gold that's put to use more gold begets

[jackrackham]

This morning, as Jack goes through the possible things he could start working on, or learning more about, the little note in his notebook with the address of the archive keeps grabbing his attention. It really is time that he stopped by and found out what's really there.

And there is the matter of a dish that he has to return to Eliot. He might as well do both at once.

The walk is more comfortable now that he has warm clothes to wear, and Jack takes his time walking over to the Archive, the empty pyrex tucked under his arm. It's not a nice day, but it's serviceable, and it feels good to have some small task to accomplish. He's going to return Eliot's dish and, if possible, find his own file.

When he arrives, he steps inside and closes the door behind him. The place is a mess, though he can tell that organization is in progress. It's more or less what he'd expected to find based on how Martin and Eliot had described it.

What he doesn't immediately see is anyone here to greet him. He calls out a hello as he loosens his scarf from around his neck, and goes to look at the contents of the first open box he can see.

Comments

[eliotwaugh]

Jack remains difficult to read; he frowns, but it doesn’t seem to Eliot that the expression matches his speculation. It’s true he doesn’t know much about the world Jack and his partner came from, or the specific circumstances of their exit. All Eliot has, really, is a layman’s understanding that it was a dangerous time, a more violent time than this one, and he’s hard-pressed to think of a reason why Jack would look so…regretful about being taken from it.

It’s easier to study his face than look at the documents, and Eliot finds himself smiling at the immediate interest Jack takes in the map. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, he supposes. Something that, if not familiar, is at least comprehensible to someone who’s been at sea.

The question manages to startle him, and Eliot laughs a little, leaning closer to look at the map before he answers. “Ah,” he says, quiet. “No, this was...a few years ago, it-” Eliot looks at the point where the journey seems to stop, the rest of the voyage unmapped, and his expression grows somber. “It didn’t end there, though I see why you’d think that. We...lost our cartographer along the way, this is…unfinished.” He gestures to the void out beyond the island they’d named for Benedict. “I’ve been trying to fill the rest in, off and on, but working from memory when it’s not my area of expertise, well…” He can only shrug.

[jackrackham]

The change in Eliot's tone isn't lost on Jack, and he thinks first of the rarity of a cartographer before he considers that the loss was most likely not the completion of a map. He wonders if Eliot and this cartographer had been close, what event had ended his life, and why this map had been as important to Eliot as the bloody papers sitting on Martin's desk are to him.

Jack's voice softens a little when he replies, "I've never made a map myself, but I gather it's difficult to do so even with the actual land-masses at hand."

He takes a quick moment to look at Eliot's transformed expression, then looks back down at the map again, this time with greater context. Now the extra space beyond carries more weight than just the absence of a further journey out. He wonders, again, about just what Eliot's magical world must have been like. "I'm sorry about your cartographer."

He refolds the map, and tucks it back in its folder while he asks, "So it was a trip to map the area? Or...an exploratory mission?"

[eliotwaugh]

Eliot nods in thanks. Thus far his efforts at filling in the map have amounted to rough guesses scribbled on sticky notes, and he never manages to get much done at a time before he succumbs to the insidious nostalgia. He did so much back then, in Fillory, and it was important, and he’s done nothing like that here. But he feels he owes it to Benedict to try, at least.

“It was...a quest,” he says after a moment. That’s a simple enough way to start. “Magic was starting to fail, and we--it was my friend Quentin’s quest to begin with, really, but we needed to find out why magic was leaving the world, and secure a means of preserving it.” Eliot smiles a bit, trying to think of how it all sounds to someone on the outside. “Kind of silly fairy story stuff, on the surface, but we had to find seven golden keys and sail to the end of the world and unlock a door with seven locks. It took a year.” He sighs. “The effort was not without its setbacks.” Just one more instance in the history of Eliot coming out of trouble unscathed and having to live with others paying the cost.

“Is that…” He looks at the folder, then back up at Jack. “I don’t know, does that even make any sense to you? I haven’t really spoken about this much to anyone.”

[jackrackham]

"It makes sense to me." He pauses then tips his head, admitting that that's not entirely true. "As much as I understand magic existing at all. But it doesn't seem silly. A sea voyage to the ends of the Earth to find seven gold keys? To save magic itself?" He looks down at the paper again, wishing that he could see the original map, and also that he could have seen what Eliot looked like then, on the deck of a ship pursuing a magical quest. "I'm sure it's not as simple as it sounds, but it sounds fantastic. I think I would have liked to have been there."

He smiles a tight, wry smile. He'd certainly been on his own crusade, and Charles had had ideas about making Nassau something to believe in, but neither of those things was anything like what Eliot's world is like.

"Nothing where I came from could ever be so noble." He flips the page and looks at the second piece of paper. "What's this one?"

[eliotwaugh]

He’s glad Jack’s able to follow along as much as he has, and it’s nice to know they have some point of common ground. Or, sea. Eliot thinks back on the quest, trying to fit Jack into the picture beyond being professionally suited to the environment. He would have been useful, Eliot thinks. Perhaps it could have been accomplished without so much loss, if they’d had another fighter. But it’s difficult to imagine the voyage happening differently, because it ended so definitively and the journey itself forced him to grow up so much.

Jack’s question pulls him out of his thoughts, and Eliot frowns just the slightest bit upon seeing the other sheet. He’s not yet willing to delve into it, much easier to think of better times, when he was better.

“Oh,” Eliot laughs, sidestepping the question and considering instead how Jack described the voyage. Fantastic, yes, certainly, but perhaps not entirely noble. “It certainly wasn’t all grand adventure. There was one island where, and I can’t explain how this would have formed, but the beach was actually made of keys. Hundreds of thousands of them, and we spent two weeks of just...drudgery, trying to find the right one. Fucking uncomfortable to walk on, too.”

The self-deprecation is enough of a buffer that he’s able to consider the other document, and Eliot sighs. Once more into the breach.

He barely even has to glance at it; the dry typewritten description made an indelible impression the first time he looked at the file. Cardiac arrest, it reads, as if that can really convey the weight of what happened. 80% surface area burns.

“So, this,” Eliot says, gesturing to the page, “is apparently something I’m not allowed to forget, if we can ascribe any sort of consciousness or intention to Darrow.” He swallows, suppressing the knot of anxiety, and wishes he’d gotten the scotch after all. “I did that. I was a little older than you were when you were...left on your own.” Eliot looks out into the middle distance for a moment, trying not to remember the scene too closely. “I’d no idea magic was real, at the time, but that’s what it was. Apparently that can happen on occasion, for people with the aptitude. But I…” He takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “I killed him. It was an accident.”