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“We can’t take care of you anymore.”
Those are the words he felt he’d heard hundreds of times. The words that beckoned another change of scenery for him and his sister. They always seemed to come just as Taako had shed the pain from last time he heard them. Just as he began to let himself feel comfortable, the two of them were shipped off to be someone else’s problem.
She is the only true security he has ever known. Lup has been there for him since the beginning, and she always will be. The twins’ shared childhood was not fond to them, but together they built a wall that guarded them from the horrors of the outside world.
They didn’t need anyone else, and they were not afraid to make that obvious.
When the sun set that evening, Lup and Taako ran. They knew they were a gift, but were sick of being made to feel like a burden. Enough was enough. The twins would not take another moment of this never-ending cycle.
A few paces away from the quiet village where he and his sister had spent the last year, Taako was overcome with a sense of freedom. We’re finally fuckin out of there. He sprinted, laughed, twirled, and let the cold air envelope and rejuvenate him. That is, until a badly placed root in the path caught his foot, hurling his small frame towards the ground and lodging a particularly sharp rock into his shin.
“Fuck,” Taako half-yelled, subconsciously remembering to be as quiet as possible.
Lup was already at his side by the time he hit the ground. “Simmer down bro,” she said, equally entertained and concerned, “Are you alright?”
Taako whined in response as he pried the rock from his skin, which left behind a pretty large gash, dripping with blood. “Gross,” he winced. Lup reached into her bag and took out a small canteen of water that they had stolen from their uncle’s kitchen. They were supposed to drink that, but Lup wagered this was probably more important right now. She washed the dirt and small rocks from her brother’s wound, and ripped a long strip of material from the bottom of her dress.
“I liked this dress,” she halfheartedly complained as she began to wrap the cloth around Taako’s leg. “You can still walk on that, right?” He nodded. Lup watched her brother shakily stand up and added, “You gotta be more careful, Koko.”
She was right - they had no family to go back to now, no warm bed to sleep in at night, no one to tend to their wounds but each other. The thought terrified him, but the warm expression on his sister’s face wiped those feelings away. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Let’s go.” He took her hand and they continued, albeit somewhat more slowly, down the path away from the village.
~
Almost two centuries later, on another plane of existence, a sparring match with Carey goes a tad south. Taako finds himself with a nasty dagger wound and no energy to heal it with magic. As he wraps the bandage around his thigh, he can’t help but feel something is missing.