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Lucretia had thought of almost everything when she put her plan into action. It had to be incredibly complicated, to manipulate the memories of an entire plane, to cover all of her bases, to be aware of all contingencies and anything that could cause her to slip up, anything that might reveal the truth.
What she didn't account for was that the brain was not a simple machine, memories were not stored like books on a shelf, able to be taken in and out and replaced without consequence. If memories were akin to a puzzle then it was less of a jigsaw and more of a sliding square puzzle; move one piece and the rest must shift to fill its place.
There is a version of Taako who always had a companion, who grew up loved even when they had no home, no family but each other. Lup protected him and he protected her, they raised each other when they had no parents to do it for them; after their aunt died, they made the decision to run away together rather than continue to be passed around between family members they barely knew, who never cared about them. There is a version of Taako who rarely stopped holding his sister's hand for the first ten or so years of his life, lest they be separated, who loves her with everything he is, who learned to be a good person from watching her.
There is second version of Taako, and the two are not mutually exclusive. A Taako who had no one and nothing, who ran because he was scared and angry (always, always so angry) rather than because he knew that he would be okay knowing he always had someone to watch his back. He learned not to trust in anyone, to look out for himself and only himself, to lie and cheat and keep his head down, to take what he could get and give nothing in return. He couldn't look in a mirror sometimes because he looked at his own face and saw static and everything felt wrong and he never knew why.
The latter does not go away just because he remembers being the former. They exist impossibly in the same space, fractured pieces that don't quite form a whole person.
Despite all the confusion going on in his head, confusion he doesn’t try to talk about because how can he, Taako finds himself smiling more, now that Lup is back. He has reasons to smile – his friends and family safe, his sister sort of alive, the end of the world averted. For the time being, they’ve stayed on the moon base, beginning the long process of growing a new body for Lup and repairing the damage that the Hunger did to this world.
Mostly Taako keeps his distance from that, he helps but only when he’s asked. Part of it is that he’s fucking exhausted. Part of it is that Lucretia is, naturally, the leader everyone turns to in this time of need, and he can’t. Can’t look at her without white hot rage boiling in his veins, without feeling sick, and somehow everyone else is fine, fine with what she did, except for him. And maybe Davenport, who took the real short end of the stick in this whole mess, and hell if that doesn’t make Taako feel like an ass, wallowing in the injustice done to him when Lucretia literally took everything from Davenport. They should talk, probably, that would be the decent thing to do. Maybe one day.
For now his focus is on Lup, Lup who is finally free, Lup who doesn’t sleep or even meditate in this spectral form, with little to do but torment everyone on the moon base by drifting through walls and looking as terrifying as possible. He and Barry stay up late into the night with her and too many pots of coffee, keeping each other company and talking. He wants her to know everything, but it’s harder than he expects. He tries to tell her about Sizzle It Up, but any time Sazed is mentioned the words turn to ash in his mouth. She would have never let it go that far, if she had been there, would have known Sazed wasn’t meant to be trusted, would have stuck around and tried to save those people instead of running and it’s wrong that she doesn’t already know, that she wasn’t around for those horrible years, When he can’t keep talking about it, Barry tells them about what he went through in those years, searching for someone whose name he couldn’t even know, trusting himself to see it through. I should have been there, Taako thinks, more than a little bitter, I should have been with you, searching for her. She should never have been missing in the first place. He’s not sure if he could have done what Barry did.
For Lup’s part, she’s oddly quiet about her time in the umbra staff, brushing it off like it’s all a big joke instead of a decade of imprisonment. He wants to push, but he doesn’t – he doesn’t like it when she pushes him to talk about Sizzle It Up, after all, so he usually changes the subject – he sees how upset Barry is, thinking about her stuck in there, and maybe it’s best to spare them all.
Ten years without her was a blip in time compared to his lifespan, but it felt so long, and sometimes it feels like no time at all, because he didn't even know who she was during that time. There is still a part of him that doesn't know her. It wells up in him, turns her face to static, until he shoves it down, buries it deep in his mind. This isn't real, he knows that. Lup is what's real, fantastic, ridiculous Lup. He knows this.
It feels real.
He doesn't mean to keep it from anyone, really, because he assumes everyone is having the same problems he is at first. Everyone's mind got fucked by Lucretia, surely everyone else sometimes has trouble remembering things like how old they are, or their childhood home, or the first time they felt the electric buzz of magic through their veins, or the sound of their sister's voice.
He's cooking dinner for everyone one night, not even a hard recipe really, one that Lup wrote and he helped perfect years ago. Laughing at something she said, he goes to pull the next ingredient he needs from the cupboard and freezes, mind going blank.
He doesn't know what he needs. He searches his mind and he doesn't even know what he's trying to make.
"Koko?" Lup waves a spectral hand in front of his eyes, he realizes that she was speaking but he couldn't hear her. "You still with me, bub?"
"I don't..." He grits his teeth, head aching. "I'm fine."
He isn't. Something is - wrong, in his head, fractured, his whole world off kilter, he grips the edge of the counter to keep himself steady, not fully present - they are on the Starblaster cooking this recipe for the hundredth time, moving around each other like a choreographed dance, and he knows it was real but it feels like a dream; now they are in their twenties and working their first real restaurant job and Lup is making him test the recipe with her, perfecting it; now he is in his twenties and alone slaving away in his first real restaurant job and he is not making this recipe, never has because it was never written; he is in his kitchen on the moon and he both knows this recipe by heart and has never even heard of it, and static clouds his periphery.
"I'm fine," he says again, shaking his head, shaking away the static, "what was your secret ingredient again?"
"Uh, almond extract?" She laughs, reaching past him to pull it off the shelf, focusing her spectral form enough to touch it. "It's not really a secret, though... you sure you're okay?"
His head pounds as he measures out the almond extract. Half a tablespoon. Of course. He knows this recipe, walks himself through the steps flawlessly as the world straightens on its axis and everything comes back together, of course he knows it, he helped write it. He gives Lup a grin and a thumbs up, and she returns the gesture but keeps watching him as he works, her brow furrowed in concern.
He's trying to keep it to himself, trying to keep it together. He just doesn't want to bother anyone with it, not when everyone is so happy, everyone else is fine and he has no reason to be like this, to still be so fucked up.
But his mind is a fucking traitor, malfunctioning at the worst times. It’s a bad day already, he has a lot of those, and they make him so angry. Angry at himself, but mostly angry at Lucretia, though that isn’t entirely fair and he knows it because he had bad days even before he got his memory back, but it’s much easier to put the blame on her. He woke up screaming again, still half stuck in a nightmare, and it’s hard to even want to be around people. Mostly they leave him alone, it’s probably best for everyone that way, he won’t bring them down.
But Barry brought him a drink and now they're just chilling in Taako's room, he's half-listening as Barry talks about how Lup's creepy new clone body is coming along (the man gets entirely too excited about necromancy sometimes) while he tries to act like he's remotely okay, but nothing feels real, not the room around him, or the bed he's sitting in, or even his body; he blinks down at his hands and doesn't recognize the chipped paint on his bitten-down nails. A rational voice in his mind informs him that he's dissociating, that this happened to him sometimes even before his brain got royally fucked, but that information isn't actually helpful at all, thanks, what the fuck do I do about it?
A voice, gruff and human, breaks through the fog, and Taako stares at the stranger in front of him "Sorry, spaced out for a sec. What did you say?" He says politely, not particularly caring about whatever they were talking about, too much going on in his head to really process it.
"Oh, nothing, just that Lup is really impatient for her body to be finished," the man laughs. Larry? Harold? Barold, maybe. Nah, that's not a real name.
"Lup?" Taako replies blankly, that means something to him, doesn't it? Lup. That should mean something. It makes him think of fire, of hot summer days. There's that static again, clouding his mind.
Barry - of course that's Barry, he knows Barry - stares at him, eyes wide, terrified, why is he so scared? "...Yeah, Taako," he says slowly, "Lup? You... you remember Lup, right? Fuck, Taako, tell me you know who Lup is."
"I don't..." Taako groans, eyes closed. "God, my head hurts."
"Just - lay down for a minute, buddy, I'll be back," and Barry rushes out of the room. Taako realizes his hands are shaking, his heart pounding and he doesn't know why, but at least he feels something, at least its proof he's real. He lays down curled up on his side, waiting for the pain to subside.
Barry comes back, talking quickly to the woman following him, a woman in a red robe who kneels on the floor by Taako's bed, looking down at him. "Hey, bro," she says, voice carefully controlled. "Not feeling too great, huh?"
He shakes his head, pressing his face into his pillow, it's hard to look directly at her, like she isn't fully there.
"Can you look at me, hon?" the woman says. He tries, but for a second there is only static where a person should be, and he flinches. When he looks again the static is gone. The woman is beautiful, she has thick blonde hair like him, pointy ears like him, the same eyes. He smiles; he likes her, though he doesn't know why.
“I know you,” he says.
“Better than anyone, yeah. You’re gonna be fine, just stay here with me. Try to name five things you can see."
"I don't want to,” he mumbles, like a petulant child, shutting his eyes.
"Tough shit. Sooner you do it, sooner I’ll leave you alone.”
"Okay, jeez. I see you." He takes stock of what's around him - he's in his room, he knows that, which means he’s a real person who has a room, and that at least is a comfort. He’s on a bed, his bed. His pillowcase is silk, he has a down blanket that he's kicked to the floor. That's real. He doesn't know why everyone is so worried, he can take care of himself, he always has.
"That's good. What else?"
"You look like you could be my sister," he says with a laugh. "Isn't that weird?"
And the woman – comes apart, it’s the only way to describe it, all red electric sparks and her form flickering out like a candle flame, Taako startles and shrinks back and Barry rushes to her side, he doesn’t touch her but he comes as close as he can. “Lup, hey, hey. Stay together for me.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Her voice is high, panicked as Barry tries to calm her down. When Taako looks at her for a moment she doesn’t have a face, just a bare skull. He remembers a red robed skeleton in a cave, holding an umbrella, he hadn’t known why that moment felt so important at the time but he knows now – does he know?
“I don’t know, babe, but we’ll figure it out, I promise,” Barry says, voice gentle, loving, he must love this woman who Taako should know but doesn’t. He decides to work through it logically – he knows Barry, so who does Barry love?
“It’s me, Taako,” Lup pleads, “it’s me, we’ve been through so much together, don’t you recognize me? Do you know who you are?”
“I’m Taako,” he says, that’s an easy one. “From TV.”
“That’s right,” she laughs, wiping her eyes, “you’re the world’s greatest wizard. You started learning magic for me, remember? I wanted you to learn transmutation to help me look like a girl and you said –“
“I said that you are a girl, so you already look like one,” Taako says, everything coming to him in a rush that makes him dizzy, the room around him a blur but Lup is there, the only solid thing there is, how could he forget Lup? “I… I know you. I know you. Lup.” He’s crying, he realizes, he doesn’t know when that happened, and he’s remembering her all over again. “Lup -”
She hugs him the best she can, not quite solid, but enough that Taako can feel it if he pretends, if they both focus hard enough on being real. “Don’t you ever fucking scare me like that again,” she growls. He laughs, a little, and lets her go to flop back onto the bed, his limbs feel heavy, not strong enough to hold him up, his head fuzzy like he’s just woken from a long nap. “Hey,” she says, making a motion to brush his hair from his eyes, but her hand passes through him.
“’m so tired.”
“Get some rest. I’ll be right here.”
He wakes up to voices all around him, head still aching and his mouth dry, he shoves his face into his pillow to catch a few more moments of rest before he starts to process the voices.
“And then he just remembered again, like nothing happened,” that’s Lup, and he’s relieved that his mind doesn’t resist that thought, that he knows her. “What’s going on? That can’t be normal, right?”
“I don’t know for sure, I – I was never under the effects of the voidfish, but I suppose it could take time to fully recover.”
His ears twitch when he hears Lucretia’s voice, and he opens his eyes. Sure enough there she is, standing over him but looking at Lup, brow furrowed in concern. He hasn’t seen her for more than a minute or two since the day of story and song, refusing to stay in the same room if she was there, avoiding her eye if he passes her in the hall, taking the stairs if she gets in the elevator before him. She tries to talk to him, but he acts like he doesn’t hear. It surprises him, the anger that flares in his chest when he sees her, how hot it is, how much it hurts to still be so mad. And Lup just forgave her like it was all nothing, a minor inconvenience and not over a hundred years gone.
“I think he must still be feeling some residual effects,” Lucretia says. “It wasn’t just our journey that was erased, for him, it was everything to do with you. That must be harder for adjust to.”
“Yeah, okay, but how do I fix him?” Lup asks, impatient. It occurs to him that Barry is gone, and he feels a twinge of guilt, it must have been terrifying to witness Taako forgetting again, he’ll have to make sure he’s alright later.
“Well, you don’t – you don’t just fix people, I – I mean, I don’t know for sure. If he’s confused by false memories I expect talking him through it would help, reminding him what’s real and what isn’t...”
“Hey,” Taako says, probably too loudly but he’s satisfied when Lucretia jumps a little, “I’m right fucking here, you know, you could ask me.”
“Taako!” Lup is by his side in an instant, “Hey, what’s my name?”
“I’m fine, Lulu, cut it out.”
“An hour ago you didn’t even know me, okay, forgive me for being a little fucking freaked out!”
“Taako,” Lucretia says, voice level, “does this happen to you often?”
“Yeah? It’s like, whatever? Quick question, who the fuck let you in here?” He glares her down, sitting up and ignoring how his head spins.
Lucretia leans on her staff, not the Bulwark staff anymore but an even simpler one of plain brown wood. “Lup called me, you gave her and Barry quite a fright.”
“Well as you can see, I’m just peachy, considering I got brain-raped by a magic jellyfish for a decade.”
“I’m, so, so sorry, Taako,” Lucretia says, and Taako grits his teeth, her saying it again doesn’t make him believe it any more. Or rather, he absolutely believes that she’s sorry, but she will never be sorry enough for his liking. “I didn’t know this was even a possibility. I know I hurt you, but I want to help, if you’ll let me.”
“You can start by getting the fuck out of my room.”
“Taako, come on,” Lup begins, but he cuts her off, standing up.
“No, alright? Fuck this, I don’t want her here, I don’t want to talk to her, I don’t want anything to fucking do with her!” His voice raises with every word until he’s shouting, and it makes him even angrier that Lucretia doesn’t flinch away, she simply closes his eyes and accepts the abuse like she thinks she deserves it, he’d rather see her fight back, yell at him too, that’s the Lucretia he knows. And how could Lup even think to bring her here, think that he wanted her help, hasn’t she done enough?
“Taako!” Lup scolds, and Taako’s ears droop.
“It’s fine. I should go,” Lucretia says, turning toward the door, if he didn’t know her so well he would think she was cold, but he can see through the façade she’s built, can see how she’s hurting. “If anything changes, if you need any help at all…”
“See you, Madame Director,” he says, venom dripping from each syllable. That does make her flinch. Good.
“C’mon, Lucy, wait,” Lup rushes out of the room after her, and Taako slams the door behind both of them. He can hear them talking in the other room but he can’t make out what they’re saying, if they’re talking about him, voices low and hushed. Finally his space is quiet, finally he can breathe without everyone watching him, looking at him like he’s broken. Knowing he’s broken. He runs a hand through his hair, breathing in shakily, he never wanted anyone to know, wanted to figure this out and fix himself, no one was supposed to know he was anything but whole.
They were bound to find out, he knows – if not Lup then Magnus or Merle, they all know him maybe better than he knows himself, but if they were going to find out he wanted it to be because he told them, because he asked for help. Not like this, not by making a fool of himself. His face burns with shame as he paces around his room, kicking trash and discarded clothes aside as he goes.
That she called Lucretia, of all people – it makes sense, but fuck. She, of all people, needs to believe that he’s fine. That would be the ultimate revenge, you fucked me up but I’m still here, I’m fine, you will never break me. Well, that cat’s out of the fucking bag, isn’t it.
His room is too small, suddenly, like it’s closing in on him, so even though Lucretia might still be out there he leaves, he needs to get this energy out somehow, needs to cook something. Anything. When he gets there it’s just Lup, everyone else is gone, and she crosses her arms over her chest and raises her eyebrows at him. He doesn’t say anything, just starts pulling ingredients out of the cupboard, flour, sugar, vanilla, butter, chocolate chips. He dumps things in the bowl without measuring, gets flour all over the counter.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She finally bursts out,
“Nothing.”
“Nothing my ass, Taako. You know, Lucretia was really worried about you? She feels responsible for all this, she just wanted to help.”
“Oh, does she? Does she feel fucking responsible!?” He laughs, voice too high pitched, slamming the spoon down in the bowl of half-mixed dough and finally turning to face his sister. She’s furious, eyes all red.
“Who else was I supposed to go to? She knows more about the voidfish than anyone!”
“God, Lup, you know how I feel about this –“
“No, I don’t, because you don’t talk to anyone, I thought maybe you’d have gotten over yourself by now!”
“She’s the one who did this to me. To us.”
“Lucretia apologized, I don’t know what else you want –“
“No, you don’t know!” And he doesn’t mean to yell again but he can’t help it, all that anger and hurt still balled up in his chest and needing out, needing to go anywhere, so he shouts, “You don’t know because you were dead, Lup, you weren’t there, you’re not the one who had to forget everything that ever mattered, you have no fucking idea what she took from me!”
He laughs again, pacing and pulling at his hair. Lup stares at him, silent, eyes following his movement. “You know I thought I was an idiot for the longest time? Y’know Taako, the simple idiot wizard! That’s how everyone knew me, that ditz from the cooking show, can’t even transmute an elderberry without poisoning everyone! After she was done with me I wasn’t even a fucking wizard anymore, I started from nothing, all that power in me and I had no idea what to do with it – because I learned magic for you and I didn’t have you, so I never learned it! Years of our childhood just static, thinking I was alone through everything and I fucking hated myself, I felt like half a person and I didn’t know why, I thought I was just broken!”
All of the energy drains from him then, and he slumps against the counter, breathing hard. Lup’s arms are wrapped around herself, flickering with red sparks as she stares at him, stricken. This is wrong. He has never known her to take being yelled at without fighting back.
“It’s her fault,” he whispers, throat raw, staring down at the floor. “I’m not forgiving her. I won’t.”
He looks up again when he realizes with a start that Lup is crying, trying to hide it behind her hand - not really crying, her body is pure magic mimicking the shape of an elf, there are no tears to shed, but she can still remember how it feels to cry, how it makes her shoulders shake with restrained sobs. Taako stands up straight, reaching out to her, but his hand falls back to his side because he can’t actually touch her, not in this form, not when she’s crackling and sparking trying to keep herself together.
“Lulu...”
“Do you hate me, too?” She sobs, and Taako’s heart breaks, he’s by her side in an instant, anger melting away like ice, but he doesn’t know what to do. She sinks to the kitchen floor, hugging her knees to her chest. “Did you hate me for leaving?”
“No,” he says, “no, no, Lulu, no, I could never.”
“You should,” she says, sniffling, “I’m the one who left, if – if I hadn’t then she wouldn’t have erased me, w-we would’ve still been together. It’s my fault you were alone. Taako, I had no idea…”
“It wasn’t your fault, you were just doing what you thought was right -”
“So was Lucretia! A-and you don’t talk to me, you don’t let anyone help you, what else am I supposed to think?”
He starts to say that he doesn’t need help, he doesn’t need anyone, but that isn’t the real him talking. That’s the Taako who never had Lup. The real Taako would have talked to her. He would have told her everything instead of hiding from the one person who knows him better than anyone.
“I could never hate you,” he says, and there isn’t an inch of him that doubts that. “Don’t talk like that. Dingus.”
He’s not sure if it’s actually the right thing to say until she lets out a watery laugh, and he relaxes a fraction. “Shut up, goofus.” She says, rubbing her eyes. “Ugh. It kind of feels good to cry. Is that weird? Like, at least I’m feeling something, sometimes it’s like I’m still stuck in that stupid umbrella, couldn’t feel a damn thing in there. I hate this stupid body.”
It’s the first time he’s heard her talk openly about how it feels to be a lich, how it felt to be trapped – how bad it actually was. He sits down next to her, leaning on the cabinet. The handle digs into his back, but he doesn’t move away from her, not for anything in this world.
“I don’t even know which parts of me are real,” he says, strange to vocalize it, to put words to what he’s been feeling. “They all feel real, but I know I must have made most of it up, right? And I don’t think you’d like who I was without you. But I spent so much time as him, maybe that’s just who I am now.”
“You’re my Taako,” Lup insists. She puts an arm around his shoulders, and they can’t quite touch, but he can pretend to lean on her, to relax into her like he used to. She’ll have a body soon and he’ll hold her properly then, like when they were kids, huddled together for warmth and safety. “Always. When you forget, I’ll remind you.”
“I won’t forget you,” he swears, but they both know that’s not something either of them can promise yet, not while he’s still recovering from what Lucretia did to them. But he remembers what Lucretia had said earlier, about just talking through the memories, having Lup confirm what was real and what wasn’t. “I remember getting picked on in one of the caravans we were with. That one circus, I don’t remember the name. That half-orc kid who hated elves always shoved me around. I wasn’t strong enough to fight back, so he beat me up and left me behind when the wagon left. Was that real?”
Lup shakes her head. “Not real. I lit that little fuck’s hair on fire. Never let him touch you. We defo got kicked out of that circus, though.”
Taako slumps back against the wall with a sigh. “Okay, what about the birthday cake we made for Auntie? You wanted to surprise her so we didn’t ask for help and it turned out all rubbery because of all the eggs, and we were all upset when she came home but she just laughed and showed us how to make a cake from scratch…” He’s almost afraid to know the answer, afraid of the confusion he feels every time he has to reconcile one of his memories, both versions feeling equally real until the true one manages to come out on top, at least for a while. “Real or not real?”
“Real.” She presses a kiss to the top of his head, and he closes his eyes and tries to feel it.
The deck of the Starblaster is still blackened and torn up from the battle with the Hunger, but he doesn’t go to the deck. On the inside it’s surprisingly intact, dusty from disuse and a mess from Davenport’s wild flying but otherwise the same as he remembers. Taako steps into the cabin slow like walking through water, steps inside like he has thousands of times before, his steps echoing on the metal stairs. They lead into the general living quarters, the space that had served as meeting room and as a living room of sorts. Taako stops in the center of the room and looks around him. At the stained old sofa, the shelf of books up against the wall, most of its contents fallen to the floor, an old record player. He lived here, for a hundred years this was his home. He tells himself this over and over and over but it feels no more like the truth, like when you say a word too many times and it no longer feels like a real word.
The galley will feel more like home, he decides, he had spent more time there than anywhere else on the ship. But when he passes through the living room and enters the galley he realizes he isn’t alone. Lucretia looks surprised to see him, to see anyone here as he comes in, stopping in the doorway. There’s a skillet in her hand, which she finishes hanging up on its hook on the wall, this room in general is tidier than the last, most things back in their place. They stare at each other for a moment, neither sure who should make the first move. He realizes that his fist is clenched as if around a wand, and tries to loosen it.
“I didn’t know anyone would be here,” he says, not quite apologizing for being there, as the silence drags, without even the hum of the bond engine to fill the space.
“I can go,” she says, though she doesn’t move. It is all the more striking to him here, her age, he had only ever known her as a young woman, all of them frozen in time for a hundred years, and now there are lines around her eyes and her once dark hair is white like snow. Things he never questioned when she was just Madame Director but are strange to see on Lucretia.
He shrugs; it doesn’t matter, ultimately. He’s tired today, no energy to fight. “It’s whatever.” He steps further into the room, letting his hands trail across the stone counters, the handles on the cabinets, the stove that had served him so well, through massive feasts and late-night stress baking and Magnus’s failed attempts to make grilled cheese. There are plates and cups on the shelves, mismatched things picked up from a hundred different worlds, some he thinks they brought from home, but he couldn’t tell you which ones now.
Lucretia doesn’t leave. He can feel her eyes on him as he drifts through the galley like a ghost, she leans on the table, where she had sat with her journals for hours, where Barry and Lup had drank pots of coffee to fuel their research and still fell asleep on top of each other in the middle of their notes. He tries to remember that he had existed here, too, but the thoughts pass through his mind like leaves floating down a river.
“What are you doing in here?” He asks, still not looking at her. He’s staring at a stain on the floor, he remembers trying to clean it once, but he can’t remember where it’s from and that bothers him, even though it’s probably not even his shitty broken brain doing it but just the regular kind of forgetting.
“Feeling homesick, I suppose,” she answers simply. “You?”
“All this,” he gestures around, meaning all of it, the ship, this lost life, himself, “feels like a dream to me, right now.”
She nods like she could possibly understand, finally looking away from him, biting her lip as she stares at the floor. He brushes by her before she can speak again, through the galley, following the narrow halls, a testament to memory that he doesn’t stub his toes on anything or take a wrong turn, wandering through this place without paying attention to where he puts his feet, and this oddly makes him feel a little better. The door to his old quarters isn’t locked which is good, he has no idea where his key is. But his hand trembles a little as he pushes it open.
He lets out a long breath, shutting the door behind him. It’s musty in here, but underneath that a smell he remembers, like spice and lavender and incense. A layer of dust coats everything, immediately he goes to the porthole and opens it, letting fresh air inside, dust glittering like fools gold in the light. There are his old spellbooks, half-burned candles, jars of spell components spilled out on the floor, junk and knick-knacks and shiny cheap jewelry, clothes he forgot he owned spilling out of the closet. The bottom bunk had always been his, because he always had night terrors and Lup didn’t want him rolling out of bed. After she finally got together with Barry and moved into his room, he had still kept the bottom bunk, and then he had his own room for the first time in his life. That had been an incredibly strange transition, and sometimes he just went into their room anyway, snuggling between them, and the seven of them had no boundaries at that point anyway so Barry didn’t even mind.
He sits down on that bunk now, exhaling again, bouncing on the too-firm mattress. This was real. He had lived here. He remembers it, but it’s still dream-like, like even now he’s struggling to wake up. He pinches himself, but nothing changes, and then he’s glad no one else was around to see him do that. He sighs and lays down, the pillow smelling of dust under his cheek, he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to work through this other than to give his mind time to heal, but what if it never does?
He rolls over onto his side, looking around the room again but mostly staring at the carpeted floor. There’s a little purple stain that his eyes lock on, nail polish that had dripped and dried before they could clean it up. Countless evenings spent sitting on that floor with Lup, and sometimes Lucretia, because she was the only other girl on the ship and Taako was more femme than either of them so they all needed girl time, once in a while. Lucretia would braid his hair in increasingly intricate patterns, while Lup just shaved off various sections of her own dyed orange locks, just laughing it off and owning it if she looked like shit. Nights of mud masks and painting each other’s nails, convincing Lucretia to finally do something new with her hair, it took decades for her to let Lup give her a pixie cut, and then she just stuck with that, keeping her hair cropped short to this day. Pretending he didn’t notice the shy little glances that Lucretia sent Lup’s way when she thought no one was looking, as if everyone on the ship didn’t know she was queer, as if Taako himself hadn’t seen her little sketches of Lup in the corners of her journals. He’d considered it true gay solidarity that he kept his mouth shut when normally he told Lup everything; the universal gay experience of crushing on someone you couldn’t have, been there-done that. If he focuses he can imagine them there now, young and laughing like nothing had ever broken.
Real or not real? He would ask if Lup was here right now, but she isn’t, he didn’t tell her he was coming here, so he asks himself. Real or not real?
And he answers, real, real, real.
He closes his eyes, feeling the old quilt underneath him and the scratch of the pillowcase on his cheek. Stops focusing on remembering and tries to just be, for a while, to do nothing except exist in this place that was his home – the smell of it, and total awareness of the shape of the space around him, the ship so familiar it was like an extension of him, of every one of them, one of the few things in the universe that was not dust until he learned to live in this world, learned that he could still care. He doesn’t realize he’s been crying until he shifts and realizes his pillow is wet, and then he sits up, rubbing at his eyes and blinking. And nothing has, particularly, changed. But the edges of his vision are perhaps less hazy, less static, his world less tilted its axis. Or perhaps not. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
He leaves the bunk, leaves the room behind. Lets his fingers brush the walls as he walks the halls again, back the way he came. When he enters the kitchen again Lucretia, slowly and methodically sweeping the floor, has procured a cup of tea from somewhere, and when she sees him come in she stops her tidying up and pours a cup for him as well. He takes it, doesn’t drink yet, just breathes in the smell. Oolong, he thinks, and his lips twitch in an unintentional half-smile.
“Does it help?” He asks.
“What?”
“With the homesickness.”
“Not really.” Lucretia takes a slow sip of her tea, sighing, and then sets her mug down and picks up the broom and continues sweeping. “It’s not the same.”
She doesn’t clarify what she means, but he nods anyway. Absently his fingers trace a groove in the wood of the table, the letter T. He had carved that, he doesn’t know which cycle now, probably early on, but he remembers taking the knife to it. His and Lup’s initials, jagged letters smoothed by time, other initials or crude messages joining it over the years. Proof that they had been here. Shaking his head, he goes to one of the many storage cabinets and pulls out a cloth, starts helping Lucretia dust the shelves and furniture.
“Do you feel any better?” She asks, truly concerned, he doesn’t know if she just means right now or overall or what, but he shrugs one shoulder, it isn’t a question with a simple linear answer, just like memory and time and healing are not linear but cyclical, and it would be impossible to answer, really, with anything more than that, a shrug.
He stops for a moment and sips his tea, and he looks at her looking at him and is distantly aware of how close he came to killing her, in the heat of everything, memories flooding into his head so hot and fast he had thought they would tear him apart. Something was going to happen at the end of that countdown, if Magnus hadn’t inadvertently gotten in his way; it made him sick to see Magnus with that sword leveled at Lucretia, because Magnus was a better person than Taako and him threatening one of his closest friends was inherently wrong and it forced Taako to look at himself as if from an outsider's perspective in a way that did not allow him to continue. He still didn't know what that something was, only that it would have hurt very much but never as much as he was hurting in that moment. If Lup hadn't come back when she did, he still might have done it. He wonders if Lucretia knows that - she doesn’t seem afraid of being alone with him. But then again, she could conjure a shield long before he could think of touching her, and beyond that they both know that even if he tried, a lot of people would never forgive him for hurting her. He looks at her looking at him and hates her in a dull and muted way, like the ache of a healing wound.
"I don't know if this means anything to you," Lucretia says, and he's impressed with how even her voice remains. “But I want you to know how deeply sorry I -"
He shakes his head. "You have to stop. It doesn't - you know that doesn't mean anything, don't you?” She doesn’t respond, so he goes on, waving a hand as he speaks, “Like, you think the problem here is that I don’t know that, but I do. It’s not that it doesn’t mean anything to me but that it literally means nothing, it’s just, it’s all just words, the more you say it the less meaning it has. Because you’re not – you’re sorry it hurt us, but not for what you did. You would do it again.”
"Maybe,” Lucretia says slowly. “But I still have to say it."
“Saying sorry again and again doesn't make me believe you more.” He breathes in deep and keeps making himself look at her, at the dark circles under her eyes and the way she holds herself, so different than when they were like brother and sister, and he thinks that the apologies are less for his benefit and more to appease her own conscience. Maybe that’s not fair, he isn’t sure. “It’s not your job to make me forgive you. You did your part, you apologized. You're done. Forgiving you? If I ever get there? That’s all on me."
It takes her a moment, he isn’t sure if she understands what he means, but after a while she nods. Sips her tea, exists in this space. He wouldn’t have come, he thinks, if he had known she would be here.
“If?” She says, so quiet, so much like the way she had sounded when they first met, shy as a mouse, that it almost startles him.
“If,” he agrees, and keeps dusting. It’s a big and distant if. But it’s there, nonetheless.