Chapter Text
The worst part of being stitched out of the fabric of time and space is the memories. It wasn’t an individual blink through each life like Pete was wearing a View-Master; no, Those That Live In the Dark And Light are much crueler than that, even when they think they're being merciful.
Instead, all of his lives hit him simultaneously, birth to death, flooding in like a thousand—no, a million tsunamis colliding together in one huge rush of water over his mind. Entire universes. Birth to death. It’s a national tragedy, no survivors.
Pete watches his other lives from other worlds. No, he lives them, all at once. They fall away quickly, like his lives are being played at ten times the speed, but he can feel the weathering of his bones, the migraine-inducing flashes of memory.
There are repeated memories that Pete catches in his lives. They play out near verbatim to one another like the rhythm of an old song. Ted, his friends, Steph’s smile. Blood. Lots of blood. Some of it is his own, most of it’s not. He can’t focus on it all at once, and he eventually stops trying, just letting it wash over him again and again until he’s finally thrown back into the universe.
Pete doesn't know in which world he’ll wash up. He’s crashed through enough of his lives to become so disoriented that finding out which way was up and down was as pointless as trying to recall all the things he saw.
Pete has no way of knowing where or when he’s landed in, or what he’s supposed to do when he gets there. All he remembers is Webby’s words that float in his mind like foam on an ocean.
BLIND WHO NEVER BLINKS.
His body erupts with the sudden return of feeling. Pinpricks of pain flash through his fingertips, like there are sewing needles under his skin.
The memories stop at once.
When Pete is pulled back into time, he hits the ground hard. He must’ve been midstride, as he immediately loses his balance, skidding through the wet grass until he stops against the bottom of a tree. The sun burns against his bare arms, the earth soft under his fingers. Dew soaks into the knees of his pants.
He groans, pressing his muddy hands to his face in an attempt to stave off the beginning of an intense headache. Nausea crashes over him. His glasses are a few feet away. Pete scrambles for them, finds them bent and cracked.
When his vision sharpens, he takes a moment to take in the world around him. He lies several yards away from the imposing brick of Hatchetfield High, scattered friend groups eating together in the benched tables and on picnic blankets. At least he’s landed somewhere familiar. The sun is high and hot, the scratchy grass unkempt. It must be late summer, early fall. The beginning of the school year.
A shadow slowly comes close, and Pete finally looks up. Richie stands a few feet away, nervously picking at his fingers. His hair is a ratted mess, greasy and spiked. He has no scars from Max’s attack, no haunting dark circles under his eyes. He looks the way he did before Max even died. Still skittish, still nervous, but alive at least.
“Are you okay?” he asks Pete while staring at the ground between them.
The sight of Richie makes Pete nearly burst into immediate tears. It was just moments ago in his own life that Richie bled out in Ruth’s lap, cut down by a deranged Grace. He smiles with a heavy relief, and Richie appears to get more uncomfortable.
“I’m fine, I just tripped,” Pete says. “Give me a minute.”
“Uh. Okay.”
Behind Richie, Ruth approaches, arms wound tight around her chest, and looks at Pete cautiously. Like she doesn’t know him. She stands beside Richie, but not touching like they usually are.
Pete soon gathers that they're not his Ruth and Richie. There is no familiarity in their eyes.
“This is a weird question, but we know each other, right?”
“Yeah,” Richie says with a confused expression. “We’re in Advanced Chemistry together.”
“We’re not… friends?”
Ruth snorts. “As if. You’re a bummer, dude.”
Richie shushes her, and her mouth snaps shut.
“What do you mean?” Pete asks, then stops himself. He’s watched enough Doctor Who and sci-fi movies to know that there is no use in making it obvious that he’s not their Pete. “Actually, nevermind. Sorry for, uh, bothering you guys.”
He stands, brushing off the clumpy dirt from his hands and jeans. His two friends, no longer friends, watch him from a healthy distance.
“You’re Peter, right?” Ruth asks.
“Just Pete,” he says.
“Did you wanna eat lunch with—” Her sentence is cut off by Richie’s elbow in her ribs. “What?”
“We don’t know him!” Richie hisses at her. “You know what they say about him.”
“He doesn’t seem so bad,” Ruth whispers back. “I mean, look at him. He looks just as miserable as us.”
While the two argue in hushed voices, Pete examines his hands, at the watch strapped to his wrist. Ted’s watch. He recognizes his shirt as one of Ted’s old button downs. The jeans are hand-me-downs. All of his clothes are, even the backpack lying at his side. His hair falls well past his shoulders.
“What do they say about me?” he asks.
Ruth and Richie look up at him, then at each other.
“Well, lots of things.” Richie grimaces. “You’re an asshole.”
Pete blanches. “I am?”
“What he means is you’re not, uh, nice to people.” Ruth says it as if that’s any better. “But nobody really knows you anyway, so how would we know if you were really an asshole, y’know? You’d be just as much of a loser as us if you weren't so much of a loner.”
He wonders what this version of him could’ve gone through to be regarded so coldly by the only people that have ever tolerated him. Pete tries to send Ruth and Richie a reassuring smile when they start shifting uncomfortably in place.
“Thanks for being honest,” he tells them earnestly. “And I’m sorry if I’ve ever been an asshole to you.”
“You could be worse,” Richie says. “At least you don’t outright bully us.”
“At least I have that going for me.”
“Seriously.” Ruth steps forward more confidently now. “If you want to eat lunch with us, we’ve got plenty of space.”
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
He grabs his backpack off the ground and follows them to a lunch table. As it comes into view, Pete pauses a few feet away. Someone is already sitting there, guarding Ruth and Richie’s lunch boxes with her own bag. She has a bible balanced on her knees and a sandwich in her hands.
A flare of rage rises up in Pete like a struck match. He clenches his jaw.
The girl glances up at Pete with a confused expression. There is no darkness in her eyes, no hidden agendas. She looks… kind, a word he’s never associated with Grace Chastity. “Oh. Hi. Do you need me to scoot down?”
When he doesn’t move, she looks at Richie, who shrugs. Ruth sits on the table, her skinny legs kicking off the edge. Grace slides down and pats the space.
“Did you not bring lunch?” Ruth asks as she tears open a packet of string cheese.
“No, I did.” Pete blindly pulls off his backpack, unable to tear his eyes from Grace, who stares back with a gentle, unaware smile. “I think.”
“I have extra goldfish if you want,” Grace says, shaking a plastic bag at him.
“No thanks.”
She awkwardly returns her eyes down to her bible.
Pete forces himself forward, sitting beside Grace but as far down the table as he can. He rummages through his backpack, a well-loved canvas messenger bag that he remembers Ted used in college, and finds his lunchbox at the bottom.
An uncomfortable silence falls over them as the four eat. Pete thought that they’d be friends in every universe, attached at the hips like. It just felt like one of those things that was always true, no matter the circumstances. He wonders what else is different in this world.
Pete can’t help but continuously look over at Grace, as if anticipating to see a flicker of the version of her he knows too well in her face. But this Grace must be normal—or as normal as she can be—because there is just softness. She even meets his eyes every now and then and just smiles at him, even though he must look like some creep.
Find the host, and stop my brother.
His first thought, of course, is Grace, though he has no way of knowing which Lord has taken a liking to this timeline. There are plenty of potential victims, himself included. Webby had given him no information on how to save the timeline, just a vague warning. Pete makes a mental note to ask for at least a hint before he’s thrown through time and space again.
When the bell finally rings, Pete is the first to take off, not even bothering to zip his bag all the way up. He can’t stand being beside Grace for a second longer than he has to. At least his silent retreat should be consistent with this Pete’s odd behavior.
Not bothering to look at his schedule, Pete allows muscle memory to take him to class, finding himself in the English wing. He walks in and shuffles to the seat he always sits in. Given the lack of confused looks, he must be in the right place.
Pete pulls his phone from his pocket, scouring for any answers as to who he is in this timeline. His social media is barren, barely any followers and the occasional post. As he searches for Ted’s contact, he realizes there’s no photos of them together.
Who the hell is he?
A familiar voice draws his attention back to the real world as he watches Stephanie Lauter walk in. Her heart leaps to his throat and makes a new home there. He knows he’s staring, and he knows he should stop, but all he sees when he looks at her is the chance he lost at a good life.
“Pop quiz! I hope everyone’s been hitting the books,” Mrs. Mulberry says, passing Steph’s desk with a condescending, “Miss Lauter.”
Shit. Shit. It's today.
Pete stares down at the pop quiz sheet for the third time now, and he fills it out as quickly as his shaking hands allow. He knows in seconds, Steph will turn in her seat with a blinding smile and cunning words, and despite knowing what’s coming, Pete will agree.
When Steph leans over her desk, legs spread confidently, she whispers, “Hey. Hey, geek. Your name’s Peter, right?”
“Pete,” he corrects.
“Hi, Pete. We’ve been in class together forever, haven’t we?”
“If you want to cheat off of me, you just have to ask,” he says. He can’t live this out beat for beat again.
Steph pauses, his words unexpected. “What’re you, some kind of mind reader? How’d you know what I was gonna ask?”
“Why else would a pretty girl like you be talking to someone like me?”
Again, another pause. Her practiced smile softens into a real one. “I’m sure I could find a different excuse if you wanted.”
“I’m sure you could.”
Suddenly, a hand comes between them. “Mrs. Mulberry, they’re cheating!”
Steph twists around to glare at Grace, who Pete had forgotten was sitting behind him.
“Butt out, Chastity,” they say in unison.
It’s too late; their teacher approaches with a disappointed look and passes them both detention slips. Pete gathers his things and heads out of the classroom, waiting for the day to be over so he can escape this hellish cycle for a third time.
͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙⁺˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚⁺‧͙
Steph never thought of Pete with any regard, but as they walk together towards the detention room, she eyes him with curiosity. He’s always been quiet; most people thought he was mute for years until he was asked at an assembly to be salutatorian and he declined. Pete’s smart, she knows that much, but he’s about as forthcoming as a brick wall. To watch him match her energy, and see a shyness in his eyes she’s sure she’s never seen stirred something alive in her.
He intrigues her, and he doesn’t speak to her like the rest of the kids in their grade do, like she’s some god to appease. Pete looks at her and he sees her, not the pedestal.
While they walk, Pete fidgets, looking over their shoulders like a ghost is going to pop out of the shadows. He jumps at the opening of a distant classroom door.
“Is this your first academic misconduct?” she asks, drawing his wide eyes back to her. “Don’t worry, it’s two hours detention, tops. If you pout and look really sorry, they might even let you out early. That worked for me, until they changed the detention officer to Mr. Houston, who’s actually pretty chill. It becomes like free time.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he says dismissively.
His eyes don’t leave her face. It’s not in the way most boys do, where she can feel their gaze burning her skin with disgusting lust. No, there’s a sorrow in his eyes that’s so much older than him. She feels sorry for him, and she’s not even sure why.
“Why’re you staring at me, you little creep?” she questions coyly.
He looks away, blushing. “Sorry. You just… look like an old friend of mine.”
She snorts. “What a sad fucking pickup line. Does that work on girls?”
“I wouldn’t know. Not many girls wanna talk to the geek who allegedly jerked off to the MEEP test.”
That makes her laugh. “Holy shit, that was you?”
“Allegedly,” Pete says almost sadly.
“Can I ask—”
“Do I look like the type of guy to tug one out during an exam?”
Steph gives him a heavy once over, making him blush even more. “I don’t think you want an honest answer outta, Pete.”
“Fair point. Even if it was true, which you’ll never be able to prove, the questions were so suggestive it was just bound to happen.”
“Oh, I remember it. Melons and jugs. I’m so sure they did it on purpose.” Steph mimes locking her lips and tossing the key. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me, Jerkoffski.”
He lets out a long groan. “God, not you too.”
“Sorry. Had to say it just once.”
“You’re killin’ me, Steph.”
Nobody ever calls her Steph. Just a couple of the girls she’s close enough to sometimes call her friends, even if their relationships are skin deep. But it sounds so natural coming from his mouth that she barely notices.
“I didn’t know you were funny,” she says with mirth. “Then again, I’ve never heard you say more than ten words before today.”
When he meets her eyes again, he smiles, but it quickly fades.
Although she’s never paid him much mind, now Steph examines him through the corner of her vision, trying not to be caught. He’s wearing a cardigan with an old band shirt underneath, the Rolling Stones logo so worn it’s practically a ghost printed on cotton, and torn jeans. Steph looks down at her own clothes. They have a similar style. She never noticed that before.
“You know, as cool and mysterious as this lone wolf thing you’ve got going on is, it must pretty be lonely,” she says. “I never see you with anybody. You do have friends, don’t you?”
Pete adjusts his crooked glasses, tucks a strand of dark hair behind his ear. He’s cute. She never looked close enough to notice. “I don’t know.”
What an odd response. Steph walks faster to keep up with his pace.
“Well, I’m sure there’s someone out there you—”
“What the hell is going on here?”
Pete’s sneakers squeak against the floor as he stops. Max and Kyle stroll towards them from the other end of the hall, eyeing them like sharks.
“Is he bothering you, Steph?” Max asks.
“Obviously not,” she snaps back, already annoyed. “Move.”
She tries to walk past the jock trio, but Max grabs her arm. Not painfully tight, but firm enough to make pulling away difficult. Steph wrenches herself away from him and nearly punches him. Even if they’re friends, nobody touches her like that.
“Fuck off.” She puts herself between him and Pete, who doesn't even flinch. Is he used to this kind of behavior? “We’re going to detention, jackass, and if we don’t get there soon I might get suspended again. So fucking move.”
“Sorry, no can do.” Max circles the two, flicking the back of Pete’s head. “There are rules these nerds know better than to break. There’s a way things are supposed to go, and when you don’t follow the rules, people get hurt. Isn’t that right, Micro-Peter?”
“Sorry, Jagerman, I didn’t realize that the hallway belonged to you,” Pete says sarcastically. He stares Max down without fear. Despite the obvious difference in their strength, Pete is just as tall as Max, and takes every inch of height. “Can you even spell detention? You’ve been there plenty.”
Kyle oohs, and Max snaps at him to shut up. While Max’s back is turned, Pete turns around and sprints.
“Wait, Pete!” But he’s already gone, vanishing down the hall before any of them can catch up.
Steph elbows Max, and he yelps. “What the fuck did I do?”
Ignoring his snide comment, she chases after Pete, running into the school lobby. There is no sign of him. She frowns, oddly disappointed that he’s disappeared on her, and walks to detention alone.
•• ━━━━━ ••𓄃•• ━━━━━ ••
Pete finds his way back to his and Ted’s apartment. He takes their spare key from beneath the welcome mat—he’s surprised it’s not on top of the frame where Ted always leaves it—and enters quietly.
Despite being the same floor, same number, the interior is entirely unrecognizable. The furniture is new, but clinically white and too modern, like a unit in an Ikea. Ted has a liking for junk furniture, saying he’s going to fix it up and sell it for ten times the price, but Pete knew that was just his excuse so he didn’t have to explain his less than manly taste.
Pete drops his backpack on the kitchen island, walking around cautiously.
“Ted,” he calls out.
He must still be at work.
“Peter? Is that you?”
From the bathroom, Pete’s father exits, drying his hands with a towel. He’s in a suit, as always, and with far more grey in his hair. Pete jumps a bit upon seeing him, not expecting him at all.
“Oh. Hey, Dad.” Pete never knew how to act around his father. Their relationship was more so that of a nephew and his estranged uncle, not father and son.
“You’re home early,” his father says.
“Yeah, I, uh, had a blood sugar thing,” Pete lies. “The nurse sent me home.”
Knowing his father, if the principal called to tell him of Pete’s detention, he wouldn’t bother to answer.
“You feelin’ better?”
“I am.”
“Good.”
Pete rolls onto the balls of his feet. “So. Where’s Ted?”
Dad returns the towel to the bathroom. “What do you mean?”
“Is he still at work, or what?”
He rolls his eyes. “How the hell do you expect me to know? And why’re you asking me all of a sudden? I thought you got over him years ago.”
Pete prickles but swallows down the rest of his questions. “Right. Sorry.”
“I’ve got a meeting in…” Dad checks his watch, “Thirty minutes. I’ve gotta run. You can handle dinner on your own, can’t you, champ?”
“Sure.”
His father claps his shoulder, then leaves, not bothering to lock the door behind him.
Pete wants a beat to make sure his dad is gone, then goes searching. Despite all of Ted’s belongings being scattered around Pete’s room, repurposed for his own use, there is no sign of life. Ted’s room is now an immaculately kept office that looks unused.
He catches his reflection in his mirror and stops, not recognizing himself upon first glance. His dark hair falls well past his shoulders, purple circling under his eyes from lack of sleep. His glasses, he realizes now, were Ted’s, just with different lenses. Pete touches his gaunt cheeks and grimaces.
No wonder he has no friends. He looks like a living phantom.
There is a framed photo on Pete’s desk: the two brother’s at Ted’s college graduation. Pete was sitting on Ted’s shoulders, his four-year-old face rosy with youth and missing teeth. Ted’s hair is long like Pete’s, and he had yet to grow out his stupid mustache. Their smiles are large and matching. A young redhead stands beside him, their arms wound around each other.
Her name was Jenny, if Pete recalls correctly. She was Ted’s old best friend who moved to Clivesdale after their college graduation. Ted spoke of her rarely, and never kindly.
There’s a letter in Pete’s desk drawer addressed to him and written in Ted’s chicken scratch handwriting. Pete starts to read it, but there’s too many tears in his eyes to finish. He folds the letter, returns it to its home in the drawer.
Ted left. He went to Clivesdale with Jenny. Just up and left Pete alone to fend for himself.
No wonder this Pete is so bitter. He would be, too, if Ted ever left him. There is an irony in that thought.
“You wouldn’t leave me. Would you, Ted?” Pete asks the photograph. “Where the hell did you go?”