WHO: Alice Quinn & Quentin Coldwater WHEN: Yesterday evening, after this and before this WHERE: One of the Open Decks WHAT: Alice gets a memory upgrade and handles her grief with misplaced anger. WARNINGS: Parental Death, References to Torture. OOC NOTE: Alice publicly attacked Quentin by sending him flying into a wall. She was promptly escorted away to the brig. If you want to have had your character witness, feel free! Contains spoilers up to 3x03 of Magicians
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Lights.
They rose up and shined against the night like lightning bugs. Everything else seemed to fade into the black of the evening and all focus was upon them, as the embers rose upwards. Her gaze remained upon those lights as all other senses were ignored.
This had been how it'd been with the death of each lamprey and it had been this that she recalled as the last one had been expelled from her Father. It'd tried to crawl away, even though it was useless, but Alice pressed the edge of the rod to it's exposed body. As a human once again, she registered the senses that had been ignored when she had been a niffin. Sounds and smells accompanied it all, but her eyes had been transfixed, her gaze following the lights as they rose from the creature into the air.
Pretty lights.
This was the memory that was at the forefront of Alice's mind as she woke in the bed that still did not feel like her own. The lights were not a memory worth being alarmed over. There were pieces that had been coming back to her for months, of her time as a niffin, pieces that she did not discuss willingly. They'd been briefly touched upon with Charles Xavier, but they largely focused on the more pressing issues. She was learning to cope with her own humanity once again and that was the main focus; as well as a redefinition of who she actually was. The frustration over her unsteady magic was also an issue. But sometimes she spoke of the memories that would surface of her time as a niffin, when she was unbound by the laws of mortals and a corporeal form. And thus, the lights did not startle her.
It was the fact that this was not a moment from her past. Or, at least, not the past that she was so very familiar with until that moment. It was something new, even if now it was in the past, as her mind began to sift through memory upon memory, all rushing forward.
The horrid chill of Antarctica and Quentin's attempts to make her feel human again. The feel of grease on her fingertips, the taste of bacon on Quentin's lips, and the reminder of pure ecstasy in his arms. And how that moment had all but been forgotten, as she clutched a blanket to her chest and bolted up in bed, alarm filling her with Quentin's admission. Quentin had murdered Ember, the God of Chaos to Fillory.
The fucking Idiot had killed a God.
Even though she hadn't had magic in those moments, they could feel it dissipate around them. Magic was gone. And it was Quentin's fault.
Another memory, of Father Joseph, coming to warn her. She was being hunted. This was no surprise. But she couldn't protect herself now.
Another. Her, dragging a suitcase down the steps of the Cottage and bolting out the door.
And again, the Lamprey. It had made its way through those she loved, laying its eggs inside. And it taunted her. Quentin still loved her. Her Father was weak. It told her if she pushed it out of her Father's body, his heart wouldn't be able to handle the trauma. She didn't believe him, or was it that she had to take the risk anyway? Perhaps a bit of both. If she hadn't have killed it, it would continued to come after her, and she didn't have a way to protect herself. She couldn't carry around a car battery with her at all times. So she pressed the electrical rod to her Father's chest and she expelled the lamprey. The lights rose and she heard her Father's voice. Her Father was okay. She had been relieved.
Finally, she was helping Quentin to rid his stomach of the eggs, holding his hair back as he expelled them. Her Mother's voice shot through the house. They ran for it and on the floor, with her Mother hovering over him, was her Father. The Lamprey hadn't been lying after all. Her Father was gone.
She'd bolted up in bed and begun to pace. Her chest rose and her chest fell. Her mind was racing. Magic was gone. Magic was gone. Magic was gone.
Daniel was gone.
Her head continued to spin. She didn't remember leaving the room. She didn't remember going out on the decks. All that she could see was the image of Daniel on the ground as Stephanie shouted her name in panic. She passed by individuals, looking confused and despondent, not fully aware of where she was going. The air was helping but her chest was still feeling tight and her breaths were still ragged. As she came up onto the open deck, wanting even more access to fresh air and a full view of the sun above, she spotted a figure in the distance.
Quentin.
Magic was gone. Daniel was gone. If magic hadn't have been taken from them, like disobedient children, she would have been able to rid the lamprey from them all. Her Father wouldn't have succumbed to his weak heart. Her Father would still be with her. And whose fault was it? Whose fault was it that magic was gone?
Quentin.
She was moving forward, her legs taking long strides on the open deck, and her hands were moving in patterns that still felt fluid and natural. She wasn't even fully in the moment and perhaps that was why, when the final placement hit, she was able to send a spell flying directly at Quentin. She was unaware that during all of this, right before she unleashed the power in his direction, that his name had erupted from inside of her, being bellowed across the decks. And moments later, he went flying towards a wall.
While Alice, herself, dropped to her knees and bowed her head down, hair masking her face as she sucked in a breath that came out as a sob.
Quentin had made sure that Julia found her room after they’d had some drinks and he’d convinced her not to find Steve and shout at him or kick him or whatever it was. He still wasn’t really able to grasp everything that was happening. Not fully. He’d killed Ember. He couldn’t remember it, but he knew that it was definitely a thing. Penny was dead. Magic was gone. It sounded like everything sucked.
He had planned to go find Steve once he was a little more sober just to have someone to sit with and talk to, but he was trying to get his head in the right place. He wasn’t sure he could handle another situation where he was told not to be in love with someone if he wasn’t sober enough to just say what he was feeling, which tended to happen. Then again, it tended to happen even without the alcohol, but he was getting better at not immediately saying things that he might later regret. Sort of.
He’d heard someone walking toward him, only looking up when he heard his name. It was followed by a rush of energy, which threw him back into a wall. He fell onto the floor and groaned, brows furrowed as he tried to push himself up off the floor. “What the fu-” He stopped, staring at her for a moment as he did and realizing she was crying. “Alice?” He crawled over toward her, trying to ignore the disorientation that he was still feeling. “What happened?”
There was a pull inside of her. A part if her wanted to scramble forward and to latch her arms around Quentin's neck. The other wanted to pull back and retreat from him. He'd look at her the way he always did, expecting to see the girl she no longer was. This had been an issue for months here but now she knew it had been an issue for months back home, too. And the only difference was she had tried to reach out, to extend the hand to bridging a gap once again, but they'd missed one another somehow, paths going in separate directions.
She lifted her head and she was about to speak, when suddenly she felt firm hands upon her, pulling her back. She cast her eyes over her shoulder, and though moments before she had exposed the vulnerability she was feeling inside, the moment passed and steeliness crept over her expression. "I can walk," she hissed, moving to stand, even as the robots continued to try to bring her to her feet.
Quentin noticed the change in Alice and he watched her quietly for a moment. He felt something akin to loss. Like he was always losing her to something he didn’t understand completely. But he didn’t have to be sober to understand that something had changed. She had attacked him, which didn’t make sense when it came to everything else that had happened up till now. He hadn’t done anything to piss someone off. He was pretty sure she didn’t know about Steve, so it couldn’t be that. Which meant that it had to be about the magic. But there was something else. He just didn’t know what that something else was.
“Please. It’s fine. I’m fine. You can let her go.” He made himself stand up, feeling wobbly, but that was more the alcohol than what happened. “I probably deserved it anyway. No. No. I did. Just...please.” Because he’d taken magic from her entirely. He’d brought her back and taken everything away.
The robots weren't listening and Alice didn't move to stop them. She was on her feet now, shifting to walk along with the robots, ignoring the looks from those around them. But over her shoulder, she glanced towards Q. For a long moment, she looked to him. The anger was still there but it no longer felt directed at him as it had when she'd rushed forward moments before. It was something else, something far more than Quentin and his actions.
There was anger at a loss.
She didn't say anything but behind the anger, and the steel look that had been summoned by the robots, her eyes blinked with tears. And she cast her gaze away from Quentin then, looking forward, refusing for him to see.
And as she moved for the stairs with the robots, all she could think of was how her Father had once lifted her from the ground much as these robots had, though with a genuine tenderness; after she had gone flying accidentally off the swing set. And how he'd lifted her onto his shoulders before shouting off for Charlie to join them.
Her throat clenched tighter as she moved through the door, it shutting behind her, and preventing her from daring to look back to Quentin.
Quentin watched her go, feeling a sort of helplessness that made him feel useless all at once. That look before she’d turned away, he’d seen so much, but didn’t have an explanation for it, the words to make everything make sense. His brow furrowed and he felt suddenly alone in her absence.
With a sigh, he pulled his tablet to him and sent messages to Shiro and Steve before starting to make his way toward Steve’s room. He didn’t want to be alone. He wanted to be with Steve. Even with everything. He just didn’t want to be alone. Not now.