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The Burnt River. The Northern Marsh. Ember’s Tomb. Julia’s finger traced a meandering path over the Fillory map drawn on the underside of the table above them. Her silver ring twinkled in the muted light. It had been a birthday present from her sister, and she liked it more than she’d expected to. Maybe she’d start wearing rings more often.
Beside her, Quentin was silent.
“So where would we start?” She’d asked this question a hundred different times, for a hundred different reasons. Today Quentin’s hoodie was two sizes too big and he had the sleeves pulled down over his hands and he wouldn’t make eye contact and he cringed when the light touched him. So Julia shut the curtains, and she pulled him under the table, and she asked.
“Jules,” he said, as if it were an entire sentence.
“Don’t ‘Jules’ me. Where would we start? I have to know if I’m gonna make up an itinerary.”
He reached up and tugged her hand away from the Bronze City, fingers just poking out from his sleeve, and pulled it down to rest on the floor between them. He didn’t let go.
“Maybe we should just get a travel agent,” she said.
Q scrunched up his face and laughed. It looked like it hurt a little. “Maybe we should just admit we’re stuck on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
Julia scowled and kicked at his ankles. “Fuck that, Coldwater. Don’t you believe in magic?” She stared him down until he rolled his eyes and nodded reluctantly. “Good. Now commit to the fantasy and tell me where.”
He was silent for a minute. That was fine. Julia could be patient. Sometimes. Like…
“Does it ever seem like,” he started, and then stopped abruptly.
Like when Q needed her to be.
“Sometimes I feel like it’s all a fantasy,” he said very quietly. Like he was trying not to break something. “Just, all of it. The whole future. Growing up and going to college and getting married and being… I don’t know. Happy. Normal.” His pulse went tptptptptp against her fingers. Too fast, too light. These new meds were really fucking with him. “Sometimes I feel like planning a trip to Fillory is less far fetched than just, like…” he swallowed hard. “Just living.”
Julia shimmied down until her head was resting against his shoulder.
“I don’t want to feel this way.” His voice was barely more than a whisper.
“I don’t want you to feel that way either,” she said.
“I’m scared, Jules. I’m scared of the future and I’m scared of living to see it and I’m scared I’ll do something that means I won’t. In the hospital-” and he choked, a little, his hand going tight in hers, “In the hospital I just kept thinking I had to get out. You know, they send you to all these groups and therapy sessions and shit and no one says anything new. Like, ‘you’re young, things will change, you have a whole life ahead of you,’ whatever. I know all that. That’s the whole problem. I know things will change. I know there’s a whole life ahead of me. And it’s fucking terrifying.”
“Did you tell them that?”
“What, so they can tell my dad and make him worry more? No. I don’t need to be put on suicide watch again.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Q.” She rolled over to face him. He stared resolutely at Fillory. “How are you gonna figure anything out if you keep running away from things that might help you? And anyway, don’t they have laws against that? Telling your dad, I mean.”
Quentin shrugged. “I’m a minor. He’s my guardian. And anyway, if they won’t even let me shower in peace they definitely won’t respect my medical privacy.” He didn’t answer her first question.
So she pushed. Just a little. “Q. People can only help if you let them.”
He swallowed hard again, his eyes going all pinched at the corners. She could see he was trying not to crumple. It hurt to watch. “I’ll let you,” he said finally.
Julia nodded, not speaking. Not yet. She wanted to know that he meant it. It took another minute of silence, but he turned his head and met her eyes, and, yeah. Okay. He meant it.
“Good,” she said, rolling onto her back again. “Now. Where would we start?”
Quentin scooted closer. “I’ve always wanted to see Chatwin’s Torrent,” he said.
~
Jesus, thought Quentin. He went to Fillory for five-minutes-slash-fifty-years and came back to… well, to whatever this was. To Julia getting her fate handed to her on a platter by forces that never fucking asked her how she felt about it. Again.
He should’ve been here. He couldn’t have been here. But he should’ve been here.
“Maybe there’s some way to give it up,” he said. “If you really don’t want it. If it’s not what you need.”
She shook her head and sniffed sharply. “Tried that,” she said. “Didn’t work. It nearly killed Alice.”
“Right, but…” But what? He was at a loss. This was unfair and awful, and saying so wouldn’t help. She was always better at this than he was.
“It’s… fine,” she said. “I mean, I’m adjusting. Just. Some days are harder.” She looked down at her feet, pulled up on the couch in front of her. She’d always hated to look at anyone while she cried.
“Okay,” said Quentin. “So what can we do?”
Julia shook her head slowly. “I know you always wanna fix things, Q. And I’m grateful for that, really. But I don’t think there's anything we can do this time.” She slumped over a little more, tucking her shoulders in. “I think I have to just… live with it.”
“That’s doing something,” he pointed out.
“Yeah. I guess.”
There was something she hadn’t said yet. It was in the way her brows drew together and her jaw worked at nothing. She would say it. If he gave her the room.
The clock ticked away against the wall.
“What if it makes me like him,” she whispered. It was too awful to say aloud.
Quentin’s first instinct was to say oh, Jules, no, and pull her into his arms and not let go of her. He pushed it down. That wasn’t what she needed.
“He didn’t give this to you,” he reasoned. “OLU did. Would she have done that if she thought it would make you like him?”
Julia scoffed, then sniffled. “As if OLU has any fucking clue what she’s doing.”
Quentin nodded. “Okay, maybe she doesn’t. But you do.”
Julia looked up.
“Jules. You had no shade for months. No instinct for love or morals or anything. And you still managed to find your way back to being yourself. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you got your shade back. But you found your way without it.”
“Not really,” she said. “I had help.” Her arms hugged her body, like they were all that was holding her together.
“You have help now,” he told her.
She blinked away a fresh batch of tears. “You’re on a quest to save magic, Q. What are you gonna do, take a hiatus to play moral compass for me?”
He shrugged. “If that’s what you need. You’re my best friend, Jules. And I wanna help, whatever way I can. Will you let me?” He offered her a hand.
She stared at it for a moment like she wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then her grip loosened, and she lifted a hand, and she took it. “Yeah,” she said, squeezing hard. “Yeah, okay.”
Quentin smiled and squeezed back, still worried, mostly relieved. Jules was the strongest person he knew. She’d come out of this intact. Even if he had to kill another god to make that happen. “Well, I’m glad,” he said. “I mean, you clearly need help, because you’re a crazy person if you think you could ever be anything like him. Or OLU.”
She snorted.
“I mean, seriously, completely bonkers. Out of your gourd. Up a tree. Off your rocker.”
She was giggling now, snorting and wheezing and all full of tears and snot and totally fucking gross, and it was the best sound Quentin had maybe ever heard. “Okay, okay, I get it! You’re right.”
“Well, I learned it from you.”
“You’re a dork.” She squished her face against his shoulder, leaving a wet patch on his shirt.
“I’m your disciple,” he corrected. “You’re a goddess, Jules. Like, holy shit.”
“Literally holy shit,” she said, and if she was making stupid jokes about it then she was officially going to be be alright.
“You’re gonna be better than all of them, Jules,” he told her. And he meant it.
And she let him mean it.
~
The monster disappeared, air rushing to fill the space he had left behind.
Quentin stood silently, and went into the bathroom, and knelt on the tile, and began to clean up the mess.
“Q,” said Julia.
He kept picking up pills and putting them back in bottles, wincing a little each time he had to bend down. He didn’t so much as twitch in acknowledgment.
“Q,” she repeated, a little firmer.
He curled in on himself, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, and gasped sharply.
She moved to kneel beside him. “Quentin.”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Tough shit.”
“Jules.” A whole sentence in one syllable. He always did that. And he always gave in eventually.
So she rubbed his back and she waited.
“He’s alive,” said Quentin.
“Yeah.”
“And that. That almost makes it worse. That he’s in there with it.”
She rested her chin on his shoulder, and he slung an arm around her, thumb rubbing absent circles. Just to feel that she was there.
“Is it- am I awful? I’m awful. I’m so fucking happy he’s alive but I- but it makes it worse. There’s something to lose now. I can’t watch that thing hurt him. I can’t.”
“You can’t fight it either,” she said. She could hear the desperation in her own voice. She needed him to understand. “It’ll kill you, Q.”
He shook his head, eyes hard. He wasn’t crying. She almost wished he were. “I don’t care,” he said. “I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of watching him die.”
Julia didn’t realize her fingers were digging in until he shifted under her hand. She loosened them, carefully, and sat up. “Don’t say things like that.”
“I mean it, Jules.”
“Don’t.”
He looked at her and shrugged, helpless.
“Fine,” she said. “Fine. Then I’ll care for you.”
“Jules.”
“Don’t fucking ‘Jules’ me, Coldwater! I will not lose you. So if you won’t look after yourself, then let me do it.”
He looked like he was about to snap back at her, but then something in his eyes just — vanished. As suddenly as the monster had. “Okay,” he said. He looked down at the floor and then back up, and he gave her a tiny smile. It wasn’t strained, or forced, or aching. Just empty. “I will.”
Julia pulled him into her arms and tried to pretend he had meant it.
~
“I just need a minute,” she’d told Penny. And he’d nodded and left.
And she’d stood and stared into the flames.
She was still staring. It had been plenty more than a minute but she wasn’t ready to leave this spot. To face what the world looked like now. She could stand here an hour, a day, a year; it wouldn’t matter.
“Fuck this, Q.” Her voice cracked, and the fire crackled, and she felt like they were picking up this conversation in the middle.
“I mean, fuck this. Fuck this bonfire and fuck the memorial and fuck all our friends for saying goodbye.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “And fuck you for leaving.”
Snap, said the firewood.
“Maybe I’m not supposed to say that. I don’t know. But I’m so tired, Q.” Tears seeped out from behind her scrunched up eyelids, and when she opened them the drops clung to her lashes, blurring her vision. It didn’t matter. All she could see was red, anyway. “I’ve always tried to be strong. For you. For both of us. And now you’re gone and I-”
Sparks rose into the night air. They looked too much like the ones that the axe had drawn from her body. She shut her eyes again, just for a moment.
“I always tried to be strong. But I think you were what made me strong. Because I don’t feel strong anymore.” She could almost imagine him here, his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs rubbing circles, it’s okay, it’s okay — but it wasn’t okay, was it. It wouldn’t be okay. She stepped back, pulling away from the imagined touch. “I get to be angry now, Q. I get to hate this, and I get to be pissed and I get to be scared, because I don’t know what the world looks like without you. And fuck you for making me find out.”
The fire was quiet.
She laughed, a harsh, broken sound. “And fuck magic. Because what’s the point? What does magic mean without you?” She swiped harshly at the tears running down her face. “It was always us, Q. Against the world. And maybe sometimes we forgot that and I- and I’m sorry, okay, for when we forgot. I’m sorry, I just-”
The flames were so bright, they’d be branded on her retinas. She didn’t care. Let them blind her for all it mattered. Let her stop seeing now. Let her —
No.
Breathe.
“I’m not saying goodbye, Q. I won’t do it. But…” but she would turn around, and she would leave the bonfire to burn in silence, and she would try to get some sleep. She could do that, at least.
The fire snapped and sparked. Julia watched it, eyes burning. Smoke or light or tears, she didn’t know anymore. She had to look away. She couldn’t look away. She had to look away.
She looked away.
“Good night, Q.”
Crackle.
“Talk to you tomorrow.”
~
“You nervous, Coldwater?”
Quentin looks back over his shoulder. Penny is watching him, brows raised, expression vaguely encouraging. “No,” he says. He looks ahead again, at the empty doorway.
“So what’s the hold up?” Penny doesn’t sound nearly as irritated as he should. Quentin’s been standing in front of the doorway, not moving, for like three full minutes. He should be calling him names by now, whether he meant them or not. “If you’re feeling alright about it?”
“No, I mean…” Quentin frowns. “I’m not scared at all. Shouldn’t I be at least a little scared?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you’re not headed for Tartarus or anything, if that’s what you mean.”
Quentin snorts. “There’s no way they tell you that sort of thing.”
“Nah,” agrees Penny. Quentin can hear the grin in his voice. “But I know you.”
It’s maybe the nicest thing he’s ever said to Quentin. Funny how all they had to do to get along was die tragically. Quentin thinks about saying that, saying maybe we should’ve tried this sooner, huh? But. But he looks at the doorway. And he doesn’t feel nervous. He doesn’t feel anything about it, really.
He turns back to Penny. “It’s just,” he starts. And stops. Penny waits patiently, which, again, weird. “It’s just, everything I’ve ever done that mattered, I’ve been scared to do it. Always. That’s, like… how you tell, right?” He thinks: magic. Mosaic. Mendings. And not just the one in the Mirror World; the ones that really meant something (him and Julia, him and Alice, him and Margo and Eliot). He thinks: living. Living. Living.
He thinks: Julia’s knee digging into his thigh, the pair of them crowded together on her beanbag chair, filling out college applications. Her elbow in his ribs. That tone she always gets in her voice when she’s about to drop some pearl of wisdom like it’s obvious. Of course you’re nervous, Coldwater. A roll of her eyes. That’s ‘cause we’re doing something that matters.
Penny shrugs. “You tell me.”
So. Well. Quentin does. “I’m not doing this,” he says.
Penny pulls his bottom lip into his mouth, biting down on a smile. “Yeah, that checks out,” he says. “You never fucking do what you’re supposed to.”
“Well, what kind of life would that be.”
“The kind that requires less paperwork, you ass,” says Penny, still grinning, and that feels a little more normal. “Do you have any idea what it takes to get one of those metro cards?”
Quentin arches an eyebrow. “What, did you have to blow Hades or something?”
Penny’s face twists up. “Gross. Like, seriously gross power dynamics, man.”
Quentin shrugs. “We’ve done worse.”
“Yeah, well.” Penny crosses his arms and shifts his weight. “So, what are you gonna do? Just chill in the Underworld ‘til you’re ready for whatever’s next?”
“Sure. I mean, I’ve got all the time in the world down here, right? I can take a minute to figure some stuff out.” Or to let someone else? “Maybe…” he says. He shakes his head. “Maybe I’ll go bowling.”
Penny nods. “Alright. But you won’t get automatic strikes anymore; you used up that perk the first time you came here.”
“I- what?”
“Doesn’t matter. You’ll figure it out.”
Quentin laughs a little, the sound verging on hysterical. “I hope you’re right.” He hands the metro card back to Penny, and the light pooling on the bare floor at his feet fades. He knows the doorway has disappeared behind him.
Penny slips the card into his jacket and looks at him, assessing. “You nervous, Coldwater?” he asks again.
“Yeah,” says Quentin. “Terrified.”
And he smiles.
Penny smiles back. “Good.”
And maybe it is.