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To catch a monster, you need to think like a monster.This is the premise behind the excursion, which, if Quentin’s being honest, he still has his doubts about. Especially given he didn’t know this was an option until, oh, let’s say an hour ago, to be generous. An hour since Julia and Penny 23 explained it to him and he listened, gobsmacked, not really knowing what he was saying when he agreed to it, then about forty minutes since they got to Brakebills, fifteen minutes for them to explain the whole thing to Dean Fogg and for him to concede that it was a decent plan (was it?) and give them the information they needed, and now this last leg of the journey, to find Stoppard.“So, what,” Quentin says, “we’re just going to steal the—what did you call it—”“The Time Cube,” Penny 23 says. Quentin’s still not used to his rough attitude; he hadn’t realised Penny—his Penny—had gone so soft around the edges, until he met this one.“Like the—like the website?”Penny 23 and Julia give him twin blank stares.“Never mind.”“We borrow the Time Cube,” Julia says. “We have three Deweys, so we can’t afford to mess this up. We go to timeline 17, we get the Beast, we bring him back with us…”Quentin stops listening, though she’s still going over it. He’s processing. Julia doesn’t really mean the Beast, not the same Beast that they went through all that shit with. She’s talking about timeline 17. It was a long shot, but there had been a second Beast in timeline 23. They couldn’t get him, because they knew how his personal timeline ended—causality’s a bitch. But maybe, Julia thought, there might have been another timeline with a Beast like this. Dean Fogg had confirmed it. There was a second Beast in timeline 17, who is apparently the same as the second Beast from timeline 23, who Julia and Josh met on a quest, who is… him. Quentin.The worst part is that he can imagine it. He can see how he might have become broken enough, delusional enough, that he would cling to Fillory as the only good thing in his life and terrorise all the people who’d caused it harm. When Julia told him about this, he’d waited to hear how they’d defeated him. They hadn’t, really. He was shadeless; Julia had given him her shade and all his feelings had come back, and he had done the thing that Quentin had been spending all of his life trying not to do.Maybe… maybe for the best, in that case. He doesn’t think about what it means that Julia could imagine him becoming the Beast just as easily as he could, enough to bank on it having happened again. Or, in this case, once before.So. To catch a monster. They’re going to recruit a monster.Getting there is the easy part. Stoppard isn’t home, and his place is out of ambient magic to keep the wards up. Penny 23 knows how to work the Time Cube. Quentin doesn’t ask where he got this knowledge; Penny 23 gives off major don’t ask vibes at the best of times. He turns some dials and then they all have to be touching it and Quentin stops feeling anything at all—for only a fraction of a second, but long enough that he feels every sensation return to his body as he lands in timeline 17, in the same place they’d just been.Then, Penny 23 takes them to Fillory.Quentin thinks, on balance, he’s probably ready to meet his shadeless self. He thinks he might even be able to convince himself that coming back to timeline 40 with them is a good idea. After all, who knows him better than himself? He does not think about how different Penny 23 is from his Penny, or Alice 23 in the Tesla Flexion—what was left of her. He doesn’t think about the transient nature of various facets of identity he’s tried on over the course of his life, like a blindfolded child playing an eternal game of pin the tail on the donkey. How Fillory was really the only thing that stuck.When they see the Beast’s home, a Castle Whitespire full of Fillory and Further memorabilia, Quentin is so completely and painfully unsurprised.“The castle was like this in 23, too,” Julia says, giving everything a once-over glance before moving on. Penny 23, in a reassuringly familiar gesture, rolls his eyes and says, “Nerd shit. Jesus.”It takes all of Quentin’s energy not to stop and pick up every object lining the hallway. Some of these are things he didn’t even know existed, artefacts that the Chatwins encounter on their various quests in Fillory, memorabilia from their life on Earth. For someone without a shade, it’s awfully sentimental.“He uses the throne room like a living room,” Julia explains. “We can’t just storm in. He could kill us.”But would he kill the living replica of a King of Fillory?If they’re going to do this, they’re going to do it his way. Quentin pushes past Julia, ignoring her hissed Hey! and the hand that tries to stop him, and into the throne room. And there he is.Himself.“Hey,” Quentin says.The Beast stares back at him. There are no moths; they caught him off guard. He’s just Quentin Coldwater in a fancy suit. His eyes are glowing but devoid of any emotion. His hair’s a little longer. Otherwise they’re the same: same skin, same history. He is every dark thought Quentin has ever had. Quentin already went through that once, on his quest into the Abyss. He tries to make a joke of it to himself. Compared to that Quentin, the Beast is small potatoes.“You have friends with you,” the Beast says. Quentin knows why, too; it’s exactly the kind of offhand comment he’d make in a situation where there’s so much going on that he doesn’t know where to start.“I had help getting here,” is all Quentin says. “I need your help. You remember Eliot?”There’s nothing, not even a flicker of recognition. But that’s fine. It was a rhetorical question, anyway. It’s not like it pains Quentin to come face-to-face with a version of himself that’s lost the capacity to care, to love, to care when the only person he’s ever loved quite like this is mentioned.The Beast tilts his chin, to peer down at Quentin from his dais. “Eliot is dead.”Cold. None of the playfulness that had been in the Monster’s voice, Eliot’s voice, when he’d said the same thing. Quentin steels himself.“Not in my world. But he’s in trouble. There’s something using his body, and we don’t have the magic to get it out. You do.”“An interesting proposition,” the Beast says. “You want me to come to your—what is it, a different timeline?”Quentin nods.“You want me to leave my timeline to save your Eliot. I fail to see what’s in it for me.”They’d talked about this, back in Marina’s apartment. Julia had said to Quentin, “If you can convince him…” At that point Quentin was still dealing with the fact that he’d become the Beast in timeline 23, let alone the specifics of their crazy plan. He’d said to Julia, “How?”“I don’t know,” she’d said. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you couldn’t do it.”They can’t offer him emotional satisfaction. They don’t have any Fillory collectables that aren’t also in that hallway. They can’t even appeal to his bloodthirst, because all of his enemies are right here in this room.Quentin takes the deepest breath of his life. “The Beast is dead, in my world. And there’s no… I mean, there’s me, and I’m not…” He pauses, collects his thoughts. “Nobody’s out hunting for you. We’ve all got bigger things to deal with. You help us save Eliot, then you leave us alone. The rest of the world is yours. Free reign.”He can almost feel the way Julia sucks in a breath somewhere behind him. They both know this isn’t true. They’ll have to find a way to deal with the Beast once the Beast has dealt with the Monster. But what the hell else can Quentin say?The Beast doesn’t answer right away. He thinks it over, his lips downturned in something like a frown. At last, he says, “Let me see your friends.”Julia steps out from cover, followed by Penny 23, who has his hands up in an almost comical gesture of surrender.“You can travel between timelines now?” the Beast asks Penny 23. “I should have taken advantage of that; if I’d known, I might not have killed you.”“Uh, thanks?” Penny 23 lowers his arms. “But, uh, we have a machine. We need to go back to the right place on Earth, and then I can take us back to timeline 40.”“Forty,” the Beast says, the echo of curiosity passing across his face, “that we know of. I wonder what this one will be like.”He steps forward, down from the dais, arm outstretched.“Alright,” he says. “Let’s do this.” Quentin spends a few seconds assessing the situation before deciding that he does not like timeline 40. He feels around for magic in the air and it feels different. Not good different. Less. They hadn’t warned him about this, and they’ll pay for that later. But he remains a man of his word. He’ll deal with their Eliot situation first and then think about how he can ruin their lives without directly harming them, another condition of his visit.“Do you want me to make an entrance?” he asks. He thinks Eliot would appreciate that, even if he is possessed. “Let me put up my moths.”“No,” Other Quentin says, too quickly. “No moths.”Quentin rolls his eyes. “They used to scare me, too. That’s why it works.”“You’re not Batman,” Penny says.“I’m not,” Quentin agrees, “but you have to admit he had the right idea about vigilante justice.”“Are you serious right now?” Other Quentin has that look on his face that Quentin used to get when he was forced to confront some uncomfortable truth about the psyche he can no longer access. “This is not some vigilante mission, this is—”“Okay, Quentin,” Julia says. “Quentins. Let’s focus. Are we agreed we’ll send the Beast—”“Quentin 17,” Other Quentin says.Quentin 17—has a nice ring to it—doesn’t know how to be surprised. But he had not expected sympathy from this corner. Not from Other Quentin, when he’s got such a long and colourful history of hating himself. It makes sense, he thinks, that Other Quentin has matured beyond that, what with the whole… Eliot thing.Julia sighs. “Fine, Quentin 17. You face the Monster alone. It already trusts our Quentin, so all we have to do is put you in his clothes and give you a bit of a haircut.”Other Quentin looks resigned when he says, “He’ll know it’s not me.”“Will he? Or are you just saying that because Eliot would know?”Uncharacteristically harsh for Julia. Quentin 17 decides he likes this one. She always did get along with the Beast.“He’s in there,” Other Quentin says. He sounds determined, but Quentin 17 can recognise the echo of resignation in his familiar voice. He doesn’t miss feeling resignation. He doesn’t know how to miss. Other Quentin goes on: “The Monster is… learning from his memories, somehow. I don’t know.”Interesting. There must be something in common between timelines 17 and 40. How else did they know to look for him? Other Quentin didn’t look like he’d ever been a Beast but you never know. Quentin 17 wonders what else the timelines have in common. If the Quentin-Eliot connection, so to speak, means the same thing in this iteration of their lives. Perhaps this is an understatement: they were in love, back when love was still something Quentin 17 understood and not just a series of social and physical cues he had learnt to read in other people. He doesn’t remember how it felt, but he does remember what they called it. And, shade or no shade, fucking is fucking.His Eliot died a long time ago. This Eliot, he suspects, would be on the way out if it weren’t for him. If Quentin 17 believed in that sort of thing, he might call it a second chance.“I’ll do it,” he says. “Cut my hair.”He doesn’t care about how his hair looks. He only wears it like this because it’s different to how he wore it when he had his shade. The symbolism of outgrowing his old self appeals to his sense of narrative. After all, he has become the villain of the piece.“Great,” Julia says, visibly relieved.“When you think about it,” Penny says, “it is sort of vigilante justice.”So they cut his hair. They dress him in Other Quentin’s clothes. He looks in the mirror and sees the pathetic creature he used to be. Well, at least he knows that if anything can get through to Eliot, it’s this.They want him to get the Monster out of Eliot without getting Eliot out of the picture. Julia has some idea that he should be able to do it with all that magic bottled up inside him, with his post-human capabilities. Other Quentin talks like he thinks it’s simply a matter of reasoning with the Monster. Penny doesn’t have anything of value to say at all and Quentin 17 is starting to wonder what he’s doing there. He concocts a plan that combines their advice and everything they’ve told him about the Monster; after all, he must defer to their experience in that matter. He’ll try it Other Quentin’s way first. Then, if that goes south, he’ll reach inside Eliot’s body and pull the Monster out of him thread by thread, and rip him to pieces.This is something they’re all too scared to face: that there may necessarily be some harm done to Eliot in the process. No matter how much they wish otherwise. Other Quentin doesn’t want to consider it because he’s in love. And the others care too much about Other Quentin to think about doing it any other way.Quentin 17 wonders if he was like that, too, when he was whole. He watches Julia and Penny flock around his other self like moths to a floodlight. Had he been magnetic, too?None of them know when the Monster will arrive. “Usually happens when I’m alone,” Other Quentin admits, like it’s some great shame. They leave Quentin 17 in the apartment on his own, with a book to read. It doesn’t interest him; he glances at the pages and counts the seconds until the Monster returns.He feels it first as a new presence in his airspace. Turns, slowly. The Monster is too close behind him; he stands to look it in the eye, and then a second later it’s in front of him. It wears Eliot’s skin clumsily, none of Eliot’s finesse or flair, and certainly nothing like the suit Quentin 17 usually wears. He picked that up from his Eliot, as well as Martin Chatwin: people take you more seriously when you’re well-dressed.Maybe the Monster wants to be underestimated.“Something’s different,” the Monster says, sniffing the air. Quentin 17 waits patiently for him to realise what it is. “You… you’re…”Well, it was a nice idea while it lasted. He pulls himself up to his full height, rolls his shoulders back. “So you’re the Monster.”“Who are… you?”This thing is meant to have killed Gods, but it’s skittish, uncertain. They should’ve let Quentin 17 put on the moths from the start. Now it’s going to look like a cheap reveal.He does it anyway.“You can call me the Beast.”“You’re using his body,” the Monster says, “the way I’m using this one.”Quentin 17 has a brainwave. Just goes to show: you think faster without your shade. He says, “Not exactly. I’m him. He’s me. I’ve been stringing you along, letting you have your way for a while while I keep the Beast at bay. But I’m getting bored of that.”There’s an unfamiliar expression on Eliot’s face: pure, unfettered delight. “Are we going to play a new game?” he asks.“Yes,” Quentin 17 says. This Monster isn’t like him; it has whims, predilections, a whole range of expression that simply isn’t available to Quentin 17. He is not interested in it beyond the task he was given: rid Eliot of the Monster, so he can get on with making this timeline his bitch.“You know,” the Monster says, peering down at him, “this body likes your body more without the moths.”Ah. So it was the same, in this timeline. Quentin 17 now understands why Other Quentin knew Eliot was still in here with so much certainty. The mannerisms are different, but there’s a spark of similarity. This will be perfect for Quentin 17’s plan.“Do you want me to put them away?” he asks, letting the glamour flicker for just a moment.“Yes. Yes, I think so.”Quentin 17 does as he’s told. He smiles obligingly. Now that he has no impetus to be polite, he’s learnt how to use it as a weapon.“You’re like him.” The Monster leans in even closer. “You’re like him, but you’re like me.”Quentin 17’s body remembers what it was like to be this close to Eliot, even if his heart doesn’t. He needs the Monster unequivocally on his side for this to work. He grips its arm, stands on his toes, and kisses it. Kisses Eliot. This is second nature, something he can do without thinking. He’s practically the world/universe/whatever expert. He knows how to run his tongue along the inside of Eliot’s mouth and knows the precise places that will make him buckle at the knees. Even if the Monster doesn’t recognise this, its body will.When Quentin 17 pulls away, the Monster is somewhere between confused and, tentatively, pleased. Quentin 17 is neither of these things. His Eliot would never kiss like such an amateur. Quentin 17 kisses him—it, the Monster—again. All this talk of bodies. The Monster is a quick learner.“Are you ready to hear about our new game?”The Monster nods eagerly, looking a little stunned, but happy about it. Now that’s a little closer to a familiar face.“You and I, together,” Quentin 17 says, “we’re going to be unstoppable. All you need to do is use my body instead of his.”“You want me inside of you?” the Monster asks.Jesus. He’s definitely heard that one before.“Yeah,” he says. “Don’t you want all this power?”The last glimpse Quentin 17 has of timeline 40 is the wicked smile on Eliot’s face, inches away from his own. The last thing he hears is the Monster saying, “You lied to me. If you were my Quentin, you would know better.”Everything spins, the ceiling and floor inverted and then flickering away before his eyes. He feels like he’s falling, falling, and then he lands hard on the tiles of the throne room at Castle Whitespire. He looks around for the Monster but it’s only him.He doesn’t panic. He only knows the signs and symptoms: shortness of breath, tension in the muscles, sweat on your hands and forehead. He experiences none of these things.I didn’t lie to you, he thinks. They lied to me.It isn’t accurate to call it a lie. Other Quentin and his friends simply exaggerated the extent to which Eliot had autonomy over his own body. So, perhaps in time, Quentin 17 will regain feeling in his fingers and sight in his eyes. Until then he is alone in his mind. In Castle Whitespire. In Fillory, his own domain at last.Isn’t this what he always wanted?But, of course, he doesn’t remember what want feels like. They hear talking from the apartment, then, abruptly, silence. A thud. Footsteps—maybe? If everything went wrong, Quentin doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to open the door but he finds himself doing it anyway.Well. It’s still Marina’s apartment. No egregious blood splatters, nothing broken or upturned. No Monster, no Beast.“He was definitely in here,” Julia says. “I heard them talking.”“The Monster could have taken him somewhere else,” Penny 23 says, shrugging.Quentin looks past them both, further into the apartment, and then he looks down, and there’s Eliot’s body lying unconscious on the floor, but breathing, alive. Quentin doesn’t process a single rational thought after that. He runs to Eliot’s side and skids onto his knees. If Quentin 17 failed and ran away, and the Monster’s still in here, Quentin will let it tear out his insides, whatever. But if there’s any chance that Quentin 17 succeeded, and this is Eliot—He opens his eyes. “Q?”Right. Quentin is holding Eliot like a torn bag of groceries. And now he’s crying. All this time he’s been thinking about what he’d do if they ever got Eliot back—he’d kiss him senseless, or kick him in the shin for letting the Monster out in the first place, or shake him by the shoulders and ask him why he had to say that to prove he was alive inside his body. Turns out that precisely none of this is feasible when all he’s capable of doing his wrapping his arms around Eliot, pulling Eliot’s head to his chest, and, maybe, never letting go again.Quentin’s ears are buzzing; only Julia’s voice cuts through: “Uh, Q… ?”“Not right now,” comes Eliot’s voice, hoarse and muffled in the crook of Quentin’s neck. “We’re having a moment.”“Don’t let me interrupt,” says Quentin 17 pleasantly.Reluctantly, Quentin lets go, and sits back on his legs. He keeps one hand on Eliot’s arm. That’s how it’s going to be from now on. Eliot is just going to have to cope.It takes a little longer for Quentin’s brain to catch up with his body. If Quentin 17 is here, but not the Monster, then their plan failed. Quentin turns and looks up at his other self. The buzzing wasn’t in Quentin’s ears after all—it was the moths. And he’s back in his suit.“I went to change,” Quentin 17 says. Only it’s not Quentin 17, is it? “This body is… not happier… it’s more like itself in these clothes.”The Monster takes a few deliberate steps towards Quentin and Eliot and kneels down. The moths are right up in their faces. The mannerisms are all familiar, the cadence of its voice… and Quentin knows he should be happy they killed two birds with one stone but all he feels is a strange sort of emptiness. Shade or no shade, that’s him. That’s who he could have been. Was. Twice.“Thank you for your time,” the Monster says to Eliot. “I enjoyed your body. But this one is so much more… empty. So much room! And it has moths.”Quentin is glad he can’t see beyond the moths right now, because he knows the accompanying look of glee that’ll be on the Monster’s face and he thinks he might throw up if he has to see that in a mirror image.Eliot swallows. “You’re not welcome.”Ignoring him, the Monster turns to Quentin. One hand emerges from the cloud of moths, and the Monster strokes its thumb along Quentin’s jawline. Quentin shivers, though he wishes he didn’t.“I kept him alive for you. See?”“Yeah. You—um, thank you for that.” Somewhere inside him he finds the courage to add, “Now leave us alone.”The Monster cocks its head; the moths follow. “But you’re still helping me build my body.”“Oh, read the room,” Eliot says. He sounds so much like himself; every word loosens the knot in Quentin’s chest. “What? We already did you a service, letting you out of Blackspire. Go build your body on your own.”Slowly, the Monster lowers his hand. “I will leave you two alone,” he says. “For now. But this one…”In a blink it’s standing next to Julia. Quentin had forgotten she and Penny 23 were there.“My new body trusts this one,” the Monster says.Julia opens her mouth, but whatever she was going to say is lost as the Monster grabs her wrist, and then they’re gone.“Oh, shit,” Penny 23 says, “I’d better—”Then he’s gone too, and it’s just Quentin, and Eliot, and everything they still have to say to one another. Quentin can’t think about anything else at all, not the Monster, not the Beast, not the massive new problem they have on their hands. Just Eliot. So he supposes it’s fitting that they sit there in silence for maybe two minutes, which is longer than it seems when fifty years of understanding passed between you in the thirty seconds that constituted the last time you saw each other.“Peaches and plums,” Quentin says, shoving him. “You bastard.”“Q—”“Did you mean it?”Eliot sits up properly, sighing. “Of course I meant it. But—”“But we’ve still got a Monster situation on our hands, so that conversation can wait. Right?”“But, I should have told you as much from the start. Even when I said it was a bad idea, I wanted to.” Eliot shifts closer to Quentin. “I’m done running away.”“So we’re going to—”“Kill the Monster,” Eliot supplies. “Get married again.” He waves his hand like he isn’t particularly fussed by either option. “Your choice.”Quentin grins wider than he has in months; even Eliot cracks a smile. That’s the beauty of being on the same wavelength, at last.“We don’t have to choose.”