Author Note: Spoiler Alert for Season Four I know most of us have already seen New Hope/Hallucinations. But my mind keeps drifting back to Pete's death scene, because I've been dealing a lot with death recently, and I can't help put just write it out. I do not own Warehouse 13.
Pete couldn't sleep. Not tonight anyways. Throughout the entire dinner, he couldn't help but stare at Artie after that weird confrontation that left him with questions. The fear and barely hidden pain in Artie's eyes was not something that could be shrugged off. He hadn't needed the vibe, that he had received immediately, that twisted in his stomach and pulled in all this fear into his body to know something was up. Something that Artie wasn't saying.
Ever since the day Sykes' bomb had been dismantled, the older agent was acting abnormal. Typically Pete wouldn't pick up the subtle hints, like Myka, but these hints given to him were anything but subtle. Haunted eyes appeared when Artie thought no one was looking, eyes that scanned each face in the room. He knew the agent was now more uncharacteristically paranoid than ever, and it scared Pete because he couldn't understand why. And even more questions added to the mess that was Pete's mind.
It seemed the paranoid agent broke character and decided to use his old room at the B&B instead of return to the warehouse. While surprising, this temporary change went by without question by anyone. Except for Pete. But he truly didn't mind, oddly enough.
Because when he stared into Artie's eyes, during dinner, and saw the hidden paranoia and pain in them vibes screamed and he knew they were shouting about death. This Death that had seemed to surround Artie. The vibes wouldn't fade even when Artie shrugged him off and simply returned to dinner with a simple "Oh, nothing." And with Artie around, it meant Pete could make sure he wasn't about to die, even though the vibes didn't seem focused on just Artie but rather the world.
So Pete tossed and turned in the night , his normally comfy bed becoming as hard as rock and his thoughts turned to questions that span around his mind at light speed. His clothes, clean and dirty, stood in the closet and one of his red shirts looked like blood which made him even more uncomfortable. He turned away, trying to ignore the moonlight steadily pouring in from the window. It was either try to close his eyes, though that wouldn't block out the light or the thoughts, or try to sneak into the kitchen for a midnight snack or something to relax himself. He need not think twice about that.
Within an instance he tossed his blanket to the side, and stood up giving a faint yawn. Tiredly he walked to his door, his shoulders slouched forward and he opened the door to his bedroom. Glancing around the hallway, he paused as he heard an almost silent whimper under the crack of one of the doors. Turning to the door in which it came from, he was unsurprised to see it was Artie's room, he slowly tiptoed toward the room and silently opened the door.
Little light peeked into the dark room. Pete quieted his breathing as a groan could be heard from Artie as the agent seemed to be tossing and turning in his sleep. Artie was muttering something in his sleep, and by the dimness of the light he could barely make out the uncharacteristic tear tracks on the agent's face. But it was the whispers that completely froze him.
"Oh my god." Pete looked as Artie paused, and winced at something, seeming to relieving a nightmare—or possibly a memory.
"Don-don't talk! Just gotta stop this bleeding. " The agent whispered, and Pete shuddered. He knew that Artie was witnessing in his subconscious: someone's death. And from the sound of his tone, this was no dream.
Pete was instantly slammed into memory lane, of the nights were his mother would come in and say she could hear him relieving the scene of when he heard his father was dead. That he wouldn't speak of anything else in his nightmares and they both knew she secretly hoped their angst would eventually dissolve away at his father's death. That his screams for his father –that woke the household up at night—would eventually stop. But they knew it wouldn't be for a while, if it ever ended. But Artie's next words brought him back to reality and forced him away from the painful past.
"Ye-yes, we got it." It was a voice filled with a sadden victory, as though the cost of retrieving whatever artifact they had to grab was more than too high. "You got it!" It was the only phrased he repeated for the next moments. Pete's heart went out to the agent, wondering if this is what he wasn't telling them: someone's death. Artie groaned once more, and Pete strained his ears to hear him better. The next words uttered from Artie were softer than a whisper, but filled with more pain than Pete had ever heard from him before. The armor that the agent fully had in the conscious world of reality was ripped away in the subconscious world of nightmares and tragic memories.
"Remember what?" The conversation Artie was happening seemed to be having with the dying person began to hit its climax. Pete hoped he could hear the name of the victim, to help understand Artie's pain better. Was it Claudia? Myka? Leena? Artie suddenly inhaled sharply at whatever was spoken.
"N-no Pete." His voice, though it held tones hurt and weakness, tried to stay strong. Pete froze, and his heart stopped for a second as he realized who Artie was talking to. The pre-dinner issue had begun to make sense. His heart raced, and he instantly caught a flash of looking into the supervisor's eyes and knowing he was about to die. But this was a foreign memory.
As Pete was trying to understand, to process any of it, he almost missed Artie's last words. "You won't remember." Pete knew he was talking about his 'death'. Artie seemed to pause, and his breathing went crazy for a few seconds as he tried to regain his composure as though aware of his audience. Respect and sympathy flew to Artie, from Pete, as Pete realized the poor old agent had witnessed so much death and felt so much loss. More than he could ever understand.
"But I will. I will." Artie's voice was beyond broken, and Pete wished he could help, even though he knew he really couldn't. Taking this as his clue to leave, Pete began to turn and close the door when one last statement from the sleeping-talking agent began.
"I will remember the deaths of everyone: Irene, Helana, Pete, Claudia. And no one can ever know the world once lost hope." With that final statement Pete closed the door, as gently and quietly as possible, and retreated down the stairs into the dining room in a successful attempt to let the others rest. He stared at everyone's chairs until breakfast, wondering if he could understand if one of those chairs became vacant. The vibes truly made sense, and for once he did not at all feel guilty for eavesdropping on Artie. Eventually the sun began to trickle into the room, breathing life into the house that the cold moon hid.
The sounds of a pair of footsteps trudging down the step awakened Pete from his thoughts. He looked up and sadly smiled at Artie, who seemed to be the first one up today, and in response Artie gave him a confused look.
"What's wrong?" Artie asked, and Pete noticed the subtle signs the heavy ordeal had taken on the exhausted agent. The signs that everyone seemed to miss.
"Just thinking." He said shrugging it off. But Artie's curiosity got the best of him.
"About?" His familiar irritated tone brought a genuine smile to Pete's face, but it faded away instantly.
"What it would be like to die." He could see Artie freeze, and take a quiet gasp for breath. But he wasn't done. "And what could possibly be worse." There was silence and the usual cheery room seemed grayer than before. The sun disappeared into clouds temporarily and the only movement in the room was the two agents staring at each other.
"And?" Artie asked, knowing that Pete somehow had an inkling of what happened in the erased twenty-four hours. But how he knew it and why he knew it was bugging the hell out of Artie. However, it was a question for later.
"I think it would be devastating if I had witnessed death, and I figured the only thing that could be worse is never being able to tell someone about it. The only thing, in my opinion, that would make it better would be knowing that someone else understands my pain, even if their understanding only scrapes the surface. I would be relieved to know that I'm not alone even if I'm convinced I am." A ghost of a smile appeared on Artie's face, as he saw the message Pete was trying to send, and he joined Pete in sitting in silence as the sounds of the others coming downstairs to eat left them to their own thoughts. But before the others arrived, it was only them.
"I guess… It would also make me relieved too."