The monster's taken over Eliot's body, but he's still in there, somewhere.Â
Thanks to @zeniva for posting this and making my whole heart break badly enough that I needed to write my way out of it.Â
Also on AO3
He tried to open his eyes, but he couldnât. He tried to move his arm, but it stayed where it was. He could feel his body, but he felt disconnected from it, unable to plug his consciousness back into the power source. At first, he thought maybe heâd just been knocked out, that this was the strange place between sleep and waking. Then he felt his arms move, realized he had nothing to do with it, and knew something was wrong. Panic ripped through him, or the part of him that was still him, as he watched himself stand up and shake his arms loose like he was settling into a suit jacket he hadnât worn before. What the fuck was going on? A flash of memory he didnât recognize flew across his mind, someone called him Nigel, clapping him on the shoulder, then retreating with a terrified look on their face when he felt another tap at his back. He, with no recollection of doing so, turned around, coming face to face with the woman from Castle Blackspire. He only recognized her now, in retrospect. In the flash of memory, she felt like a stranger.
âEliot!â she said, her voice unnervingly calm for the crazed look on her face. A loud ringing sounded around them and the lights behind the bar made a horrendous  pop pop pop  sound as they burst against the mirror on the wall.
The woman, the guard, furrowed her brow, but pressed closer, âEliot Iâve been looking everywhere for you,â she said. There was a chilling innocence to her voice that even Nigel recognized as dangerous, he could feel the fear in the memory. He took a step back, ducking when the ringing resumed and a light fell from the ceiling. âJesus fuck!â heâd shouted. He knew he didnât have the accent that came out of his mouth in that memory.
âHmmm,â the guard considered him carefully, holding him in place when he tried to move back again. She moved her face uncomfortably close to his, looking into his eyes and shaking her head after blinking a few times. âWell, this just wonât do. I need you to be Eliot.â
He remembered a blinding pop of pain that traveled from the base of his skull down his spine, freezing him in an unnaturally stiff position, and then, the unraveling of Eliot in his mind, battling with whoever Nigel had been until he half-disappeared. There were pieces of Nigel still floating around inside his mind, he felt like he could almost reach out and touch them, but the shroud that had separated Nigel from Eliot lifted, and the look of utter glee on the guardâs face as recognition lit his own was enough to make him wish he was Nigel again.
âGood, now letâs go find Quentin.â
Quentin. Â It was Eliotâs last thought before blackness, and now this.
He watched as he moved for the door when he heard the voice of  his - er, no, Nigelâs - friend as they scrambled up, âBloody hell, Nigel, what was that?â
He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He couldnât even move his fucking vocal cords. Eliot had seen magic do some fucked up shit in his time, some of which heâd caused, but heâd never seen anything like this. Briefly, he wondered if Quentin felt anything like this in the Scarlottiâs Web his first year. The thought pained him.
âI am not Nigel,â he heard his voice - his real one, not the accented one - say. He saw his hand rise, saw the swift flick of his own nimble fingers and watched the blood spurt and spatter the wall behind Nigelâs friend. Something dropped in his stomach, feeling sick and wrong and tainted as it forced him to watch Nigelâs friend bleeding out on the floor of the pub, the bartender scrambling into the back as fast as he could.
âSo messy, humans,â his voice echoed into the space around them as he stepped over broken glass and through pools of blood like it was nothing. He watched himself leave his favorite pub in London - why was he in London? - and walk down the street in a way that he would never walk if he could just get control of his goddamned legs, half-skipping, leaving blood-soaked footprints in his wake. He watched his body turn into an alley and then disappear. When he reappeared, he was in Brooklyn, approaching a coffee shop as a familiar figure stepped outside, balancing a to-go cup on a stack of books.
Quentin. No. Quentin, run! Â He was screaming and nothing came out.
A heavy, suffocating pressure weighed down on him, making it impossible to think, let alone talk. Reduced to the role of witness, he watched Quentin, who believed he was someone else entirely, back away, scrambling, scared. It hurt, even with the unexpected knowledge he had, or the thing that had taken him had, that it wasnât Quentin on the surface, to see the panic in his eyes as he tried to escape.
âThis is gonna be so fun,â he heard his voice say, with a childish thrill, âI think anything is more fun when you do it with a friend.â
He tried, again, to fight back. Â Run, he willed himself to say, but he couldnât. The thing that had taken him pressed down on him again, harder, unforgiving, until everything went black once more.
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