Chapter Text
When Taako finds the first arrow sticking out of the ground, Lup is hardly concerned. It’s a good sign. It means they’re heading in the right direction. By the fourth or fifth one, though, she starts to worry. Taako vocalises it for her as he untangles arrow number six from a pile of vines, “this is weird.”
“Really weird.”
“She wouldn't abandon this many arrows.” He adds the new one to the handful he's carrying. “One or two, sure, but six?”
“Seven,” Lup points up to an arrow stuck high in a tree trunk. She summons a mage hand to pull it out, but it’s lodged deep in the wood. She frowns and tugs at it again. “Come on,” she grumbles, willing the mage hand to pull as hard as it can, freeing the arrow and bringing it down. She turns to hand it off to Taako only to find that he’s walked some distance away. She jogs over as he bends to pick something up. “Another one?”
“No.” There’s an edge to his voice that she doesn’t like. He faces her and holds up Lilliana’s bow. Her heart drops. Arrows are one thing, but the bow is Lilli’s prized possession. Hand-crafted for her by Magnus, it’s gone with her through countless classes and trials and adventures. Never in a million years would she leave it behind on purpose.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers, her hand coming up to trace the decorative carvings in the wood.
“It’s fine. This is fine,” Taako says unconvincingly. More to himself than to her. “This must mean we’re close, right? If I were Lilliana, what would make me drop my bow?”
She adds the arrow she freed to Taako’s handful. “Excessive force.”
“Right.” He taps the tip of the bow to his chin as he looks around. “So there should be signs of a struggle. It’ll lead us right to her.”
“And then I can kill whoever laid their fucking hands on her,” she says, surveying the dense trees and vines. There seems to be carnage all around them. Vines torn and hanging awkwardly from the tree trunks, broken branches littering the ground and hanging dangerously in the canopy. None of it offers any clarity.
“Look,” Taako points to the hard packed dirt that makes up the forest floor. There are drag marks carved into it, with some deeper holes from what Lup assumes was Lilli digging her heels in to stop whatever was taking her away. They follow the markings through the forest and it takes everything within her not to break out in a full run.
Since the day Lilliana was born, Lup always kept a small part of her subconscious trained on her soul. She could find her if she needed to and step in to protect her if she was in danger. Then just over a year ago, that little piece of her went silent. Lilli’s soul vanished from the world they call home, and no one could track her down. It’s been terrifying, not knowing where she is, what she’s doing, if she’s safe. They’re so close, Lup just wants to finally find her and take her home, where she belongs.
The trees thin, and they can see through them to a clearing, where a spot of red is stark against the dark greens and browns of this world. Lup lets her instincts take over and she runs, not caring if Taako keeps up. Lilliana’s laying on her back, looking up at the sky. Lup falls to her knees beside her, happy tears pricking at her eyes. The quip she had ready dies in her throat and her smile fades as she takes her in properly.
She’s no stranger to blood and gore and corpses. Not even those of her loved ones. But she stares down at her motionless daughter, with open wounds in her blood-stained neck, her eyes glassy and empty, blood coating her lips and trickling out the side of her mouth, and Lup’s whole body goes cold.
It’s not supposed to go like this. They were supposed to find her, maybe a little worse for wear, but nothing a good meal and a night in her own bed wouldn’t fix. Then they were supposed to go home, and she’d keep living her life, and she’d get old and wrinkly and they’d take care of her in her senior years until she passed away peacefully. Then maybe the Raven Queen would offer her the chance to be a reaper. And maybe she’d take it, maybe she wouldn’t, but they were supposed to have a few more centuries together before it even came up.
“Lup?”
Taako’s at her side. She can feel him. She thinks he’s touching her. But she can’t tear her eyes away from Lilliana. Her baby. Her sweet little girl. She wants to touch her. She wants to cradle her face and wipe away the blood, or squeeze her arms and tell her that everything’s going to be okay, or shake her until she wakes up. But her hands hover over her, frozen with indecision and grief and shock. There are tear tracks cutting through the thin layer of dirt on her face. Lup doesn’t want to think about how afraid she must have been or how long she had to suffer, choking on her own blood as she tried desperately to breathe. It’s still wet, the blood on her neck and lips, and the pool underneath her has barely started soaking into the ground. They probably just missed her.
She tries to say something to Taako, but all that comes out is a horrendous wail that tears itself from her chest. Her hands cover her mouth and she hunches over. She’s dead. She’s gone. Lilliana Bluejeans had her life brutally ripped away and her mother could do nothing to protect her.
How did this happen? Who did this to her? If they were a moment sooner, could they have saved her?
It feels like Barry appears out of thin air, kneeling across from her, his hands hovering over their daughter in the same frozen, grief-stricken way. “We have to bring her back,” she says. This can’t stand. They can’t bury her. Not now. Not like this.
He nods, tears in his eyes, and summons a necromancy book. Lup wants to wipe away his tears and hold him, let him hold her, but he stands, his book open to the right page. “You should go find her soul,” he says. “She’s not from this world, and I don’t know how many times she’s died before this. I don’t want her to get lost.”
How many times she’s–? Lup’s head whips up, a thousand things bubbling up for her to say. She hasn’t died before, they would know. She’s only been gone a year, this world isn’t all that threatening, and she’s so wildly skilled. This death is a fluke. How could she have died more than once?
Barry juts his chin towards something behind them. She turns and gasps. There’s a group of people lurking beyond the trees, dressed in red. She doesn’t need to count them. She knows there’s seven. And there’s only one way Lilliana could’ve died multiple times and been brought back to life with no consequences.
She looks back to Barry, hoping that this is all a dream or an illusion or a mental break. He nods. Lilliana’s been going through the cycles. And it’s been so many, too. How many times has she died in 93 years? Was she alone? More than likely. If she was with them, the crew, on the ship, they wouldn’t just be showing up now. Did they know she was here? “Oh, my baby,” she says, fighting off tears. She touches her, finally, caressing her cheek, and she’s still warm. She kisses her forehead. “My baby girl,” she shouldn’t have had to endure anything they went through, it’s all supposed to be over, “I’m so sorry.”
“We’ll fix it.” Taako squeezes her arm, and she can feel his hand shaking. “Go find her.”
She stands and takes Barry’s hand for what feels like an eternity. She meets his eyes and tries to silently reassure him and herself that this is nothing more than a bump in the road. They’ll get her back. They’ll take her home.
Then he lets go, and heads for the center of the clearing, where he starts drawing out a ritual circle. Lup summons her scythe, and focuses all her energy on Lilliana’s essence. She tears open a rift and steps through into a perfect greyscale replica of the forest, and standing right where her body lies in the Prime Material, is Lilliana. She glows white, her neck craned up to look at the sky, and her form flickers ever so slightly. Lup can feel the aura of death coming off of her, and if she focused on it hard enough, she’s sure she could figure out how much of it Lilli’s experienced, but she ignores it in favour of the relief at being so close to her. The knot in her chest loosens some, and she smiles softly. “Hi, honey.”
Lilli looks over at her, her eyes pure white, and she frowns. “What do you want?”
Lup falters at the sharp edge in her voice. “I–”
“You just can’t stop, can you? You got what you wanted, why do you have to keep doing this?”
The knot in her chest tightens again. What is she talking about? “Doing what?” Lup takes a step towards her, her hand outstretched. “Lilliana, sweetheart. It’s me, it’s–”
“I know who you are, Lup,” she spits, shrinking away from her. “I don’t have anything else for you.”
“I’m not trying to take anything from you,” she says, desperation clear in her voice. She takes a few steps closer but stops as Lilliana bristles. “I want to–”
“Just fuck off!” She shouts, her voice reverberating around them, “leave me alone for once in your fucking life!” Then she turns and bolts into the trees.
Lup wants to take after her and try to talk her down, but logic gets through and she knows that all that would do is chase her further away from them and make her harder to find. Her heart is on the verge of shattering. Lilliana has never talked to her like that. Even when she’d be mad at her for whatever kids get mad at their parents for. They hadn’t had any arguments before she disappeared, she can’t think of anything she’s done that would make her that angry. Then something clicks.
I know who you are, Lup.
Lilliana wasn’t talking to her mom. She was talking to Lup. The one on the Starblaster.
I don’t have anything else for you.
What would she have wanted from her?
Answers, probably. Assuming they knew who she was. Lup tries to think back to who she was during the century, and what she would’ve done if she met her future child. She thinks she’d be ecstatic at the prospect of getting out and expanding her family, and horrified that her child is trapped alongside them. She wants to think that she’d offer to help them, give them a place on the ship, resources, rations, and a way to contact them if need be.
Judging by Lilli’s reaction to her, though, that isn’t anywhere near what happened. She tries her thought exercise again. Who was she all those years ago? What was her main goal?
She wanted to save the world. All the worlds. She wanted to stop the Hunger from consuming more realities, and she wanted to free all the ones it had already gotten to. Now what would she do if she was presented with someone who knew exactly how to do that? What would she do if that person refused to tell her?
Her blood boils as she considers how this alternate version of herself treated her daughter, and she tears open a rift back to the Prime Material plane. She ignores Taako, stalking past him towards the group still lurking behind the trees. The other Lup’s eyes widen as she grabs her by the robe and throws her to the ground, and it brings her some satisfaction to see her robe burned black where she touched it.
The other Lup scrambles to her feet and glares at her, trying to make herself look dignified and tough. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She can smell smoke and feels her hands burning as she advances on herself. “My daughter just screamed at me to go away and leave her alone. She ran away from me . My daughter does not run away from me.” She grabs her again and gets in her face. She doesn’t really want to know, because she’s sure the answer will devastate her, but she asks, “what did you do?”
Lup lets her push her away. In any other circumstance, she’d grin at how the other Lup pats out the small embers that caught on her robe. There’s tension in her shoulders. “Nothing you wouldn’t have done. We’re literally the same person. I wanted to minimize as much suffering as I could.”
That makes her blood boil more. Seven more cycles, relics, war, ten years in an umbrella, and a whole lot more after that, they are not the same. “I haven’t been you in a long time. I don’t give a damn about what you were trying to do.” She points back towards where Lilli’s body lies, “that little girl is my first priority.”
The other Lup crosses her arms. “She’s an adult.”
“She’s mine .” Lilliana could be two hundred years old and Lup would still drop everything for her. She’d burn this forest to the ground to save her if she had to. But the Lup standing in front of her would burn her to save the forest.
She doesn’t respond, and Lup doesn’t want to argue, anyway. They’re wasting time. She pushes past her, bumping her shoulder harder than she needs to, and walks up to Kravitz. “You have to go get her, Kravitz.”
He stands from where he’d been kneeling next to Lilli’s body. “She’s nearby?”
“She was.” She tries not to think about the anger and disdain in Lilli’s face. “She ran off when I got too close, but if anyone can find her, it’s you.”
Her face must give her away, because Kravitz puts a hand on her shoulder and smiles at her with his stupid kind face. “The dead don’t always have all their faculties. She’ll recognize you when she’s back.”
She recognized her just fine. She brushes his hand off. “Just go. I don’t want her to wander off too far.”
She watches him disappear into a rift and hopes that Lilli’s kinder to him. He wasn’t a part of any of this, and she’s always loved her Uncle Kravitz. Surely, she’ll listen to him and let him carry her back.
She looks down at Lilli’s body. She’s not lying in a pool of her own blood anymore, her face and neck have been wiped clean, and she’s dressed only in her simple top, jeans, and boots. Her eyes are closed and her hands are folded over her stomach. The only indication that anything’s wrong are the open wounds on her neck.
“You cleaned her up,” she says to Taako. She notices now that he’s wearing her bag.
“Course I did. We don’t want her waking up covered in all that grime.” They watch over her silently for a few moments. Lup wants to sit with her, but now she feels like she shouldn’t. Like she doesn’t deserve it. Taako, who may as well be able to read her mind, tuts and takes her by the shoulders, pushing her to Lilli’s side, “go be with your kid, Lulu.”
She resists. “She hates me.”
“She doesn’t.”
“You didn’t see her–”
“She doesn’t hate you, she hates her.” He pushes more forcefully, and her knees buckle. He sits across from her, “and, I mean, she might not even hate her, either.”
She sighs. Taako has a point, but she worries about what might happen if Lilli can’t separate her from the woman she met during the cycles. She takes one of Lilli’s hands into her own, and presses it to her cheek. Her fingers are starting to go cold. A few tears roll down her cheeks.
Her poor girl, abandoned to the cycles, hunted like an animal. She said that the other Lup got what she wanted, so they must have defeated the Hunger already. They probably didn’t even warn her. That’s why there were so many abandoned arrows. She was being reckless. She expected the universe to turn back the clock, healing any of her injuries and refilling her quiver. It’s why she’s dead. Some black opal monster killed her, and she didn’t realise there wasn’t going to be a new cycle to revive her until it was too late.
Anger and grief swirl together in her chest and she doesn’t know which one should win. She wants to push that woman around and get every single detail about how Lilliana was treated and tell her how stupid she is for doing it. She wants to sit right here and cry and hold her daughter’s hand until it's warm again.
“I’m ready for her,” Barry says, standing over them. She puts Lilli’s hand down and stands, taking the necromancy book from him. She steps back, and he kneels, gently taking Lilliana into his arms. “Here we go, sweetheart,” he says softly, like she’s just fallen asleep on the couch and he’s carrying her up to bed, “I’ve got you.”
He carries her to his completed ritual circle and lays her down in the center. Lup hands him his book and he says, “you stand at her feet. Taako, stand on one side of her.”
They follow his directions, and he stands at her head just as another rift opens and Kravitz returns with Lilliana’s soul, a flickering ball of light, cradled oh so carefully to his chest. Lup breathes a sigh of relief that she was able to recognize him for who he was, and didn’t assume he was after her as a reaper.
He stands across from Taako, and Barry takes a deep breath in. On the exhale he says, “okay,” and begins the ritual. Lup watches with bated breath as the runes glow, Lilliana’s soul reunites with her body, and her wounds close. When Barry’s chanting stops, the silence of the forest is imposing. Lup prays for a sound. Any sound.
Then Lilliana inhales, her eyes flying open, and it brings tears to Lup’s eyes. She’s flooded with joy and relief, and it feels like the moment she heard her baby’s first screaming cry some decades ago.
Kravitz is at her side, speaking gently to her, and he helps her sit up. Their eyes meet, and for one terrifying second, her daughter’s expression is that of a prey animal that’s come face to face with its predator. Then Kravitz leans in and reminds her that she’s safe. He tells her to look closer. Her beautiful eyes roam over her, taking in the differences between her pursuer and her mother, however subtle they may be. “Mom?” Her voice is small and meek, her lip quivers and Lup knows they’re moments from her face crumpling and tears streaking down her face. “Mama,” she reaches for her, and Lup can’t stay away anymore. She all but runs to her, falling to her knees and wrapping her up in her arms. “Mama,” she clutches at Lup’s shirt, her hands shaking. “Mama, I’m so sorry. I tried so hard. I’m so sorry.”
She should not be the one apologising. “I know, honey. It’s okay.” Lup doesn’t know the extent of what happened to her or the decisions she made, but she knows that she shouldn’t be sorry for any of it. “This never should have happened. It’s not your fault.”
She’s enveloped in warmth as Barry wraps his arms around both of them, burying his nose in Lilli’s hair. They cradle her as she falls apart. She trembles and sobs and clings to them for dear life. They’ve seen her through a lot of breakdowns over the years, but this is different. It’s deep and raw and visceral. Almost a hundred years in the making.
They coax her into taking some deeper breaths. Her sobs quiet and her whole frame isn’t trembling anymore, and they’re able to register Taako’s voice over by the treeline, “so she knows not to fucking die?!”
The other Lup is indignant as she tries to defend herself, “she runs away from us! It’s not like we could’ve talked to her about it!”
“Message! Sending! Carrier pigeon! Half of you are wizards, you should be able to figure this shit out!”
Lup’s hold tightens. So they didn’t warn her. Dicks. What would they have done if they found her dead and her real family hadn’t come to revive her?
Lilli starts extricating herself from their arms. She stumbles as she tries to stand and Barry catches her. She smiles at them, and it doesn’t completely reach her eyes. Steady on her feet, she walks over to Taako.
“What do you want from me, Taako? Why should our crew have to suffer as long as you did, for the same ending?”
Taako laughs. “Oh, you’re not getting the same ending out of this, Lulu.”
He’s got that right. Despite all the bullshit that happened on Faerun, it really did lead them to the best case scenario.
Lilli takes his hand and says, “don’t bother, Koko. I told them over and over again to forget about me and figure it out themselves. I told them that if they just stuck it out that they’d go through some shit, but they’d find so much happiness at the end of it all. I even told them that all the planes that got consumed would be fine. She doesn’t care.”
It confirms exactly what Lup suspected. To the crew, to her younger self, Lilliana’s existence wasn’t just a promise that defeating the Hunger was a possibility, it was an opportunity to get it done sooner. She only needed to cooperate. But of course Lilli would want to get them to Faerun. It’s the life she knows, it’s the perfect ending, it’s Kravitz and Angus and Mavis and Mookie and everyone else they never would’ve met otherwise. The answers being so close yet so far would’ve driven her century-era self crazy. She didn’t see Lilliana for the treasure she is, because she couldn’t. She was so focused on the mission and saving everything that instead of seeing the precious little half-elf she and Barry spent decades dreaming about, she saw a grown woman staunchly refusing to solve all her problems, sentencing all of them to an endless purgatory and guaranteeing the deaths of countless more realities.
Taako walks her back over and Lup draws her into her arms again, squeezing tight. “I’m sorry,” she says into her hair, “for anything and everything.”
She squeezes her back, which is reassuring in itself. “It wasn’t you.”
“But it could’ve been.” She’s done a lot of things she regrets, but it’s strange to have regrets for actions she never took in the first place. She risks a glance at the treeline and meets her own eyes. The other one looks away to intently study the ground. Satisfaction blooms in her chest. Maybe she doesn’t need to regret things she never did, because the woman who is responsible will feel bad enough about it for both of them, now that she’s gotten what she wanted.
She pulls back from the hug and brushes a stray lock of hair out of Lilli’s face. “What do you say we get the fuck out of here?”
“Please.”