"Barbie!" Penny shouted as he barged into Lilly's bedroom, "as much as it pains me to say it, I need your help." She glanced up from her textbook with a cheeky grin.

"You don't know how long I've waited to hear you say that," she teased, "how did you even get here? This place is invisible."

"Alex let me in, and this is serious, I think there's something wrong with Quentin," that was all it took for her smile to drop. Lilly could tell by the look on his face that he was serious.

"What happened?" She abandoned the bed in a rush.

"I honestly don't know, one minute I was sleeping, and then I heard him singing Taylor Swift, so I popped into his dream for a moment to get him to shut the hell up," Lilly nodded for him to continue, "he was in some sort of mental hospital acting like a crazy person and you know the racist little bitch made me into a chicken-curry-loving Indian that cleaned up his messes. But, you made quite the sexy nurse," his eyes raked her up and down, a smirk playing on his lips.

"What exactly is wrong?" She scoffed, ignoring the fact that Quentin had a dream with her starring as a sexy nurse.

"He said he was under some sort of spell, that his dream wasn't his dream at all. He told me to find you and figure out a way to wake him up. I normally wouldn't bother trying to help him, but he's seriously fucked up in there."

"Um, okay, here's what we're gonna do," Lilly ran her hands through her hair anxiously. She couldn't imagine being stuck inside a nightmare, unable to tell what was real and what was an illusion. "We're gonna find his body, wherever it may be, and we're gonna figure out how to wake him up."

"Great plan," Penny praised sarcastically, "why didn't I think of that?" Lilly rolled her eyes, grabbing his arm and pulling him along towards the Physical Cottage. Lilly moved as fast as she could across campus, pushing open the door to the cottage and brushing aside Margo's invitation for drinks. Penny followed closely behind and barged into Quentin's room with her. Lilly gasped as she spotted a pair of legs poking out from the other side of the bed.

"Oh my god, Quentin!" She panicked, rushing to where he lay, partially obscured.

"You are not Quentin," Penny stated as Lilly jumped back in disgust from the sight of a buck-naked stranger passed out on Quentin's floor. Lilly covered her eyes and backed up behind Penny, letting him take the reins on this one. Penny grabbed a baseball bat propped up against the wall, lightly shoving the young man on the floor and trying to look anywhere but at his exposed skin. The man let out a groan, rolling over and giving the two a full view of his nether regions.

"Ew," Lilly exclaimed, turning her gaze to the ceiling.

"You act like you've never seen a dick before," Penny teased, earning a glare from Lilly.

"I see two right now," The naked man's eyes fluttered open, and it took him a moment to understand his situation. He scrambled to grab a pillow and cover his bits, Lilly silently thanked whatever god there was that he did, "what the hell?"

"Shouldn't we be the ones asking you that? Where's Quentin? Did you two fuck last night?" Penny grilled and the man did nothing but fumble over his words.

"What? No, I -"

"Todd, seriously?" Margo's voice sounded from the doorway, "there are a lot of people in the world that I'd like to see naked, and you are not one of them." Todd stood, hugging the walls, so they wouldn't see his butt again, only to walk forward down the hall, exposing his rear end anyway, "hmm, he does have a cute butt though," she observed.

"Margo, where's Quentin?" Lilly asked expectantly.

"I don't know, he did get pretty wasted at the party last night," soon enough, Eliot had joined them, and Penny recounted the tale of what happened to Quentin.

"Look," Eliot told them as they descended the stairs, "it was a hell of a party, he's probably sleeping it off under something, or someone," The front door of the cottage opened and in stepped Kady.

"Hey," she greeted, diverting their attention, or at least Penny's.

"Where have you been?"

"I had to run into the city," she shrugged nonchalantly, but Lilly had a feeling she wasn't being truthful, "what's up?" Lilly could tell by Penny's expression that he didn't buy it either.

"Your lover man here," Eliot explained, "thinks that our little Q got roofied last night."

"Look, we covered the house, let's start checking the lab, the library, or whatever," Penny suggested earning a hum of agreement from Lilly. The two moved towards the door but were interrupted by Kady.

"I know where he is," she blurted guiltily.

"And why do you know this?" Lilly inquired, knowing that Q wouldn't hang out with Kady if he had the choice. Kady ignored the question, leading them to a small storage closet, which, sure enough, housed a passed-out Quentin Coldwater. "Q," she called, dropping to her knees beside him and shaking his shoulders. There was no response, not even a groan.

"He crawled in here and passed out around one," Kady explained, "not the weirdest I've seen."

"And you didn't think to bring him up to bed, rather than leave him here?" Lilly asked, irritated and worried about her friend.

"Not my job to babysit every drunk guy at a party," Lilly returned her look with a little extra dirt to be sure the message was received. Penny reached out to smack Quentin's face a few times, still no response.

"Come on," Penny said, continuing his attempt at waking him up.

"I think we have established that hitting him is not going to work." Lilly grabbed Penny's arm before he could slap Q again, sensing he was having a little too much fun, "well, he has a pulse, and he's breathing."

"That's a good sign," Eliot stated.

"Let me try," Kady offered and Lilly hovered close just in case she decided to slap him up a bit like Penny. Kady held her hands over Quentin's chest with concentration, but nothing happened, "this is bad."

"How bad?" Penny asked, the concern seeping through his tone.

"Like, we have to tell the Dean, bad."

➺➺➺➺

"Hmm..." Dean Fogg hummed, "I thought so," the four of them had taken Quentin to Dean Fogg's office in which he was now being examined, "the spell is called the Scarlatti Web. We cannot break it, no one can."

"What do you mean, you can't break it? We aren't just going to leave Quentin to die!" Lilly protested at the same time Kady blurted,

"Wait, he's not going to wake up, ever?"

"I said no one, not nothing."

"Well, I mean, if you say, 'no one can break it', we assume you mean he's gonna die," Penny mumbled.

"We need to summon the Matarese," Dean Fogg explained, "please lower the wards," he ordered his associate. The man muttered a spell, using a complicated string of hand movements until the framework for the Brakebills wards were revealed. Blue mathematical equations floated in the surrounding air, connected by a web of glowing strings, "very good and now the south wards."

"Wait," Lilly interjected, "something isn't right here."

"Yeah, Barbie," Penny said facetiously, "Quentin is dying," The Dean looked at her expectantly, knowing that if she interrupted the process, it must be something important.

"We know that someone did this to Quentin, he didn't put this spell on himself, so why?" The others looked at her curiously, wondering where she was going with this. "Whoever it was that cast the spell must've known that you had to take down the wards to save him, what if they did this to get into Brakebills?"

"She has a point," Eliot said, looking over at Dean Fogg who was deep in thought.

"Yes, a very good one, but if we are going to save Quentin we have to act now. I don't have time to stop whoever it is and save him."

"I'll go," Kady spoke up, "I can do it," Dean Fogg hesitated a moment before nodding.

"Find Professor Lipson," he instructed. The Matarese had arrived a few seconds prior in a golden cage and the Dean's assistant had started to remove it, "tell her to protect my office. I think I know who it is that we are dealing with." Kady nodded before rushing out of the room. His assistant had successfully removed the creature which Lilly could now see was some sort of golden mechanical scorpion. "Careful," the Dean warned as he carefully placed the creature on Quentin's cheek. As soon as the creature was settled, the Dean began murmuring a spell, and his assistant performed the hand movements by his side.

"That's the answer?" Eliot asked, doubtful.

"It shorts out the cerebral cortex, which should break him out of the spell, which should bring him back, halfway."

"What do you mean, halfway?"

"The spell is like a prison in the middle of the desert. The Matarese breaks him out of the prison, but you have to get yourself out of the desert, and it is a lot easier with a guide. That's where Penny comes in," Penny moved to sit down before he did his traveling, "though you entered the spell before, it was extremely lucky that you were able to get out without trouble. Because this is a spell and not a dream, it will try it's best to keep you there, especially at such an accelerated stage. That is why we must bind you to someone on this plane so that when we free Quentin, you are able to return." The Dean turned to Lilly, who despite knowing there was no one standing next to her, looked around to make sure he meant her, "Lilly," he gestured for her to sit beside Penny on the sofa.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Why can't Eliot do it?" Penny objected as both Lilly and Eliot agreed.

"Do you want to save Quentin or not?" The Dean asked, knowing very well what their answer was, though Penny seemed to hesitate before nodding. "Like it or not, Eliot is a more experienced Magician, and given my current disabilities, we may need him." Lilly sat beside Penny reluctantly and as far away from him as she could get on the small couch. "I need you to hold onto each other's forearms," he instructed as his assistant approached with a coil of rope.

"What kind of kinky shit have we gotten ourselves into?" Penny asked looking apprehensively towards the rope. Despite their reservations, they grabbed each other's forearms as the Dean's assistant wrapped the rope around their joined arms and secured it with a knot. The position had left them much closer than they were comfortable with, knees touching, face to face. Eliot sighed from across the room.

"If only I had a camera," both of them glared at him before turning their attention to Dean Fogg.

"This may sting a bit," he warned before he and his assistant performed the spell. She didn't know what she was expecting, but it was not the burning pain that ensued. The ropes had begun to glow red-hot, melting into their skin everywhere they touched. They cried out, gripping each other tightly, watching as the rope morphed into their skin. The fibers had sizzled into their arms, leaving behind a tattoo of the rope that had been wrapped around them. Their skin was red and raw around the edges of the tattoo, but they let out a relieved breath when it was over. They attempted to remove themselves from each other only to be met with the same resistance as if they were still bound.

"If we are stuck like this forever, I swear, I will cut off both our arms," Penny agreed wholeheartedly.

"I have no problem with that."

"Enough dicking around! Go save Quentin!" Penny looked to Lilly and she gave him an encouraging nod before he shut his eyes. Just as Penny astral projected himself into Quentin's mind, the Matarese jumped into action. The sounds of Quentin choking could be heard as the scorpion crawled into his mouth, weaseling its way down his throat, on its way to who-knows-where.

"Nasty," Eliot cringed.

"What now?" Lilly asked, watching Penny's stony form with concern.

"We wait," the next few minutes were filled with silence and the occasional nervous pacing. Lilly's legs began to cramp from being stuck in the same position for too long. She was just about to readjust when a burst of agony shot through her arm. The ropes were starting to burn again, turning red like they had when they first attached themselves to her.

"What's happening?" She panicked and instinctively tried to wrench her arms back. Dean Fogg rushed to assess her, taking her arm in his hands, while Lilly bit her lip and grasped Penny tighter.

"The spell is trying to pull Penny in. You must hold on until he gets back, no matter how unbearable the pain," Lilly nodded and squeezed her eyes shut. She was beginning to feel nauseous as the pain increased.

"He better hurry his ass up!" She gasped, her skin was on fire, and she felt as if she'd been running for hours, her energy draining by the second. The ropes looked as if any moment they would burst into flame. Her vision blurred, turning black for a moment, and tears sprung up in her eyes.

"The spell is pulling her in, we need to keep her mind anchored to--" The Dean's words were cut off as Lilly was thrown into another room entirely. She saw flashes of a hospital, she was running down the hallway as fast as she could, something was wrong- very wrong.

"Lil, Sweetie," Eliot. She was back in the room with Eliot kneeling beside her, his hand gently stroking her hair. The pain was back, stripping every nerve raw. She screamed and thought that her whole arm might fall off if it went on any longer. Dean Fogg was chanting, his assistant casting spell after spell. They circled her, working frantically. The room dissolved again. Quentin lay, strapped to a table, a bloody man holding a scalpel inches from his face.

"Get up! There are no straps," a voice told him, her voice- no- Penny's, but it came from her mouth. "This is not a hospital, you are not crazy. You can make it disappear," the Matarese sat on Quentin's chest, and he gaped at it. He wasn't responding to Penny's instructions, immobilized on the table, "do it!" The lights began to flicker rapidly, and suddenly everything went black.

Lilly gasped, and Penny's eyes shot open, hissing when the pain from the ropes hit him. The Dean rushed over to Quentin, placing a hand on his head.

"It isn't working," Lilly slumped forward against Penny, riding the line between consciousness and darkness. He managed to support her, though their limbs were intertwined at uncomfortable angles.

"I don't know, I went there, I told him, the Matarese did its thing, and then -- everything went black," Penny's words came out in a stream. The Dean's assistant rushed over to them, muttering an incantation that made the briefly dormant ropes flare up again, burning their way out of their skin. They hissed, gripping each other from the pain until the ropes resurfaced, and the assistant removed them. The burden was lifted from Lilly, and she slowly pulled herself back to lucidity. She rubbed her arms, the red marks remained, much worse on her than on Penny. They awkwardly extricated themselves from each other with reddened cheeks.

"What do we do?" Lilly pleaded.

"There's nothing to do, it's up to him whether he makes it back or not." Penny stood and Lilly went to follow, but a wave of dizziness washed over her, and she stumbled to the side. The pain must have taken a toll on her. The Dean's assistant handed her a vial of purple liquid.

"Drink this," he instructed. Lilly was in no shape to argue, so she unscrewed the top and downed the liquid. It tasted of sour milk, and she almost threw it up right onto Penny, but somehow, she managed to get it down without incident. As soon as it hit her stomach, the dizziness subsided, and she felt much better. She was able to walk without falling over again. She knelt at Quentin's side, and just as she took his hand the door shot open and in stepped the one person she would never expect- Julia Wicker.

"It was me, I'm the one who cast the spell."

"Julia? What the hell?" Lilly stood abruptly, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to get this far." Saying that Lilly was angry would be the understatement of the century, she was livid.

"So, you're saying that you, Quentin's 'best friend', put him under a spell that would inevitably kill him, on purpose?"

"Look," Julia ignored Lilly, tears in her eyes, "I can help, I can give you the exact wording of the spell." None took kindly to her presence, even Dean Fogg who rarely broke his calm demeanor, had his brows furrowed in frustration.

"It's too late," he practically growled.

"It was just supposed to be a joke," Julia whispered, looking down.

"Bullshit," Eliot spat, "you did it to get even."

"A joke? Are you fucking kidding me, Julia?" Lilly hissed, "you put him in a mental hospital and told him that everything about magic was a delusion. You of all people should've known that would screw him up on a whole new level."

"Fuck you!" Something snapped inside Lilly, and she lunged for Julia, only to have two strong arms wrap around her waist, restraining her, despite flailing arms and legs.

"You bitch, he's dying!"

"Somebody, help him!" Julia screeched through her tears, she truly was sorry, but sorry wouldn't save him now.

"If I had the exact spell wording one hour ago," Dean Fogg stressed through gritted teeth.

"There's gotta be something."

"Do you have any idea where he is right now?" Penny's voice sounded from behind her, still close enough that he could restrain her again if she tried to strangle Julia. Lilly could tell that he secretly wanted to let her loose, "why would you do this?"

"She didn't," Dean Fogg stated, "not by herself, did you?" Julia's eyes were fearful as she quickly shook her head. A violent gasp drew their attention to one of the couches just in time to see Quentin expel the Matarese from his throat, launching it halfway across the room. His coughing fit continued, Lilly and Eliot rushed to help him. Lilly sat beside him, rubbing his back while Eliot perched on top, stroking his hair.

"Somebody woke up," Eliot cooed.

"Thank God," Lilly sighed.

"Took your damn time," Penny scoffed and Lilly rolled her eyes.

"Someone, get him some brandy," Dean Fogg ordered, of course, Eliot jumped up at the mention of liquor, rushing to locate the bottle. Quentin had finally stopped coughing and rested his head back on the edge of the couch, waiting for Eliot to deliver the alcohol.

"Wait," Eliot paused, "where's the hedge bitch?" Sure enough, Julia had disappeared into thin air before she could deal with the consequences of her actions.

"What?" Quentin asked.

"Nothing, we'll fill you in later," Lilly shared a knowing look with the rest of the group. Lilly knew one thing for sure -- Julia was going to have hell to pay.

Hey guys! Hope you liked this chapter. Who do you guys ship Lilly with? I'm super curious to see what your answers are. As I was writing this I just let the characters take the story where they wanted so the relationships would feel natural. Don't forget to like and comment!

-Vi