there had been timelines where he and quentin had been happy, eliot knew there had been, because if his lifes sole purpose, 40 times over, was to live with this pain, this emptiness, this grief, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to go on.
ao3
eliot was no stranger to grief. he’d known it in so many shapes, and forms in his life, it felt like grief was just a part of him. but this - this hurt in ways eliott wasn’t sure he was ever going to be able to recover from. fen was gone, ousted hundreds of years before by a dark king, the woman he’d been destined to marry, the woman he’d had, and lost a child with, the woman he’d loved so dearly in the end, gone.
and q.
quentin coldwater wasn’t the sort of person you could get over, eliot had realised that very early on. quentin left a mark on you, forever, a sort of a remanent of his love, and you didn’t get over that. losing quentin felt as though someone had reached into the battered, broken remains of his body, and had pulled his heart out.
(eliott wished someone would just reach into his chest and pull his heart out. maybe - maybe this would hurt less, if they did. maybe every waking second, every moment, wouldn’t feel like he was breathing in needles, everything around him a sharp reminder of quentin’s absence, tearing him up from the inside out.)
eliot wasn’t entirely sure he could live under the crushing weight of the regret that seemed to cause his every movement to drag. he’d missed his chance, to love quentin, and now he was gone - in the underworld. he was gone, and eliot hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye, to tell quentin he loved him, to say he was sorry for not taking a chance on them.
peaches and plums motherfucker. i’m alive in here.
the last words he would ever get to say to quentin. hindsight was wonderful, he supposed. if he’d known then, what he knew now, he’d have used those last words to say something more. he’d have made sure that when quentin died, he knew, he knew that he was the love of eliot’s life.
40 different timelines and a life in fillory had proved that.
eliot - he liked to believe there was a timeline out there where they had been happy. 16, perhaps. or 3. anything would be better than the ending they’d gotten here, in timeline 40. this must be the worst one of all, eliot decided, the timeline where they never really even had a chance.
in 16, they were happy, eliott decided. he’d been courageous then, and he’d kissed the breath out of a nervous q at his first physical kids party, and that had been that, they’d stayed together ever since. they’d fucked, and fought, and loved, and broken magic, and saved magic, and they’d ruled fillory together, kings to margos high king. in 3 - in 3 eliott had kept his promise, and he’d found quentin after he was expelled from brakebills, and he’d seduced him, and they’d fallen totally, completely, grossly in love. eliot had given up brakebills for him, in that timeline, he’d left school behind and become new yorks baddest hedge witch. after marina, he supposed.
there had been timelines where he and quentin had been happy, eliot knew there had been, because if his lifes sole purpose, 40 times over, was to live with this pain, this emptiness, this grief, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to go on.
know that when i’m braver, it’s because i learned it from you.
eliott inhaled the barely there scent of quentin’s cologne as he sat on q’s bed, a jumper of his in hand. eliot still wasn’t quite sure who he was, these days, the possession and the whole love of his life dying thing knocking him for six.
but he could be brave, like q.
eliot tugged the jumper on over his head, the arms coming up a little short on him, but he didn’t care. it was as close as he would get to having q with him now, and eliot had always needed quentin, right from the first moment they had met.
brushing a gentle hand over one of quentin’s well loved copies of fillory (not the first editions, no, this was one of the paperback ones with a cracked spine, and folded pages, and little notes made down the margins in quentin’s neat handwriting, their guide to the madness of fillory), eliot couldn’t shake the strange feeling he needed to bring it.
picking up the book, eliot forced one foot in front of the other, joining the rest of their motley crew in the hallway. alice was in the library, now, quiet in her grief in a way eliot was jealous of - all he wanted to do was shout, and scream, and tear down every old god out there and demand they give him quentin back.
julia - well, she was struggling. eliot could see it in every rasping breath she took, the way her eyes widened, and filled with tears as she realised just who the jumper eliot was wearing belonged to. eliot might have loved q for a lifeitme, but so had julia.
margo held out a bag, a familiar bag, quentin’s horrendously ugly leather satchel, the bag slung proudly over her shoulder. “here, i’ve got space for that,” she offered.
eliot wanted to say no. he wanted to shout, and scream, and demand they find a way to get him to the underworld so he could find quentin, so he could find him and be with him forever.
(q would never forgive him, eliot knew that much.)
placing the book in margo’s - quentin’s - bag with shaking hands, eliot nodded. “let’s save fillory then.”
(if eliot couldn’t save quentin, he’d save the thing quentin had always so desperately loved, even if he’d loved it a little less, in the end. he’d do his best, because in this timeline - in this timeline, he had to live for the two of them. and q had made him brave enough to try, at least.)
