WHO: Quentin Coldwater and Una Chin-Riley WHEN: February 11 WHERE: Quentin’s Apartment WHAT: They’re both cursed. Quentin’s is a little more severe. WARNINGS: TW: Discussions of Depression and Mental Illness (also feelings)
Una knew she had no room to complain. She had even gotten compliments on her 'new hair' with questions as to if she could give them the number for her hair salon. Her coworkers at the security office could be very chatty when she wasn't out doing actual bodyguard work. But her current client was out of the country and had explicitly denied a detail. It also meant she wasn't doing much of anything in particular that kept her mind going.
So, on her day off, she went to visit Quentin and see if he would like to go have lunch. The man was the anxious sort but he was fascinating to listen to, especially when he got going on some train of thought or another and got excited about the subject matter. Una knocked on his door and then realized she should have messaged him first. When he didn't answer right away, she internally winced and sent him a text. Are you home?
Rather than receive a text back, there was a clattering from the other side of the door, followed by a mild, but fervent curse, and then the door was open. Quentin stared, taking in first the familiar, welcome face, and then—"Hair." His eyes widened and snapped down to a more reasonable level. "I mean, hi. Was I expecting you? Things are a little… blurry right now."
He stepped back from the door and dragged his hand through already messy hair. "Either way, come on in. Hi."
"You weren't expecting me," she assured him and entered the apartment while she watched him. She knew that look. Chris had gotten that look. Lack of sleep. "Sorry, I came over unannounced." Una was usually better than that; she tended to plan and over-plan when something didn't call for an immediate call to be made while she was in temporary command.
She made a self-conscious movement to smooth her hair back and check her tight pony-tail but then it was eyes on Quentin again and concern made her frown. "Are you okay?" Una asked quietly. Not gently, not condescending. Just worried.
"I—sleep—I haven't—" Q shook his head, but it was probably a mistake, since it made the room spin. How do I explain to someone that I'm hallucinating an awake paralysis demon without being carted off to the closest facility? A question for the ages. He blinked unevenly, then gestured toward the couch. "Get you something? Water? Beer?"
He'd considered getting day drunk, but was also afraid it would make things worse.
"I want you to sit down, Quentin," Una said with a firm tone. She reached out and guided him to the couch with a steady hand. Una had forcibly moved more than one person in her lifetime and she could pick the man up and carry him if she needed to; most didn't know how strong she actually was. She did, however, take a seat as well and turned herself toward him.
She made a point of breathing in slowly and then exhaling while watching him. "Now," Una said, this time more gently, "tell me what's going on. Why haven't you slept?"
Something about just being around someone else didn't so much clear Quentin's mind as it made it fractionally calmer. He didn't resist in the slightest under Una's guidance, but wasn't actually aware of it until he found his legs bent and the couch under him. "Curse?"
It came out far more doubtful than he meant it. The damned flower delivery was in his kitchen garbage can, after all, the ends of some of them still poked up over the top of the rim, cheery as ever. "Every time I close my eyes for longer than a blink, there's a… There's a presence. It's— Something like this has happened before, so I-I think it could also be in my head?"
The uncertainty made Una nod, encouraging. They had met and communicated with alien species who couldn't always be seen and it had been easy for someone to think they were hallucinating. And the more Quentin went on, the more her resolve strengthened. "It could be in your head," she admitted, "but if you got the flowers then it is safe to say this is curse-induced." She tilted her head at him.
"Can you tell me about the presence? Is it saying anything? Doing anything?" Una asked, reaching out to rest a hand over his and offering a lifeline sort of grip. "I believe you," she added.
"Oh," he said, small and startled, actually looking at Una again instead of just about anywhere else. It said a lot that— well, he had so much more to unpack than auditing his current emotional state. Quentin shifted, but made no move to actually stand. He did, however, turn his hand over so he could take hers. "I can't see it. Not really. It's more like a shadow. But I can hear it. And I can feel it poking me. Pinching me awake. I-I haven't slept since Friday. Not really."
Una offered a small smile, again trying to encourage. "If it's doing something physical, I think that's even more proof that it's not just in your head. And I do know that you need to get sleep. The way the body and the mind need to be able to reset and heal, it's doing damage," she said, giving his hand a small squeeze. "I'm Illyrian, not human. My body adapts and heals. But even I haven't tried to stay awake longer than I needed to."
"Have you considered a sedative?" she asked softly. "I could stay here so you feel safer?" An uncertain offer but it was made all the same. Una was sure of her physical prowess but even she couldn't fight a shadow or a curse and there was the question of Quentin even believing what she was suggesting.
He chuckled dryly, but his smile sat in a weird angle on his face. At least it felt like it did. "I love when people introduce logic into my anxieties. One time, I got trapped in a dream world, and it took this caustic asshole I know to finally convince me that it was all literally in my head—but, like, magically. I just hate that this is something my magic can't seem to fix. I couldn't even wake Dick up, but at least I saw the connect between the curse and these stupid flowers."
Shame burned like a flashfire through him, but Q forced it aside. There was literally nothing wrong with admitting, "Can't. Contraindicated with my depression meds. Ironically, they usually help me sleep, so i take them with dinner when I'm not out. Or a snack when I get home. Which… is way more information than you asked for. Sorry. Um. Yeah, could you stay? We can watch something?"
"Just because you couldn't break through the magic here to wake him up doesn't mean you failed. It just means that your magic is different and what decides to mess with us here was more dominant this time," Una said and sighed.
She gave his hand another squeeze as he went on. "I'm all about getting information," Una said with a small smile. "When we're on the bridge, we can't always ask for only one piece of information. We ask a question, we either get a succinct answer or we get a barrage of information. Or we get more questions than answers. I'm used to it." She glanced away in thought. "Of course I'll stay. But you haven't slept in two nights now? So your medications aren't working to help with sleep?" Una asked, turning her head again to frown at him.
"Story of my life," he grumbled, an inside thought that should have stayed that way, but his brain-to-mouth filter was the thinnest membrane now. It was true, though. He'd always wanted to be the main character, but his ego had taken enough beatings for it really hammer home that he would always and forever be a simple day player. Better than dead, though, which is what should have happened to him had he stayed in his own life.
And then he was focusing, dragging his attention with no small effort to his friend. He always liked her stories about working on the Enterprise and all the ships she'd served on and the places she'd been. Much like his own, he knew they'd barely scratched the surface of one another's histories. Their stories were both fantastic, just coming from almost the opposite sides of what was possible.
Quentin was slow to answer, as wrapped up in his own thoughts as he was. The room grayed around the edges, and his head dipped, then snapped back up. For that half-second, he could sense the presence again, hovering just at his shoulder. No matter how fast he looked back, he knew he'd never see it. "No, it's not helping. Every single time I try, it's yelling and poking and hissing in my ear. Did—do you still have people… like me in the future? People who… need help?"
She continued to watch him, assessing everything. "We still have people in the future who need all kinds of help," Una confirmed. "And I don't shame anyone for it, no matter the century."
Una breathed out slowly and looked away. "We've come so far in a lot of ways, especially with technological advancements, but there are still a lot of things that aren't solved. And I'm sorry if that's not what you want to hear, Q, but there isn't anything to fix," she said, turning back to meet his gaze if he would allow it. "The medical community treats what they can and there are better programs in place than in this time period. Everyone has what they need, including access to all kinds of care."
She hesitated but her grip tightened on Quentin's hand. "Do you feel alone in this?" Not just the curse, some nightmare demon lurking at the edges of his vision, but his mental illness as a whole. "Because you're not."
Tears stung his eyes as she spoke, and by the end, they were falling freely. When he'd asked, he hadn't really been thinking about a fix, but maybe on some level he had? Quentin opened his mouth, but all that came out was a low croak that he quickly tried to swallow down. It worked a little, but not fast enough. "After Julia," he mumbled out around a throat thick with the sobs he was trying to hold back, "and even Eliot—before it all turned into a shit show, it never— It's just one of those things that you never want to leave at someone's proverbial doorstep or feet. Everyone's always going through their own stuff, and it sucks feeling like a burden."
He laughed, sharp and bitter. "I met this questing beast in Fillory. The White Lady. Caught her fair and square, so she had to give me a wish. Of course, she couldn't give me the one thing I really wanted: to give my… friend Alice her life back. She offered up a wish to be happy, instead. But then she said something that I've never been able to get out of my head. She said, 'You would find your way back to sadness, no matter how far you run from it.' And I hated her, because she's right. I can take all the meds and go to all the therapy sessions in the world, but my head is going to forever be this. And, I mean, sure, it would be pretty freaking great if the future had an insta-fix for feeling like this, but the fact that it doesn't? It makes sense, too. All those species with all these types of brains— there can't be a cure all, because we're not all the same. Okay, now I'm rambling, and you're being so nice, and I don't really know what to do with that other than say, um, thank you? Yeah. Thank you."
Una listened, patient as ever, and kept her eyes on Quentin though she didn't move to put her arms around him when he so desperately looked like he needed a hug. Not yet. "It's hard," she finally said, "to not feel betrayed by your own mind. That little voice in the back of your head that says all the things it can to bring you low."
She paused, gathering her thoughts, and then canted her head a little. "But you don't get to decide if you're a burden or not, Quentin. You don't get to decide if someone cares for you or not. And if you rush to cut that choice off before you've even given them a chance then you've removed their autonomy. And I think that maybe that act of keeping it all in as best you can, for most of your life, is probably exhausting and it wears you down further than you can bear." Una retracted her hand but only so she could reach out and stroke a hand over his hair before tucking a piece back behind his ear so he couldn't hide behind it.
"Tell me about the things," Una said softly. "If you can't tell me, text me. Send me paragraphs on the network or in a text or e-mail. Or leave me rambling voice mails and recordings. But don't hold it in and don't make the decision for me as to if I can or cannot listen." She let that sit for a moment and then gave a quiet sigh. "Come here." Una opened her arms for him.
At the end of all that, Q had no other recourse than to instantly fall into the hold she was offering. Maybe a part of him waited for the flutter of attraction to rear its head. He didn't have the bandwidth to deal with it either way, so it was probably better left as some nebulous thing, lost in the emotional muck that was his current brainscape. She was right, of course, about all of it. And so much of it was echoed in his sessions, but hearing it from a friend hit differently. Anyone who said Una Chin-Riley was a hard ass— okay, they were absolutely right, but they probably couldn't see the depth of her care and empathy. Quentin was pretty sure he was only witnessing a fraction of it all as he cried endlessly into her shoulder.
Exhaustion, both the physical and emotional kind, poured out of him.
He had no way of knowing if it was the catharsis of this moment or the curse merely running its course, but this time, when he closed his eyes, Q knew it would be okay.
"Thank you," he whispered, just barely getting the words out before consciousness slipped away from him. A film like an oil slick came away from his skin and evaporated in the air.
The curse was over, the cruel shadow entity gone. Quentin was totally, blissfully asleep.
On Una's shoulder.
Una waited him out and just cupped the back of his head, a light touch that he could pull out of if he wanted to. She didn't hush him, she didn't try to soothe him. When he went slack against her and something felt different, Una dared not move. But he was breathing. It was the slow, even breathing of a sleeping person and she tipped her head back with a grateful look toward the ceiling. She still didn't move, afraid of waking him, but he was going to be at risk of getting a stiff neck.
She considered the merits of just carrying him to his bed but that would require perhaps too much movement so she waited a little while longer before easing out from under Quentin and guiding him down onto the couch to lay out. It still took some maneuvering and careful monitoring (and she would convince him to go back to sleep if he did wake) to get him into what should have been comfortable enough. Una again waited, watching, before she went and got a pillow and a blanket for him, tucking him in and sliding the pillow under his head before she sat down against the front of the couch and messaged her apartment-people. I won't be home tonight; don't be alarmed.
The woman had offered to stay, to make sure Quentin felt safe. And stay she did: for as long as Quentin Coldwater slept right there behind her on the couch.