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He finds Kravitz easily. In a village this small, it’s not difficult. He follows the sound of music (melodies, harmonies that he doesn’t recognize, written in a tempo popular a thousand years ago) — and he’s not the only one; the music is beautiful and Kravitz is good, and he hears people rustling through their coin-purses before he catches sight of Kravitz himself.
Kravitz’s eyes are brown.
That, more than anything, is what Taako latches onto. His eyes are no longer bright red as Taako knew them, but a deep brown, warm and sparkling. They’re half-closed, covered by dark eyelids, a small smile curling up his lips as he plays. In his hands he holds a violin and Taako knows that hand, he knows them both, knows how they feel on his skin, cupping his cheeks.
Somehow, even in a ragged, worn shirt, Kravitz is just as gorgeous as in a well-pressed three-piece suit.
The people around him come and go (and they always, Taako notices, leave happier than they arrived, beaming just a little bit brighter, and in that moment Taako gets it, how someone like Kravitz would find so much joy in bringing life to other people); but Taako stays. He breathes, though oddly; it’s hard to draw in enough air, pleasant and warm with autumn haze at it is, tinged with woodsmoke and clear of the pollution of cities like Neverwinter, Goldcliff — cities that do not yet exist.
Evening falls too quickly. Taako could stay and watch Kravitz play forever, that small smile curling up his lips, the softness to his face. He’s tried before, actually. During the long nights in their apartment, and later their home (their home, theirs), watching Kravitz play the piano with that same gentle expression, coaxing music from the keys with the same compassion he uses to coax honesty from Taako.
Kravitz, in any era, is so easy to love.
“Not even a copper, hmm?” says a voice — his voice, Kravitz’s voice — and Taako nearly jumps out of his skin. He jerks around to find Kravitz watching him, amused, violin in his case, and shit, Taako had missed him packing up. “You’ve been there for quite some time.”
He has an accent. Not the fake Cockney that Kravitz — that Taako’s Kravitz — uses for work, but a small, rural thing that draws out his vowels. Taako wonders if Kravitz still remembers this accent or if, like everything else in his mortal life, he’d forgotten during the Raven Queen’s employ.
“Y-yeah,” Taako says, heart pounding painfully in his throat. “Yeah, that was some, uh, fine-ass playing, my dude.”
The quizzical look only deepens. “You’re not from around here, are you?” he asks.
“Um,” Taako says. He — Kravitz’s eyes are brown, and he can’t stop staring. They’re beautiful. Taako never saw them like this. “No, I’m, uh…no. Not from around here. Caravan-hopping, y’know?”
It’s a weak lie, but Kravitz accepts it with a good-natured shrug. He smiles more easily, Taako notices, more quickly and freely. Where his Kravitz is reserved, formal, this one moves loosely, carefree.
Death changed him.
Death changed him; and not, Taako thinks, for the better.
“Fair enough, stranger,” Kravitz says, and holds out his hand. Taako remembers tracing circles around his nails, head nestled in the crook of his shoulder. “My name’s Kravitz.”
Kravitz wears no rings. There are no beads in his hair, no gold circlets linking his neck, no crimson burn in his eyes; and when Taako takes his hand, he’s warm.
“Taako.”
“Do you have any regrets?” Taako asks him one lazy evening in the heart of winter, wind and snow slicking their windows with ice. Kravitz puts down his book. This close to the fire, curled up on the couch with Taako, he’s warm.
“About what, love?”
Taako doesn’t ask if he regrets Taako, because after so long with Kravitz he believes, finally, that loving him was never a regret. Somewhere along the way, Kravitz healed the scars Sazed tore open.
Taako waves his hand, vaguely. “I dunno,” Taako says. “Just — anything. No limits. Whole world’s a stage and all that.”
Kravitz hums low in his throat then smiles, sheepish, wistful. “I suppose I — it’s silly,” he says, laughing at himself already. “But I would’ve liked to try conducting, just once. As a mortal, I mean. I make music now, of course, but it’s not quite the same. Hard to relate to mortal audiences, you know, after so long in the Raven Queen’s employ.”
“Huh,” Taako says, something sick curling in his gut.
“I know,” Kravitz says, and laughs again, and Taako feels maybe a little bit selfish; Kravitz is amazing and wonderful and talented, passionate in a way few people are. Whether it’s through luck or Fate that he ended up with Taako he’s not sure, but he can’t help but feel undeserving.
Kravitz, he thinks, deserved better than a life of an eternal servitude; than a condemnation to watch everyone he loved die, to lose himself in his work for a thousand years before feeling again.
Kravitz, he thinks, deserved better than this.
“Well, Taako, I’ve never seen you around, but you’ve clearly got a good taste in music.”
Cocky, Taako realizes, with a flash. It makes sense — he’s young, even by human standards, and untested. The world hasn’t broken him just yet. “Yeah. Yeah, that was some baller playing.”
“Thank you. I do try my best.”
“You want to, uh…you gonna do that the rest of your life?”
Kravitz looks wistful. It’s an expression Taako recognizes; he’s thinking about his music. “I hope so,” he says. “I would love to conduct. Just have to…you know. Find employment first. Which can be a little rough around these parts,” he says ruefully, gesturing about himself, to the emptying village. Then he shakes himself, laughs awkwardly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be saying this to a complete stranger.”
The words hit him like a punch to the gut.
“I think you’ll make it,” Taako says, honest in a way that only Kravitz makes him, and does not think about how Kravitz doesn’t know what this means, this open admission from Taako. Does not think about his bright eyes, his free smile, his open laugh, the way he looks content and at home, here, thousands of years before Taako, before the Raven Queen and the Stockade and his own, eternal death. “I think you could swing it. You’ve…you’ve got talent.”
“Well, thank you,” Kravitz says, looking pleased. Rather than unclenching, the nausea in Taako’s gut coils tighter.
“Yeah,” Taako says, throat dry. “Yeah. Look, I gotta — I gotta go, but, uh, keep it up, okay?”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay?” Kravitz asks, and Taako knows that look, too, the open earnestness and hope and gods damn it, he hates this. Kravitz is interested, of course he is, but Taako — he can’t.
“I’m sure,” he says, a horrible emptiness settling in his chest. He hands Kravitz three gold pieces — a handsome payment for some music but it’s not for the music, even if Kravitz doesn’t know that, even if he never will. “Go — go get yourself something nice, okay, bubbeleh? For me.”
Kravitz stares at the gold in his hand, then looks back up at Taako, shocked. “This — I can’t accept this.”
“Sure you can. ‘s real easy. Just take the gold, forget the face. Go…” he swallows, hard, “go buy a nice guy a good drink or somethin’. Enjoy yourself.”
By the time Kravitz looks up from the gold in his palm, Taako is gone.
It’s later that same evening. A lazy one, by all rights; Taako had left Kravitz’s arms only to cook, but even then, not for long. After night had long since fallen, Kravitz marks his page and sets the book aside — slipping a bookmark carefully in place, ever-cautious of the precious pages, because he’s kind and considerate in all ways including this — and carries them both to bed.
Kravitz’s chest is cool as Taako traces his fingers down it, thinking. The selfishness of earlier returns and he wonders who Kravitz would have been, if he hadn’t entered the Raven Queen’s ranks so early. Perhaps he would have been famous; perhaps the world would forget his name. Taako doesn’t know.
But famous or not, conducting would have made Kravitz happy. Taako knows what it is to have dreams ripped from you without warning, and he hates the Queen, a bit, or perhaps Istus, for taking from his beloved that chance.
Kravitz loves music in a way that he loves little else.
His fingers run over a ridge in Kravitz’s skin, then trace along it, gently. The skin is puckered and raised from old, old scars. A Y-incision, in the center of his chest; someone had cut Kravitz open, plucked out his heart. Taako wonders if they’d heard a dying melody as they did.
“Hey, Krav? Random question.”
Kravitz, already half-asleep with his nose against Taako’s shoulder, hums sleepily. Warmth fills his chest at the sight of Kravitz so unguarded, so peaceful, and for the hundredth time in as many years Taako realizes just how deeply in love he is with this man. “What is it, love?” he murmurs.
“How did you die?”
Kravitz blinks open, bleary eyes fixing on Taako’s face. “Definitely an odd one,” he whispers, voice hoarse with sleep.
“Humor me.”
Kravitz, of course, does. He shifts a little, catching Taako’s hand in his own and interlacing their fingers, settling them over his newborn heart. It beats, though weakly; after a thousand years with a vacant chest Kravitz’s body is still growing accustomed to the center of warmth beneath his skin. “I hardly remember, to be honest,” he says, breath brushing across Taako’s collarbone as he pulls Taako closer to him, ducking his head beneath Taako’s chin. Beneath his fingers Taako can feel the puckering of the scar, and — he’s seen gruesome things, and plenty of them, but he hates to imagine Kravitz, torn open.
“It was — dark, of course. Necromantic. I wouldn’t have attracted the attention of the Raven Queen had it not been. It was a cult, ah, Loviatar — an old goddess, popular in my days. One of her followers needed a new heart. A “full one”, the text read, full of…I don’t know, passion, I believe. I was known in my town, and, well…” Kravitz shrugs. “I was young and foolish. When a young man approached me, bought me drinks, I followed him home. I didn’t come back out.”
“Oh.”
Kravitz hums, unaware of the way Taako’s breathing stutters in his chest, that sick feeling growing stronger, denser in his stomach, a litany of he deserved better, he deserved better, he deserves better than this. “Strictly, with a ritual so dark, I should have been sent to the Stockade; but my Queen took pity on me, since I did not go knowingly, and offered me a choice. A life of service, or a life of imprisonment.” He smiles, briefly, tiredly. “And you, ah, know the rest.”
Taako doesn’t ask if Kravitz regrets it, because he knows the answer; of course not, Kravitz will say. I would give anything for you, Taako, he’ll say.
But the strangest thing? Taako believes him. After so long with Kravitz he can recognize love.
He recognizes it equally within himself.
That Kravitz would not change a thing is precisely why Taako would.
There aren’t many cults of Loviatar in Kravitz’s village. Taako finds them easy, natch. Whatever era he’s in, Taako is still the most powerful transmutation wizard in the planar system, and he crushes them easily. He thinks about torture, perhaps rending their hearts from their bodies. Gives it serious thought, because it is their fault Kravitz died and their fault he lost his dream the first time; but, in the end, he does not.
It’s not what Kravitz would have wanted.
Kravitz’s smile is the last thing Taako sees before he dies.
He holds onto that sight, treasures it, before he sinks into oblivion. He expects for his husband to wrap an arm around his, and perhaps they’ll hold the same warmth, now that they are both dead; but instead he finds himself in a room full of gray and the sound of needles.
“Taako.”
“Lady Istus,” Taako says, grinning. He doesn’t kneel, because the cheek makes Istus laugh. That’s what he likes about her — no pomp and no circumstance. There’s no need for ceremony when Istus can see you as you have been, as you are, and as you will be, eternally.
“I thought I should make you an offer before you pass,” Istus says, voice wry, “and before my beloved gets a chance. You are my follower, after all; I get, as the mortals put it, ‘first dibs.’”
Taako flips a hand at her, ears perking up in interest. She doesn’t look up from her knitting, scarf a radiant gold in her hands, but still she smiles as he moves. “Shoot.”
“I would like for you to continue to act as my emissary, Taako.”
“Hell yeah,” Taako says, smirk growing broader. He was hoping for this job opportunity to show its face. “Look, I love what they do, really, but black? So not Taako’s gig. I do more the pastel-and-rainbows, y’know? Our aesthetics just mesh so much better together.”
“Excellent,” says the Lady Istus. Her skeins float around her head and she plucks one out of the air without looking, adds a brown-red thread to her tapestry with a quick flick of her hands. “Although you should be aware, Taako, that there is a trial. An initiation, of sorts, before you will spend an eternity in my service.”
“Baller,” Taako says. “Hit me up, m’dude, whatever you got I can take it, natch.”
Istus begins to weave that thread. “You will be presented a choice, Taako,” she says, voice changed somehow; lower, deeper, and powerful. “Your decision will affect Fate itself. Your performance will determine whether or not you may join my retinue.”
“Hachi machi,” Taako whistles. “Damn. Any rules and regulations? You got a fuckin’ rubric — ”
“Your test begins now,” Istus says. “Good luck.”
“Wait,” Taako says, apprehension spiking sharp in his stomach. “Wait, no, too fast, my guy, how am I supposed to — hey! Hey!”
But Istus is gone, and when he blinks again, he stands on a dirt path outside a small village, autumn air warm and weighted against his shoulders, the sun shining bright.
He goes to find Kravitz once the deed is done. He finds him back on that street corner, playing his violin, again lost to the world, caught up in his swelling music, his passion. Love is clear on his face and Taako feels sick.
He looks the same. Taako isn’t sure why he expected anything different.
“I love you, Taako,” Kravitz says. Taako would pick a time, but there are so many; hardly a day passes without Taako hearing the words, at least once. Kravitz was always good at loving, and he did so freely. They fought, of course; but that steady reassurance that Kravitz would never leave brought them back together, every time.
Taako loved him too, of course — but he was always rather awful at saying it.
Besides, he reasons, actions speak louder than words.
Kravitz packs up his violin, unaware that yesterday he was supposed to die. He sets the instrument back in its case with care and Taako should go, he’s not supposed to be here; but he’s rooted to the spot, staring at the graceful fall of Kravitz’s hair over his shoulders. It’s shorter than it should be, he thinks. And for a moment, that’s all he can think; of running his fingers through that hair, braiding it and marveling at its softness, of Kravitz falling asleep in his lap after a long day.
After meeting Taako, he’d begun to snore in his sleep. Even when it was annoying it was endearing, because it was thanks to Taako that he breathed at all.
And for that moment, Taako wants nothing more than to press his hand against Kravitz’s chest — smooth, unblemished like Taako never saw it — and feel that heart beat. To feel his true heart beat smooth and steady, the one whose ghost Taako resurrected, in a future that will never be.
“Oh, hello again,” Kravitz says, and Taako chokes, throat thick. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Good music,” Taako whispers, and clears his throat. It hurts to speak. “Very, uh…very emotional. I liked the last one you did, uh, the best.”
“Thank you,” Kravitz says, genuine. Open. Honest. “I wrote it last night, actually,” he says, chuckling at himself. “Spur-of-the-moment composition, y’know?”
“Yes,” Taako says, even though he doesn’t. He was not meant for making music. “It was lovely. Sad, but, like…soft, too.”
“That was rather the feeling,” Kravitz admits, and frowns. “It was odd. Last night, while I was writing, it…felt as though I were missing something.”
Taako freezes, eyes wide, heart pounding, but Kravitz shakes himself out of it and smiles. “Listen to me, rambling on,” he says. “Anyway, I’m glad you enjoyed.”
That smile was the last thing Taako saw before he died, and it will be the last he sees of Kravitz, too. “Right,” Taako says, voice hoarse, and this time no amount of throat-clearing can save him. “Right, yeah, it was…it was real fuckin’ good. You — you’ll be conducting in no time, my — my dude.”
“Thank you,” Kravitz says again, pleased. “That means a lot — um, what was your name again?”
Taako looks at Kravitz one last time; his soft smile, his well-kept hair, his warm eyes. “Not important,” Taako whispers. “Good luck. With your music, and with, uh…everything.”
And with those words, he is enveloped in a world of gray, far from bright reds and golden browns and the warmth of the sun.
“I could never forget you,” Kravitz says: after nightmares, after breakfast. Before their wedding, after, over meals, during movies. It’s a promise, always.
“Yeah,” Taako says, kissing Kravitz’s forehead. “Me neither.”
Taako shows up for his first day on the job in a gorgeous rainbow-bright palette, sporting golden shades to match. The lenses are perfectly tinted, shimmering a subtle silver, a beautiful blend of mystique and class that Taako just adores.
“Lookin’ good, bro,” Lup says, hip-checking him casually. Barry waves. They’re both decked out in black: not his style. He’ll leave the deathly dark and ominous to his sister and her beloved hubby.
“Hey,” Lup says, looking at him quizzically, as they stride along the shores of the Astral Sea. “Shouldn’t Kravitz be with you?”
Even as the words leave her mouth Lup pauses, confused by her own question, and Taako — Taako feels sick.
He feels sick and he doesn’t know why.
That name — it’s important. It’s important, but he can’t conjure it again. There’s something fading, something leaving him — no, something that never was? There’s the impression of sand trickling through his hand, a brush of bright, joyous red, of winter wind skating along his skin, chilled and cool. He goes to ask what it is, that name, that word and why it sounds like music, feels like home, what does it mean, because it means so much and Taako can’t recall the sound of it —
So he asks, “Who?”