For the May 31 prompt: Free Day! for @duckprintspress May Trope Mayhem
Fandom: The Magicians (TV); Relationship: Eliot Waugh/Quentin Coldwater
Warnings for canon-typical language and grief/regret; the "canonical character death" is Eliot's death in the Mosaic Timeline.
Summary: A story in verse. Eliot’s POV, reflecting on their lives at the Mosaic, as well as what happened in the throne room afterward. Yes, their hearts were broken then—but in the course of these reflections, Eliot realizes a few things. And makes plans. So—there's hope!
Also posted on AO3—link at the end.
Each night I dream of that puzzle—
fruits of the orchard, often our child—
but always that puzzle with you on it.
Crawling the playing board or pacing with me;
standing by, or perched on the ladder,
perusing the journal to compare solutions, or design new ones.
But always you, you, standing there,
frowning or excited for some new possibility,
or on your hands and knees working the tiles,
gazing up at me with mischief from under that fall of long hair.
“We work”—our hearts in harmony, more often than we fight,
but I’ll take both: anything to get a glimpse of you while you’re still mine,
sharing peaches and plums, peaches and plums,
that sweet tang, the juice running down your chin,
all over your fingers—licking it off,
tasting your sweet lips, your tart bite, the witty sarcasm, the fond embrace,
throwing you over my shoulder or lifting you high like an airplane on my long legs.
Your snark, your wit, your kindness.
Your muscles rippling on a hot, shirtless day.
I want to continue that life with nothing but you:
no other place I ever felt at home or happy.
But you were my home, you and our son.
Our whole lives stretched out, and we lived each day fiercely
with love, even through the fights.
And then it all ended: not with my death,
though I’m sorry I grieved you—
but with your decision to start over—
without asking what I wanted.
(To be fair, I was dead and couldn’t answer.)
You arranged for a letter to reach High Queen Margo,
arriving in time, with all the information she needed
to stop our quest from ever happening.
She arrived holding the key it took us a lifetime to earn—
a lifetime of love, of happiness—
our lives together, just us. An adventure
there’s no need to go on, now—
we stopped before the clock, before we ever felt magic again
or tasted each other’s lips a second time,
our first time alone following the threesome.
Everything we know says it never happened:
everything we feel says it did.
Was it a dream? Was it real?
Why did you want to stop us?
Did you want to escape a life of toil? Me?
Did you think that we’d just start over, fresh,
even though I don’t know how to do this?
Even though you erased the one time we had enough time
for me to learn how to work past my fears, to believe it was possible,
to trust that someone could actually love me?
I love you so much that I’m fucking terrified,
and I don’t know how to get there,
how to get home from inside this tangled wood,
never having lived those lives I loved so much,
where I loved you so much (so many times)—
where the certainty of your love
was so much greater than all my fears.
I want so badly to touch your face, but this is the world
in which I have no framework, no certainty,
nothing but my love for you that was never returned,
not for years, not for flirting or threesomes,
not as far as I ever knew.
And my heart stutters trying to speak—
Even though all I want to do is go home—
home to you, to our peaceful lives of purpose, our child,
But I never can, because home doesn’t exist,
not anymore. Because I said “I love you, but.”
And Okay, I’d give anything to take back what else I said,
all those lies and excuses, just me running away—
but I’ll be honest. I was happy. We were happy.
We loved each other. We lived good, beautiful lives.
And I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t want to die.
But I died loving you. Watching you, awed by your beauty even then,
even though you didn’t know it. I died knowing I was loved.
That we’d made it. I’d beat the odds. Lived a good life. Been a good dad.
Husband to the most wonderful man in the world. In any world.
A task so hard it seemed impossible in our lives before.
I never could have done it without you. Without that quest.
Our lives dedicated to endless combinations of art.
Focusing on something else
so I could pretend not to notice love sneaking up on me.
But I noticed. I noticed. I savored every minute.
I loved you so much. Long before I could say.
Long after I stopped being able to say, in this place we are now.
A quest so hard I’d have said it was impossible:
true love, happiness. A family.
It was the miracle I never dared to hope for.
I died loving you. Being loved. Old. Home. Happy.
And now…it’s nothing but a memory.
A secret shared between us. But even we don’t dare to speak of it anymore.
If you’d asked me, love, before you sent that letter . . .
I didn’t want to come back. Not ever.
Not to be separated from you like this.
Not to have that hard uphill climb
that I might never achieve again, not with all these odds stacked against me—
two royal marriages to contend with, our fucked-up fairy overlords,
alcoholism, the burdens of the crown—
my inability to speak my heart.
(Your ongoing pull toward Alice Quinn.)
My paralyzing fear. Jealousy.
All the things, reasonable and un-,
that have separated us once again,
stranded on different worlds:
you on Earth, and I in Fillory.
But, love, I’ve been puzzling this out.
To sort out not what’s possible,
but what’s important—enough to make it happen.
There are keys left on this quest.
And I’m not a king any longer.
Let’s find the next one together, shall we?
for that boat quest you always wanted to go on together?
This time, I promise you:
together, we’ll find one more key:
I’ll unlock my heart and say
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
