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It feels like coming home, when they fall in love.
For Lucretia, it’s a crush. A kiss on the cheek. A radiant smile, a hard candy, a shared jacket.
For Taako, it’s all at once. An urgent kiss. A secretive smile, their trembling hands, a shared spoonful of soup.
And for Magnus, it’s everything. It’s his big heart. Their beautiful, silver souls. Their hands in his, holding tight, each the other’s world entire.
…
They’re smushed together in his bunk, late one forgotten night. Everyone else is asleep.
“Your feet are fucking freezing!”
Taako cackles and pushes them further up Magnus’s calves. Magnus yelps and jerks back into Lucretia, who nearly falls off the edge of the bed.
“Stop, Taako!”
But she can’t stop laughing. And neither can they.
Magnus pulls her back into him and makes sure she’s comfortable as they continue giggling.
“Okay, so I need a bigger bed. Noted.”
…
The three of them are in the water, the final evening on the beach. They know tomorrow will come, but they don’t think about it too much.
Magnus tosses her over his shoulder, then easily into the waves. Taako paddles over on his board. The sunset, gold and pink, reflects on the rippled water.
Lucretia surfaces and splashes them both. They laugh. Taako keeps the board steady while Magnus helps her up so she can sit, balanced with Taako on the the other half. He kisses her, then Taako, who waits patiently for his own slice of attention. Magnus doesn’t disappoint.
“I love you guys. So much.”
The waves lap quietly on the shore.
Lucretia puts her hand on his hand. Taako puts his hand on his chest. They smile.
…
Magnus dies early one year. Too early.
She grieves privately. Grief is a strange thing now. It stopped being permanent a long time ago. But his bed is empty, and so are her hands, and so is her chest. So she rolls out of her bed and pads down the hallway to his room. But as she slips in through the crack of the doorway, she finds a lump beneath his blankets.
She hears Taako crying and it breaks her. She puts a hand on the lump where she guesses his shoulder is. He doesn’t move.
“Taako…”
She pulls the old quilt away, the one Magnus had brought from their first world and refused to let go of, because it smells like home. As she kneels down beside the bed, it just smells like him.
Taako’s eyes are rimmed red and exhausted. She pushes damp blonde hair from his forehead.
She sits beside him on the bed and, eventually, he pulls himself up and into her arms. She rubs his back in circles until he starts to breathe easier.
“I miss him.”
“I know.” She holds tighter, still. “I miss him too.”
…
“Do you think we’ll ever be able to stop? Settle down, I guess.”
“I hope so. As nice as living on a ship is…”
A quiet laugh.
“No, I think a home would be a little nicer.”
“Yeah. Home.”
…
Lucretia takes an architecture class that year in Tesseralia. Late one night, she sits at a desk among piles of papers and a a few measuring tools. She has a pencil tucked into he hair, and another between her lips.
Magnus splays a hand over her back.
“What’s this?”
She hesitates, then looks away shyly.
“...Floor plans.”
“For your class?”
“Um. For us?”
His smile is so wide it hurts her cheeks.
...
Taako sits beside her on the deck, watching Magnus playing with a herd of puppies in the field down below.
“Mutts.”
“He’s so good with them, though.”
Taako makes a noise of vague disgust.
She smiles. They’re quiet for a long time.
There’s a cool breeze blowing. Magnus’s booming laugh carries through the valley.
“I love him.”
Lucretia looks over at him, but he’s watching Magnus with a fond smile.
“I love him, too.”
…
He builds her bookshelves for the journals. He’s determined to learn carpentry beyond the realm of wooden ducks.
“They’re crooked.”
“I love them.”
“But they’re crooked. Maybe if I used a different--”
She puts a hand on his chest.
“I love them.”
...
They’re laying together, all three of them, in the grass. She tucks a tiny wildflower into one of Magnus’s sideburns, a miniature of the flowers she’d braided into Taako’s hair.
It’s been a peaceful year. They found the light in the first couple months. The planet is perpetual latesummer, permanent sunset, stretching just one more day, one more day. It’ll be over soon.
They treasure the years all three of them survive. They feel the lightest.
“Well, there has to be at least one dog.”
“Does there have to be, or is that like, negotiable? ‘Cause I’m not so jazzed on that one.”
“What about a cat?”
Magnus huffs.
“A dog. One. At least. That’s my condition.”
“Cats seem like a better deal.”
She nods at Taako in silent agreement. He snorts.
Magnus pulls them close. And in their hearts, it beats: home, home home.
…
“Your kitchen.”
“My kitchen?”
“Yes. Your dream kitchen. What’s in it?”
“I’unno. A big pantry? Butcher’s block…”
“You can do better than that. Anything you want.”
A pause, then Taako smiles.
“Double French-door oven.”
“You got it.”
“Oh! And a pastry nook. For sure.”
…
Taako dies and leaves them alone and it’s too much to bear. Magnus carves ducks until his hands ache.
Lucretia tries so hard to draw him from his grief.
“We love you,” she reminds him, because Taako can’t. Because she needs to. Because it’s true.
…
She doesn’t notice at first, when her drawings start going missing. It’s not until there are actual empty spaces where sketches once had been in front of her desk and beside Fisher’s tank.
She folds her arms, bathed in indigo light.
“Did you eat them?”
The voidfish trills and floats a few tendrils in the direction of the door. She shakes her head.
She goes to Magnus’s room first. He’s not there, and neither are the drawings. Just a few that she’d given him herself.
She finds Taako in his bunk, levitating cross-legged over a pile of dirty laundry. And, pinned up among dozens of scraps of paper and fabric and photographs, are the missing drawings in question.
“What’s up, bubbeleh?”
Taako flicks his wrist. She watches as a mage hand floats a bottle of nail polish past her head.
“You’ve been stealing my drawings.”
“Damn, I thought for sure you’d blame your pet.”
“Fisher knows you.”
She rolls her eyes and walks along his bunk. There, hanging right next to a photo of him and Lup, is the drawing of him and herself that she’d done from memory at Legato. One of the lavender ribbons she’d tied into his hair before their performances is pinned to the corner of the thick paper.
“Well, ya caught me. You can take ‘em if you want. No skin off my back.”
She smiles to herself and reaches up to steal the bottle of polish from his mage hand. He whines in protest.
“We’ll call it even.”
…
They make dinner together, just the two of them.
“No, no, you have to--”
Taako moves a hand over Magnus’s larger one as he guides the knife over the halved sweet pepper on the cutting board.
“This way, first.”
Magnus flushes red as Taako shows him how to cut the vegetable into thin slices so he can add them to the simmering pot on the range.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, you doof.”
“I never learned how to do stuff like this.”
Taako kisses him softly.
“There’s time for us, yet.”
…
After she lands, she sits in the cockpit with her knees tucked to her chest. Her eyes feel heavy. She hopes that this spot will be remote enough to ward off the bandits and the raiders and the Judges for even a few hours.
She needs to sleep, but she can’t. She has to stay alive. She has to. For them.
Sometimes, she talks aloud to herself to keep herself awake. A necessary reminder that she is alive.
“Coatroom. Front hall. Kitchen.”
The sun’s going down.
“Dining room. Living room. Tea room. Porch.”
She prays it’ll be dark enough that nobody will see the ship.
“Our rooms. Three. Guest rooms. Four.”
She misses them.
“Study. Studio. Library.”
…
She can’t sleep, even after the Judges have been wholly devoured into darkness and her family and safety returned.
Magnus keeps asking what he can do. Taako doesn’t ask, but she knows he’s waiting, too.
On the third night of no sleep, they tuck her between them. Taako promises her he’ll be conscious the whole night long. They won’t let anything hurt her.
When she thrashes in a nightmare, Magnus pulls her tight to his chest. When she cries, Taako places a steady hand on her back.
“We’re here.”
“We’ve got you.”
“We promise.”
…
Taako knocks once at her door, then opens it without permission. He’s carrying a tray with a sandwich and soup for her.
“I’m not really hungry, but thanks.”
“Just try it for me?”
She sits up with a huff and he puts the tray down over her. There’s a glass of water and a tiny plate with three macarons.
She sighs, then takes a bite of the violet cookie.
“Oh, this is so good. The texture is…”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
But there’s no joy in her voice, not how there should be. He straightens himself out, then leans in with a smile.
“I’ll let you in on a secret, babe. Lemon juice. To stabilize the egg white.”
She smiles and nods. It’s the first time he’s seen her smile in days.
He kisses her forehead and leaves her to her lunch.
…
Magnus finds a little abandoned cottage in the woods, every wall lined with rows of books. He brings her there alone one afternoon. She stands, wide-eyed in wonder, in the center of the room. It becomes a ritual that cycle. Sneaking off, reading to him in the afternoon, book in one hand and his hair tangled in the other. They’d make love by the window, glowing golden at dusk.
A whisper, between kisses.
“A window seat.”
He nods, and kisses her with twice the strength.
…
In the glow of the projections of the plan that everyone else has agreed to, Magnus meets her eye. He looks sorry.
He promises they can try her plan, if this one doesn’t work. As she looks at Taako, talking quietly with everyone else, she doesn’t know how to feel.
Home would be nice right now. Home would feel better than this.
…
She’s at the kitchen table with a book and a cup of tea. It’s always better when Taako makes it.
She’s not reading. Not really. She hasn’t been able to focus. Lup has been missing for nearly a month.
Magnus has Taako in his arms, turning slowly to a song he hums. It’s so out of tune that it’s unrecognizable, but he’s so sweet that she knows Taako will only pretend to mind.
Magnus spins him and Taako laughs. She realizes, with great sadness, she hasn’t heard the sound in weeks. When Magnus looks across the room at her and their eyes meet, his smile falls. He looks exhausted.
As Taako’s head settles back down on Magnus’s chest, she thinks, perhaps, there is a way to put an end to this pain.
…
She gives Taako a stagecoach. The world will love him as he’s meant to be loved.
She walks Magnus to Raven’s Roost. He will love the world as it’s meant to be loved.
And she goes home, to their ship, to their shared kitchen, to their empty rooms and old quilt and crooked bookshelves and stolen drawings and realizes that this place cannot be her home if they are not in it.
Bathed in indigo, their floor plans float in the tank.
…
She stands in her quarters and stares at her wall. One hundred journals, lined neatly on half of the crooked shelves. The other half are empty now.
Fisher sings something somber.
“I know.”
She remembers how Magnus would steal the journals and pencil stick figures and hearts in the margins. Then Taako would steal them from him, and write commentary in his looping, purplish script.
She misses them.
Decades ago, she had scrawled about their year at Tesseralia. She’d indulged a rare anecdote about their nights out, the restaurants Taako had brought them to in his excitement, and Magnus’s rebound games, for sake of the record, of course. Always for the record.
As the Tesseralia Winners and Coach Magnus won their final game, Taako and I stood together on the sideline, watching their celebration. I am forever grateful for my friends.
She traces her fingers over the page.
There, wedged between “my” and “friends,” is “best,” inked forever in purple.