would have gotten them even if Jonah Magnus had never been born.
But Peter Lukas, dead before he'd even turned fifty years old, would never have become Head of the Institute of Elias hadn't asked him to. He never would have antagonized the Archivist of Elias hadn't tempted him to it. He never would have been in The Lonely for Jon to find if Elias hadn't thrown him a wager all those months ago. And he would have had no tales to try to hide at the expense of his own life if Elias had not told them to him.
Peter Lukas, by all possible metrics, is dead before his time, well before his time, because, for reasons unfathomable, he chose to be torn asunder, ripped apart, rather than divulge Elias's secrets. Peter Lukas has become the only person whose death can be laid solely at the feet of Jonah Magnus.
Simon knows it, and he knows that Elias knows it too. Peter is dead because of him, entirely because of him, perhaps the only person he has ever known to have died solely because of him. And Peter is the only person to have ever died for him. Of all the possible ways this story could have ended, Elias had not expected it to be like this. And he finds himself, for the first time in a long time, unsure. Unsure of how he feels about that.
"He knew what he was doing," Elias says. For some reason, he has to fight to get the words out. Simon says nothing, just traces an aged finger over the brass of the whistle. Elias lets it mesmerize him for a moment.
"This new world you're on the cusp of bringing to us," Simon says. "I imagine it will be worth it."
"Very much so," Elias answers. "I've no doubt you'll enjoy it as much as he would have."
Simon's response is to drop the whistle and immediately fling himself through the window and out into the air beyond. Elias doesn't check to see if there's a body; he knows there won't be, and that Simon may make himself known again once Jon opens the door and gives them all everything they've ever wanted, enough to make up for a thousand dead Peter Lukases. Instead, he simply goes and picks up the whistle from the floor, letting himself absorb the shock of just how cold the metal still is against his skin. And he...
Well, Elias feels very alone.