#qmakepeace

     Eliot’s eyes felt like they were burning, drenched in unburning fire. He had only stopped crying a little while ago but he hadn’t slept yet. Not because he didn’t feel like he needed to cry anymore but because he was physically incapable of doing any more of it. His stomach felt sore and his skin raw. The monster hadn’t been kind in the way it had treated his body the last months, unaccustomed to having a body made of flesh and bone.       The ax had left a mark on his body that even magic couldn’t fix as easily as it should have. The magic was old and strange and distinctly Fillorian. It still hurt. All of him still hurt like he had never hurt before.       Eliot was staring at an empty bed in the infirmary Quentin had been in when they had dragged his body back out of the mirror world. He was dead, they told him hours later when he woke up. Margo had been there, and so had most of everyone else. Quentin wasn’t when it had been the person Eliot had been most eager to see.       The look on Alice’s face when he asked them where Quentin was had been enough to know it was the wrong thing to ask. For a very long moment nobody talked, and they let the silence answer for them. Eliot listened, and his heart broke so painfully he went numb.       He felt like time between the moment Alice had put her arms around him, in response to him gasping for air, and now had faded and evaporated into a gray, meaningless mass. Hours on hours that were filled with the pain in his chest drowning out everything else.       He was alone with his own thoughts now, after he had begged Margo to give him a bit of time alone, promising he wouldn’t die if she did. He was hurting but he wasn’t in any physical danger anymore. She was worried and he couldn’t be mad about it. He had missed her, too, but he wasn’t able to tell her yet.       Eliot ran his hand over the cold, rough fabric of the sheets. He shifted in his seat and it felt uncomfortable, his skin feeling taut and stretched. Maybe an hour ago, he had passed the point of just being tired. Tiredness had become a vital issue for his body, which was starting to make him aware it would simply refuse being awake in just a little longer. Pain and heartache and thoughts be damned, his body was drained and exhausted beyond the level it could take.       His eyes fell shut and he lost his balance a bit, moving forward towards the bed. He couldn’t sleep like this but he realized he had waited too long.Putting a hand on his side, he put his upper body onto the mattress, breathing heavily. Margo would come back soon, he’d just have to wait a little longer.      With that thought, he fell asleep.      Everything was gray. Eliot could see shapes against the uniform mass of a vast gray plane but he had trouble making out what it was. Slowly, fog rose and engulfed his feet. He was standing without pain, wondering why he expected to be in pain to begin with. What was wrong? For a moment he felt the answer push dark tendrils into his thoughts, and then decided to look away, to not think about it anymore, least he would know again why he was upset.      As long as he didn’t remember, he didn’t have to be upset.