Chapter Text
“Listen, Jules, I think I found something,” Quentin said, holding a book up for Penny 23 and Julia to see. It was a crumbling yellow manuscript, its pages very possibly made of papyrus, and it was in Ancient Greek. “The spell I used to translate it is a little unstable, but in the Argonautica, right, there’s this story of Jason--”
“The guy who got the Golden Fleece? Wasn’t he a king?” Penny 23 interrupted.
“Yeah, he’s a hero, and I think he’s maybe a demigod, or at least, distantly related to Hermes,” Quentin continued. “Anyway, he’s given these stones by Enyalius--”
“The god the Monster is looking for?” Julia asked.
Quentin nodded. “And the stones have the power to cause discord, and start a war among all these factions of Greek soldiers--”
“So you think this Monster wants to, what, use the stones to start World War Three?” Penny 23 asked, incredulous.
Quentin looked up at them soberly. “That’s exactly what I think,” he said.
“But if that were true, why does he need more than one of them?” Julia pointed out. “In the Golden Fleece story, doesn’t Jason only need one rock to throw, to start the war?”
Quentin shrugged. “Maybe more stones make the impulse to, I don’t know, blow up the entire world a little stronger.”
“Then we can’t let him get more,” Julia said firmly. Quentin looked like he’d been kicked.
“So if the Monster isn’t using the stones to build a body,” Penny 23 began slowly, finishing the thought for everyone in the room, “Then what happens to Eliot when he’s done?”
*
Eliot sat on the staircase of his mind palace, which was a particularly halcyon replica of the Physical Kids Cottage. Sure, the booze was an illusion, and the inhabitants just versions of his own happiest memories, but every now and then he could trick himself into thinking for a few seconds that everything was fine and exactly as it used to be. The Happy Place. The feeling never lasted very long; most of his time was spent trying to figure out the Monster’s secrets without getting killed by the murderous creatures outside. They’d killed Charleton, finally, which had hit Eliot harder than he would have expected. Charleton had been decent company, if for no other reason than the fact he was the only part of this place that wasn’t some part of Eliot’s subconscious mind. Eliot hadn’t known what to do with the body, if it was a body (it wasn’t), and before long it had just faded creepily into thin air. That was more frightening than almost anything else he’d seen lately, and he’d seen more than his fair share of horrific spectacle.
Eliot had never liked his mind that much. It was a good mind; he knew he was smart. You had to be brilliant to get into Brakebills, let alone to survive a couple of years there without blowing yourself up. And hadn’t he been a good, wise king? He hoped so. He missed Fillory. He missed Margo. No.
But the parts of his mind Eliot had carefully tried to avoid were all he had here, in this weird liminal space. He’d never considered what it would be like to be possessed before now. Was this how it had been for Mike? No, Eliot reminded himself. We don’t think about Mike. Every time he focused on someone from his past for longer than a few moments, they would materialize in front of him, a corporeal memory that usually wanted to have some kind of existentially painful conversation with him, and he was not in the mood for another one of those. He didn’t know how much time had passed, time was impossible for him to measure in this state, but it felt as if he’d just revisited every repressed memory of his life, and now was not the time to ruminate on the possessed ex-boyfriend he’d had to kill.
Horror films had always made it seem like the person possessed was totally gone, absent the consciousness of the being using their body, but Eliot found this situation so much worse. He was here, but he was… impotent. He had to wait. And as much as the drama of being a damsel in distress appealed in the abstract, in practice it was somehow both dull and terrifying. And if he were honest with himself (which, why not, there was nothing else to be now), it was also a bit mortifying.
His friends were probably working themselves sick trying to save him, Eliot thought, not for the first time. The thought didn’t make him particularly happy, especially because he wasn’t sure it could be done. But if anyone could…
This time, it wasn’t the Quentin who’d fought Penny who appeared in front of him. That Quentin was long gone, sacrificed to the creatures in some distant memory to which Eliot had sent him. This Quentin was the one he’d only glimpsed for a second, in a park. He thought it was a park, anyway, he hadn’t had much time to look around. This Quentin was wearing a blue collared shirt, his hair shorter, his eyes bright and sad.
“Eliot?” Quentin said, in the same certain voice he’d said when Eliot had opened the door. Eliot drank him in, studying him. He hadn’t meant to manifest this Quentin, especially not while worrying so much about him, but his mind palace was weird that way; intention didn’t have to be entirely conscious.
“Hey,” Eliot replied, exhausted. He’d said it more out of habit than because he wanted to have yet another conversation with himself in the form of a friend. Or whatever they were, he thought darkly.
The Quentin before him hesitated in an unreasonably good impression of the real thing, and then seemed to take Eliot’s greeting as an invitation to sit next to him on the stairs. Eliot felt the warmth and weight of him as if he were real. He guessed that was because he had a pretty clear memory of the real Quentin’s warmth and weight beside him. Fifty years’ worth of memories, he corrected himself.
“Honestly? I don’t mean to be rude,” Eliot started, having trouble meeting Quentin’s eyes again. “But I don’t think I can handle being this close to you right now.”
Quentin just stared at him with the same manic hope Eliot had glimpsed for a moment in the park. He wished he could go back to see it again in person. Quentin’s face was open, shocked. His lips were parted and he looked like he was about to say something important.
“See, that’s what I’m talking about,” Eliot said, chuckling without much mirth. “When you look at me like that… It’s just,” he swallowed thickly. “I can’t touch you--”
Quentin rested his chin on Eliot’s shoulder. “Sure you can,” he said gamely, with the same chutzpah Eliot recognized from the last time Quentin had kissed him.
Eliot laughed hollowly. “Not the way I want to touch you. You know what I mean. You’re not… you aren’t real.” He braved a glance at the Quentin nuzzling his shoulder, and cleared his throat. “As much as I like the idea of you torturing me, Quentin, this version of torment is not really my idea of fun.”
This time it was Quentin’s turn to laugh. “I know you think about me,” he said simply, shrugging a little. “I know you’ve been fantasizing about me since my first day at Brakebills. How is this, you know... any different?”
“That is not true,” Eliot said, indignant. Quentin just looked at him with an expression that clearly said, Liar.
“Okay, once or twice,” Eliot admitted. "But you don't know that."
“Try 32 and a half times,” Quentin corrected. It was deeply annoying that somewhere, his mind had been keeping count. He had no idea what the “half” time was. A buried memory for a different day, perhaps. Eliot glared at him. “All I’m saying is,” Quentin started, unbuttoning the top of his shirt, “It’s not like it would be wrong.”
“It would be so wrong,” Eliot countered, shaking his head and covering his eyes with his hands. “I can’t believe that my life is in danger, actual mortal danger, and all I can think about is you seducing me.”
Quentin shrugged again. “What else are we going to do?”
Eliot rolled his eyes. “Let’s just save the earnest dirty talk for real life, okay?”
*