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1.
“For the record,” Lup says, “I think he’s cute.”
“Okay,” Taako says. “It’s on the record. Now can we go off-record and discuss your insane taste in men? He’s the most bland person I’ve never seen, and I don’t say that lightly.”
Lup just shrugs. Her brother has always had a type: dark-haired, broad-shouldered men who eventually or immediately reveal themselves to be assholes. Lup’s never been as picky; she likes men mostly, but she’s never been blind to the appeal of sex with other sexes, as it were, and it would be difficult to identify any kind of pattern among the people she likes beyond that. Sue her; she’s always had eclectic taste.
The man in question turns into the same building they’re headed to. Taako elbows her. “Look, Mr. Average is taking the entrance exam too, he’s perfect for you. You two can get married and have two point five kids and a labrador retriever and-”
Lup knocks him with her hip. “At least he probably wouldn’t steal my clothes in the middle of the night and leave me to wake up in a stable,” she points out.
“That was one time ,” Taako whines, dragging his feet, and Lup grabs his wrist and pulls him up the grand steps into the building.
2.
“I still think being late is a better power move,” Taako mutters, slouching down into his cloak. “It’s all about the entrance, you know?”
“Nah, no way,” Lup says. “Look, they’re coming in now, they’re gonna be so fucking intimidated. There’s two of us, they’re gonna think they’re late. C’mon, sit up, look cool.”
“I always look cool,” Taako grumbles, but he pushes his oversized sunglasses more securely up onto his nose and leans back in his chair.
Some people file in. Lup guesses they’re nervous, but she can’t tell; she’s not looking at the door because of how intently she’s pretending to examine her nails. Beside her, she hears Taako whistle. “Hey, big guy,” he says. “Over here, my dude.”
The guy who drops backwards into a chair in front of them is indeed big. Lup isn’t great with other races’ ages, but he seems young, even for a human. He’s wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and a sizeable hole in the pec that Lup isn’t sure is accidental. “Sup?” he says.
Taako turns to Lup. “I want this guy on my team,” he says.
“We’re all on one team,” Lup points out.
“The team of asskicking,” the guy agrees eagerly, holding his hand out to shake. “Magnus Burnsides. I’m here to beat up aliens.” Taako high-fives his hand sideways.
“Oh,” says someone in the doorway. “Am I late?”
Taako’s eyes widen, and then he nudges Lup and points at the door. “It’s that guy,” he says. “Time Magazine’s Most Unremarkable Individual.”
“So it is,” Lup says, and then she goes back to looking cool as hell, because if Taako isn’t going to put the work in then she’s going to do it for the both of them.
3.
“Yeah,” Barry says. “So I’ve written it out as a series of symbols. I thought we should go about this phonetically.”
“Totally,” Lup says. She traces over the letters on the page he’s handed her. “Oh, is this based in Elvish?”
“Yup,” Barry says. “It’s pretty convenient, since vowels are written the same way as some of the mongoose sounds, and I thought, if all three of us speak it anyway, it might make it easier than making up whole new letters.”
“Yeah,” Lup says. “Taako and I don’t actually speak much Elvish. We’ve got a little from when we were kids, but there wasn’t really anyone to speak it to except each other, and most people aren’t too psyched about the scruffy elf kids in their caravan to start with, let alone if they’re speaking gibberish to each other.” It’s too blunt, she realizes, for someone she’s known less than a year, and Lup braces herself for his awkward apologies, his hesitant pity.
“Oh,” Barry says. “I’ll change it, then. Good thing you said something now, or you would have had to learn a new alphabet, huh?”
He turns to a desk to scribble into his notebook, and Lup is left pleasantly surprised.
4.
“I fucking hate this plan,” Taako volunteers.
“None of us like it,” Lup says. She grabs his face and plants a kiss on his forehead. It’s a testament to how serious the situation is that he doesn’t immediately try to scrub it off. “But it’s the best plan we’ve got. If it even works halfway, I’ll see you in a few days anyway.”
Taako scowls at her, but she can see the real fear underneath it. Barry shifts nervously behind her; time is growing short.
“It’s gonna be fine,” she tells him. “Barry and I are a good team. You don’t trust us to keep your ass safe?”
“We need to go now,” Magnus says, moving to touch Taako’s shoulder and then thinking better of it. “You got the Light?” Taako produces it from a pocket, then shoves it back in.
“Be careful,” Lup tells them.
“You too,” Magnus says. Taako flips her off, and then the two of them disappear out the mouth of the cave.
“You good on the plan?” Lup asks Barry.
“It’s a pretty simple plan,” he points out. “Stop undead warriors from following and killing our friends and destroying all chances for their world in the process. Try not to die.”
She pats him on the arm. “You’re a natural. Ready?”
In answer, he just squares his shoulders. They’re good shoulders, Lup thinks.
5.
It takes Lup approximately fifteen seconds to wake up, pleasantly warm, blink in the thin morning light, and realize quite suddenly that she is spooning Barry Bluejeans.
“Oh, shit,” she laughs, scooching backwards. “Sorry, dude.”
“It’s, uh, fine,” Barry says, sitting up and running a hand through his hair. A couple leaves fall out. He has terrible bedhead, but Lup probably does too. Barry’s obviously been awake for a little while, which Lup would be more embarrassed by if it weren’t around five in the morning.
“I should have mentioned it,” she says, lifting herself onto her elbows. “I got used to sleeping next to Taako when we were younger and I never really got out of the habit of having someone next to me. But a lot people don't like being cozied up to with no warning, so that’s on me.”
“No, really,” Barry says, but he’s avoiding her gaze without subtlety, cheeks pink. He clears his throat. “You don’t need to apologize.”
Lup pushes herself up and punches him gently on the arm. “Still, sorry,” she says, making a mental note to sleep on the other side of the fire tonight. “Anyway, we should head out soon.”
“Right,” Barry says. “Right.”
6.
Lup isn’t really sure what happens after the lightning hits her - she does remember that, if only because she knows what the casting looks like for it - gods, how dumb was it that she hadn’t stopped it, but she had been busy with a wall of flames, and if she hadn’t maintained it, the army would have come through, and Barry was out of spell slots, so -
“Barry?” she croaks. It’s a weird thing to think, but after over fifteen years of living with someone, you kinda know what they smell like, so even if the feeling hasn’t come back to her body yet, she knows that he’s there. Or she’s lying in a pool of his shampoo and deodorant.
“I’m here,” he says, exhaling hard. “Fuck, Lup, I thought - I didn’t think you were going to wake up.” As her eyes adjust to the darkness, she can see him sitting over her; her head is resting in his lap. “You took a lot of damage, I wasn’t sure that-” He stops talking abruptly, scrubbing his palm over his face. She moves her hand - with some effort - and ends up holding onto his ankle, the easiest part of him to reach.
“I’m not gonna skip out on seven months of this year,” she says. “M’not some kind of slacker.”
Barry laughs damply. “Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, Lup, I know.”
7.
“I’m okay,” Barry says unconvincingly. “Really, Lup, it’s just a cold, you didn’t have to go to the trouble.”
“Pretty sure it’s the flu, actually,” Lup says. Years of traveling in poorly heated caravans have given her a lot of practice identifying different illnesses on her brother. “And it wasn’t trouble! When your research partner gets sick, you use the time you would have spent researching to make them soup.”
Barry cups the bowl in his hands and breathes in the steam. “Research partner?”
“Would you rather I said study buddy?”
“Nope,” Barry says. “Research partner is good.”
“I mean,” Lup says. “I’ll tell you this because you’re sick and clearly miserable, but like, you’re probably my closest friend? Aside from Taako, obviously, but I don’t know if he counts.”
She had been joking to cheer him up, even if it was the truth, but Barry looks genuinely touched. “Oh,” he says. “Thanks, Lup. You too. I mean, this soup is my best friend right now, but you come in at a pretty close second.”
Lup laughs and gets up. “Feel better, nerd,” she says. “I’ll give you and the soup some alone time. There’s more in the kitchen if you want it.”
8.
There’s this horrible cracking sound as Taako’s spine bends at an impossible angle, then gives way. Lup instantly knows it’s going to be echoing in her ears whenever she tries to sleep. From her vantage point behind a pile of rocks, Lup can see the giant swing Taako around, limp as a ragdoll, and then, seemingly unconcerned with what he’s done, let his body fall. Sound roars in Lup’s ears, and then the giant is yelling and stumbling back as he’s consumed with flames.
Lup doesn’t think before moving - she needs to get to Taako, goddammit, and then Barry’s in front of her, grabbing her around the waist. She’s stronger than he is, and she doesn’t fucking take kindly to being grabbed on the best of days, but Barry pulls her back before she can push him aside, and when he lets go he positions himself in front of her and doesn't let her step around.
“Let me go,” Lup snaps. “Barry, I swear to god, I will kill you, I’m not joking-”
“I know you’re not,” he says, reaching out one hand to hold onto her shoulder. “Lup, Lup, listen, he wouldn’t want you to see him like this.”
Lup has the brief, terrible flash of the image of her brother’s twisted body again. Her heart momentarily forgets to beat through the cold in her chest. Taako’s died before, they all have, but never like this. The breath punches out of her; if Barry wasn’t holding her arms she might have stumbled. Instead, she steps automatically forward, into him, and, slowly enough that she could push him away if she wanted to, Barry brings his arms up around her.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs in her ear. “I’m sorry, Lup, I’m sorry.”
She buries her face in his chest. “Not your fault,” she manages. “Fuck. Fuck .” Barry keeps holding her, tightly but carefully, and oddly it's that tightness that makes it seem like she's suffocating a little less.
9.
“Shut up, shut up,” Lup says, “You’re not going to die.”
“I’m pretty sure he is,” Merle says unhelpfully.
“Shut up,” Lup tells him.
“It’s only two months,” Barry points out through chattering teeth. It’s a warm autumn day, but the venom from whatever bit him earlier that morning has leached the heat from inside him. Lup clutches his cold hand. “We already have the Light, it’ll be fine.”
“This is bullshit,” Lup says furiously. “This is so fucking dumb. Merle, isn’t there anything you can do?”
“The villagers said there was no cure for it,” he says. “I got no way to make one without knowing what the hell that thing was, and even if I did it would take months. He’s got hours. Maybe.”
Lup grits her teeth. This is so needless, so stupid. “Too tight,” Barry murmurs, squeezing her hand gently, and she loosens her grip.
“Sorry,” she says, letting her forehead drop onto their clasped hands.
“S’okay,” he says, smiling at her. “You’ll be fine without me for a little while, study buddy.”
Lup snorts, lifting her head up to look at him. Barry reaches over with the hand she isn’t holding, ignoring the way it trembles, and brushes a piece of hair out of her face. Merle chuckles.
“Shut up,” Lup says to him, but she doesn’t look away from Barry.
10.
“What?” Barry says, glancing up from his book. “You watching me?”
Lup settles her chin in her hand. “Admiring the view, since I’m allowed to now.”
He laughs, heat rising in his cheeks. “That’s supposed to be my line!”
“You were always allowed to,” she says. “You were encouraged to. You just never noticed, dummy.”
“Well, you never said, smarty,” he says, tapping her on the nose with his pen.
“I knew the whole time,” Taako says from the couch, raising a hand without looking up from his magazine. “And if you don’t take your whole situation to a non-common area, I swear to god I’ll go choke down Merle’s most poisonous plant.”
“Fair,” Lup says. She turns back to wink at Barry. “We’re pretty gross, babe.”
“Chyeah,” Taako agrees.
“So we should probably take this somewhere… more private.”
“Please,” Taako says, and then his head snaps up. “Wait, hang on-”
Lup’s back is to Taako, so she smiles at Barry, wide and white. Barry, bless him, is playing the straight man perfectly; his glasses are slipping a little down his nose, his cheeks are pink, and he’s got his eyes fixed on her. “Barry, which room is cleaner? Your room has all those manuscripts you just got, so me and Taako’s room is probably good-”
“Okay!” Taako shrieks. “I get it, I get it, I’m going!” He leaps to his feet and out of the room. From the end of the hall, he yells, “You and I are switching rooms tonight , Bluejeans, you hear?”
“Magnus snores,” Barry calls after him, but Taako must already be out of earshot.
11.
They still die, sometimes. It’s never easy. None of the crew’s deaths are; Lup had wondered, early on, if they would somehow become less affected by each other’s deaths, but if anything it’s gotten worse as they grow closer together. Lup’s memories of biological family beyond Taako and their aunt are fairly hazy and resentful, but she thinks this is what it’s supposed to be like.
In the fifty-something years the crew has spent together, the semi-professional barriers that used to exist between them have largely broken down. It’s not unusual, now, to see Taako asleep on the couch, head resting in Lucretia’s lap while she writes, or for Merle to present them each with rocks and sticks that reminded him of them. Lup makes fun of him for it, but she keeps most of them.
It’s rare that they’re ever all on the Starblaster at the same time for more than a couple days, and so when it does work out, it’s an unspoken rule that a big deal must be made. Lup and Taako make them a feast, and usually no one bothers to go back to their rooms; if it’s nice out, they camp outside.
“There’s more stars here than at home,” Barry says, his voice reduced to a low rumble to avoid waking the others up.
“Mm,” Lup agrees.
“I was reading,” Barry says. “It’s not a big deal yet, because I have no idea if it’ll work, but I might have found something that could help us against the Hunger.”
Lup turns her head and presses a kiss to his jaw. “Tell me in the morning,” she says, and Barry nods and pulls her closer against him. He understands.
12.
The cuffs around Barry’s wrists look uncomfortable, but Lup has bigger concerns. Magnus is in bad shape on her left, the head wound he received hours ago still bleeding sluggishly. On her right, Taako is twisted awkwardly with one leg underneath him to avoid kneeling on his broken knee, and on his right Davenport keeps surreptitiously spitting out globs of blood.
Still, the rush of relief Lup feels on seeing Barry is indescribable. Aside from being able to look at his sweet face now, it confirms what she had suspected: Merle and Lucretia are still on the ship.
“One of them has to die,” the asshole who’s been interrogating them tells Barry. “Tell us the information we want to know or pick one of them to be killed.”
Barry blinks at him. “Wait,” he says. “So if I pick one of them, I don’t need to tell you anything?”
This is clearly not the answer the guy was expecting. “But if you tell us the information, none of them need to die,” he explains to Barry, clearly worried he’s overestimated Barry’s intelligence.
“No, I get it,” Barry says, “I pick her.” He nods at Lup. It’s not a bad delivery, for what it is, but if it were Lup she would have made it a lot more dramatic. Their interrogator has his back turned to her so she mouths, Sell it! at Barry.
“I… okay,” the asshole says. He nods at one of the guards standing behind Lup. “Do it, I guess.” He turns back to Barry as Lup is dragged forward. “The fuck is wrong with you?” he asks Barry. “You just hate the people you work with?”
The guard positioning an axe over Lup’s head mutters, “I can relate.”
“She’s my girlfriend, actually,” Barry says. The axe comes down. “But she can take care of herself.”
Lup taps him on the shoulder with one spectral finger. “Thanks for helping me out of my body, bro,” she says. “Hope you don’t mind if I return the favor.”
Later, when Barry’s in bed and Lup is hovering next to him - it’s the best solution they can find for when one of them is mostly incorporeal - she says, “That was pretty cool, babe.”
“You did the hard work,” he says, starting to reach for her and then remembering it won’t work. “And I threw up when I accidentally looked at your body.”
“Yeah, it was pretty gross,” Lup says. Barry doesn’t say anything. “Are you… okay about it?” she asks. “Like, I know it was my body bleeding all over the floor, but… I’m right here.”
“I’m okay,” Barry says, just a little hoarsely. He clears his throat. “I know you’re fine, I just wish I could hold you.”
It isn’t all a breeze, this whole lich thing. They’re figuring it out.
13.
The worst it maybe ever gets is when all of them die at once. Except Lup and Barry are fine, of course. But it doesn’t make it easier, when she rises up and out and turns around and there’s her body, and it’s lying next to Taako’s, but he’s dead for the next seven months and she’s fine. Next to his slumped form is Magnus, his strong hands curled loosely at his sides, and next to him, Lucretia, lying on her side like she fell asleep reading. And Lup is completely fine.
“Should we bury them?” Barry asks, later. They’ve killed the people who killed the others, but it doesn’t make it better.
“Is it awful if I don’t want to go back?” Lup asks. She doesn’t think she can stand it, to see the rest of them exactly where they left them.
“No,” Barry says. “It’s not awful at all.”
It’s a bad year. The Starblaster is empty; even she and Barry float through it silently, and it’s not as though they need to eat, so most of the rooms go entirely unused. They can’t leave; they need to protect the ship, and anyway, it’s not as though two liches can take a stroll through town.
“Wake me up when the Hunger gets here,” Lup will say, and she’ll sleep - well, not exactly sleep, but close enough - for days and days. Barry takes out every lab report and notebook he’s ever filled and organizes them one way, then another. They sit together for hours, talking sometimes, sometimes not. But when the Hunger does come, black tendrils crashing down onto this barren world, it feels like a relief.
“Have a nice vacation?” Taako asks when he is threaded back into being, flipping hair out of his eyes. “Nice little honeymoon without the rest of us all up in your business?”
Lup leaps at him and squeezes him so tightly in her newly reformed arms that he wheezes. “You betcha,” she says, and she doesn’t mention that she knows what being a ghost feels like now.
She turns back to Barry, grabs him, and kisses him all over his face. There’s a lightness in her bones that comes partly from the pleasure of having bones again, and partly from the ability to reach out and touch all of them. Taako puts on music and Lup seizes Merle’s hands and spins him around the kitchen before passing him off to Davenport and reaching for Magnus, who sweeps her into a bear hug.
“Thank you for keeping me sane,” she tells Barry later that night as they clean up the debris from dinner, Lup secretly delighted by the evidence of life in the Starblaster again. “I don’t think I would have been able to stand it otherwise.”
He smiles at her. There’s a growing warmth in Lup’s chest - and gods, is it good to have a chest again. “Not sick of me yet?”
Lup reaches out for him and runs her hands over his face and shoulders and the squishy part of his stomach right above his hips. She doesn’t understand how so much person can fit in one body. “I could never,” she says. “Barry, I could never .”
“I believe you,” Barry says, earnest in a way that eighty-plus years of destruction haven’t managed to beat out of him.
Lup leans into him, burying her face in his shoulder. “Thank you,” she says again, into his shirt, and he says, his voice a little rough, “Lup, you know I’ll always-” and she says, “I know.”
14.
She should give them more of an explanation, she knows, but it’s not as though she can be killed. Although it would be kind of embarrassing to come back without a body.
“I’m going to bed,” Barry tells her, yawning. He’s barefoot, and when he leans around the counter to kiss her, he smells like soap. Lup resists the urge to pull him in closer, because if she did he might ask if something was wrong . She’s never been good at lying to him. “You coming?” he asks.
“Soon,” Lup tells him. “I just need to finish one thing.” It isn’t a lie.
Barry smiles. “You just like taking advantage of my abilities as a bed-warmer.”
“You caught me, babe.” She kisses him again because she can get away with it, because she needs something to take with her in the next couple days. Barry leans his forehead against hers. She loves when he’s like this, heavy and warm and soft. “I don’t know how long this is going to take though, so don’t wait up.”
“Okay,” Barry says, and he kisses her on the cheek. “Night.”
Barry’s asleep when she creeps into their room - she had known he would be, because she had purposefully waited for his breath to even out. Her suitcase is fully packed, but Lup makes the mistake of looking back at him, and the urge to crawl into bed beside him is so overwhelming it almost hurts. She can’t touch him, or say anything, because Barry’s a light sleeper, but she blows a kiss at him before pulling her card out of her pocket and setting it down.
Back soon .
It isn’t a lie. Or, she didn’t think it was.
15.
“Barry?” Lup murmurs.
His hand in her hair pauses before resuming stroking. “Yeah?”
“Were you angry with me?” She turns her head so she can see his face. Now that she has her body back, they had honestly intended to have sex, but somehow in the undressing it turned into holding each other and breathing and trying not to cry. She’s lying on top of him in only her underwear, head resting on his chest. Barry is also shirtless, but still has his jeans on. He’s warm. “When I disappeared?”
Barry thinks about it. Lup fucking loves that about him, that he doesn’t pretend to have the answers to hard questions right away. “Maybe at one point,” he says finally. “I mean, I knew you wouldn’t just leave . So I couldn’t understand. I was definitely angry about that. But I think when I got scared, I stopped being so mad, because if something happened to you, it wouldn’t have been your fault. And I think I thought that if you were really, you know, gone, then I wouldn’t want the last thing I felt about you to be anger.”
He traces calloused fingers over her shoulder and back as he speaks, like he’s categorizing every bone and muscle that she has again. He isn’t looking at her face, but as she watches him, his gaze wanders over to meet hers. “Were you angry with me for not finding you?” he asks quietly.
“I wasn’t much of anything,” Lup admits. “For a long time. I mean, until Taako found me, I was just - numb. Not exactly meditating, but it felt kinda like that.” She bites back the you can’t imagine how bad it was, babe , because even if Barry got to eat and sleep and talk to people for that decade, he was just as alone as she was.
A tear slips down Barry’s cheek. His glasses are crooked. “I can’t imagine,” he says.
Lup pulls herself forward so she’s sitting over him and takes his face in her hands. “You are not allowed,” she tells him, “to blame yourself for what happened to me. Honestly, hon, I think we can safely say becoming a being of pure magic and then making a weapon that ate magic was on me.” She leans down to kiss him for emphasis. “You hear? Not allowed.”
Barry concedes to a sniff-laugh. “Okay,” he says, and then, helplessly, “God, Lup, you’re so-”
“Yeah,” she says, breathless. “You too, babe.” It’s almost too much, the feeling of skin touching skin after ten years of absence, and Lup is suddenly high on it.
Barry sits halfway up to kiss her again, propping his elbows underneath him, and then he gets an arm around her waist and leans even closer, until she’s sitting in his lap. He breaks away to press a kiss to her jaw and then neck and say, “Mind if I-?” and gestures in the direction he’s traveling.
And Lup says, “I most certainly do not mind, but get those pants off first, Bluejeans!” and he laughs against her collarbone. For someone who hasn’t had a beating heart in over ten years, it’s hard to tell the difference between the vibration of Barry’s laugh and the hard battering inside her chest, but honestly, why bother.