Work Text
Margo’s about four months along, already looking like she’s carrying a basketball in front of her, when Julia shows up in Fillory. They haven’t seen each other in a while. She takes one look at Margo, figures out how the boys are treating her, how she’s eating alone most nights and being ostracized by the entire court, and must say some kind of version of “fuck this,” because things change pretty much overnight. Eliot is suddenly much, much nicer to her. “I’m sorry, Bambi,” he says one night. “You’re damn right you are,” she snaps. “You think this is a fucking walk in the park? You think I’m doing this because I was struck by some sudden maternal instinct? I traded away one of your babies, Eliot. I wasn’t going to blow your chances at another, no matter how hard it was.” He actually looks at her. Her jaw is set. But she can see that finally, he realizes she’s serious. Even though he never really wanted to be a dad, that he had this shoved on him, she knows he finally understands that in this act, through what’s turning out to be this monumentally stupid, insane, and inconvenient act, she’s trying to make up to him what she fucked up. “You didn’t have to do this,” he says quietly. “Yes, I fucking did,” she replies. “No matter how hard it is.” “I’m so sorry, Bambi,” Eliot finally says, and she’s so grateful for that admission, so grateful that someone else has finally taken some sort of fucking responsibility for this, that she almost bursts into tears. Fen carrying that log around like a baby is so sad. It’s all Margo’s fault and she can hardly look at her without swallowing tears. It’s fucking hormones, she knows, but there isn’t a damn thing she can do about it because it’s a real feeling and it hurts. Then the white witch shows up with Fray, who she claims is Eliot’s actual daughter. This is clearly bullshit. Is she the only same person in this court? But no one wants to listen to the crazy pregnant lady. Suddenly Eliot’s got to sail out to look for one of the keys to restore magic. The White Witch, who Margo wouldn’t put it past dropping Fillory into winter and canceling Christmas, stupid bitch, decides to take an interest in the quest and sends both Log Lady Queen Consort and Eliot’s fake daughter along for the ride. Guess who that leaves to run the fucking kingdom, with Quentin MIA and Alice good for absolutely nothing — why the fuck did they make her a monarch in the first place? It leaves the motherfucking pregnant woman, that’s who. The miserable, sick, ain’t-got-no-real-baby-daddy pregnant woman. Margo feels like shit pretty much constantly. But you can’t govern if you sleep until 11am every morning, so she wakes at the asscrack of dawn, dragging herself up to read treaties and tax forms and arbitrate disputes, all while the whole court snickers at her and speculates about the father of her children. They’ve taken to calling her the Whore Queen instead of the High Queen, which she has to privately admit is rather clever, but she channels Cersei Lannister, banishes a motherfucker or two, threatens to let the sloth torture another, and she’s finally got the barbarians in line again. Except she looks insane, because she’s telling them to do shit like pull up perfectly good crops and plant fields of inedible mushrooms. Not telling, decreeing. There are mutters about pregnancy psychosis. She’s managed to make that eyepatch look good; she has those dressmakers highlight that giant fucking belly instead of concealing it and making it look absolutely glorious. Fuck the asshats. Eliot’s boat gets hijacked. By pirates. She has to ask the Fairy Queen for help; the monumental bitch flies her there on a Pegasus, probably just for shits and giggles. Margo throws up six times on the way from both the sway and the smell, which will never, ever come out of her hair. Fuck this noise. Eliot’s gone, it seems to Earth. Great. She’s fucking marooned, alone, in Fillory. Because someone has to run the fucking country and it won’t be Tick. On her voyage home, she’s seasick the whole motherfucking way. She spends all her time in the king’s cabin throwing up into a chamber pot, a pillow under her stomach, feeling the babies flutter and twist. It’s the only thing that makes it bearable. Sometimes it’s only one of them. Sometimes it’s both of them at once, and she can tell because it feels like there’s a miniature rave happening in her belly. When she touches her stomach, she can’t feel them, not yet. She keeps checking. Weirdly, she can’t wait until she can. She always wonders, when she feels them, which it is. Eliot’s? Quentin’s? Will they even be able to tell when they come out — newborn babies, from what she’s seen, all look the fucking same unless they have hair. All squishy potato things. What if they look exactly alike and they mix them up? They’ll to have like, tag them or something. Dress them in different clothes. Clothes. Baby clothes. They’ll need baby clothes and all the shit that comes along with babies. She’ll have to delegate some motherfucker to deal with that. She has no idea about any of that and has no intention of learning. Oh my god, she’ll have to feed them. With her fucking boobs. She’s pretty sure she can make someone else do that. This is fucking Fillory and she’s the motherfucking queen. Does that make her a bad mother?, she wonders. She didn’t do this to be a mother. She did this so Eliot could be a father. They’re two separate things, two very distinct things. But no one knows better than her how fucked up you get when your parents don’t give a shit about you. She can’t bring kids into the world and do that to them. Better that she would have done something about them back when she took those pregnancy tests, and it’s too late for that now. She’s got to figure out this fucking — this fucking parent thing (she can’t think the ‘m’ word. It scares the shit out of her). She can farm a lot of it out, but in the end, it’s on her to actually care about them, to take care of them. How is she supposed to love someone like that? She supposes she’ll learn, the same way she learned to be a queen. You just wake up one day and make a decision and you grit your teeth and you fucking do it and you don’t take no for an answer, even from yourself. I will not treat you like they treated me, she promises. You will not end up like Eliot and I. When she’s not wallowing in maudlin thoughts about parenthood or actively barfing, she contemplates what the fuck they’re going to do to get the babies out of her. Because they have to come out sometime. Will they drag her Earthside and do it there? Make her do it in Fillory? She hopes it’s Earth. They have much better drugs on Earth. You’re also much less likely to bleed out or die of shock or some horrific infection on Earth. Childbirth in Fillory is fucking medieval. When she gets back to Whitespire, there’s a letter waiting for her, an old one, which some messenger says has been waiting to be delivered to her specifically on this date. It’s from Quentin. It says they’ve lived a long, full life, and they were happy, and they got the key and they’re dead and — oh fuck no. Fuck no. Fuck this. She runs into the Clock Barrens and finds Jane Chatwin. Jane tells her the key is on her body, which is buried at Brakebills. Margo has to fucking dig it up. First she has to sail into Fogg’s office knocked up as Kate Middleton circa 2013 and ask where the body is, and that’s bad enough, but she keeps her head up and her “come at me, bitch” look on her face, and he pretends he can’t see anything below her chest. Or her neck, really, because her tits by this point have become something truly spectacular. They’re bigger than Alice’s. She finds a shovel and starts digging. Five months pregnant. The exertion alone nearly kills her, but she manages it: shoveful after shoveful, one at a time, huffing and puffing and eventually crying with exertion, but she finally hits the coffin, then has to rummage through a fucking corpse, and if there was anything left in her stomach she’d have thrown it up. But she finds the key. She stumbles to the cottage and finds Eliot and Quentin about to walk through the clock.“Looking for this?” she asks, holding out the key. She had sworn she wouldn’t cry. She had sworn she wouldn’t freak out. But she’s throwing her arms around Eliot and weeping like a little girl, her big belly between them. They all walk through the clock. And then she passes the fuck out. She wakes up in her bed, in Whitespire. She knows she’s there without opening her eyes; the sheets are that weird handspun-soft and the quilt is heavy velvet. Some kind soul has wedged a pillow under her stomach. Quentin is crying. He’s crying. “We have another chance, El,” he saying. “We got another fucking chance.” Eliot’s sniffling. “I know, Q,” he says, and his voice is thick. “I can’t fucking believe it. We have another chance. We lost it and now here it is again.” “I thought about it so fucking much,” Q says. “While we were there. How we left and if she was okay and they were okay. What ever happened. And then we had Teddy and it made it better but it made it worse too, somehow —” “I know, Q. I know we never really talked about it —” “What the fuck were we going to say? We couldn’t do shit about it. We had to take care of the quest.” “But now we have another chance. Another chance not just for them, but for —” Eliot’s choking up. “I miss Teddy so much,” Q says. Margo finally can’t take this anymore. And who the fuck is Teddy? She moves a little bit so they figure out she’s waking up. They’re both at her bedside in a second. “Hey, Bambi,” Eliot coos at her. “Can you sit up? You’re really dehydrated. Here.” He hands her a glass of water, which she gulps greedily. It makes her queasy. She wills herself to keep it down. “I had to rob a fucking grave for you,” she manages. “We are — we are sofuckingsorry,” Quentin says in a rush. “We are just so fucking sorry. We can’t even —” “Well, I didn’t want you to fucking die,” Margo says. “God.” “Bambi, Quentin isn’t talking about the grave robbing, which, by the way, when pulled off at five months pregnant with twins makes you some kind of fucking Marvel superhero. We’re sorry. For how we treated you.” “I’m going to have another son,” Quentin says, and completely breaks down. “Another son?” Margo asks. “Um, you got the letter. Key quest, lived an entire life, had a kid and a marriage, I apparently died, there were grandkids —” “You have descendants on Fillory?!” Margo asks. “Um.” Eliot looks at Quentin. Quentin looks back. “I, uh, never made that leap.” “We should, uh, get on looking for those.” Quentin says through his tears. He reaches out to Margo. “Can I?” he asks. She nods. He puts his hands on both sides of her belly. “Can you feel them move on the outside yet?” She shakes her head. “They fucking tapdance on my bladder, though.” She glares at Eliot. “I’m blaming yours for that one. But they’re also fond of throwing baby raves when I’m trying to get to sleep at like, midnight.” Quentin actually laughs. “Do you remember Arielle complaining about that?” he asks Eliot. Eliot smiles. “That and how often she had to fucking pee. Do you remember when we were able to feel Teddy kick?” “Maybe six months? Something like that?” “God, Arielle’s belly was never this big, though,” Eliot says. “Thanks, asshat.” Margo smacks him. She figures Arielle was their wife. Teddy must have been their kid. They had a kid. At least they’ll know how to do this parent thing. What a giant fucking relief. And suddenly they’re mooning over her like she’s the fucking Madonna. It’s whiplash. But she’ll take it. After all she’s been through with this bullshit, she’ll fucking take it. They give her more water. She lies back down. She is so fucking tired. She is so fucking relieved. But she can’t sleep long. She may be five months pregnant, but she’s the morherfucking Queen. And High Queen or Whore Queen, she’s got a kingdom to run.