Quentin stumbles numbly backwards as memories flood into his mind. It shocked him, in a way—not the fact that there was this entire life he had lived, but that he had forgotten. How could he have forgotten? Q only barely notices it when he hits the steps behind him, only barely notices it when he crumples to the ground. What he does notice is Eliot beside him, aching like a third arm, like he has always been there and hasn't he? He shakes his head only slightly, trying to separate what was and what is and what never even happened.

"I got so old," Eliot breathes. Quentin can feel his pulse in his ears now. It is heavy thumps against his eardrums, like some greater self knocking at the door to his mind. He pushes the thought away as his stomach drops.

"You died," Q clarifies. The I had to burry you, goes unsaid but remains a living, breathing thing in the space between them.

"We had a family." And isn't that the kicker? It wasn't just them affected by this whole fucked up situation—it was their son, his wife and children. Whole generations of people that existed or maybe didn't or maybe did but never will again. A whole lifetime spent loving and hurting, living and dying, gone.

The two of them sit there on the steps silently for a moment longer. There seems to be some unspoken understanding between them that now was different than then, which only served to make the tension in the room thicker—Q could practically see it.

"I don't know what to say," Quentin mumbles, but even that seems too loud against the quiet.

"You didn't know what to say then, either," Eliot laughs, but the sound is bitter and makes Quentin's stomach churn. Of course he remembers that night—their first anniversary, all 'ums' and 'overthinking.' "I guess there was never really words for what we were," he decides, throwing his head up to study some piece of architectural majesty on the ceiling. It sounded practically elegant the way the words fell from his tongue like gemstones. Q wanted more than anything to kiss them from his li—Quentin shook his head a little more forcefully this time. No, now not then. That never happened. That never happened.

Eliot's eyes linger on him, and Quentin can feel the way they study him—gliding up and down, calculating.

"Well shit Q," Eliot decides, standing suddenly. "It was never me, was it? It was never going to be me, was it?" he takes long strides toward the door.

"El—" Quentin pleads, wanting him to stay, to extinguish the deep ache inside of him, but he doesn't move. He remains there, sitting on the steps in the throne room, helpless. He is chained to some idea of his life as it could be. Of fixing Alice, of being normal again. But all of it, everything, is muddled up in Eliot. The taste of him and the sight of him and all of him, and Quentin can't seem to separate the two—now and then.

The echo of the door slamming shut reverberates through him like a gunshot. The definitiveness of the sound seems to say he's lost his chance at either of it. He will never be what he once was, not with Alice, and now, it seems, not with Eliot either. The pulsing in his ears gets louder, more urgent. So he closes his eyes, resigned to it all, left with nothing but his heartbeat and a twisted reminder of footsteps against the cold, stone floor.