Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The caravan pulls into a cute halfling village mid afternoon, and Lup hits the market while her brother starts the soup. They don’t need much, it’s only four more days to Tern Harbor, a real big-boy town, but fresh veggies are nice out on the road. She gets some greens and the last of those nice fall artichokes. A little girl helping her dad stock produce wants to know how Lup got so tall. “I got stretched out by a hill giant, pumpkin,” whispers Lup, theatrically, “She got me by the ears, that’s why they’re so pointy.” The kid gasps. It’s hysterical.

Lup and Taako make the best food these stooge traders have had in their measly lives. They are so fucking good at what they do. Even Lup can barely wrap her mind around it. Dinner is, yet again, a hit. The crew are acting like they've never seen an artichoke before. Some of them maybe haven't? They picked up a bunch of wide-eyed young dwarves a few weeks back. Are dwarves about that sweet A-choke life? She asks Taako. He shrugs.

They wash up, set everything out for tomorrow's porridge, and hit the fuckin tavern.

Halflings know how to party, and this village doesn’t get a lot of people passing through, so basically everyone has shown up for a rager with the caravan crew. It’s the best time Lup’s had in like a year. Three old dudes who probably have kids and are, like, pillars of the community, are doing the cancan on the bar. Lucky the muleskinner gets dared to climb up and swing from the chandelier. He immediately falls, and knocks over a table on the way down. Everybody cheers.

Lup dances back up to the bar to keep the good times rolling. She almost sits on a chick passed out, somehow, across three different stools. “Iss fine, honey,” slurs her friend, “Greta’s fine, she juss started early’s all.” Hell yeah Greta, turn up.

She finds an unoccupied seat, and waits for the barmaid to make it back to her.

“So did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” asks the handsome (if, well, short ) gentleman next to her. He almost says it with a straight face, too. Lup laughs.

“This - is this a thing ? Has this gotten you a lot of ladies, like, historically ?”

“It was worth a shot? You’re really pretty,” he says with a big goofy smile.

“Okay, but this a bragging rights thing, right? ‘One time I banged a hot elf,’ right?”

“Okay but have you ever been with a halfling? You know what they say,” he says, struggling to not to laugh again, “‘Once you go half, you ne- you-’” He never quite makes it to the punchline, and instead sort of falls over onto the bar giggling. This dude is adorable. Lup lets him buy her a drink.

About ten minutes later as they’re stumbling up the stairs to Dude’s room, Lup catches her brother’s eye and winks. Taako eyes the guy’s ass and nods his approval.

Shortstuff turns out to be kinky, and it’s pretty rad.

They have their own two little bunks tucked in the back of the mess wagon this time, which is honestly kind of nice. The whole wagon is their domain: pantry, stove, bunks, pots and pans clanging from the roof, and a little cupboard over the door for their stuff. No one bothers Lup in middle of the night except for her garbage brother, and he’s been doing that since the womb, so honestly kind of whatever.

The night turned bitter cold at some point, and few little snowflakes start to fall as Lup jogs back to the caravan in the early hours, still a teensy bit buzzed and wrapped in a blanket she stole from whatshisname’s room. When she finally slips back into the wagon, she just leans against the wall for a long moment, shivering and waiting for the warmth to seep into her. Taako is curled up in the bottom bunk already, which is comforting. Sure, he’s a grown-ass elf who can take care of himself, but knowing that he’s here and she’s here and everything is as it should be feels good. It feels like home. She clambers into bed and hunkers down to hopefully get in a couple hours of rest before they have to start breakfast.

Chapter Text

Lup wakes up a little after she’d have liked, but they can still get something thrown together by dawn. She kicks Taako a little bit to get him moving, and he makes an absolutely pitiful noise and burrows down deeper into his bed.

“Nuh-uh, rise and shine sweetheart,” says Lup.

“I’m dying, Lup,” he croaks from somewhere beneath the blankets. “This is the end for Taako. You can’t have my new boots, I wanna be buried with them.”

Oh for fucks sake. She shuts the curtain and leaves Taako to regret his decisions.

You can kinda coast through breakfast with basic kiddie-grade shit, honestly. Lup starts some porridge and bacon and coffee, and makes several unsuccessful attempts to convince Taako to drink a raw egg mixed with pickle juice, for science. Two thirds of the crew were also at that dope-ass party, so they are also hungover as shit. Everyone just sort of huddles around trying to pretend that they won’t be swaying around on wagons all day.

Taako surfaces a few hours later and just sits very still peeling potatoes. Fine. He’s trying.

Lup’s got this anyhow. Fritters for lunch, get some grease in all these drunks. Maybe salt-cod? They have some salt cod still somewhere. Stew with dumplings for dinner, easy as fresh hell and everyone likes stew. Lup’s good, she’s got this.

The next morning, though, Taako is still sick, and definitely not with a hangover. He’s hoarse and maybe feverish? It’s hard to tell around the hot stove sometimes, but Lup wouldn’t dare take him outside to feel his forehead. The caravan master will freak if he thinks someone in the kitchen is sick. He’ll toss them out for sure.

Lup handles it. Eggs, ham, and fried potatoes. Then she handles lunch too: rice and beans, greens, cornbread. Tea with honey and some toast for Taako. Stewed tomatoes for dinner - Taako is coughing again. Did he even drink that goddamn tea?

Taako mostly flops on his bunk, but he comes out to dish people up at mealtime, smiles and chatters and plays it like he feels fine. Her brother is such an inspired bullshitter. Lup is so proud of him.

On the third day Taako has a spotted rash and Lup panics. She's not stupid enough to go to the medic, he's paid directly by the caravan master, but one of the sweet baby dwarves, Hulda, is a runaway apothecary’s apprentice. She’s gotta know something. Lup sidles up to her after breakfast.

“Oh it's just red pox, girl!” says Hulda, looking Taako over. “He’ll be flat on his ass for a couple weeks, but he'll be fine.” She rummages through an old carpet bag of tiny clinking bottles, and pulls out a tall thin one made of blue glass. “Two spoonfuls of this a day until the rash goes away completely,” she says.

“This tastes like if licorice was up some dude’s ass” whines Taako, “I would 100% actually rather die than drink this for two weeks.” Hulda laughs.

“Try chasing it with some brandy,” she says.

Lup slides Hulda a little honey cake at dinner and gives her a grin and a wink. Networking, baby. It's all about who you know.

Except, the next day it turns out Hulda is a little fucking snitch, and Lup gets summoned by the caravan master for the I'm-not-running-a-charity-here talk.

“Red pox can spread to humans. Near all my teamsters are human, doll. I'm sorry, but this is just business,” he says, with a little shrug, as if his hands are tied, as if he isn't the guy in charge.

If it was Taako here, he would bargain or blackmail or turn on the charm. If it was Lup back at the wagon shivering under three blankets and both their cloaks, he might even beg.

Lup doesn't do any of that shit. Lup sees red. Eight goddamn months she's been feeding this man’s crew, at it before dawn and washing up til well after dark. She has cooked and cleaned and kept the pantry stocked, haggled every damn fishmonger within an inch of their life.

“Fine,” she says, staring him dead in the eye, “Good luck finding someone else by noon.”

She sprints back to the wagon and starts packing their bags. Taako doesn't even ask. He knows what’s up.

She pulls out a sack and starts stuffing it with bread and apples and beef jerky. She takes the sugar and the salt and all the spices. “Hope they like blaaand shiiit” she singsongs. Taako lets out a hoarse bark of laughter from his pile of blankets. She grins and starts dumping all the rest of the food out the back of the wagon. “Hope they like diiirt~” she sings. Taako loses his shit and almost falls out of bed.

Lup gets everything together and pulls Typhoid Fuckin Mary’s hood way down until they find just the shittiest, most drafty inn in Tern Harbor.

“Smart move Lup, I'm basically a fuckin space heater right now, so why pay for a room that's, like, actually habitable,” says Taako.

She stuffs his face into the one scrawny pillow the room came with, but not too hard, he's sick.

They’ll weather this dry spell and then hop on the next caravan that comes through. This is a port, so it can’t be that long. In the meantime, this is a good-sized town, and Lup is smart as hell and basically the greatest chef ever to live. She’ll pick up something.

Except, townspeople are different. They have a lot of ideas about who gets to do what. Tavernkeepers take one look at her flashy clothes and the tattoo on her wrist and tell her they just filled the position. Fishermen tell her it’s bad luck to have a woman on the boat. She can’t scrub a rich lady’s goddamn floor without a letter of introduction, apparently. She shows up at a call for ditch diggers and a bunch of burly old dwarves just laugh at her.

Fine, whatever. Lup’s got this. She’s good.

Lup flirts with a gross old rich dude, lures him into an alley, and robs him with a carving knife. She rushes back to the inn to show Taako her spoils, but he doesn’t think it’s funny at all. “What the actual fuck, Lup” he croaks, shoving himself up into a wobbly sitting position so he can glare at her better.

She opens her mouth to yell at him, but takes a deep breath. Taako doesn't mean she's an incompetent thief, he means that he loves her and he worries when he’s not around to watch her back. She assures him that she won’t try any more solo crime, and after a little more glaring, he seems satisfied. Lup passes the rest of the evening sitting on the edge of the bed telling Taako about the various weirdos she’s met in the tavern downstairs. He does her hair and laughs and provides color commentary until he starts to nod off, then she finishes the braids herself and shoves him down into the mattress. “You need to sleep, dummy,” says Lup. “I need my right-hand man back.” He grumbles something about how he’s the one in charge and she’s the right hand, but he’s out almost immediately.

She doesn’t need to rob people, anyhow. She’s got this.

The money runs out though. The medicine runs out and they can't afford more. Taako’s fever spikes again. He spends a lot of time dozing. The week Lup paid up front for the room runs out and the innkeeper comes upstairs to tell them she isn’t running a charity.

They’re slept on the street before, but it’s cold and Taako’s too sick to even sit up properly, and Lup got them into this because she was too proud to beg. Well, she’s not too proud now. She wrestles her brother up onto her back, drags him up to the temple overlooking the town and begs them to take him in.

Chapter Text

The people at the temple have no idea what to make of them. Elves as a rule aren't super into human gods (Lup doesn’t even know what this one is the god of, honestly), and Lup imagines that, regardless of race, they don’t get a lot identical twins dressed like vagrants. Some of the younger acolytes pepper her with questions and she has a blunt discussion with them about minding ones own damn business and also yes, yes it is racist to just ask an elf you don’t even know what your name is in Elvish.

The people at the temple do take them in though. They get Taako a bed, and give him some weird-smelling tea. She props him up to drink it, and he asks her with a distant fuzzy look if she needs his help with dinner.

“Nope, just go back to sleep, okay babe?” she says, and she sits with him until he does. Then they hurry Lup down a long hall to get initiated.

The first thing the acolytes do is give her a nice sage green robe and shave her head, which? Totally baller. A look .

Then they want her to discard her frivolous possessions, which she is a lot less down for, but once the priestesses realize that the twins own a sack of costume jewelry, three books, and a set of kitchen knives, Lup gets a classic pitying look and they tell her to just keep them. Fuck yeah.

There is mandatory study and prayer, but Lup spends as much time in the infirmary with Taako as she can get away with. After a few days he's sitting up again and thoroughly enjoying all this free food and pampering. The healers gave him a little bell to ring if he needs help and he has a great time summoning people to his bedside to pick up things he dropped or bring him a glass of water or tell him the exact time.

In the meantime, part of Lup’s mandatory study is magic, and it's basically the coolest shit ever. Sure, she and Taako know a little bit already, they’ve travelled with a fair number of wizards and bards and such over the years, but that just amounts to a handful of incantations. This is how it all works . Lup is pulling off all sorts of awesome shit in no time. Brother Silas calls her a natural, says she would make a great wizard. There’s a bunch of boring basics she’s supposed to learn first, but he sneaks her off to a rarely used courtyard sometimes and shows her how to do the fun stuff.

The other acolytes think Lup is fascinating. They’re a bunch of goody-two-shoes dweebs, and not a one of them have ever been shot at by bandits, or gotten arrested, or smashed a glass over someone’s head, or been chased through the woods by goblins, not even once . They crowd around her at mealtimes and just lap up all her good jokes and anecdotes and one-liners. Finally, some fucking recognition.

Taako gets better, gets his own haircut and robe, and joins them for magic lessons. He immediately takes to the weird shit, shrinking this and transforming that and what have you, which Lup figures is probably fine since she’s got a really good handle on explosions, ie. the important stuff. She calls him a fucking nerd, and he turns the sugar in her coffee to salt, and she’s so honestly impressed that she can’t even be mad about it.

The temple burns a different incense before each prayer, there are always bells chiming, there is always a swarm of youngster acolytes in the halls whispering and giggling and making faces when they think the priests aren’t looking. The stained glass windows send streams of multicolored lights into every room. It doesn’t quite seem real. They’re learning to do magic, there’s a library with more books than Lup has seen in her entire life, and they get fed three times a day. This is it. This is their lucky break.

Which is why Lup is so thrown when Taako asks her one afternoon what she thinks is worth stealing when they bounce.

“What are you talking about?” she says.

“Uh, when we get away from these robe-wearing lunatics and get back out on the road?”

“Taako, they’re teaching us magic . For free .”

“Yeah, if we pray all the time and don’t want to have hair ?”

“Taako, if we stay here and learn magic we don’t have to got back out on the road! We don’t have to be cooks anymore!”

“I like cooking!” says Taako, looking affronted.

“Taako listen . Wizards? Don’t get tossed out on the side of the road. We become wizards and we’re set for life!”

Taako gives Lup a long suspicious glance, as if he’s searching her face for evidence of brainwashing.

“Ok fine,” he says. “But Lulu? If this shit gets even remotely cult-y? We are gone in ten .”

“For sure,” says Lup.

Lup is pulling off a totally chill Thunderwave one morning when the abbess calls them into her office. Normally Lup would know what’s up, but this time they are living at an actual, forrealsies charity.

“Brother Taako, Sister Lup,” she says, nodding to each of them.

“Acolytes extraordinaire!” drawls Taako, with a wink.

“Yes, about that,” says the abbess.

Chapter Text

School is hard. So much harder than Lup could have guessed. Lup and Taako read their assignments over twice, three times, and still have no idea what they're supposed to mean. They always reference other books and scholars and historical events neither of them have ever heard of. Sometimes there’s untranslated Sylvan. Do people even still speak Sylvan? Lup asks one of the professors and he just laughs at her.

They study late into the evenings, not leaving until Martha, the least friendly of the librarians, forcibly escorts them out, long after closing. Lup spells out the long words and Taako looks them up in the dictionary, and they slowly work out all the things they were supposed to be learning instead of how to fillet a fish and cheat at cards and to always keep your eye on the exit.

The scholarship the abbess got them covers their classes, and the temple itself has them set up with a stipend and a little attic apartment. They’ve never stayed in one place before, not since they were, like, twelve, and Lup loves it but also feels like she’s suffocating. Taako never says anything, but she sometimes catches him mooning over pretty painted wagons out on the street. They stayed for months at the temple, and now have potentially years awaiting them in this little room. It’s a weird change for both of them.

Their birthday comes around and they spend an entire day cooking and eating a meal they scrimped for weeks to afford: crispy duck with figs and rosemary, brussels sprouts with bacon and almonds, mushroom risotto (creamy and perfect, natch ), their aunt’s special orange cake with buttercream frosting. It's all for them and no one else. They wash it down with a great deal of box wine, and spend the whole night arguing about how to spend their gold once they’re fancy wizards.

In the meantime, there’s work to do. Lup gradually, slowly, brings Taako to accept that the weird math with the letters and stuff probably isn’t some sort of elaborate prank, and he finally jumps in and starts wrangling with it. Lup learns to how to write a formal essay, and is delighted to discover that a good two-thirds of university is just fancy arguing. They start to get good at this shit.

Finals come. Taako comes home with an entire sack of flour that he somehow slipped into his parka while the grocer wasn’t looking. He spends the first three days of reading period relentlessly stress-baking. Lup gives up on making real food, and they just eat rugelachs and brownies and mini-quiches for every meal. On her breaks Lup takes deep breaths and strikes matches. Over the week she works her way through an entire box them, just lighting each match one by one and watching them all burn down. She tosses the burnt out ones all in a bowl full of water that Taako put out so that she’d stop throwing them in the sink with the dishes.

On day four of finals, Lup peeks over Taako’s shoulder at his history paper and makes fun of his shitty handwriting. He tries to steal back the cookies he made for her, and they both lunge for them at once, tumbling off the bed and wrestling on the floor like when they were little kids. They end up slumped on the ground together just laughing, and Lup realizes that this is the happiest she’s felt since they were little kids, tearing around and playing with sticks and helping their auntie bake bread. This is how it’s gonna be for now on, decides Lup. We’re gonna be wizards and shit is gonna be easy peasy here on out.

They ace their finals. Lup impresses her evocation professor and gets a summer internship.

“Ok it's a job , but they're not paying you?” asks Taako, again. Taako knows what a fucking internship is, he just wants to make her say it so he can give her a pointed look about it.

Taako gets a real job that pays money for the summer, which helps out a lot, and more importantly gives him something to be smug about.

Lup spends the summer cataloging a huge storeroom full of awesome and super dangerous magical artifacts with Russ, a joyless Tiefling grad student, and Cerise, another elf who just finished first year. Cerise is a goddamn delight and they get on like a house on fire. Like an actual house on fire, terrifying and mesmerizing and surprisingly loud. They eat lunch on the roof and shoot spells off into the sky together. They make fun of Russ right in front of him in Elvish.

“You guys know I speak Elvish. I understand everything you’re saying. Please stop,” says Russ.

“Do you think he knows we’re talking about him?” she stage-whispers.

“Oh shit, he’s looking this way, play it cool, Lup.”

Russ puts his head in his hands. He does that a lot.

Fall comes, and classes start up again (Geometry, Intermediate Evocation, Astronomy, History, Intro to Draconic), and this time Lup and Taako are ready. They’ve bought their own dictionary so they don’t have to spend so much time at the library. They’ve tested out of remedial math and grammar. They’ve got this.

Taako gets really into making up increasingly lewd mnemonics for his exams, and Lup occasionally has to threaten to throw him out of the apartment if he doesn't stop making her laugh.

Cerise starts to come over in the afternoons. They drink coffee and chat and study and make dinner together. Sometimes Taako will hang out with them, but mostly he keeps to himself. He gets weird once when Cerise calls her “Lulu,” like he owns calling Lup a nickname. Lup takes a breath and tells herself not to get mad at him. Taako’s never been good at making friends.

Lup and Cerise are taking the same Draconic class (Tuesdays and Thursdays, midterm will be 70% written, 30% oral). Lup thought it was going to be an easy A, but it turns out that the kind of Draconic you learn from spending a summer hanging out with Dragonborn mercenaries is very different from the kind you find in ancient works of magic.

“This is impossible,” Cerise mumbles, face in her hands, one night, “I’m dropping the class.”

“It’s a prereq for Intermediate Summons, homegirl, you kind of can’t .”

“I could change majors? I don’t know, this is too much to deal with!”

Sometimes, just sometimes, Lup wants to tell these rich kids she goes to school with that they have no idea what “too much” is, that they must have never been really cold or hungry or sick or scared in their lives if they think studying for a multiple choice vocabulary test is “too much.” She doesn’t say it, though.

Instead, Lup says, “Cerise, would Fantasy Ruth Bader Ginsburg give up?”

“No,” says Cerise glumly, “She’d be an unflinching intellectual badass.”

“Well then, there you go,” says Lup, and turns back to her notes. There’s work to be done.

Their birthday comes around again, and Taako presents her with an ice cream maker.

“It’s certainly convenient how this present also benefits you,” says Lup.

“Well it’s also my birthday. Oh and by the way, you’re welcome ,” says Taako, and Lup laughs. He conjures up some cream and fruit with a truly unnecessary flourish and they go wild with flavor profiles late into the night.

Finals come around again. Lup, Taako, Cerise, and Cerise’s drow sorta-boyfriend Reggie spend 33 consecutive hours in the library. Lup and Taako snuck in a truly impressive amount of snacks, and they are all vibrating slightly with energy potions and panic. It’s unclear how much any of them actually accomplish. Lup adds a page to her essay, then shuffles through her notes for twenty minutes, wondering how much it would hurt to get run over by a carriage, and how much of an extension she could get for that. Taako has been staring at the same page of numbers the last five times Lup looked over. Lup doesn’t like Reggie all that much, she’s medium-sure that Cerise is just dating him to piss off her parents, but she can’t help but feel concerned over the incessant eye-twitch he seems to have developed.

Eventually they collectively snap, and then the four of them steal a fire extinguisher from the hall and take turns levitating and blasting themselves around campus. They are rolling in the grass fucking howling with laughter. A bunch of bleary-eyed students glare at them from the dorm windows.

It’s the best thing that’s ever happened until Reggie goes flying into an elderly professor who goes down hard in a flurry of papers, and they are all dragged before the dean of students. Taako, next to her, looks terrified. They have been in this office before, and they both know scholarship kids don’t get the kind of second chances that other students do, students with money and connections and families.

When the dean immediately starts to lay all the blame on Reggie, Taako visibly relaxes, and Lup is fucking furious with him, how quick he is to let Reggie get thrown under the bus. Lup knows why they want to blame it on Reggie and let the nice high elf kids go, and she sees red. Taako catches her eye and shakes his head ever so slightly. She glares back. This isn’t right.

Before she can open her mouth though, Taako springs up out of his seat. He holds up his hands to the dean imploringly and pulls out a winning smile. Lup has never really known how to be anyone but Lup, as loudly and emphatically as possible, but Taako can be anyone you want him to be for as long as it takes to change your mind or make you laugh or steal your wallet.

“Listen,” says Taako, in his most friendly and charming tone, and Lup doesn’t know where he’s going with this, but Taako was born for bullshit. He’s pretty amazing, Lup’s brother. “ Listen .”

They don't lose their scholarship. They survive finals.

Chapter Text

Taako meets a boy during the summer. Oliver is a charming human with curly hair and great cheek bones. They meet at a bar, both of them heckling people at karaoke night.

Taako comes home giddy practically every night for two months. He stumbles in late at night, disheveled and wild, and one notable time, soaking wet, waking her up nearly every time, because it’s a one goddamn room apartment, but she lets it go because he’s so happy. Oliver said this, he’s so funny, you’ll never guess what we did last night, I cannot believe we didn’t get caught, his fucking eyes, Lup, like, have you seen his eyes?  is all he talks about.

Lup listens, and as a courtesy she would only extend to her brother, she does not make fun of him. Instead, she helps him with his hair and doesn’t let him leave for dates unless his accessory game is on point.

Then one night he comes home early, slams the door, and says he doesn’t want to talk about it, so Lup doesn’t talk about it. She makes baked ziti instead, with a side salad and her special garlic bread, and they eat dinner together quietly until Taako decides that actually he does want to talk about it, at great length. And then she listens, and hugs him and tells him that dude was a fucker, and I never liked him and he didn’t deserve you.

“Want me to break his kneecaps?” she asks.

Taako laughs and if it’s a little shaky Lup would never tell a soul.

“I’m serious, I’ll wreck that little dickweasel. Just say the word,” says Lup, and her tone is light, but she would. She would beat the shit out of everyone who ever hurt her brother, chronologically, starting with that shitbag cousin they lived with right after their grandpa died, but he just laughs again.

Fall comes around again. Taako throws himself into studying and acts like the summer never happened.

Lup can’t get out of Divination I (4 credits, req for all applied magic concentrations) any longer, and the professor has a problem with her just because she’s loud and rude and announced on the first day that she doesn’t give a shit about this class. Her classmates, all younger than her, are quietly delighted. She develops a bunch of underclassmen hangers-on, a gaggle of little nerds who crowd around her at lunchtime. She tries to impart some wisdom to these kids, or at least some fashion sense.

She invites everyone she knows who can’t make it home for Candlenights over to their place and Taako is thrilled to cook a big meal and play host. They’ve never thrown a party before, and even if the whole thing is just an excuse to get blazed and watch Fantasy Die Hard, there’s no reason to not give it their all. Taako makes macarons, and Lup covers every available surface in tinsel and little illusory lights. They put out holiday-themed napkins. It’s pretty legit.

That week Lup turns in the best Divination paper of Professor Waller’s stuffy life. He gives her a B. Still a win.

Cerise comes over on a nice spring morning, the first one of the year where Lup has been able to throw open their one dormer window and let in that sunlight and fresh air. Cerise acts nervous, and doesn’t seem to be working on her assignments at all, and after a half-hour or so Lup proposes that they stop and take a little break. Finally, over lemonade and jam dots, Cerise takes a deep breath and blurts out that she’s leaving the program to get married.

Lup stares at her a long moment, stunned. “What?” She finally sputters, “Have you gone crazy? You've done all this work, no dude is worth that! Is it Gordon? Because you can do so much better than Gordon!”

“No, it's not Gordon. You wouldn't know him, my parents hired a matchmaker.”

“Wait, your parents are just making you marry some dude? Are you're just going to go along with that?”

“No, it’s not like that! I mean, I didn’t pick him, but I like him. He’s nice.”

“'Nice!?’ You, you Cerise, are giving up your aspirations for a guy? Because he's nice?"

Cerise stands up, furious.

“This is why I didn’t tell you sooner! You just don’t get it - no one’s ever expected anything of you.”

Lup sees red. She grabs her drink, chucks it in Cerise’s face, and tells her to get out. Cerise drops out the next week and Lup doesn’t see her again.

Taako offers to crash the wedding with her and make a scene, maybe steal some shit, but for some reason even the idea of that doesn’t make her feel better. She wonders if Taako’s maybe smarter than her, to hang back and not try to make friends here in the first place. These people have never gone hungry or slept in an alley, they never had to stuff everything they owned into a pillowcase and run off in the middle of the night.

These people look at her brother and see a standoffish asshole, and don’t understand that’s how he stayed alive. These people tell Lup they wish they had her confidence, and she doesn’t know how to tell them that she didn’t have any other choice but to be confident, that she hopes one day to finally have enough leeway to be weak sometimes, that she’s so fucking tired.

Maybe she was just hung up on the idea of having a best friend, like girls did in the stories she read as a kid.

Finals come around again, and around again. Lup buckles down. She gets shit done. She takes Advanced Topics in Evocation and decides she wants to write her thesis on arcane ballistics. She gets a juicy fellowship and throws herself wrecking shit in the name of science.

Taako spends most of his time in the lab, and when he’s home he’s grading papers. He reads the particularly bad ones out loud over dinner and they have a good time laughing at the stupid first years he’s teaching. Taako goes on and on about his class with scorn, but he grows maybe a little bit proud of them as the year goes on. He starts to read out loud the really good bits in the evening instead, and he spends extra time that he isn’t getting paid for helping out the students who are behind.

“It’s just that I can’t stand to see them suck so hard,” he makes sure to explain, just in case Lup might be starting to think he cares about these kids.

“Oh yeah, for sure,” says Lup with a grin, and she goes back to crunching her numbers.

It takes them an extra year, but they finish their coursework and their theses are accepted.

“What are you going to do now, Madam Wizard?” asks Taako, trying to pin his mortarboard at the exact angle he has deemed perfectly fashionable.

Lup grins, and pulls out a pamphlet for the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration.

“Ugh. It’s always doing things with you,” says Taako, trying to tape the tassel so it hangs just so.

Chapter Text

They get accepted into the IPRE, and cruise through the academy. They both graduate in the top ten, but Lup was 6th and Taako was only 8th. She makes sure to remind him whenever possible.

Lup gets put on propulsion systems. Maybe someday her team will blast something straight into space.

“Do you have to shout ‘hey-oh’ every time someone says the word ‘thrust?’” asks Greg Grimaldis.

“Greg Grimaldis,” she begins, putting as much disapproval in her voice as possible, “That is stupidest question I’ve ever heard.”

He sighs. “Okay,” he says, “when we’re calculating the thrust...” he pauses and looks to Lup.

“ Hey- oh!” shouts Lup, giving him the finger guns, and sending her chair rolling back from the conference table a little bit.

Lup cannot believe she's getting paid to do this. She's getting paid damn well, too.

Taako has an office with a better view than Lup’s, which he makes sure to remind her of whenever possible. People come from other departments to ask Taako’s advice as a transmutation expert; he becomes famous around the lab for weird but clever solutions to seemingly impossible problems. He preens every time.

They are fucking respectable now. They move out of their little attic room and into a proper apartment. A fucking home . Lup has her own room for the first time in her life. She paints it all in bright wild colors and places what few momentos made it this far on a shelf over her bookcase. She has a full-sized bed just for her, and she covers it with pillows. She has her own door with a lock. She never actually locks it. But she could if she wanted to.

People at the IPRE look at Lup like she’s something amazing. When she talks everyone shuts up and listens. Her team all invite her out for drinks and lunches and bowling tournaments against those fuckers over in alchemical engineering.

She gets a write-up in 25 under 250: Magick and Science , and Taako is insanely jealous. He tells her that her picture in the article is hideous and makes her look like a horse, and she Bigby’s Hands him straight off the couch. He still helps her work friends surprise her at lunchtime with a cake though (perfectly moist and expertly decorated, of course ) that says “Congrats on being a Brilliant Young Mind.” There’s champagne. Lorea from Drafting has made a card with a little cartoon Lup blasting flames. It is absolutely covered in red and orange glitter, and Lup very nearly cries.

Lup buys fancy skin cream and brand-new clothes and jewelry made of real gold. She gets her first ever pair of heels, and when Taako is being annoying she wears them around the house so she can be three inches taller than him.

“Oh I’m sorry, did you say something, Taako? I couldn’t hear you down there, darling,” she says.

“Yeah, sure, you’re a fucking riot, Lup,” grumbles Taako, testing the soup.

“Do you need me to get something off a high shelf for you, sweetie? I don’t want you to have to go grab a chair,” continues Lup after that fails to get a good rise of him. He swats at her with the spoon, but now he’s laughing.

Lup stops sewing her money into the hems of her clothes, and opens a bank account. Taako opens one too, but she knows he still keeps little stashes of cash here and there. He still keeps a bag packed in case they have to run. She tries to tell him a couple times, gently, that it’s okay now, they don’t have to live like that anymore, but it doesn’t do anything. Lup leaves it. She still has her bad days too, but it's a little easier now that they have a record player to listen to and a couch for her to flop on and hot chocolate, the good kind , for Taako to press into her hands.

Lup and Taako walk to work in the morning, and then walk home together in the evenings.

They hang up their robes and cook dinner and make each other laugh. They mess around in the kitchen, tossing in this and that, gossiping about people at the lab, passing each other the next ingredient before they even ask. They’ve made it, Lup thinks to herself. This is how it’s gonna be here on out.

Then the Light of Creation shows up and shit goes bananas . Massive scientific breakthroughs start happening left right and center. The whole world is watching the IPRE. Everyone is working around the clock because there’s just so much new shit happening so fast, and it is so incredibly exciting. Finally , everyone is joking, finally being a scientist is as cool as I thought it would be in undergrad. Lup is on like eight papers right now and doesn’t know what day of the week it is at any given moment. Taako gets an entire flock of interns to order around, and starts drinking enough coffee daily to kill an adult gnome, Lup did the math. They are both swaying on their feet but grinning when they pass each other in the halls. Everyone starts sleeping at their desks.

Several months of this pass and honestly people are getting a little unhinged. One morning the cafeteria is out of poptarts and and Grimaldis has a fucking enthralling public meltdown, absolutely hysterical. Melissa from HR has to come down and cast Calm Emotion on him and politely tell him to take a day. Lup chokes on her orange juice laughing at him. She turns to share this beautiful moment with Taako, and remembers that he didn’t show up for breakfast today, or yesterday. Lup doesn’t think she’s talked to her brother in about four days, which is un-fucking-precedented.

Taako is glaring at small red gemstone while a mass of interns shift nervously.

“Did that rock kill your mother or something?” shouts Lup from the doorway. It's funny because they have the same dead mother and it was probably plague and almost definitely not a rock.

“This is alchemy, Lulu. It's not a literal rock. Why don't you run along and blow something up or whatever it is you all do over there in Building Three.” He waves her away without even looking up.

“Nope, I’m taking you out for lunch, Taako.”

Now he looks up. “Where to?”

“The place where you like the coq au vin but think the rabbit is too dry.”

Taako brightens. Gotcha. He loves to go somewhere nice, but where he still gets to complain a little bit.

Taako turns to the interns. “Emily!” he barks.

Emily, a gigantic dragonborn who can probably bench-press a tree looks to Lup’s brother in terror, which is basically the funniest shit Lup’s ever seen. She snorts a little bit.

“Yes, sir?” Emily squeaks.

“I’m taking a lunch. You’re in charge. Don’t fuck it up.”

“I- I won’t sir!”

“Of fucking course you won’t. That’s why I’m putting you in charge of the clown patrol here,” he says, making a sweeping dismissive gesture at the rest of the room. The other interns shrink back.

As they walk down to the elevator he gushes with pride about how Emily is a smart as hell , and he’s giving her such a letter of rec, that kid is going places, for sure .

Taako fusses with his hair in the restaurant window. He wears it long these days and bleaches it. It's a good look, but he’s gotten super prissy about it.

Lup slaps down the recruitment flyer and starts her pitch.

“Ok so you know about the mission they’re doing, right? Travelling to the edge of the planar system?”

“Obviously, Lup. It’s all anyone’s goddamn talking about at the lab. You know the lab? The lab where we both work?”

“Shut up. Listen. They want two arcanists Taako.”

Taako looks at her like she’s lost her goddamned mind.

“Hell no. Hell no, Lup. Taako? Your brother Taako? Not hopping on the death boat to the stars. You’ve seen Apollo 13! Where they-”

“-That was fiction! They had to call the IPRE ‘NASA’ because it was-”

“-where they died in space !”

“-That’s not even what, Taako, honey, you fell asleep, remember? That’s not what happens.”

“Whatever. You can do what you want, Lup, but Taako’s keeping his two feet right here on the ground.”

Two months ago Taako got a stern memo from HR for levitating himself and making a grad student pull him around campus, but Lup decides to switch tactics.

“Burnsides is applying.”

“Oh. Oh yeah? Sure, I super want to be locked in an enclosed space for two months with Magnus Fucking Burnsides. Deffo won’t be throwing myself out the fuckin airlock, won’t be- won’t be praying for the sweet release of death, hanging out with Ole Mags 24/7. Nuh-uh. Nope. For sure.”

“You like Magnus! You went out for beer and pizza with him like last week!” Lup takes a deep breath. “Taako, listen . First elves in space. We are the first elves in fucking space. We get into the history books. Little kids write reports for class about how we’re their heroes.”

He pauses. He sniffs and straightens his hair a little bit.

“Ok. Listen. I’ll do it. But, we are gonna have to get some real nice portraits done up. So everyone in the future knows how arrestingly good looking we are.”

“I mean hell yeah , bro. Fucking of course .”