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“It also predicted that you would learn what it is to live and rule alone.”
“Yeah? Well, alone’s my jam.”
*****
She doesn’t remember it at first. When she first gets her memories back she’s just relieved to see Fen, and ready to solve whatever Ember’s message was about.
Bacchus sends her back to Earth, and it’s a setback, but she happens to know where everyone else was when she left, so she goes back to find them.
Kady, Penny, and Josh are still there, but Quentin, and Eliot are there now too.
She’s never been more relieved in her life.
She all but runs to Eliot, letting out a relieved “Thank Christ,” as she does, but Quentin stops her. He almost jumps in front of her with his arm out, blocking her, saying “Wait, waitwaitwaitwait,” as he does. Kady has one arm out towards her and her other on her hip. Everyone looks very tense, and she can’t see where the god is, so she freezes.
Quentin says, “Not Eliot,” looking quickly at apparently Not-Eliot and then back at her, and she’s devastated.
“I’m so glad you came,” Not-Eliot says. “Saves me having to hunt you down, I’ve got so much of that ahead of me already.”
Her eyes are watering, and she does her best not to let her voice shake as she asks Quentin, without looking away from Not-Eliot, “What is he talking about?” Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Please, don’t say it.
“He’s ... hunting gods.” Quentin moves away from her and towards Not-Eliot, arm out in a placating gesture. She sees him in her peripheral vision. She hasn’t moved since Quentin told her to wait. She hasn’t looked away from Not-Eliot. She can’t.
Quentin is looking at Not-Eliot now, arm still out, still walking slowly towards him, “Vengeance for locking you in the castle.”
“They did more than that,” Not-Eliot says, looking at Quentin. “And, so did you.” He looks right at Margo this time, and she can’t help it. A single tear slips out of her eye and down her cheek.
“You tried to kill me. You were all part of it.” He says, almost with a laugh, and as he sits down in the golden chair in a way that is familiar and unfamiliar at once, she knows. She knows exactly who it is.
After that statement, comes a collective realization. They all realize just who this is, and she realizes that the last time she saw Eliot as herself was before he went off with the god-killing bullet. She doesn’t even remember if she got a chance to say goodbye. She doesn’t know that even if she did, if it was Eliot she was with before she was wiped, or if it was the monster.
She suddenly remembers that Lord Fresh told her that her birthright box predicted she would know what it is to live and rule alone. She’s High King now, Eliot isn’t Eliot anymore, Fen is in Fillory, and she is on earth, alone. This is it. She has to become acquainted with this pain, with this emptiness.
When she was Janet she said that being alone was “her jam,” but it isn’t Margo’s. Margo doesn’t thrive in loneliness, she thrives in love and friendship. She thrives in the deep soul connection she has with Eliot, in the way that he brings out the absolute best and bravest parts of her, and she of him.
How can she ever learn to be alone like this? How can she be herself without him? She never thought she’d have to find out.
She needs him back.
“Tell me Eliot is still in there somewhere,” she says to Q after she’s checked to make sure the bell is indeed on the table behind her.
“Not that I’ve seen,” he whispers back to her.
Marina told her to ring the bell as soon as the god sat down in the chair, but she remembers what the god-killing bullet did to him back in Fillory. Nothing. It just killed the host, and even if Q hasn’t seen him, there’s still a chance Eliot is alive in there.
The monster has decided to kill Josh. She can’t lose any more friends.
She does what she has to.
“I can give you Bacchus ... I found him hiding someplace far away. Hiding from you, right? I can take you there, if you let them live. All of them.”
She’s watching him, and he’s watching her. It’s unnaturally silent, like everyone in the room is holding their breath. She used a more desperate version of her most sympathetic voice, the same one that makes grown men cry and fall to their knees for her. The same one that Eliot claimed never worked on him, but the one he always caved for anyways when she flashed her Bambi eyes at him.
There’s nothing. There’s no recognition. There’s no fondness. No amusement. There’s no Eliot.
*****
She made a mistake. She was desperate, and she knew it, and she tipped her hand. Now the monster knows how much she loves Eliot, and he knows that she and Q would do anything to keep him safe, even if Eliot is dead and they are just preserving the host body.
He asked to be her friend. He asked her to teach him how to be more like Eliot. As if a crude, incomplete facsimile of Eliot would be enough for her. As if it would be enough for any of them.
She has Josh poison Bacchus for him, but it isn’t enough, and she doesn’t have any other gods to give up. She tries to reason with him, convince him he’d be better off in a non-human body, but it doesn’t work.
To what end would she and Q go to protect Eliot? To preserve his body without knowing if he’s still alive inside it? They’re all about to find out.
*****
She makes another mistake. Josh hurt her, and he didn’t mean to, but she wanted so badly to hurt him back. And she did. She’s not good at feelings, at caring about other people, she’s always had Eliot and Quentin to guide her, to help her, but now she’s alone.
You will learn what it is to live and rule alone.
*****
“It’s a stupid fucking premonition.” Margo does not have time for this. She needs to fix this damn lizard, so it can give her answers.
“You want to risk the life of your lizard, or is that a relationship you’re willing to set fire to as well?”
“Oh, I’ll fucking fry this lizard.”
Rafe looks quickly in between them and Fen, and Fen goes ahead and takes the plunge and starts talking over the both of them. As they keep talking to each other, he just watches them, eyes darting between them and the lizard, and he hopes that they can figure out how to get the lizard’s voice back.
He hopes they can get Eliot back before Margo burns down the world to join him.