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They spend the first two rebuilding months coming and going. Tall buildings climb from the ashes of glassed towns and judge-leveled cities. Saplings poke from the ground in the spaces of destroyed forests. The seven have dinner together now and again in half-finished houses , built in the short moments to breathe between rebuilding the world they'd cursed, then saved. Lup, Taako, and Barry stuck together, naturally, clinging to each other after being splintered and separated for so long. Magnus goes to Raven's Roost, naturally. Merle's by the beach. Davenport leaves and doesn't come back for a long time.
And Lucretia, she's in Neverwinter, building a library. She's on the moon base, rebuilding domes. She's in her office, writing, writing, writing, never ceasing. She's throwing herself into her work so she doesn't have to think about it.
It. She doesn't know what to call it. It's something different with each of them. The discomfort with Davenport, the sad smile from Merle, the uncomfortable tension with Lup and Barry. Anger, ice cold, from Taako. And from Magnus, forgiveness.
Despite the new memories.
Despite the fact that it'd been two months and they still hadn't addressed the elephant in the room, despite its heavy presence in each of their passing interactions. The gravity of a love spanning half a century that she fed to their Voidfish with the rest of their journey, then returned to him with a sip of ichor. Luckily, she's able to avoid him for a while, until they all meet to have dinner again, half for business and half for catching up. Lup thought it was important to keep them together; definitely sentimental, possibly true. She hosts the dinner at the house that she's sharing with Barry and Taako and they oversee rebuilding efforts in Phandolin. Everything is fine. Taako doesn't have a lot to say, and that's okay. She excuses herself in a lull in the conversation to do dishes.
It feels familiar. She remembers, as she rinses soap off of a very expensive looking plate, the night that she sang static. There's no song they can't hear now.
She feels relieved, reminded of their success. No more weight of the world on her shoulders every day, every hour, always running on their borrowed time. No more missing her family. She watches the bubbles swirl down the drain. Well, she still missed her family. She doesn't see them much. She doesn't know if she's avoiding them, or if they're the ones avoiding her. She doesn't blame them.
She never knows what to say.
She especially doesn't know what to say when Magnus appears in the doorway with an armful of dirty plates. Instead, she watches as he walks up next to her and places the dishes down carefully into the sink. She is acutely aware of the way his arm brushes hers, and then the way he pulls his arm away quickly at the touch.
But still, softly: "Hi, Luce."
Her mouth feels dry. "Hello, Magnus."
She rinses a plate, watching the warm water roll over the porcelain. Her focus remains on the suds in the drain. She is desperate not to look at him. "You were awfully quiet out there." And he laughs a little bit.
She laughs too, nervously. "I... never quite know what to say at a table with so many bold voices."
"Well, I think yours should be the boldest of everyone's now, huh?" he says, and there's still a smile there in the sound. He means it genuinely and without malice. "I mean, now that I remember all that, I miss it. You being a part of the conversation, I mean. In particular.
She exhales. "You're throwing me a lot at once here." She places the dish she's holding in the sink and lets the water run, then turns to look up at him. When their eyes meet, she feels nervous.
"Sorry." He sighs back like he's been found out. "I thought coming out of the gate with it casually might make things less weird."
"I think things might be more weird, now," she says, deadpan, and he still cracks a smile.
"What do you say we finish these and sit outside?"
Anxiety touches her, first in the throat and then in her gut. The meal she just devoured turns in her stomach with discomfort. "Yeah, sure."
She washes the dishes and he dries them. Their elbows bump and it feels so familiar. He's towering next to her and she feels small. He's humming under his breath. He's nudging her with his arm. Gods, it's so familiar.
And then, they're outside on the stairs of the front porch, gazing up at the dual moons in the sky. They laugh as they muse about how strange it is to think they lived up there for a while. Then they laugh again as she reminds him that, yes, it's strange, but it's markedly stranger that they were from another plane of existence and spent 100 years on an interplanar spaceship.
She longs for those days as uncomfortable silence pulls them back into its orbit. They refuse to acknowledge the history suspended in rotation, the strange pull of a second moon of memories added to a mind where there'd only been one.
She leans against him now, still unspeaking. He doesn't lean into her, but he doesn't lean away. His breath shakes in his throat. The near-silent sound his lips make when they part to speak nearly sends her out of her skin.
"You know what I've been thinking about?" he says, and it's watery. She wasn't expecting tears tonight. Not from Magnus, anyway.
She is petrified to know, but still, she says, "what's that?"
"I... remember that stuff with the bond engine?"
She is caught between the exasperation of of course she remembers the story and song, and the surprise of the unexpected turn in topic from what she'd assumed they'd be discussing. But still, she says, "yes, what about it?"
"I can't stop thinking about how I could have summoned Julia." She looks up and he's looking down at his hands. A tear drips from his lashes and onto his lap. "I had a chance to see her and I blew it, kind of. I mean--" He stops to inhale sharply. "I knew who I needed there to win, but I wish I'd known that we had it in the bag, that I could have used that chance to see her, you know?"
She is leveled with a complicated avalanche of feelings, half of which she wasn't expecting, the other half she'd never even known were emotions she was capable of feeling. It hammers through her in tandem with her heartbeat: loneliness, heartbreak, agony, guilt, longing, and some twisted coil of jealousy. But still, she says, "I'm so sorry, Magnus."
They’ve never talked about Julia before. She wasn't expecting it to come before a talk about them. He's crying, tears dropping from his eyes as he twists them shut in protest. Then, he laughs. It breaks her again. "It's okay, don't be sorry," he laughs with a shake of his head. She notices, in the porchlight, how much older he really looks. She tries not to think about what he must think of her now with his memory of her at nineteen returned to him. She wasn't exactly that girl now. She died a long time ago. In a way, she had that in common with Julia.
And again, "it's okay," comes his assurance to her through his tears. He makes it hard for her to believe him.
She puts her hand on his knee and it's the first time she's really touched him since their hug after everything was over. They’re quiet, save for the sound of sniffles, for a long time. She feels like she has to say something. She has to say something, right? And gods, all she wants is to just get it all in the open and out of the way.
"Magnus, I... are we ever going to talk about it?" She pauses. "Us, I mean..."
A second flood of tears takes him, and the sound of a sob does her in. She softens as she begins to regret asking anything at all.
"I'm sorry." She doesn't know what else to say.
He looks up at the moons and she, in some strange way, admires the tears glimmering in his eyes, threatening to continue spilling over onto his face.
"I'm not ready to talk about it, Lucy." The nickname cracks in his throat and he swallows an unspoken apology. It seems like he has more to say, but he's crying and she's heartbroken and she still has her hand on his knee and he's still looking up at the moon base and not at her.
She swallows. "You should tell me about her sometime."
The suggestion hangs between them, rivaling the weight of the century stolen from him, then returned.
"She was so smart, and so beautiful," he says. "She was a lot like you."
He lays his hand over hers on his knee.