[Audio] @ SuprNerd - open

[moderatelymaladjusted]

[The first few seconds of the recording is just Quentin breathing, fast and shaky at first and just before he speaks, the breathing evens out. The whole speech will be said fast and jerky, like the words are just spilling out without thought.]

What the hell? I can't be the only one who's thinking this, but just what the fucking hell? What the hell just happened? This place, oh shit, this place just-- did any of you see things? Hear things? Fucking feel things? And why? Just, why? I thought we were here to help, to find a way to solve this-- this whole puzzle and suddenly there's something here that made me think I was losing--? That's just-- it was just to fuck with all of us?

What the hell? That's what I want to know - just, what the hell? Is this hell? Is that why?

So, if you're listening to this, lady in the lighthouse? Fuck you! Seriously. Fuck. You.

Also, someone took my hoodie and I need that, so please bring it back. Thanks.

Comments

— audio / @parker.

[webshoots]

Is this where I say welcome to Beacon, tagline: creepy death town? Because — hey, welcome.

Re: — audio / @parker.

[moderatelymaladjusted]

Fuck you, too, Peter! I was at the fucking river and-- fuck all of this!

1/2

[webshoots]

2/3 whoops

[webshoots]

We all were, Quentin. Everyone here has just been through something really unpleasant. This place isn't fun and games, and I'm sorry— I'm sorry for whatever you saw, whatever you experienced, but that's what this place is. The first month we were here? We got to see how everyone died. The next month, half the town did die, again.

[webshoots]

I get it, I really do. D'you think seeing— [ a breath. ] Being here to help and being here to go through that aren't mutually exclusive.

@javert, voice

[policier]

Yes, yes, we all saw them. There is no need to get hysterical about it.

( Javert himself sounds exasperated, tired. He may not be any good at calming people down, but the last thing he needs is for others to start freaking out. It will not do anyone any good, so he continues evenly, )

This is hardly the first strange occurrence to have happened here.

[moderatelymaladjusted]

Hysterical? Fuck you, dude. Honestly, just-- go fuck yourself.

[Because the worst thing hadn't been the fear or the fucking horror show of watching literally his greatest mistakes and regrets paraded infront of him for days. It had been the quiet kind of slip in to surrendering and the calm acceptance of insanity. Again.]

Well, it was a fucking first for me!

Text | @Nightshade

[primordialerebus]

Uh. I can help you find your hoodie at least?

[moderatelymaladjusted]

Yeah? It's black. With a zipper? Have you seen it?

@wayne

[pearlstrings]

Well I suppose that's one way to look at it.

But it's a bit early for shouting over the network don't you think?

[moderatelymaladjusted]

Shouting it at the trees doesn't help. Why not here?

text; @kingsknight

[broplaints]

You okay bro?

[How to ask someone if they're alright in millennial - a novel.]

[moderatelymaladjusted]

Do I sound okay to you?

@freddie1967 | Private

[sauntered_downward]

Someone should do something about the person in the Lighthouse before she makes this worse for us.

| Private

[moderatelymaladjusted]

Maybe

And maybe someone should stop putting something like that on a network the light house lady might be able to spy on

@darkness : voice

[evulsed]

I told you this would happen.

[moderatelymaladjusted]

Yeah. You did.

@keeper; text

[beaconkeeper]

:/

This wasn't me.

[moderatelymaladjusted]

Yeah? Who, then?

@jtodd

[mind_blown]

hey.
good call, some1 should start a lost & found
u feel better now?

[moderatelymaladjusted]

No

@cuttingedge; audio

[knifecollecting]

I think all of us did. I don't- [She pauses for a moment, sighing loud enough for Quentin to hear.]

Maybe there's not a reason if this is Hell. [Maybe it's just mindless torture. Maybe not.]

Maybe it's just to remind us to work together.

[moderatelymaladjusted]

How would driving us crazy help us work together? Because--because I'm not really feeling up for holding hands and--and. I'm not really feeling like I want to do anything but stay in bed, and how is that going to help? How is any of this helping us find a way to repel the World Eaters or whatever?

Yeah, yeah, maybe this is hell.

D-Day

[itselbitch]

[ he'd seen the preparation quentin had been doing, regardless of how well quentin might have attempted to hide it (knowing q, any of it would have been incidental rather than intentional anyhow), but as far as eliot was concerned, quentin may as well have been shouting back at him that he was going to still try and do something about all this the whole time anyway. despite eliot having argued against it the whole time, pushed to dissuade him, and fought to keep some sense of calm. there were a few times it even felt like he might have gotten through. but quentin, being quentin, never knows how to leave the tunnel once he's in it.

it hurts in a way that he doesn't know how to convey. he can only hold quentin closer when they sleep, let his touch linger as long as he can let it before he feels he's asking too much. they were supposed to be figuring things out together since everything else already seemed wretched enough on its own, and somewhere along the road, there had been promises, both spoke and otherwise, made. even before they came here, that's how it had been. with having arrived and started to find some footing, eliot had thought it meant they were all the stronger for it. except even now, with all of the history and emotions between them, even with what recently happened nearly tearing them apart at their own seams without even caring for the grander picture, he feels worlds apart as quentin carried on about what needs to be done, as eliot stifles the fear still embedded in his limbs, the ghost of malicious touches against his arms, his back.

they're meant to be parts of a whole. something incomplete without the other. but he watches as quentin prepares a bow, finds a quiver, fills it with arrows. eliot asks him to stay, but quentin only sees what's ahead, prepares to leave him behind.

when he's alone, he hears the hollow sound of the air vent from his childhood bedroom, the only sign of life beyond his breath and the shaking of his fingers against rumpled cloth clasped so tightly his knuckles are white. he doesn't want to be right. he doesn't want all of everything he worked years of his life for to be just a lie that lets him sleep at night. but what if it really just is? what if he'd been right all along about him and quentin too? all he'd ever really needed was the right person at his back, but here quentin stands far ahead, waiting for eliot to catch up.

the both of the know that if anything is going to be said, it will always have to be eliot. there's even a method to it, a way quentin simply does and silently dares eliot to say something, ready to fight back with something as angry as it is determined, but eliot had been avoiding it because he just wanted to feel home again, that feeling he'd somehow barely managed to find when quentin was recovering from his injuries. he doesn't quite find it. he can't when quentin is being like this, and while there are conversations they have where he fights back, they all end the same, and eliot knows he hasn't changed quentin's heart or his mind. he isn't like margo. he doesn't know how to fight and make people feel guilty for it. but maybe this is his own fault too, for thinking he could possibly be the solution to quentin's everything.

when q comes back with a torch, eliot ignores the sharp cold that pierces his chest and seeps to his fingers. he finishes making dinner, and only when they've cleaned up does he manage to find the words. ]

So. You're really going.

[ it's not a question because it couldn't be. not when it's fact. ]

[moderatelymaladjusted]

[There's no plan beyond getting out of here. There's got to be a way out, and it's was probably going to be somewhere in the forest. Quentin really had no deeper reason for why it had to be in there, except for the experience gleaned from fantasy books throughout the years. And in every last one of them, the solution, the end of the Quest, was in the most dangerous place around. Just look at the Key quest.

The solution was in a dark castle on the underside of a fantasy world and this was going to be just like that. Just like finding the Wellspring in Fillory, like finding the Hidden Sea under castle Whitespire and just like finding the castle with the well of all magic and the Monster.

Determined, Quentin finds the things he needs and carefully packs it all up in his new pillowcase-slash-messenger bag; the ocarina, in case he needed to try to talk to the spirits. Trying that out as a first, instead of just using magic, might not be the worst idea. A bow and the quiver of arrows he found at the Armory, all packed and ready to go. But there's Eliot, looking quieter and more withdrawn with every day that passes, and all the arguments for why Quentin shouldn't.

Shouldn't go, shouldn't look, shouldn't try. And all Quentin hears is - you can't. Can't save me, can't save this, can't help.

So, he works harder, reading through the logs on the network and looking at the map until he almost knows it by heart. There's a way out, there's a way to make sure Eliot never has to go through this again. And somewhere, deep down, Quentin knows it's selfish. That he's doing this to make himself feel better, to feel useful but he swallows it down deep and focuses on doing something.

Because Eliot looks lost sometimes, or like he wants to say something and stops himself. Because the hugs in bed at night are fierce and hard and he never wants to let go, not even for a second, but Quentin can't stand to remember the look on Eliot's face on that last day. How huge his eyes were, wide and full of terror.

He gets in contact with Peter to maybe have a tracker, just in case, and he asks the birdperson for a torch, getting ready despite the hollowness in his stomach and the way every step feels too slow, too little and too late.]

Yeah. [Quentin rubs a hand over his face and looks up, his voice almost shaking with emotion. With exhaustion and overthinking.] Yeah, I'm going. I know there's a way out, El, and I know I can find it.