Coffee in hand, Julia stepped outside the back of the cottage, having spotted Eliot outside with coffee of his own. Or at least, that's what it looked like he was drinking. She could never be too sure with him. Quentin's arrival had lightened the mood in the cottage, but there was still a lingering sense of unease that she couldn't shake.
She wondered if Eliot felt it too. The burden of potential futures that they had no firsthand knowledge of, futures she wasn't certain had any bearing in her own reality. That was the weird thing about traveling through the multiverse and knowing you existed in thirty-nine previous timelines. Reality had an entirely flexible definition.
"Hey," she said quietly, taking in the fresh air and trying to ignore the fact that there was a tree that grew daggers not too far away. "How are you doing?"
So far they'd successfully avoided any serious conversations about the futures Margo had laid out for them, but it was possible that streak was coming to an end.
“I’m great,” Eliot said. Which was easy to do when the coffee to bourbon ratio in his cup was questionable. This was Eliot cutting back on his drinking. Not for Q’s sake, if anything, Quentin’s arrival had Eliot testing his resolve. No, it was for the mandrake leaf Eliot kept tucked away in the side of his mouth, that he would have to keep there until the next full moon if he wanted to become an animagus.
Was he supposed to continue the conversation?
Julia mentioned watching some of the show.
Was the mosaic on the show?
Even worse, if Quentin was from another timeline where he didn’t die, did he experience the mosaic? Maybe his life would turn out to be completely different.
Good for him.
Eliot looked up as if surprised Julia was still there. To be fair, it was morning, pre-double digits on the clock, Eliot was allowed to be a little grumpy, wasn’t he?
"Great, good talk, Eliot," Julia said, before sighing. "Margo knows not to give her welcome speech this time, right?"
They were at least on the same page there, weren't they? "I know you made that note on the network, but have you talked to her?"
She expected Q to have questions and while Eliot may have kept him drunk or distracted or both the night before, she did doubt his ability to keep that up.
Eliot took a long sip from his coffee and preferred not to answer. He could not control Margo, and really, it was best not to even try.
“I honestly don’t know,” Eliot finally spoke up. He reached down to the patio with his long arm and held up the bottle of bourbon he used to flavor his coffee in an offering to Julia. “I made my preference known, she may have other ideas.”
Eliot didn’t want to have that conversation. It was cowardly and unfair. But maybe Margo would meet him halfway and refuse to do it herself, again, even if she disagreed with it if only because it shouldn’t have had to be her every time. Eliot knew that.
He was just being a bit of cock.
The mandrake root made everything he tasted a little off. Was turning into, what he was now mostly convinced being a peacock, worth it?
He refused to change his mind now.
For a moment, Julia considered the bourbon before accepting the bottle, adding only a small amount to her coffee before handing it back.
Julia nodded. "I'll talk to her." If Q was going to find out, it seemed like it should come from one of them, and if he kept asking her she might relent. But she agreed with Eliot that he should be able to adjust to Vallo first.
"It's not like we know the future, anyway. For all we know, we could split off four different ways and not intersect with the other three at all." So there wasn't any reason to fret over it, or at least that's what she kept telling herself.
Maybe she should have added more than a little bourbon. She took a sip of her coffee anyway before admitting to Eliot, "I was a mess about it. I'm trying not to be now."
Eliot didn’t say anything at first, nodding his head in agreement. Everything Julia said was completely logical. If the TV show was Timeline 40-A, Margo was from Timeline 40-B, who’s to say Eliot, Julia and Quentin weren’t from Timelines 40-C, 40-D or 40-E?
Of course, when had their luck ever really worked out for them like that? Was he nodding? Or was his head making a noncommittal circular motion? Lips closed, his eyes were wide, and he wanted desperately to avoid talking about it at all.
It was at Julia’s last admission that Eliot’s expression softened. “Julia,” he started. His free hand easily reached hers, clasping it lightly. “Being a mess is kind of our brand. You don’t need to apologize or try not to be a mess. That’s not what we do. We go out there, sometimes a little drunk, usually out of our depth, and we figure it out. Mess or no mess. With all the shit that gets thrown at us, how dare anyone judge us for getting through it however the fuck we get through.”
Was it a pep talk? An excuse not to try? Something in between? Eliot didn’t know if he was channeling some inner wisdom or was just a little tipsy and full of shit.
It could have honestly gone either way.
The gesture caught Julia by surprise, though maybe it shouldn't have. Eliot had a way of connecting with her, reaching out when he needed to. She gave him a faint smile and said, "You're right. But it seems senseless to waste my time being upset about something that I don't even know is going to happen. Marina and Fen having that future and Margo having a different one calls for some balance, doesn't it?"
She shook her head, pulling her hand away and trying to pull herself from those thoughts. "Really, Q is here and he's alright. Why even bother thinking about the rest of this?"
“Exactly. Cheers.” Eliot raised his boozy cup of coffee to clink against hers. “At least until he finds out about the TV show none of us have warned him about and reads the episode summaries, or worse, watches them and relieves all our greatest hits and the bullshit that comes afterward.”
It wasn’t sustainable.
Eliot just wanted it to be.
“I haven’t watched or even looked at it and I have no plans on doing so, by the way.”
"Cheers," Julia said flatly, definitely wishing she'd added more bourbon, though she did have to go to the University later. Responsibility won over. "Marina's done that. I don't think I ever could. Or would want to."
Honestly, sitting and watching her life thus far sounded like torture. And entirely like something Q would do if he got into the wrong mood. Fuck.
"I only watched a couple of scenes. You can guess at least one of them. I don't really recommend it to anyone." And then the deck of cards had shown up, the ones she'd watched herself throw toward the fire only to discover she had magic once again, because in their bullshit world, magic came from pain.
The cards had shown up and she'd put them in the drawer of her desk. It had seemed then as though Vallo was confirming the future to her, and she no more wanted to think about that then than she did now.
"While we're here, this is the only future that matters," she said, though it was unclear whether or not she was saying that to convince him, herself, or both.
“Sing it, sister,” Eliot replied.
Had they come to an agreement? It felt like a plan without any plan at all.