Chapter Text
V. i.
Magnus dies in Wonderland, and Lucretia does not weep.
She wishes she could say it was because she has better things to do, that she truly learned how to grieve so quickly, but really, honestly, she just can’t fully comprehend that he isn’t coming back.
Lucretia does not weep, but she does wonder. She took away what Taako and Magnus had - out of necessity, it really couldn’t be avoided with everything else that had to go - but she wonders if the truth of their awkward, fleeting almost-romance exists in him. She wonders if he’s going to hurt over this loss, never really knowing why.
She wonders, for the first real time, how the hell he’s going to react when he finds out the truth about his lover, his sister, his everything.
V. ii.
Taako drinks the ichor of the second Voidfish, and it doesn’t happen all at once.
First it's the name of the ship - the StarBlaster - then teaching Barry how to swim, then Merle’s shitty dancing, then, oh, fuck, everything with Magnus, shit, and all the while he feels something, someone bigger than the rest toeing the line of known and unknown in his mind, and
And then Lucretia.
He’s sitting in his bed, reading a poorly-bound book his aunt gave him, written in a dialect of elvish he’s starting to forget from disuse, when she walks into his room. She saunters over, flopping onto his bed, the drama of it all accentuated by the puff of magic sparkles she sends a few inches into the air.
“Taako,” she says, bringing her hands up to rub at her temples, “I’m so gay.”
“Oh, mood,” he replies, and it’s all so poetic in its simplicity.
“I mean for your-”
And the dam breaks, and it's all too much until he gets his footing, and he finally has the damned words he’s been looking for for twelve fuckin’ years, and she, and she -
V. iii.
“You fucking took everything from me!”
V. iv.
Lucretia and Taako do not have a legitimate conversation until five months after the Day of Story of Song.
Being who they are, both to the world as two parts of seven and to their complex web of mutual friends, they see each other often. Lucretia finds it odd, being in the same room with the man she’d consider her best friend and knowing he’d rather speak to anyone else but her.
She’ll wave, and he’ll respond with empty eye contact, so void of recognition that she’ll sometimes clench up, wonder if he really forgot her, whether through some intentional magic or as a side effect of just how much she took from him. Then he’ll notice her fear and smile, and she can never quite tell from the distance he likes to keep whether it's meant to be consolation or mockery.
One evening, on one of the many galas and parties thrown in their honor during the first year after the Day, Lucretia finds herself waiting for Lup to come back with a drink. As is upsettingly almost routine, she catches Taako’s eye across the hall, but the whole thing is off. He doesn’t bother to hide that he knows her or keep his face from settling into a grimace. His posture is reserved in the way Lucretia knows means he really doesn’t see the point in something Lup has asked him to do, especially if it requires any sort of self-sacrifice. There’s a movement behind him, almost imperceptible, as Kravitz nudges his shoulder with an elbow, softly, and whispers something to him.
Taako sighs and begins the walk across the hall to Lucretia.
She clenches up, feels the desire to run building up in her like steam and stay there, gaining pressure to the point of inevitable explosion as her feet remain glued to the floor.
He’s wearing the tamest thing she’s ever seen on him other than his uniform. A muted purple vest with a matching skirt over a beige shirt - no hat - it almost looks like he’s in mourning.
He is. They all are, but him especially.
And then he’s too close for her to run away without looking purposeful, without stirring up half-true rumors that she won’t outlive. So she waits until he’s close enough to hear her heartbeat and chaotic inner monologue and opens her mouth to, to say
“Hello, Lucretia,” he says, “You look nice.” And it’s so clunky, so formal compared to the last conversation they had on good and honest terms.
Her hands clench up, of their own accord, and draw towards her chest. “Ah, yes, hello - same to -”
“Kravitz wanted me to tell you that you’re off the hook for all the times you died. I mean, I don’t think he was gonna reap the lady who saved the whole fuckin’ universe, but, just so you knew.” His posture shifts towards comfort as he speaks and falls into something like one of his usual rhythms; he leans most of his weight on one leg and on the cane he carries now - making up for the destroyed umbrella and injury to his spine in Wonderland - and tosses his meticulously done hair over one shoulder with an arcane flourish.
She almost asks him why Kravitz wouldn’t tell her as such himself until she catches his eye over Taako’s shoulder. He’s biting his knuckle, furiously tapping his foot, and overall looking a whole lot like he doesn’t want her to know that he’s watching this conversation.
“Ah, yes, well, thank you, Taako, I,” she says, gracefully. With each word, the lines in his face deepen, his grimace soon pulled so tight that she can see the very tips of his teeth. And it’s a shock, how familiar disgust is with the way it settles into his features put against the horrible foreign sensation of said disgust being directed at her.
The tension eats at her in her few panicked moments of ramblings so much so that she feels she could burst. So she improvises.
“You look a bit constipated.”
Taako takes a step back at that, nearly tripping over himself and his cane. His mouth hangs agape as he catches himself, breathes, and Lucretia winces, full body with guilt.
And then Taako starts laughing. Guffawing, really, so much so that heads start to turn their way. He bats away Lucretia’s concerned hand, doubling over his cane.
“Gods, Lucy. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.” He gives one last gentle pat to her shoulder, bitterness in his face turned semisweet. “Never change,” he says as he walks back towards Kravitz.
He leaves a space in front of her, a void quickly filled by other partygoers milling about and Lup draping herself over her shoulders.
“Is he being a little shit? Want me to deal with it?”
“No, no,” she says, “I think things are getting better.”
V. v.
Taako’s drunk.
It’s later, much later, and a much more private party since the last time he got a real good look at Lucretia. And he was a lot less drunk then.
He remembers when she glowed under the party lights with his sister draped over her shoulders. He remembers going on “double dates” with the two of them and Magnus, illegally loitering under docks, drinking things more sugar than really anything else, laughing not at jokes but because of just how happy he was.
Lucretia’s glittery cheekbones sparkle as they catch the light, and he remembers that too.
He wants to rush her, corner her. Wants to scream in her face and demand apologies for, for everything, for even the stuff she didn’t quite do. Wants to lie and say he knew the whole time, knew she was lying when she first looked at the Umbrastaff and said she hadn’t seen it before, when she found him in the hallways and said she didn’t know who Lup even was.
He wants to hug her. Wants to hold her close and sob into her chest because he’s seen her die too many times to ever really hate her. Wants to tell the truth and say he knew the whole time, that he could never forget her, or Lup, or any of them.
He walks up to her. Touches, more like grabs, tugs on, her shoulder until he has her attention.
“You,” he says, burps in his mouth a bit, “you stole my thing. With the painting. Low blow, Lucy. Low blow.”
V. vi.
She gets a message on her stone, a few months after the first year. From Taako, and left at a time when he certainly knew she wouldn’t be available to answer.
Hey, again, Lucretia.
Kravitz and me are gonna get hitched here soon. I thought you’d wanna know. This isn’t a formal invitation, but Lup said you’d be her plus one anyway. It works out, I guess.
I guess I wanted to mention that it all worked out. With me, and, uh, Magnus.
Not in the way you’re probably thinking. Like I said, I’m happy with Kravitz, and I’m ready to spend the rest of my life - and after? He’s still holding out on promises but I’m sure he’ll be able to get me a sweet afterlife deal - with him.
It worked out because Magnus was able to find love, and so was ol’ Taako. Which, I suppose, you get some of the credit for, on both accounts.
You didn’t fuck everything up, is what I guess I wanted to say. You came fuckin’ close, that’s for sure, but. Not quite everything.
V. vii.
As part of what is apparently a growing trend, Lucretia and Lup get married.
When it happens, Lucretia isn’t thinking about what she did to Taako, and, for a few moments haphazardly strewn about the day, she forgets to think about whether she deserves this ending.
Through a series of spells, they are able to protect the affair from wandering eyes and ears and keep the guest numbers below triple digits. The reception is a soothing affair, really, but Lucretia can feel in her old, aching bones that it’s a formality more than anything.
She tells Lup this, and Lup says, “This isn’t like before, babe. This doesn’t end when you die. When I said forever earlier, I meant it.” She pinches Lucretia’s cheek, gentle and affectionate. “And I also promise, dear. That’s kinda the whole point of this.”
There’s a ringing sound that resounds throughout the room, then, like a spoon hitting the side of a champagne glass. All eyes in the room fall on Taako, who is very pointedly holding neither a champagne glass nor a spoon, just the gilded wand spinning between his fingers.
His posture straightens as he preens under the attention, and Lucretia watches Kravitz laugh behind his hand.
“Thank you all for your attention!” Taako says with a flourish of his fingers. “I just wanted to take the opportunity to say a few words about tonight’s lovely brides, loathe as I may be to admit that my sister is lovely.” The small crowd of guests laughs as Lucretia meticulously picks apart his expression and words, his posture, looking for some sort of malice or joke at her expense.
She frowns, confused, when she cannot find it.
“Plenty of people have told me, over the centuries that I’ve been alive, that they’re in love with my sister. It’s pretty fuckin’ weird, espcially cause, unless she’s been a dirty liar all these years, no one has ever told her the same about me!”
The crowd laughs again, and Lucretia finds herself able to lean into it more, savor this moment of something like normalcy.
“Perhaps that isn’t too bad though, because a lot of the people who have told me this have been, like, the biggest fuckin’ creepos. They didn’t love her for her, they loved her because they thought elves were delicate enough, that we, specifically, were delicate enough to be controlled. All of them, really, were this fuckin’ evil, until,”
Lucretia feels her sins roar in her ears like The Hunger itself screaming its hell once more. Lup’s hand is solid on her shoulder, in hers.
“Until Lucretia.”
-
Three hours before the wedding, Taako says, “I don’t know how to forgive her.”
And Lup responds, “I think you do.”
And he does.
-
Lucretia has read and written so many books in her long lifetime. Words are a speciality of hers; if she hadn’t been so awkward for so long, perhaps she’d have been a bard. She ate up everything she could, from longform nonfiction to little children’s fables. Often, she found herself indulging in great big novels about heroes, always seeking something. Love, treasure, power,
Redemption.
She’d read about people who’d done horrible, horrible things and then spent years of their lives seeking forgiveness, freedom of guilt, anything to negate what they’d done. She’d watched these people trip over themselves until they’d fallen off of cliffs, and Lucretia and all of her long, skinny limbs and guilty conscience had simply decided to never do anything to necessitate such great, such futile efforts.
Which has certainly worked out well, hasn’t it?
She has walked in the shoes of those heroes for decades, and she is well aware how futile it is to seek redemption. For so long, for so, so long, she was so sure it was because such a thing was impossible. Once you rip someone’s life, someone’s family out from under them you can’t put all the pieces back right, she’d thought.
That isn’t entirely wrong; the pieces of her and her family’s lives haven’t gone back into place, per say, but they’ve found a balance. They’ve filled in the pieces lost to time and weathering with other people, with new experiences and stories to tell. Though they are legends, heroes, perhaps even something like gods, their lives are not the kind of stories where someone can find redemption on a quest over vast lands and through planes of existence.
Redemption finds you, Lucretia thinks as Taako finishes his speech. She was never the one who got to decide whether or not Taako, or anyone, ever forgives her, and she never will be. The only person who she can ever make forgive her is herself, and she can feel in her old bones that she is not quite there. But she senses in the pressure of Lup pulling her into her warm embrace, in Magnus’ jovial shout from across the room, in the way Taako’s chair screeches against the floor as he pulls it back out to sit down, that it’s so, so possible.
V. viii.
“Until Lucretia.
She never told me she was in love with Lup, not in so few words, anyway. But it was obvious, the fuckin’ essays she’d write with her mouth in the dark, the hours I’d spend teaching her how to talk to girls - how to woo my sister! - in the, the littlest fuckin’ things she’d say so that I’d know how much she cared, however much or little that love was meant for me
We are all so intimately fuckin familiar with the shit Lucretia has pulled, good or otherwise. You’d be surprised about the shit that didn’t make it into her journals - that I’ve had to fill in the gaps for myself over the past year and a-fuckin’-half - the girl is really quite mischievous once she realizes that whole planar galaxy’s interpretation our lives is dictated by her daily scribblings.
But I’m rambling. What I really wanna say, I guess, is that Lup picked a good one. Of all the people who have been in love with my sister, Lucretia is the brightest, smartest, and certainly most fuckin’ magically gifted.
So kudos to you both. For your lives, your possible afterlives, and your hella good booze selection. Cheers.”