Chapter Text
"Service is delayed seven thousand, six hundred and fifty-six minutes, due to a problem on the tracks," says the PA; and Quentin opens his eyes.
The man with the walker. The woman in the blue trenchcoat.
And beside him: Brenna, asleep.
Quentin takes a breath. He doesn't—need to, does he. His heart isn't doing its level best to pound its way out of his ribcage. His heart isn't, as far as he can tell, doing any beating at all.
"Brenna," he says. Tongue thick. "Brenna": and then he reaches for her freckled square hand, resting on her knee; and his fingers go right through it.
He jerks back.
"Okay," he says. "What. The actual fuck."
Go lower the wards, he hears; and jumps. Like—Alice's voice, right next to his ear; and then he hears, Quentin: murmured, just behind him, in that warm-dangerous Eliot-not-Eliot way—
—and he scrambles up to his feet and turns, heart pounding: to look at the shadowy reflection of the subway in its dark, dark windows.
The man with the walker. The woman in the blue trenchcoat. And—
Take my hand, says the Monster, wearing Eliot's face; and Quentin is—Quentin is there, he's right there, he's standing right fucking there and looking in a mirror, he should be—there, but he's—not, it's just—
Please, Quentin, the Monster says, low and urgent. You're my friend. Please—
—and Quentin's body, without asking him, reaches out a hand and touches the rippling-dark reflecting surface of the window—
—and he is standing, all alone, on the plains.
There is—nothing, still. Just flat razed miles of dried mud and dead-scraggly grass, and—and a quivering scrap of tan fabric, one end trapped under the rime of mud at his feet. Quentin bends down, and picks it up: it's a smooth, heavy wool, it's—familiar, it's—
—it's from Eliot's coat, he realizes. The long heavy coat that he'd helped Quentin slide on in Montclair. That Quentin had died in, half an hour later: and "Caw," says the crow, hopping a half-pace towards him, quiet.
Quentin sighs, and slips the scrap of fabric into his pocket, then sits down on the ground.
"Well, this is a fine kettle of fish you've got us into, Jane," he says, very quietly; and the crow hops closer still.
"Caw," it repeats; and then Quentin jumps, as Margo says, the hell happened, right in his ear.
Quentin takes a breath.
"Okay," he says. "I—okay. Can you talk to me? I think I need you to talk to me, I—what's going on?"
The crow squawks at him again, and then ruffles up. Shakes its wings out—
—and then dissolves into a hovering glitter-gold cloud, and then resolidifies, as a boy.
Sharp-chinned.
Skinny.
Dark curly hair—
"Don't do that," Quentin says, sharp; and the boy shakes his head.
"I'm not," he says, and then tilts his head. "I'm trying not to," he corrects; and sits facing Quentin, tucking his knees up under his chin.
Quentin swallows.
Like this, he looks—nine, maybe. A young-looking ten. It's a little hard to know: Teddy had actually been a little tall for his age until he was in his early teens—so had Quentin—but this boy isn't. This boy has long, long eyelashes, though, and looks heartbreakingly out of place in his t-shirt and jeans, and—and he has brown eyes, a very very dark chocolatey sort of brown; and Quentin can breathe again, almost.
"You're borrowing from him, though," Quentin says, and the kid's skinny shoulders hunch together under his t-shirt.
"I don't have very many people to borrow from," he explains; and then holds out a hand: and Quentin—
—shouldn't.
He hurt you, he hears, in Brenna's voice. He hurt you, and looked like someone you loved while he did it—
—He was a child, Quentin had told her. I'm not—excusing it, or apologizing for it, but—
—but I want to be able to forgive it, he is thinking; and he reaches out to take the Monster's little hand.
Then he is standing alone in a clearing and there are trees all around him and they are—so, so green, a green he's never seen, not even in Fillory. The trees are so, so green, arching up above him, and between their branches there is a sky shining a rich, sapphire blue, so clear and so bright that it's—painful, nearly; and there is a white-walled thatched-roof unfamiliar little cottage in front of him, with a bright red blanket hung over the doorway.
Quentin swallows, and walks over, and pushes the blanket aside.
"Hello?" he calls; as Kady says, Who else knows how: he doesn't jump, this time. Barely. Breathing in, as steadily as he can; as his eyes adjust to the dimness inside the cottage.
The cottage feels—wrong, in some way he can't totally identify. He's not sure why. The floor is packed dirt, which is—familiar; and there is a fire in the hearth, burning very very low. That's familiar, too. There is a low table, in the very center of the room, covered in bowls, and then Quentin realizes what's wrong: the furniture. There—isn't any, really: at least, there aren't any beds. Just—just the table, and in the corner, a rocking chair, which Quentin happens to know is an anachronism for the apparent age and level of technological development of the cottage.
He scrubs at his face. It doesn't matter. It probably doesn't—matter, or whatever: so he comes over and crouches beside the table, picking up the first bowl. Rosemary, by the look of it. He touches the bristly green sprigs, crushing them between his fingertips; and the sharp foresty smell of it rises up, filling him—
—can't even manage to tell the difference between a weed and your dinner, Arielle says, laughing; and Quentin sets the bowl down.
Hands shaking.
"No," he says. "She's—she died. This isn't real. Don't—"
—and Quentin stumbles, slightly, outside the porch of a house he's never seen before. Four concrete steps up—a red doorframe—a brass mailbox, the number 27—
—and Quentin wakes up on the Metro.
"Brenna," he says; and then claps his hands together. "Brenna. Brenna": but she doesn't wake up; and then Quentin feels a sudden, sharp lurch in his gravity, and then—the nauseating impact of a spell, like back in first year, when he'd cast at Penny and it'd bounced off Emerson's Alloy and shattered every bone in his left arm; and Quentin's awareness splits like a kaleidoscope: hand hovering over Brenna's on the Metro while he sits knee-to-knee with the Monster in the plains and crushed rosemary fills his nose in the cottage that's no place whatsoever while he hovers fifteen feet above the sofa in the penthouse, looking down at Lissy bouncing in her playpen, saying, bark! bark! bark bark! while he jerks awake, naked and sucking in breath, in the center of the circle of his friends on floor of a laboratory in the Library—
—and then he snaps back into himself, all in one place, shaky and nauseated, on the Underworld Metro.
"Okay," he says. Tongue thick. "Okay, I—Monster!" Pushing up to his feet, turning to look at the window, where he isn't reflected: he pushes his palm against it, yelling, "Monster! Whatever the fuck your name is, come on, asshole! What the fuck is—"
—and he jerks back to the plains, as the little boy who isn't Eliot squeezes his hand.
"You're traveling," the boy says. "They're trying to stop you. They want take you away from me."
"That's because I'm not fucking yours," Quentin snarls; and the Monster nods.
"I know," he says. "I'm sorry. I want to help you. Will you let me?"
"I don't fucking trust you," Quentin moans; and then yanks his hand back. Flattening it, shaking, over his eyes.
"I know," says the Monster. "You shouldn't."
He sounds resigned.
And—fuck. Just—fuck him, anyway: because in that moment he doesn't remind Quentin of Teddy and he doesn't remind Quentin of Eliot but he does, more than ever before, remind Quentin almost painfully of Stavi Widder, a half-feral, totally unsupervised boy who'd washed up in the village when Teddy was nine, and about whom Quentin and Eliot and Larot and all the other worried mums of the village (a category in which Larot readily included Quentin and Eliot, cheerfully and with no apparent sense of irony) had had six months of anxious one-on-one and small-group conferences. Stavi had been, by his own reckoning, a journeyman bard on a quest to the Bell Falls to seek a story that had been lost, there, by his grandfather's grandfather. The worried mums had seen an underfed fourteen-year-old, traveling alone, in winter, with holes in his boots and all the general self-preservation instincts of a depressed lemming. Stavi had spent a week sleeping in the puppy-pile of Larot's kids; and then six days sleeping in the Millers' barn with their milk-cow; and then four nights with them at the cottage, Eliot and Quentin and Teddy all crammed into the other bed and kicking (Teddy); before Daisy Baker had convinced her wife that they could use the help, and Stavi had gone to help them haul sacks of flour and learn how to turn a loaf and sleep in the warm pocket of their attic, until the snow cleared. When Quentin drops his hand from his face, he even—looks more like Stavi, doesn't he: his hair is fairer, and finer, and his cheekbones at least ten percent less devastating. It makes it easier, looking at him.
Quentin swallows. "Thanks," he says, rough; and the Monster shrugs.
Looking down at his skinny knees, in his baggy jeans.
Tattoo him, Alice says; and Quentin takes a deep, slow breath.
"Are you jumping around, too?" Quentin asks; and the Monster nods.
"It's not as hard for me, though," he says. "I'm used to not being allowed to keep my body."
And that.
That, Quentin finds, is in fact excruciating: how calmly he says it. How matter-of-fact he is, about everything that's been done to him.
"You shouldn't—they shouldn't get to steal your body," Quentin tells him. "You should—it's not fair, you should get—you should get an actual life, you never had a life, did you?"
And the Monster looks up at him, blinking brown eyes. "What do you mean?" he asks; and Quentin sighs.
"I mean—after you were born," Quentin says, as carefully as he can manage. "How long did you—uh. Get to keep your body, then? Your—first body, I guess."
The Monster's mouth tugs down, a little. "I don't remember," he says, and then hunches his shoulders together and says, "She won't tell me."
Quentin sighs. Nods, looking up at the sky.
The crow, circling.
If everything's fucking—going wrong, Eliot says, so close Quentin can practically—feel it—
"I keep going to the apartment," the Monster says. "But not staying long enough to pet the puppy."
"Yeah," Quentin says, quiet; and then—blinks. "Wait," he says. "You can travel out of here?"
The Monster gives an awkward, embarrassed sort of shrug. "It makes her mad, too," he says. "She wants me to stay here. But—I keep trying to make things, so it's less ugly, but it's hard. I get bored."
Quentin can feel—his breath, moving in lungs he probably doesn't actually have; the wet corners of his mouth.
"Can you take me?" he says, and the Monster frowns. "Can you—can you take me with you, or whatever," Quentin says, "can you show me? How to get back to the apartment?"
The Monster tilts his head—
—and Quentin feels that hard harsh smack of magic and sees—the apartment—the bowl of rosemary—the woman in the blue trenchcoat—the number 27—a dizzying cloud of golden light reflecting everywhere so bright he can't see and then he jerks, hard, back into his body heart racing clammy all over reaching—reaching up for—
"El," he manages, reaching—warm: Eliot's hand catching Quentin's hollow shaking hand as Eliot is bending over him, whispering, "Hey, we've got you, it's okay, hm?" and Quentin is holding his hand and he squeezes and squeezes and squeezes—
—and then he jerks back to the cottage. Not their cottage. Not either of their cottages—the smell of rosemary harsh in his sinuses.
He sets the bowl down. And then—
—and then he looks, really looks, for the first time, at the table.
It's a work table, he is realizing. Recognizing. Eight smallish bowls and about fifteen tiny ones: the sort he and Arielle and Eliot had used to measure out the ingredients for the Queen Cake at midsummer; or all year round for abortifacients and antipyretics to trade for their eggs and their flour, the sort of little round stoneware measuring bowls they'd used when brewing Quentin's mood stabilizers and the anti-allergy tincture they'd given Teddy by the much-protested teaspoonful every evening between the equinoxes. In the larger bowls: rosemary, valerian, copper shavings, blue moss, crushed sandstone, worm casings, warm ashes, egg whites: and Quentin remembers the spell even before he touches the first two of the tiny bowls, so small they can't even hold as much as a shotglass: mercury, and essence of hemlock. The rest of the ingredients don't matter much, do they. Tansy Waterborough had offered him the recipe, the summer after Arielle had died: The milk of the Underworld, she had told him, To bring communion with those who have left us; and then she had cackled wildly when Quentin had said, voice shaking, Is that what you call suicide?, and shuffled Teddy away from her cart at the market.
And Quentin knows, all at once, down to his bones, that he has been brought here because he is meant to perform the spell.
He can—remember it, is the thing: half the time he can't remember how to cast a proper locking ward, even though that was Brakebills Week Four, or something, but he can still fucking—remember every fucking word of some spell instructions he saw for maybe forty-five seconds, once, in an alternate timeline, ten years from now? He remembers it, and he wouldn't—he wouldn't remember it unless he was meant to actually—to take the mortar and pestle, to grind the rosemary; mix in salt while distilling the valerian: two and a half hours to make the potion, and a half a second to—to just finally fucking swallow it—
But.
But beside the bowls, on the right, is a knife—Arielle's knife, isn't it? He—he'd barely remembered it, until this moment, but—but that is Arielle's little steel-bladed folding-knife, a coming-of-age gift from her mother that Quentin and Eliot had used between her death and Teddy's thirteenth birthday: with the ding on the bone handle that had caught against Quentin's thumb when he honed it over and over until the blade curved and shortened, from all their years of use. It is resting just where he would've set it, if he were prepping a spell for his own casting—except that Quentin never did his own prep, on ingestibles, for safety reasons: either he prepped for Eliot, or Eliot prepped for him, and then they both always turned the handle before setting the knife in line with the edge of the table, behind the bowls, where it'd be safe and easy for someone with the opposite handedness to pick up, and where Teddy couldn't reach it until he was old enough to know better than to pick it up. It'd become such a habit, like starting the kettle boiling as soon as he was out of bed in the morning or double-checking all of Eliot's ingredient measurements, because if he were brewing a bottle of something they were going to trade to a village girl or sell to a worried mom with a sick baby or feed to their own goddamned son, Quentin was going to be absolutely fucking sure that he knew what they were putting in it. They both were. They had—fifty fucking years, of being each other's backup, didn't they—
—and then a step to the left—, Arielle says, so close he can feel—her breath on her ear and her arm 'round his waist, pulling him—
—and Quentin clenches his teeth together, snaps the knife shut, and drops it into his pocket.
A step to the left, Quentin! says Arielle, more urgently; and Quentin nods, nods: says, "Okay, honey": then grabs the bowl of rosemary, scoops all the littler bowls into it at once, and chucks the lot into the fire.
There is a volcano-bright blazing blast of red-and-green light—
—and Quentin jerks back into himself on the Metro.
"Service is delayed," says the PA; and Quentin says, "Shut the fuck up"; but the PA just keeps trundling on, "—six thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four minutes," uncaring: "Shut the fuck up," he yells; as it finishes, "due to a problem on the tracks."
He stands up. "Brenna," he says, sharp; but he doesn't expect her to answer and she doesn't. "Wake up," he shouts; but no one hears him. "Wake the fuck—"
"Service is delayed six thousand, seven hundred and forty-eight minutes, due to a problem on the tracks," says the PA; and Quentin whirls, looking up at the ceiling: "Are you just fucking with me?" he shouts: looking for—a fucking speaker, a—a goddamned security camera, anything to interrupt the smooth dimensionless ceiling of the fucking—pig train car, what the actual— "Are you just fucking—toying with me": howling, nearly; "because that was not a hundred and sixteen fucking minutes!"
He is panting. His lungs—his fucking—lungs that aren't lungs working as hard as they can to pull air into his body that isn't a body, no fucking heartbeat, and then he notices—
—the woman, in the blue trenchcoat. Who is.
Still, frozen; just as she's been, since the first time he woke up; and holding—
—her fingers, loose and slack, just barely holding onto a cup of coffee.
"That was—that wasn't there," he says, and then turns, yelling, "That wasn't there, that wasn't goddamned there, Jesus fucking Christ—" and he shouldn't, he shouldn't be able to touch it, he knows that, he knows it, he can't touch—Brenna, the one fucking person who actually fucking—gives a shit about him, for some reason, in this entire fucking nightmare-prison of a metaphorical transit system, but his hand closes around the cup and he can feel it, he can hold it, the seams on the cardboard sleeve digging into his palm as he takes it from her and then lifts it up and then—fucking looks: SL 2x SR, says the sleeve, in blue Sharpie; and just under that, Kady.
"Fuck." Quentin takes a breath, and fumbles the sleeve off, pockets it: drops the cup on the floor because if you can't litter in the afterlife, really, when can you, but then—then all his autopilot responses kick in and he picks it up again, and shakes it out, and stuffs it into his other hoodie pocket; and then he shoves his way up the aisle of the train car, half-tripping over all the stilled, frozen, discarded limbs of the people lining the seats running up and down the sides: "Service is delayed six thousand, six hundred and seventy-six minutes, due to a problem on the tracks," says the PA; and Quentin yells, "Eat my entire goddamned ass!" and then grabs for the metal safety bar, just by the door—
—and jerks back into himself, his other self, another self, sitting on the top of the twisting staircase in the apartment.
In her pen, Lissy sits up. Looks straight at him, and barks.
Quentin lets out a breath.
"Hi, lucky puppy," says the Monster. He's crouched down, in his little-boy suit, reaching over the edge of her pen—and Lissy bounces up onto her back paws, wagging furiously, and tries to lick his fingers—
—and Quentin falls backwards, gasping, on the plains.
"Jesus," Quentin croaks, struggling back up to sitting; and across from him, the Monster pulls his knees up to his chin, looking unhappy.
"I can't make myself—stay," says the Monster. "I can't stay anymore, every time I try to—it's like being attached to one of your hair ties, Quentin," he says, with that same odd, practiced inflection on hair ties, because they had had an ongoing disagreement about the maintenance of his—Eliot's—hair, which Quentin had kept threatening to cut for him, if he didn't do something about cleaning it up; and the Monster hadn't liked it when Quentin spell-scrubbed it but he had liked it when Quentin brushed it and that'd lead to a multi-week argument about—braids, somehow—
"Can you choose where you go?" Quentin asks; and the Monster frowns.
"Of course," he says; and Quentin nods, very slowly.
"The apartment," he says. "You're going to see Lissy": and the Monster tugs his knees up closer against his chest. Not answering. "Because I can't choose," Quentin says, thinking—
—and he snaps forward, dizzy and reeling, to stand at the base of the four concrete steps, leading up to a red-framed door and a brass mailbox: house number 27.
He breathes in. That sort of—cold, muddy-rot salt smell: he must be—near water, or—
—and then there is a sea of gold, liquid-moving everywhere around him: trailing through him, rippling out of him, dissolving him, remaking him: a half-million mirrored slivers of his face in his peripheral vision while he—
—feels himself jerked sideways, just for an instant, into his body with Alice's hands on his aching chest and her mouth on his mouth hearing—
—his own breath, cavernous, as he jerks back into some hollowed-out shell of himself, in the plains.
"Okay," Quentin says, gasping. Gasping. "I—okay." He laughs a little, unsteady. "Show me," he says, "I can—you want to learn how to make things? Fine, I can show you how to make things, but—I need you to show me, first. I need you to show me how to—"
—and Quentin can feel himself starting to—flutter—fly—apart—
—and the Monster says, "Focus the heart of your seeing, behind the center of your forehead—"
—and Quentin thinks, Home—
—and snaps into a clearing, before a cottage, beside a mosaic, in the heart of the Southern Orchard, in Fillory.
Breathing in, deep.
It's still—recognizable. Isn't it. Their old badly-hung door, the red paint still flaking off their shutters: but this isn't—home, not really, is it? It—never was, or—never will be, exactly, for him, will it? But he still—goes in, doesn't he: looking for something he barely knows if he will recognize. Two beds, still. No quilts. A cobwebby stack of firewood, and a pair of almanacs on the little shelf beside the fireplace. Not their vintage.
He closes his eyes and thinks: No. Home. Home—
—and when he opens his eyes again, he is sitting at one end of the window-seat at the front of the Cottage, at Brakebills; and Julia is curled up at the other.
"Julia," he says, startled; but she doesn't look up. "Jules": he repeats, and then—
—he snaps back into his body, knee-to-knee with the Monster, on the plains.
The Monster is holding his hands cupped on the mud in between them.
"Hello," he says, not looking up.
"Uh." Quentin swallows. "Hi."
"Not you," says the Monster, and then, "Look": and so Quentin—
—his body just—
—doing it, just as requested, through habit of long practice, when a kid wants to show you something, with that tone of voice—
"Wow," Quentin says, looking up. He's not even faking it. "That is—that's amazing, that's really good, how'd you do that?"
And the Monster beams at him, and then, very carefully, uncups his hands.
The little sprig of plant trembles, a little, in the breeze.
"Wait, no, um—" Quentin fumbles with his hoodie. "Put your hands back, for a second": and so the Monster puts his hands back around it, while Quentin digs out Kady's coffee cup. Pulls the lid off, and then shakes it out on the ground, away from the Monster's little plant, just in case there's still—soy milk in it, or coffee, or whatever. Then he sets the cup down and casts, quick: just enough to open up the bottom, so that he can set the little ring of cardboard around the Monster's plant, to protect it from the wind.
The Monster lets out a little noise; and Quentin looks up, as.
As the Monster.
Scrubs at his cheeks, face ducked forward; and his eyes.
And makes that little sound again, hunching up, and Quentin, helpless, scoots over, chest aching, until—
—until he realizes, in a sudden, dizzying rush, that he's in—some awful side-annex of the afterlife, with his left arm arm around a nearly-omnipotent prepubescent boy who used to torture him, while he weeps over a plant.
"What's happening to me?" the Monster asks, voice thick; and Quentin—
—could let go. He could—push him away, and scream at him, and rage at him to let him go, to show him, to help him—
—but he.
Doesn't want to, for some reason.
"I think maybe you're remembering things," Quentin says, finally; and the Monster pulls his legs back up, so he can press his face down against the knees of his jeans.
"I don't want it to die this time," the Monster whispers; and then makes that tight, hurt little noise again.
"Yeah," Quentin says, quiet. "Me neither": and the Monster nods.
Quentin swallows. "Hey," he says, after a minute. "Can you—how much control do you have, here?"
The Monster lifts his face up, wiping his hands over his eyes again. The heels of his hands are positively crusted with dirt: Infection, sing-songs a small, impossible part of Quentin; but he shoves it down. "Control over what?" the Monster mumbles, and then turns his head to snuffle, wetly, against his sleeve rucked up against his shoulder.
"Sunshine?" Quentin hazards. "Weather? Um—can you make it—warmer? Can you make it rain? Plants need—water. Sunlight."
The Monster squints up at him; and then—a very small, very localized rainstorm bursts up above them, drenching them both.
"Right," Quentin says, after a second. "Cool": and then the Monster rests his head back against Quentin's soaked shoulder, while they wait for the rain to stop.
There's something. Glinting, a little bit, in the mud, just to the right of the plant, as it quivers under the fall of the water. Quentin reaches out, and tangles his finger around the chain. Pulls, a very little: until an angled stone pulls free from the dirt: a sort of sunset-y orange-pink color, where the rain washes it cleaner.
Quentin turns it over. Wipes it off.
Puts it in his squelching soaked hoodie pocket, where—
"Sunshine?" Quentin asks, when the rain stops; and the Monster hums a little, uncertain; but slowly, very slowly, the oppressive grey of the sky lightens, slightly, and a weak, watery sunlight breaks through.
After a minute, the wind dies down.
After another, Quentin picks up Kady's coffee mug, to give the little plant room to grow.
They have to scoot back, before long.
"What is its name?" the Monster asks, when it's the size of a beach ball; and Quentin laughs, a little.
"I was always awful at botany," he says; but then takes a breath. "But," he says. "As it happens. I think I actually know this one." It had been on one of Alice's first batch of flashcards, in part because it hadn't been local, so the professors liked to use it to trip up first-years. "I'm—about eighty-five percent sure it's a Retama raetam," Quentin says. "White broom. Alice would know." He brushes his thumb over a sprig, just unfurling with creamy-soft flowers; it knocks a blossom free, by accident. He feels bad about it, immediately; and then immediately tries not to. It was just an accident, he reminds himself. It's not the end of the world.
Besides.
It's—
—pretty.
"Why did I grow it?" the Monster asks; and Quentin sighs. Reaching over, to tuck the broken flower behind the Monster's little ear.
"I don't know," Quentin says, quiet. Smoothing the Monster's fine wet curls back away from his forehead. "But."
"But?" the Monster asks, after a minute; and Quentin shifts. His clothes are still just—absolutely fucking sodden. Both of them, Jesus. He twists his fingers, casting, very carefully: a modification on Eliot's hair-drying spell, with a little bit of warmth—just a little bit—tucked in.
"In Arabic, they use the name to mean—a kind of reminder." The Monster snuggles back in against his side: drier, now. Quentin licks over his own empty mouth. "A string, tied around your finger," he explains.
"Why would you tie a string around your finger?" the Monster asks.
Quentin shrugs, a little. "To let you know you had something to remember."
"But how would that help?" The Monster's back is tensing, under Quentin's arm. "How would you know what you're trying to remember?"
Quentin laughs, a little. "I'm not sure, honestly. But—it seems to work for some people. Just—to have a reminder that they've forgotten something."
The Monster doesn't answer, at first. Then he says, "I never know what it is that I've forgotten."
"No," Quentin says, quiet, "I know," and then closes his eyes; and when he opens them again they're in the apartment. Standing next to Lissy's playpen.
She sits immediately. Still wagging, a little: it keeps pushing her butt up off the ground, but she's trying so, so hard to sit still. She's getting so big. She barks, once, looking right at the Monster: "What is it, Liss?" says Pete; and walks right through Quentin, coming over. He picks her up: That dog, Pete had said, skeptically, the first time he'd met her, is never going to learn how to walk under her own power, but it'd taken him all of about four and a half days to be just as bad as all the rest of them: scooping her up for cuddles whenever he was over, carrying her everywhere her little squirming paddling indicated she wanted to go. Lissy rests her chin on Pete's shoulder, and barks sadly at the Monster.
"Hi, lucky puppy," the Monster says, very quietly, and then—
—then they are standing in the Urban Decay aisle of a Manhattan Sephora, and Quentin is looking at the felt-tipped eyeliner that Margo'd jammed into the back of a display of lipsticks: Weird, he thinks, someone should've fixed that by now, and then reaches out for it—
—and then they are standing, Quentin realizes, in the space that isn't the mirror realm and isn't the Seam but only because it is a vast, churning ball of magic, still bouncing around, writhing: with Quentin and the Monster and a mirror at its middle.
"Holy fucking Jesus," says a tall, heavyset woman, dressed like a Librarian, from the doorway—
—and then Quentin is standing, hand in hand with the Monster, on the Metro.
Still holding, somehow, Margo's eyeliner.
They are standing by what is, Quentin knows, where the door should go. It doesn't look like it has been or will be capable of opening, ever. It is totally sealed. The window is black. There is a small panel to the right of it, glass over an unassuming white button. The panel is red-framed, the edges marked in careful, all-white capital letters:
In Case Of Emergency: Brake Here
Quentin tilts his head, and puts Margo's eyeliner in his pocket.
"Is that a typo, d'you think?" he asks.
"What do you mean?" asks the Monster.
Quentin shakes his head. Still holding the Monster's right hand, with his left.
"Listen," Quentin says. "In case this doesn't work quite the way I want it to—do you want a name?"
The Monster looks up at him, eyes widening. "You know my name?"
Quentin shakes his head. "No, but I can give you a new one, if you want it," he says. "You could—keep it for now. Pick another one later, if you decide this one doesn't fit."
The Monster's face. It's so—small, and round, and his brown eyes are just—huge, God, if he was a real little kid, face like that: he'd be a holy terror. "You can do that?" he asks, uncertain; and Quentin swallows.
"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, you can. I think you have to, kiddo—there's no one left, who's going to tell you who to be."
The Monster's face crumples. "You're leaving me," he says; and Quentin shakes his head.
"I don't know what the fucking hell I'm doing," Quentin tells him, "but I'm done letting you pick for me, okay?"
And the Monster's face—
"You want to see me, come visit me in the apartment, okay?" Quentin says. "Now do you want a name or not?"; and the Monster lifts up his chin.
"Yes, please," he says, quiet; and Quentin nods.
"Service is delayed one thousand, nine hundred and fifty-two minutes, due to a problem on the tracks," says the PA; and Quentin says, "Yeah, but I'm done waiting," and brushes his thumb over the flower, tucked into the Monster's damp, slightly-frizzy brown curls.
"My name," says the Monster; and Quentin nods.
"Rotem. After your plant," Quentin says, "in Hebrew, it means—to bind." He swallows. "If I get to pick for you at all," he says, "that's what I'd choose. Just—be done breaking things apart, okay?"
The Monster swallows. Those huge, sad brown eyes: "Okay," he says, very quietly; and Quentin nods, and turns back, and smashes his hand through the glass over the panel.
It shouldn't work. All those times his hand went right through Brenna—
The lights go out.
When they come up again, Quentin is standing in the Station: almost alone, but not quite.
Across from him, Penny takes a deep, slow breath, and adjusts his tie.
"Hi, Quentin," he says; and Quentin says, "Yeah, okay, hi, so—can you walk me back to the elevator?"
Penny's mouth quirks, a little. "This direction," he says, "I can't take the card for the fare."
"Ah." Quentin nods. "Yeah, I mean, I did wonder. So—okay, what is it?"
He digs around in his pocket. Fishes out—the sleeve, from Kady's fucking—soy latte, that he'd barfed on her shoes: "I guess it is sort of your kind of sentimental," he says, remembering Penny's fucking—chocolate wrapper, from Antarctica: he holds it the sleeve out.
Penny takes it. "That's one," he says; and slips it into the inside pocket of his jacket.
"I—what?"
"That's one," Penny says, very patiently. "But that doesn't cover the whole fare."
Quentin shifts. Tucking his hands in his pockets. Feeling—
"I've got—four," he says. "Four things left."
Penny lifts his eyebrows, smiling a little. "The fare is eight, in total," he says; and Quentin swallows.
He takes out the scrap of Eliot's jacket: "Does this even count?" he asks.
"I can't answer that for you," Penny says; and Quentin grinds his teeth together.
"It fucking counts," he says, holding it out. "I was naked. I was freezing, I was—thirsty, he bought me a—juice bottle—"
"Then that's two," Penny says; and pockets it, and Quentin takes out Arielle's knife, and hands it over.
"That's—that's a good knife," he says, throat tight. "Don't—it's a good knife, don't just—throw it away, or whatever—"
"I'll take care of it for you," Penny says, smiling a little. "That's three."
Quentin hands over the eyeliner. "Technically I shoplifted that," he says. "But I was, like—ambiguously a ghost while I did it, so I wasn't exactly—carrying my debit card, and also she'd—you know, left it there for me, sort of, so—"
"Noted," Penny agrees; and takes it from him. "That's four": and Quentin, ribs aching, takes out Julia's necklace, and drops it into Penny's outstretched hand.
"That," he says, "she. She definitely gave me that."
Penny nods. "I can take care of that one, too."
Quentin swallows. Tucks his hands back into his pockets.
"That's it," he says. "That's all I've got."
"Is it?" Penny asks. "That only makes five"; and then he raises an eyebrow, and glances down at—
—at Quentin's blood-stained, too-big grey sneakers.
Quentin crouches down. Fumbling with the knots: "You know," he says, "just because I was—catastrophically melting down at the time, or whatever, it still seems really—insulting, sort of, that other-Penny decided I needed him to like quadruple-knot my shoelaces."
"Take it up with him, my brother," Penny says; and Quentin just yanks them off, finally, without getting the knots more than about a third open, and hands them over.
"That's six," Penny says, very quietly, tucking them under his elbow; and then he holds out his hand.
Quentin breathes in. Breathes out. After a minute, he reaches into his back pocket, and fishes out his Underworld Metro Card—
"Ah," Penny says, taking it. Smiling, a little. "Actually, I do have to take that back, but I can't technically count it towards your fare."
"I haven't got anything else," Quentin says, low.
Penny raises his eyebrows. "Who're you missing, Quentin?" he asks: and Quentin lets out a long, slow breath.
"Alice," he says, very quietly; and then swallows.
Penny raises his eyebrows. "And you don't have anything of hers?" he asks; and Quentin puts his hand over his right shoulder.
The tattoo. Both tattoos: because he can suddenly feel the other, a dull, searing sort of a throb, tucked between his ribs and his triceps. He lifts his elbow up, to look at it: the circle of runes, and the anchor. Still bleeding at its edges, a little.
"She gave me these," Quentin says, uncertainly, and then, "Can you take a tattoo?"
"Kady gave you the tattoos," Penny says; and Quentin shakes his head.
"But it was Alice who figured it out," he says. "Alice—buried herself in books and made spreadsheets and bossed everyone around and she didn't fucking give up and she'd never fucking give in, she loved me as hard as she could in the most Alice way imaginable and if you tell me that doesn't count as her giving me anything—"
Penny lifts his hands up: "All right, all right," he says, half-laughing. Quentin's filthy fucking sneakers, slipping under his elbow. "It counts," he says. "That's seven."
And Quentin swallows. "I don't," he says—
—and then he stops.
Who are you missing, Quentin?
"Brenna," he says, and then closes his eyes shut tight. "Oh, God, I didn't—fuck, I didn't even get to say goodbye, I didn't—"
"It's okay," Penny says; and Quentin says, "No, it's not, I didn't even—thank her, I didn't—"
And Penny looks at him, smiling: so fucking warmly, God, sometimes Quentin fucking hates him.
"Thank her for what, Quentin?"
Quentin swallows.
"I don't even know," he says, unsteady. Shakes his head. "She—she fucking—she sat next to me. She made—shitty jokes about hell, she—she held my hand, she was a voice that wasn't in my own fucked-up fucking head—"
"Seven, Quentin," Penny reminds him, "you have to give me something": and Quentin takes a deep, slow breath.
He is—remembering—
—that sort of—cold, muddy-rot salt smell—
"Her sister," Quentin says, "in Poughkeepsie," mouth numb—
And Penny says, "Eight."
—and then Quentin is standing at the base of four concrete steps, leading up to a red-framed door, with a brass mailbox and a number-plate that says 27.
The door opens, and a heavyset redhead in a bathrobe shuffles out to squint out into the sunrise. She looks—just like Brenna, Quentin is thinking, with an odd, off-balance pang: but—of course she does. It's not like he hadn't expected—
"You know, I can feel you, every time you project in through my wards," she says, and then yawns. "It's not even seven in the morning. Rude as hell, kid."
He blinks. "You can see me," he says; and she rolls her eyes: "you're a traveler," Quentin realizes; and she sighs, and waves a hand.
"I'm a painter," she says. "And it's freezing out here, if you're still attached to a body." She steps back, holding the door open, and asks, "Are you coming in or not?"