On the Way Down
Dying was one thing. Dying to save your best friends and defeat the oppressive Librarian Overlords was another, much more noble thing. But dying to save your best friends, defeat the oppressive Librarian Overlords, and winding up stuck on a seemingly never-ending elevator ride down, down, down to the Underworld with both of your exes and Margo Hanson wasn't exactly the hero's death Quentin had been expecting.
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Dying was one thing. Dying to save your best friends and defeat the oppressive Librarian Overlords was another, much more noble thing. But dying to save your best friends, defeat the oppressive Librarian Overlords, and winding up stuck on a seemingly never-ending elevator ride down, down, down to the Underworld with both of your exes and Margo Hanson wasn't exactly the hero's death Quentin had been expecting.
"So we're....really dead, huh?" Eliot was the first to speak, and judging by the way he assessed his clothing choices, the tattered jeans, the graphic t-shirt, the oversized cardigan-cape thing, he didn't remember much from the few moments between being possessed by the monster and throwing himself in the line of fire to stop the monster's sister from killing Margo.
"Looks like it," Margo retorted coolly, turning her hands over in front of her.
Alice was quiet, her eyes downcast, her arms crossed over her chest. She looked so much smaller in death than Quentin ever remembered her being in life. He wished it didn't bother him.
"And we're all, going down there....together?" Eliot asked again, the logistics of their fate still evading him. Truth be told, they evaded Quentin, too. He had no idea why they were all on this elevator together. Was it because they'd died in such close proximity together, within a relatively short timespan? He knew he hadn't died at exactly the same time. He would never be able to un-know that.
"It would appear so," Quentin said quietly, staring straight ahead, the weight of failure on his shoulders. He'd been fine with death. Hell, he'd been ready to welcome it with open arms for a while, but he'd only wanted it if he went down alone. Clearly, that didn’t go as planned. Because of course it didn't.
"Well, fuck," Margo said, sounding more surprised than upset.
"What the fuck am I wearing?" Eliot asked. Slowly, Quentin turned around to see them all again. All the people he'd been trying so hard to save. His closest friends. The people he loved most in the world - dead. Eliot pulled the cardigan out from his body, regarding it with disgust.
"Darth Eliot had shit fashion sense," Margo explained, "But fuck if I was gonna tell him that and risk getting my neck snapped. I mean, I guess I kicked it anyway, though, so, sorry I couldn't get you to the Underworld in your Sunday best, baby."
Eliot shrugged, like this was a perfectly normal conversation to be having after a perfectly normal circumstance had occurred. Maybe they were all more fucked than he'd realized.
"Death by fashion advice definitely gets edged out by blazing, world-saving glory, Bambi. I'll allow it."
"We're all dead, " Quentin said, flustered that no one really seemed to grasp the severity of that concept. "No longer living. Ceased to exist on the corporeal plane. Are headed to the Underworld as we speak. Why are you two talking like you're on your way to happy hour?"
The outburst was, perhaps, the single thing most aligned with the reality of their situation, but an awkward silence followed it, and lingered for what felt like an eternity. Eliot crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. Margo squared her hands on her hips and stared Quentin down until he finally broke, turning to Alice. Alice, who was the only person in this god forsaken elevator who actually looked appropriately stricken by the concept of facing her own mortality. Or, having faced it? He wasn't quite sure how this worked.
A pang of guilt struck him when she looked up and their eyes met, for a split second. The fear there was a reflection of the last thing he'd seen on her face before she died. He'd really let her go to her death believing she was the villain of her own story. Her last attempt at apologizing had been to save them all, and she'd died in vain all over again. He wanted to apologize, now, but the words stuck in his throat, died on his tongue before they ever fully formed.
Quentin turned around, staring at the door again. After several silent moments, he could hear Eliot and Margo whispering something vaguely contentious sounding, the way fierce whispers always sounded, back and forth, but couldn't make out enough of what they were saying to turn back around. Eventually, the whispers fell away, too, leaving all four of them in total silence. It was palpably uncomfortable, but it took a long time (too long, why weren't they there already?) for anyone to break the tense quiet.
"Are you three really not going to talk about this?"
In the time it took Margo to say those ten words, she managed to shift the atmosphere in the elevator from palpably uncomfortable to completely suffocating. Quentin could feel the pulling back of shoulders, could easily picture the glare Eliot was giving her, a warning, and the icy stare Alice was shooting, if she was looking at Margo at all.
"Mmmm," Eliot's voice hummed disapprovingly, "If we did that, we wouldn't really have those secrets we're supposed to be taking to the grave now, would we?"
Quentin's eyebrows shot up his forehead, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest - or, the sensation was the same, anyway. He didn't really think his heart could pound if he was dead. Scientifically, it didn't make sense. He turned to face Eliot, a hundred questions in his eyes. Eliot, in frustratingly Eliot fashion, answered only one, pointing to the buttons on the elevator. The single button lit had an "SG" engraved on it, with the words "Secrets Taken to the Grave" etched below it.
"If they really wanted you to keep 'em to yourself, don't you think the fuckwads in charge of this ridiculously bureaucratic place would have made this a short elevator ride?" Margo retorted, arching an eyebrow expertly at Eliot before turning that same stare toward Quentin, and finally, Alice. Alice, who still refused to make eye contact.
"God you three really are unbelievable," Margo huffed. "Q said it himself. We're dead. What the fuck do you think you have to lose at this point?" The last bit was directed at Eliot, who stared straight through Margo like he was trying to cut her in half with laser beam eyes he, sadly, did not possess.
All three of them were silent, and Margo threw her hands up in exasperation.
" Jesus, you guys. You know what? Whatever. If you three are too stubborn to talk about this even AFTER you've died, it's not my problem anymore. El, sweetie, I adore you, but this is a clusterfuck and you know it."
"What's she talking about?" Quentin asked, eyeing Eliot carefully, not daring to get carried away. He could still remember the sharp pain of what had happened to him last time he had.
Eliot chewed on the inside of his cheek for a minute. The tightness in his jaw was an unmistakable tell Quentin hated he could still recognize. Then, with a roll of his eyes, he huffed out a breath, tossing his own hands up in a mirror of Margo a moment ago.
"Oh, Christ, Q, what did you think 'peaches and plums, motherfucker' meant, exactly?" he said, turning sideways so he could lean against one of the eerily empty and gray walls of their chariot to the underworld.
"Finally," he heard Margo mutter, but it sounded like she was miles, rather than feet, away.
"But you said -"
"I know, okay? I know what I said because, surprise, I'm a fucking coward! I saw a chance at happiness, and I told it to fuck off, because I couldn't trust myself not to break it."
"So, what are you saying?"
"That I lied. I looked for the one thing I knew would end the conversation, the one thing you wouldn't push back against. Which I knew, because of course I knew. How many times did we have that exact conversation back in Fillory? I know you better than anyone, Quentin. I knew what I needed to say to shut you up."
Eliot was barely looking at him, which was exactly how Quentin knew he was telling the truth. What the fuck?!
But before he could begin to process what Eliot was telling him, he heard a familiar throat clear. Everyone's heads turned in eerie unison (of course they waited until after death to finally get in sync) toward Alice. She unfolded her arms from her chest, staring intently at Eliot.
"No, you don't," she said simply.
"I'm sorry, Library rat, what?" Eliot said, tone sharp. Quentin winced.
Eliot didn't know. The last thing he had seen was Alice, melting the keys they'd spent so long finding, destroying their chance at getting magic back. Magic, which Quentin watched bring light back to Eliot's eyes when they stepped through that clock and into Fillory's past. Even without having witnessed Alice's apology tour and the way she'd sacrificed for all of them in the end, Quentin thought Eliot's words were harsh. His instinct, kicking in just a little too late, was to protect her. He kept his feet firmly where they were planted.
"You don't know Quentin better than anyone," Alice spat back, unafraid. Brave Alice had always been one of Quentin's favorite versions of her. "I do."
Oh, no.
Eliot scoffed. No, he laughed. He actually, full-on laughed.
"Oh, please," he said. For a man who had been so skittish about eye contact a moment ago, he had no problem meeting Alice glare for glare now.
"Why would you honestly think that you know him better?" Alice said, stepping forward. Margo shifted back, out of the way.
"I don't think, Blondie, it's fact."
Quentin wasn't sure if he felt cared for or mortified, but he held up his hands to stop this before it got out of hand regardless. "Guys, can we not do this?"
"So you know about his Star Trek collection?" Alice challenged, and Quentin groaned, running his hands over his face. If she were going to start somewhere, maybe somewhere a little less nerdy would have been better.
"Framed, signed photo of Leonard Nimoy and all," Eliot countered. "First time he was ever hospitalized?"
"Broken leg, 12 years old," Alice replied, smug. "Favorite childhood memory?"
"Drawing the map of Fillory with Julia under the dining room table," Eliot scoffed, "Seriously, that's not exactly a deep dive question. You know about the scar behind his ear?"
"The one he hates? He doesn’t tuck his hair back on that side because of it," Alice said.
Margo rolled her eyes, stepping in between them now. "For fuck's sake, I know about the scar behind his ear and we've only fucked once."
"Not. Helping," Quentin warned.
Margo shrugged, "What? I'm thorough. Besides, it doesn't matter . Trivial Pursuit, Coldwater Edition is not the fucking answer."
"You're right," Alice said, still glaring at Eliot.
Eliot averted his eyes. The uncomfortable silence fell again, more strained than before. Quentin tried to ignore it, pleaded with the elevator to bring this afterlife travel torture to an end already, but it refused.
Jesus, what, were they supposed to live another lifetime in this thing? Quentin had more than enough of those inside his head already. Quentin, Fillory Quentin, Brian. It was exhausting, carrying around three lifetimes' worth of pain, and knowing that even with access to that much of it, he still hadn't been able to save the people he loved. Magic comes from pain, what a load of bullshit. Guilt, confusion, hurt, failure, worry, love, all built on one another in his head, adding more and more pressure until he couldn't think above the buzzing in his brain.
He spun on his heel, fixing Eliot with an angry stare.
"What did you mean, exactly, El? Because when I told you no one gets proof of concept like that, you told me I was too straight, you told me you wouldn't choose me, when you had a choice. So you know what? I have no fucking idea what you meant, but by all means, enlighten me!"
Eliot's eyes were wide. Quentin had seen him backed into a corner like this before. In Fillory, after telling Quentin to live his life there, when Quentin hadn't backed down. It was one of only a few times, a small enough number that he could count them on one hand, that he had ever seen Eliot look genuinely afraid.
"I fucked up," Eliot admitted quietly, eyes shifting between Quentin and the spaces in between Margo and Alice, never landing on either of them directly.
"And I moved on," Quentin said, choking a little on the words as they came out. He didn't deserve to feel guilty about picking his life back up after Eliot told him no. Again, and again, in different ways. If fifty years together hadn't been enough to "prove" that he wasn't straight, that wasn't Quentin's battle to fight. He didn't owe Eliot an explanation of the boy he'd kissed in college, or the day he realized he wasn't sure whether he was, at the heart of it, more jealous of Julia or James when he saw them canoodling across from him in the booth at their favorite diner.
"I didn't mean that I wouldn't choose you," Eliot said, and Quentin tried not to dwell on how his words sounded weak, like they'd been rehearsed with more gumption, but fear diluted them on the way out.
"You looked me dead in the eyes and said those exact words, Eliot," Quentin said, jaw set, "You said, 'That's not me, and it's definitely not you. Not when we have a choice.' What part of that says 'run away with me' to you?"
"I know," Eliot said, looking down.
"I know, " he repeated, "But I didn't mean that I wouldn't choose you, Quentin. I meant that I didn't think you would choose me, when the peaches and plums of it all wore off, and I wasn't willing to watch myself fuck something beautiful up again."
"I was literally choosing you," Quentin gaped, unable to grasp the part of Eliot that was so broken it warped one of the purest things Quentin had ever done so horribly.
"And I was literally scared shitless," Eliot retorted, slowly (torturously slow, the apparent theme of the whole goddamned trip) raising his eyes to meet Quentin's, now.
They held each other's' gaze, but neither of them moved to cross the distance. Quentin was done crossing that distance. He'd made the first move in Fillory, he'd made the first move after.
"Quentin, what... are you talking about?" Alice's voice snapped him away from the layers of feeling reflected in Eliot's hazel eyes.
"You didn't… tell her?" Eliot asked.
Quentin shook his head, still looking at Alice. "There wasn't exactly time, what with your body and Julia's trying to end the fucking world. We kind of had other things going on."
"You didn't tell me what, Quentin?" Alice asked, her voice pressing, nervous. Quentin was intimately familiar with the way it wavered, and he hated that he'd done something, again, to make it sound like that.
"The key quest, the time key," Quentin explained in a rush, "Eliot and I went back, into Fillory's past, to solve the mosaic."
Alice's arms folded over her chest again. She didn't need the mosaic explained to her. Not like Eliot had.
"We...lived a life together, there. Raised a family. I....I had to bury him, Alice," Quentin's eyes were shining now.
"I thought that never happened," Margo chimed in, looking at Eliot, confused.
"You never told her? " Quentin asked, blinking back tears that he couldn't even place an exact origin to. Was he crying for what they'd had? Was he crying for what he lost? Was he crying because he didn't tell Alice, before asking her to try again just like he'd asked Eliot? He had no fucking clue.
"Like you said," Eliot shrugged, "other things going on."
"I don't - the logistics aren't exactly clear. But if it happened, or if it didn't, Eliot and I....we remember all of it," Quentin continued, his eyes pleading with Alice for understanding.
"You..." her eyes shifted to the floor, a resigned sigh falling from her lips. "You love him."
"Loved him," Quentin corrected, glancing guiltily back at Eliot, then to Alice again. "Maybe love him, I don't… really know. But I love you, too, Alice. I wasn't lying when I said I wanted to try again." He swallowed against how similar it sounded, hanging in the stale air of the elevator like that, to what he'd asked of Eliot.
When Alice pulled her eyes from the floor, they were on Eliot now.
"You love him?" she asked.
Eliot, who suddenly seemed significantly more uncomfortable without a vest and perfectly knotted tie to hide behind, shrugged. Quentin felt something in his chest squeeze.
"Well," Alice said stubbornly, "So do I."
"Good for you," Eliot said derisively.
"You think you love him more," Alice challenged.
Eliot sighed, rolling his eyes. It was a stubborn move, one Quentin had come to know meant he was buying himself time, when he didn't have an answer quippy or eloquent enough to keep him safe. Quentin's head was spinning in a sickly way, tossed violently back and forth between the idea that Eliot loved him, had loved him when he turned him down, and the idea that he had forgiven Alice, and when the hatred had faded away, the love was still there. That he'd only discovered one of those things before he died. What might have happened if he'd have discovered Eliot's secret sooner.
"I think it doesn't matter. We're dead."
"Maybe it matters," Alice said, glancing at the glowing button on the otherwise smooth, steel surface next to the sliding doors.
Secrets Taken to the Grave.
If they all had secrets, what were they? Was it the same secret? Were they all parts of the same secretive puzzle? Maybe that was why they were stuck here, together.
Quentin had so many secrets he could hardly keep them straight, half the time. He tried to be open and honest but there was too much darkness inside of him that he could barely stand to look at himself. But he'd shared a lot of that with Alice, with Eliot over the course of an entire lifetime. He couldn't immediately, pick out what piece of him neither of them knew. He could pick out things that Eliot didn't know, but Alice did, and vice versa, but something neither of them knew?
"Jesus, Alice, that button says Secrets Taken to the Grave. Not Express Your Feelings Hour. I don't have to do this."
"Maybe you do. Maybe that's the whole point. Maybe we never get down there unless we all just admit whatever it is that's taking us to that particular floor, or department, or whatever," Alice said, pointing at the button furiously.
"What? What do you want me to say? Yes, I think I loved him more, because I lived an entire life with him, came back around, and still wanted more?"
"Oh that's such crap, Eliot!" Alice snapped, "That's not all there is to love, you know. Time. You don't know anything about how I love him, about how much it hurt, having to get over him. How I couldn't, not really."
" You don't know anything about what we had, about how happy we were," Eliot shot back, his words heated.
Quentin shrank into a corner. For all the times in his life he'd thought being in this position, the shiny thing people were fighting over, would be cool and gratifying, the reality of it was mortifying.
"We were happy, too, you know," Alice spat, "before you and Margo ruined everything."
"Oh my God, we're not really going back to that are we?"
"Back to when he cheated on me with you?"
"Also known as magically-induced and ancient history," Eliot retorted, his tone sharpening again.
Quentin remembered a whispered conversation in the cottage, years after Arielle had passed, where Eliot admitted to thinking about that magically-induced night more often than he wanted to. Where he had said that, even though it was fuzzy around the edges and soaked in alcohol, it meant something to him. How long it had taken him to really sort that out. How much longer it took him to be able to say it out loud. He didn't bring it up, now.
"I'm just saying if you're going to use time as a measuring stick, for God's sake, at least be man enough to admit that you're half the reason our time got cut short!" Alice shouted, and Quentin couldn't - he couldn't fucking take it anymore.
"Stop, just, stop it! Both of you!" He finally found the strength to step forward, getting between them, and was shocked when both Alice and Eliot reached out to push him away.
"Shut. Up, Quentin!" they both yelled in unison.
"I died for him, Eliot. I died for all of you, and Quentin was the only one who even gave a shit! You didn't bother to show up at my funeral!" Alice’s voice cracked at the end, and hearing it cracked something inside of Quentin, too.
"I was running a kingdom, Alice! That doesn't mean I didn't fucking care! Who do you think buried you? " Eliot said, gesturing to Margo. Margo's face went sheet-white in an instant.
"You guys...." Quentin said, looking between the two of them. He knew she'd been buried by the castle, in the gardens, but he'd always assumed they delegated the task. He never would have imagined that... a knot worked its way firmly into his throat. Quentin knew, intimately, what it was like to bury one of them. He couldn't believe Eliot and Margo never said anything about it.
"Can we not make a thing of it?" Margo said, sighing. Her hands were shaking.
"So what, you spelled a hole in the ground and put my body in it? That doesn't make you some big hero," Alice said stubbornly.
Eliot looked away again, clenching and unclenching his jaw in a repetitive way that tugged something raw inside of Quentin's chest. He stepped forward then, gingerly touching Eliot's arm. Eliot rolled his shoulder away from the touch, side-stepping closer to Margo.
Margo, with an ease Quentin had never seen achieved between any other two people, looped her arm through Eliot's and leaned into him, closing her eyes. "Is this fucking thing broken? Why the hell aren't we there yet?"
"You didn't spell a grave for her, did you?" Quentin asked quietly. Neither of them met his eyes.
"You were a Queen of Fillory," Margo said softly, squeezing Eliot's arm. "You deserved better than a quickie burial."
God, they were all such a fucking mess, such a tangled web of secrets and betrayals and love and hidden affection, Quentin couldn't even begin to pinpoint where the first knot really was, let alone start to pull apart the mess.
"Look," Margo continued firmly, "We've all done some fucked up shit, for Coldwater, for each other, in the name of Fillory, to save magic, to save El, what-the-fuck-ever."
"I hope there's a but coming, Bambi," Eliot interjected.
"We've thrown ourselves on the sword so many times, none of us can actually be surprised that this is where we ended up," Margo continued, ignoring Eliot's comment. "We could bitch about the finer points of which fuck up was the most nobly intentioned, or we could just vag the fuck up and admit whatever secret we think we're taking to the grave, and maybe this tin can will pop us out a couple of floors early, or something."
"Bambi. You can't actually be advocating for feelings hour here," Eliot said, tone just missing the flippant Quentin suspected he was aiming for.
"We're dead, babe. Pretenses mean pretty much fuck-all at this point," Margo said, resigned.
Alice shifted back and forth on her feet, rubbing the side of her left arm with her right hand repetitively. Quentin ran a hand through his hair. Eliot reached up to straighten the knot of a tie that wasn't there.
"I never really forgave you," Alice's voice was small, but she was staring straight at Quentin.
"For," Quentin's eyes flitted to Margo and Eliot. Alice shook her head.
"For locking Charlie in that box," she said.
"Alice, I had to," Quentin retorted, and Alice held up a hand, looking just beyond his shoulder.
"I know. I know you did, but it doesn't matter. He was my brother. Even if he wasn't my brother anymore. I know what happens when you become a niffin, Quentin. I know the difference. I wasn't me when I was a niffin, but it was Charlie. I can logic my way out of it a hundred different ways, but I just....haven't forgiven you for it. I've tried."
Quentin wanted to earn her forgiveness. His entire body screamed at him with the knowledge that he would never get that chance, that Alice would never get the chance to forgive him for it. This wasn't how he wanted to go down. Raking fingers through his hair, he nodded, his voice broken and soft when he said, "I'm sorry.
Alice, teary-eyed, nodded back, "I know. I’ve known that, Q, for a really long time. And I wish it was - enough, but it put this crack in our foundation. I thought I could fill it, or pave it over, or it would just go away, with time, because I loved you, I love you so much, but - when you told me I couldn’t trust your love, when you sent me away, I wanted to fight back. But I couldn’t. Because you were right. I’ve never been able to trust us, not the way I want to. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, probably, but Charlie’s where it started.”
Fuck this elevator. Fuck secrets taken to the grave. Fuck the fact that they were dead.
He looked at them each in turn, his heart aching for everything he knew they had lost. Alice, who spent most of the last year of her life trying to earn back the trust Quentin wasn't even sure she ever deserved to lose in the first place. Margo, who gave up her rule of Fillory to save Eliot, who finally learned the power of laying down the heavy armor she carried around, and then lost her life. Eliot, who tried to save Quentin. Even if it was a rash, terrible decision that tipped the first tile in the grotesque domino effect they faced, he'd only been trying to save Quentin from spending an eternity trapped with a monster. The final year of his life was spent trapped in his own head while his body committed terrible acts of violence and murder, all in the name of something it didn't even understand. Eliot, Jesus, Eliot, spent his last minutes of life finally reunited with his body, with his friends, only to watch them slaughtered before him.
"I tried to find Teddy," Quentin finally said, the lump in his throat clearing long enough for him to find his voice, for tears to spring to his eyes.
Eliot froze. "What?"
"Well, his grave, I guess. But I tried to find it, once. Fen let me into the census room." Now it was Quentin's turn not to make eye contact. "I didn't tell her why I wanted in, she didn't really question it."
"Did you -?"
Quentin shook his head, "No. Something happened with the fairies before I found anything."
"Are you okay?" Margo asked, and Quentin looked up. Eliot had slumped to the floor of the elevator, his head in his hands.
"El, I'm sorry, I just - I had to know, or try to know," Quentin said. He pulled on the sleeve of his tattered black hoodie, a nervous tick that did nothing to ease the wave of anxiety crashing over him. “I should have told you, or asked you to come with, or something, but I didn’t want you to think I was, um, using it, to remind you or to make you want to be with me again or whatever, I don’t know, I’m sorry….” he trailed off, looking away.
"I never thought about that, about how there might be -" Eliot shook his head in his hands, unable to finish the sentence.
Quentin understood that feeling. Every time he thought too much, or too long, about their descendants, about the grandkids, or their great-grandkids, or the idea that, if it happened, even though it didn't happen, they might have family out there, somewhere, he felt like he was being ripped in two, slowly, each bone and ligament cracking and snapping away with blinding pain.
"Q," Eliot said quietly, pulling his head from his hands. Quentin saw the shine in his eyes and his heart broke.
Margo squeezed her hand on Eliot's shoulder, moving it to sweep dark, stringy curls away from his face. "Let me go. I kind of think yours isn't gonna be as shitty as mine."
Well, that wasn't promising. Margo pushed the sleeves of her shirt up to her elbows and inhaled deeply.
"Okay, I know I talked a big talk about the whole desert quest, and handing those misogynistic fucks their asses, and yeah, that was completely badass and I stand by every part of it, but that shit was also like...really fucked. And I realized something out there, or like, clarified something, I guess."
Quentin had never seen Margo look contrite, not really. He'd seen her regret choices, watched things blow up in her face, but genuine remorse or apology was hard to come by. Even when she'd tried to mend the damage between them at the coronation, it had been delivered with a hefty dose of Margo Hanson sarcasm. It was fine, a trait Quentin had learned to navigate over the years, something he'd learned to hear and believe in the softness in between the harsh beats, but she looked truly uncomfortable now.
"Jesus fuck, I'm deeply regretting my choice to support feelings hour," she continued, looking down at Eliot, who gave her a miserable shrug in return. "I still don't agree with the choice you made, Coldwater. Deciding to stay in Blackspire was some Grade A dumbass bullshit and you're an idiot for putting us in that position. You couldn't actually believe any of us were going to let you do that, could you?"
He opened his mouth to answer but Margo bowled him right over. "This is my confession, shut it. So I don't agree with what you did, or decided, or whatever, because it was insane. But at the end of the day, losing Eliot wasn't worth it. It didn't even do the thing he wanted it to. You still got stuck with the monster, which was the whole thing we were trying to avoid. And it took him away from me." She paused, her chin quivering. Eliot reached up a hand and laced their fingers together. "If I could go back and do it again, I'd leave you there. I'd wrestle the gun away from El, and I'd leave you there."
"Margo," Eliot whispered, shaking his head.
Quentin knew he should have been hurt, probably, by her admission. On some level, he was. That made two people in this elevator alone who'd told him, to his face, that they wouldn't choose him. Even if Eliot was lying, it didn't feel great. But, on some level, he agreed with her. If he had stayed, at least his friends would be alive. At least his hands wouldn't be dripping with the blood of all the lives he'd let the monster take in the name of saving Eliot's body.
"No, it's - it's fine," Quentin said. He crossed his legs beneath him and sat on the floor of the elevator, too. Alice and Margo followed shortly after. The tension in the elevator hadn't dissipated, but it had shifted. Where it was stubborn and bull-headed and venomous before, it was vulnerable and heartbroken and raw, now. Three secrets floated in the atmosphere of the small metal box, carrying the weight that had previously been nestled in their chests.
"And then there was one," Eliot quipped sourly. "Though I'm not sure how much of a secret it is at this point."
"It's a secret til you say it, El," Margo said.
"Q," Eliot said, looking up at him. Everything inside of Quentin tensed as their eyes met. "Suffice to say these are not exactly the circumstances under which I had hoped to be telling you this."
He leaned forward, his eyes shifting back and forth, the way they always did when Eliot was about to say something that made him feel exposed. If Quentin had a heartbeat anymore, he was certain it would have picked up pace in his chest.
"When you asked me to give it a shot, to give us a shot, I got scared. No, I got terrified. Because I'd just been smacked with all these memories and feelings of an entire life together. Of raising a family with you, and Arielle, of looking for the beauty of life every day, even as it was unfolding right before our eyes. It was...stunning, Q. And I know myself, or, I thought I knew myself, well enough to know that I couldn't be trusted with something that precious in this world, with everything we were up against. So I ran away. I kept running, and then you said you were going to stay in Blackspire, forever, and I realized if you did that, I'd never have the option to stop running. You'd be gone."
Eliot's hands gripped his quads. Quentin could see the little indents in the jeans where his fingertips dug in.
"Q, I love you. I’m in love with you. I'm sorry this is how you're finding out."
Quentin's mouth was bone dry. He wanted to say it back. He couldn't conjure the words.
A metallic ding echoed in the space around them. The doors of the elevator slid open. All four of them scrambled to their feet, looking varying degrees of more broken than when they'd arrived. Quentin's heart jumped at the familiar face looking back at them.
"Hey," Penny said, appraising the group of them with something Quentin might have even pegged as fondness, if he didn't know any better, "Been awhile. Welcome to the Underworld."