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2019-03-24
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How to Thought Spiral: A Step-By-Step Guide by Quentin Coldwater

Summary:

Quentin resents the quest for many things, but this he hates it for most. Why couldn’t it have just let him forget.

Notes:

I would like to thank my own incessant late night self-flagellation for inspiring this little ditty.

Work Text:

Quentin’s had plenty of practice thinking about death.

There’s a lot of material to cover, what with it being such a multifaceted concept. His favorite approach is probably the metaphysical: does the soul persist after death, and if so, can the soul perceive its own existence, and if so, what does that say about the nature of existence, etc, etc, ad infinitum. This angle had seen a spike in mental airtime after he found out ghosts were a thing.

Then there’s the religious aspect, if that’s your cup of tea. Not really Quentin’s, but he did take an elective called ‘Death, Religion and Culture’ freshman year of college which had been pretty interesting, objectively speaking. After all, religion was really just humanity’s way of watering death down for mass consumption, or weaponizing it.

There’s also Quentin’s personal experience with death.

With losing the people he loves to it.

With seeking it out himself.

But for all that familiarity, nothing could have prepared him for what it was actually like to grow old. To walk slowly toward death, no shortcuts, no take-backs, and at the end of it all, greet it like a dear friend.

The beauty of all life.

The worst part about it, Quentin decides, in the dark of the night when he’s alone with his own thoughts, is this: Eliot’s rejection makes him question his own memories. Because if Eliot could come back from that and just…move on, like he hadn’t slept at Quentin’s side every god damn night for fifty years, like they hadn’t raised a child together, like they didn’t know the other’s body better than they knew their own, not just from sex but from the unparalleled intimacy of caring for someone in their final years—then maybe it really hadn’t happened. Maybe Quentin’s mind is playing tricks on him again, filling in the gaps to feed his starving heart.

But no. That line of thinking is the easy way out. Because it was real, Quentin knows it was, so then Eliot just…doesn’t want him anymore.

Not when we have a choice.

He can’t keep doing this to himself. Circling the same intrusive thoughts over and over again like a fucking masochist. But when he tries to redirect his mind toward kinder reveries, he finds that all roads lead to the mosaic. The temptation to sink into the same slideshow that plays in his head almost every night is too powerful to resist.

The memories aren’t always clear, or substantial; old age had claimed many of the details, and even without that, Quentin senses another barrier: the paradoxical, semi-reality of the quest, softening edges and bleeding one memory into the next, like watercolor paint in the hands of an unskilled artist.

Wading through this stream of blurred remembrances, Quentin lands on something new. A small moment, impossible to place.

“What?” Eliot murmurs.

“I like your chest,” Quentin says. His head is resting on it, nestled in the fleshy cushion where chest becomes shoulder becomes armpit. They’re in bed, sunlight streaming through the windows. “I like how it smells like you. I like your hair.” He runs his fingers through it. “It’s so comfortable, I could rub my face in it all day.”

“My little weirdo,” Eliot says, fondly. He picks up Quentin’s hand, the one that had been playing with his chest hair. Threads their fingers together.

Quentin looks at their joined hands for a time, swiping his thumb lazily against Eliot’s palm. Eliot’s chest rises and falls, a steady rhythm. Quentin feels his heart beat against his cheek.

The scene dissolves. Small indeed, but enough to leave Quentin desperate for more. He chases down another memory.

“You can’t stop there!” Teddy’s tiny, eager voice. “Five more minutes. Please?”

“Ted,” Quentin chides, gently. The three of them are sitting around the fire, Teddy curled against Eliot’s side, Quentin a few feet away. “It’s bed time. You have school in the morning.”

“I’m not tired,” Teddy protests. “And I don’t want to go to school. I want to know what happens to Queen Margo and the faeries.” He looks up at Eliot. “Da-ad. Two more minutes.”

Eliot laughs. “What do you think?” he says, meeting Quentin’s gaze over Teddy’s head, eyes shining.

When Teddy was born everything had slotted into place, like pieces of a puzzle, like the mosaic itself. What did I do to deserve this life? Quentin remembers thinking. This sort of happiness wasn’t meant for people like him.

Yet here they are: healthy, and safe, and beautiful, and his. This, he thinks, looking at them, at the home they had built, laid out beneath a canopy of stars. I could stay here forever, just like this. Let time stop. If we never leave this cottage, if we never solve the quest. I’d be happy.

The memory peters out, leaving Quentin’s heart keening like a dying animal. "Teddy," he whispers, out loud—he can’t help himself, he has to speak it, make it real—our son.

“I love her,” Ted tells them. He’s older now, almost a man grown. “I want to marry her.”

“I—wow. That’s.” Quentin struggles to continue.

“Fast,” Eliot supplies, baldly.

Teddy’s jaw clenches. “We’ve been seeing each other for almost a year.”

“That’s nothing,” Eliot says. “Ted, you’re seventeen. Do you realize how young that is?”

Teddy glares at him. “We’ve already talked to her parents about it. They think it’s a great idea.”

Eliot huffs in exasperation. “They’re Fillorian, they think compulsory tree school is a great idea.”

“I’m Fillorian!” Ted exclaims, his voice cracking. It doesn’t help his argument. “In case you forgot. Just because Mom’s not here—”

“OK, alright, stop,” Quentin interrupts, physically putting himself between Eliot and Teddy. He takes a deep breath. “Ted, we love you, we love Alana, you know that. We want you to be happy. This is just—it’s sudden, that’s all.”

“I know this is right,” Ted says, firm. “I know it’s hard for you. But it’s happening.” He takes a shaky breath, glancing at Eliot quickly before dropping his gaze. “I’m leaving. Tomorrow…”

It had been hard, Quentin remembers. Especially for Eliot. But Quentin also remembers feeling so damn proud of the young man Teddy had become. Infinitely generous like Arielle; bold and brave like Eliot. The best of all of them.  

“What if—” Quentin stutters, speaking softly. Conscious of waking Arielle and the baby, but also—ashamed. “What if he’s like me? What if I—I passed it on to him.”

With Eliot, he doesn’t need to elaborate. “So what if you did?” he says, stroking his arm. “It would just be one part of him. He would have you to help him through it.” He brushes his lips against Quentin’s temple. “You’re going to be an amazing father, Q.”

Quentin feels tears welling in his eyes. “I just. It was so hard, for so long. And it almost—a few times. I almost didn’t make it. I can’t bear the thought of him having to experience that kind of pain.”

“I know.” Eliot squeezes his arm. “I know.”

Quentin feels his throat constrict, remembering how the thought of Teddy inheriting his depression had haunted him, particularly in those early years. But his fears had been unjustified. Teddy had been a happy, exuberant child who had grown into a well-adjusted man. Thank god for Arielle. 

Arielle. Of all the pieces of that life, she feels the least real. He strains to conjure the way she smelled, the exact tenor of her voice, her laugh that he loved so much. As always, it’s an exercise in futility. His memory fails him every time. He clings to what little he can remember, which is mostly just the way he felt about her. He remembers their love sneaking up on him. After Alice, and then Eliot, he hadn’t thought his heart was capable of loving someone else so wholly.

It’s bizarre, Quentin marvels, the details that still stand out in his mind, persisting in bold defiance of time and reason. The braided strap of leather Eliot often used as a headband, curls framing his head like a halo whenever he wore it. A letter Teddy wrote to Arielle, found by Quentin years later when he was cleaning out some of Teddy’s old belongings (the last sentence remained burned into Quentin’s memory, scrawled across the page in Teddy’s unpracticed hand: I love you, but I hate you for leaving me.) The pungent aroma of the balm Eliot applied to his aching knees every morning, made from some kind of weird Fillorian nut. The words to a nursery rhyme about boats Arielle’s parents had been so fond of.

What makes a headband more worthy of remembrance than the sound of your own wife’s voice? More important than the names of your neighbors who shuttled you to the marketplace every Sunday when you’d grown too tired, too fucking old, to get there on your own? How is that fair? How is that right? Quentin rages against the pathetic fallibility of human memory, against this quest that had given him everything and then ripped it so ruthlessly away. 

An icy chill passes through his body, because who does he sound like?

No. He won’t empathize with that—that thing. The Monster crossed a line when he decided murdering innocent people was a satisfactory way of indulging his anger.  Quentin is nothing like him.

Aren’t you? his inner voice challenges. Isn’t that exactly what you’re doing? Allowing innocent people to die every time the Monster throws a fit because you can’t let Eliot go. If he gets his body back, what then? He could burn the world down, and you’ll be complicit because you couldn’t stop chasing the shadow of a life that never existed. That never will.

How stupid could he possibly be, to hope that this will end any different. Quentin wants Eliot back, god, he does. But even if they fail and he never sees Eliot again, Quentin knows he’ll never be free of this stupid, boundless want. This fist around his heart that squeezes and squeezes and never, ever lets go. He resents the quest for many things, but this he hates it for most. Why couldn’t it have just let him forget.

He immediately hates himself for the thought.

In bed, he turns onto his back, staring at the darkened ceiling. Wishing for a canopy of stars.