Chapter Text
Jean Moreau came back to himself in pieces, dragging himself together as he had a thousand times before. Had to, because falling apart wasn't an option here. Right now he was nothing but a partner. He was a #3 to a #4. He was ripping away the one support system he'd ever known.
But this had to happen. He had to force himself into solitude. There was no other option, for Elias was bruised and battered raw. Jean almost couldn't tell where one wound began and the other ended—it usually wasn't as bad as it looked, but now it appeared like Elias was at death's doorstep. The only reason he wasn't knocking on Heaven's door was because his arm was in too much pain to raise itself.
He had already lost Kevin, and now he would lose Elias too. But this time it would be on his own terms. Whether Elias was okay with it or not.
"I'm not—" Elias's words were delirious and panicked. Jean was sure he hardly knew what was going on. "I'm not leaving you."
Jean's stomach clenched. "You'll die there."
"Then I die there," Elias slurred, and his voice cracked on the last word. He was proud in the way only a fool could be proud. "Wherever you are."
His voice was particularly more accented in this state, which somehow made everything all the more worse. Jean was going against everything that was instilled in him—disobeying the rules, ridding himself of his partner—but he was so terrified by Elias that he knew he had to.
Jean's throat closed around his desire to concede and make his way back toward Castle Evermore. He felt as raw as Elias, and almost wanted to check himself for the same wounds as his partner. But it was Elias with the wounds, not him. It was Elias who was halfway to death.
"I will not watch you die for me," he said, forcing conviction.
Jean risked a glance at his hopelessly brown eyes. They were wet and miserable and glazed over and wrong. He tried fixing his gaze on Jean.
"You've watched enough. Don't force me to stop doing the same."
It took everything in Jean to say, "You are done with the Ravens. You don't have a place with us anymore."
Elias's drunken desperation only grew at this. Maybe he'd been hit with a moment of clarity—he was in this car, in this passenger seat, being driven away from Castle Evermore before his teammates could finish the job.
"No," he choked. "No. No. Jean, no."
Jean's grip tightened on the steering wheel. He barely even knew how to drive, but for his partner he would.
Elias gasped, and it sounded garbled and horrifying. "No," he begged. "Jean-Yves Moreau."
"Elias Nunez."
He whined, or sobbed, and Jean knew exactly why.
"Oh, please don't do this," Elias cried. "Don't do this to yourself. You have to let them—You have to let them—"
"Let them kill you?" Jean finished.
It was a choice of either enduring Riko's wrath or finally losing his #4 for good, which wasn't really a choice at all. Elias would only stop letting himself be a toy when he was too dead to let it happen, and even then Jean worried his torture wouldn't stop. Tonight was the final straw. Jean was already imagining what punishment awaited him when he returned to Castle Evermore empty-handed. What would Edgar Allen do without their compliant and love-starved fool?
Jean almost knew. It would only be him left. Jean Moreau, who would suffer as he always did, but from now on alone. Jean Moreau without Kevin Day and Elias Nunez.
The sentence felt like an oxymoron.
Elias was barely conscious, and Jean knew it by the way he whimpered, "Please." He couldn't even rest his back against the car seat. "Please, take me back. Take me back. I can take it. Jean, I can take it. I cannot leave you."
Jean said nothing.
"I cannot leave you," Elias repeated.
Jean knew that. He also knew Elias couldn't leave anything behind, whether it gutted him or not. His feelings for Jean would veer him off the road, and he would let them.
But Jean would not let him let them. Not anymore.
It was incredulous that Elias couldn't understand the severity of the situation. Jean couldn't help himself from pointing it out. "They are going to keep going. They are not going to stop."
"They never stop anyway," Elias sobbed. "It never stops."
It had to now, for Elias. Not for Jean, but for Elias. For Kevin.
"You're going to get hurt."
"You are hurt," Jean pointed out. That Elias could find it in his delirious brain to worry about potential situations involving Jean rather than the present situation concerning himself was despicable.
Elias shifted in the seat, groaning as the movement pulled at his wounds. His hand, trembling, found Jean's arm. It was foolish for him to move like this, but Elias always was. His grip was weak to prove it.
"Do not make me live without you," he whispered.
Jean pulled away sharply, before that fragile touch could undo him. "You will live without me. That is the point."
"It's not. Please. It's not. It's not. No." Elias's breath came in ragged gasps. "They'll take you apart piece by piece. Who will put you back together?"
Jean was bitter and hollow. "I will."
"No, let me stay," Elias begged. His words blurred together, delirious, desperate. "Let me stay, let me stay—"
"No."
Elias let out a low, keening sound, curling in on himself like the pain had finally caught up to him. Jean knew better. It wasn't the wounds. It was him. It was what Jean was doing.
"Please," Elias said again, this time in Spanish. It was a weapon used to hit Jean where it hurt. Elias wasn't allowed to speak Spanish—the only times he did always felt like the most harrowing.
Jean kept his eyes on the road, refusing to look. Elias could beg as much as he wished, but it never got him what he wanted before, and it wouldn't get him what he wanted now.
The hum of the car engine was the only answer Jean gave for too long. Until his own voice betrayed him in the silence.
"You were the only thing left that was mine." His voice came out too vulnerable. "And now I am giving you away."
Elias turned his face toward him, even in his half-conscious haze. "I do not want to be given away."
Jean exhaled sharply, his chest aching like something inside was caving in. He scratched at his neck while he kept one hand steering the wheel. "I don't care," he said. "You need to live. You won't do that here."
Elias's tears caught the passing light, a flash of something too human for the Nest, too human for Jean to carry.
"No, it's fine," he babbled. "It's fine. It's fine, Jean. It's all fine."
"It's not fine." Jean's voice finally cracked.
Elias was hysterical and out of it. He was pleading and weeping. "It is, it always is. You know it is."
"It's not," he argued. "It is not."
He tightened his grip on the wheel and forced himself not to cave at the sound of Elias; not to feel his emotions as if they were his own; not to want to keep his partner by his side always. Because this was the only way.
Elias was dry-heaving at this point. When he managed words, they were a gut-wrenching jumble of English, French, and Spanish.
"Please. Please, it has to be. It can be. I can let it be fine, I can. I can."
And Jean couldn't take it anymore. He hated resorting to this tactic, but he currently felt just as desperate as Elias was acting.
"Elías Nuñez," Jean called him. "Stop."
So Elias stopped fighting.