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They haven’t spoken in five years.
The world was different, after the Day of Story and Song. It struggled, of course, but it also grew.
And as it grew, so did the interest in Bonds.
Faerûn is not a world where one’s Bonds are visibly manifest, and no one besides the Seven Birds has an impossible century of experience to develop the trick, so beyond the work of rebuilding and countless requests for interviews and stories and demonstrations, the Birds are asked about Bonds.
“Does my husband really love me?”
“Will my friend betray me?”
“Look, I dragged them all the way here, will you please tell them I really do care about them?”
By unspoken agreement, these seekers, whether of truth, reassurance, curiosity, or something else… they are sent to Lucretia.
Taako in particular seems to take a vicious, if silent, delight in sending her those with the most minor or ill-intentioned worries.
She takes them all in stride, sorting through the Bonds with the ease of long practice.
It makes sense that they would be sent to her, after all.
She’s had about a decade more practice than anyone else.
She’s at a birthday/graduation party for Angus, now 15 and already holding degrees from Lucas’s and Taako’s schools. Lup and the birthday boy himself had full control of the guest list, which is why Lucretia finds herself entering the stylish, expansive home of Taako for the first time.
She busies herself with catching up with Magnus and Merle first. Magnus, of course, brought his dogs, and they delight at the beautiful mix of yellow and orange that stretch between him and his pups. Merle, his secret out after Carey and Killian’s wedding, has to keep pushing a particularly rambunctious year old wolfhound off his soulwood arm, but there’s already a thin but bright thread of yellow between them.
Her Bonds with them both have returned full force. Tempered, perhaps, by her betrayal and their years apart, but unbroken, and no longer gray. They even have more, now, with the Bonds forged during her time as Madam Director, before they remembered.
She is not so easily forgiven with all of the Seven.
She continues on around the room. Angus has not yet appeared, possibly getting dressed under the expert tutelage of his mentor, or perhaps solving a last-minute case. She sees Barry leaning against the huge window to the kitchen, smiling at his wife. He catches her watching and raises a careful hand, his palm coated in a dusty green from when he saved her from walking off a cliff in cycle four. The matching patch on her shoulder seems to twinge in response, although Lucretia suspects that might just be wishful thinking of a sort.
They’re still not quite okay, her and Barry. He loves, fiercely and openly, but ten years alone, dying, remembering, living, forgetting, have left their mark, literally. Pockmarks of black and gray still pepper the bonds springing out from him, indicating places where time has not healed.
Not that she can judge. She has just as many.
She passes some Bureau members: Avi, flask in hand, the thick red strands wrapped tightly around his torso after being severed when Johann died. He’s doing better, most days, although she can still see the slim threads of black grief, prominent against the red. He toasts her as she passes, but continues on with his conversation with Carey, the thick red rope stretching between her and Killian all but screaming their love. With the twins not in the room, it’s very nearly the brightest Bond here.
Her circuit brings her to the snack table, still yet to be filled. She sighs, leaning slightly on her staff (plain red maple, carved by Magnus - no world-changing power in this one) as she looks over the crowd. She hears footsteps just in time to turn and see Taako, bearing a platter of cookies.
He places them carefully on the table, making sure the layout is exactly to his liking, and pointedly does not look at her.
And all at once, Lucretia can’t bear it.
They haven’t spoken in five years, but she can clearly see the bonds, too many to count, stretching between them. They’re withered, thinner and much less vibrant than they once were, the the blue nearly gone entirely, the yellow barely a whisper against his brilliant clothes, the once bright green faded and filmed over with a dark mix of black and gray. Whatever brightness there might be comes from her side, but even that is weighed down,
But she can still see them.
And she knows he can too.
“Taako,” she says abruptly as he turns back towards the kitchen.
He doesn’t stop.
“Taako, wait,” she says, hearing the pleading tone of her own voice. That does stop him, although he still doesn’t turn to face her. His ears are flat, shoulders tense as if expecting a blow, or preparing one.
Now that she has his attention, or what passes for it after what she did, she doesn’t know what to say. “Taako, I-”
“Was there something you needed, Madam Director?” he asks, and now he does turn. She thought she was ready for the flat coldness in his eyes.
She was not.
It hits her like a physical punch, like being stabbed with an icicle (from experience, cycle thirty-six). Like losing twenty years in Wonderland.
She finds her core of steel, the one she built, agonizingly, during her cycle alone, and the one that sustained her during her ten lonely years as the Director. And she faces him.
“I’m happy for you,” she offers, after the silence stretches far beyond uncomfortable.
He snorts, and that at least is something she knows, even if it doesn’t touch the sharpness in his eyes. “I don’t fuckin’ care.”
“But you do!” she snaps, some part of her shrinking away, whining that she deserves this, she deserves his hatred, she deserves this guilt, she deserves her family never trusting her again. She shoves that part away as hard as she can, focusing on the Bonds between her and her brother.
“Nope,” he says, faux-casual, drawing out the middle sound to at least six syllables and popping the p. His ears betray him, flattening further against his skull. He was never as good as Lup was at controlling his ears. “Taako’s good out here, away from you.”
“You know, Taako, it’s a lot harder to lie when we can see it,” she says, moving her finger as if to pluck at the strings between them. Her hands pass through, of course - Bonds are intangible, even if they can see them - but Taako flinches all the same.
“It doesn’t matter, homie,” he says flatly.
He huffs out a breath and starts fiddling with the cookies again, shoulders hunched around his ears as if she’s going to attack him.
He should be the one attacking you, the shrinking voice whispers in her ears. After what you did. You deserve it. You deserve anything he might do to you.
“Do you remember cycle eighty-two?” she asks, desperately, if only to shut the voice up, her hand dropping to her thigh. Unwillingly, as though she’s tugging on that Bond, he glances over, ears relaxing a fraction.
“Shithole plane,” he mutters. “Maybe Jeffandrew shouldn’t put that one back.”
She hums an agreement as they both remember. That cycle had been rough for all of them, but Lucretia and Taako had finally found the warlord holding the Light. The stealth part had been shot to hell when the stable boy Taako had been flirting with betrayed them. They ran for their lives, the Light in Taako’s arms. They ran, Taako out of spell slots, Lucretia down to one, scrambling through thick underbrush and dragging trees, Taako shouting a warning for Lucretia to leap last second over a ravine. She had yanked out her spare wand, her primary one having been broken during the fight in the stronghold, and cast a spell. Whatever it was, it blew up everything behind them, leaving her panting and sweaty, with a gleeful smile. They had shared a wearily satisfied glance, and then Lucretia was down with a brutal scream, most of a crossbow bolt sticking through her shattered thigh.
“Shit, Luce,” Taako had stammered, dropping down next to her, shoving the Light carelessly into the crook of one elbow, hands attempting to find some place to put pressure on the wound and only succeeding in becoming covered in blood.
“It’s fine,” Lucretia said, already fading, watching the dim green form between Taako’s hands and the mess of muscle tissue and jagged white bone that used to be her leg. “Go. I’ll see you in a few months. Go!”
He had, after giving her the mercy she asked for.
When they reformed on the Starblaster, the new Bond had stayed. Barry had been fascinated, the blue Bonds between him and Lup glowing brightly. They were delighted that they finally had proof of a theory Barry had been working on, that death or near-death experiences formed specific Bonds. Over the heads of their science nerds, Taako and Lucretia had shared a single, quiet glance.
“I dunno why they were so excited,” Taako mutters. He prods at his side with flour-covered fingers, poking at a similar Bond, faded, as all their Bonds are, but still there, from when a spear punched through his side. She had gotten him to Merle in time to save him, but the Bond remained. “S’not like we didn’t have proof of it before.”
Lucretia hums again. Something in the air has… lightened, between them. They’re not okay, far from it, and somewhere in her, Lucretia doubts that they ever will be.
They don’t say anything for a minute.
“You fucked up, Lucretia,” Taako says, staring out over the crowd. She follows his gaze to Magnus, still with Merle and Killian. They both trace the sturdy ropes of red lashed around his torso, crisscrossing over his arms, roping around his legs: his love for Julia, burning bright and strong no matter that they’re separated. Even from here, with their trained eyes, they can see the insidious black threads weaving throughout, evidence of Kalen’s spite, even if Magnus can’t remember who they belong to. Merle, next to him, has similarly strong ropes, these of a beautiful mix of green and orange, settling over his children in a fair web of love.
“Magnus found the love of his life,” Taako says, flat again. “She actually made him a good man. And our shitty cleric actually has children, whoever the fuck let that happen. Can’t understand the voice that comes out of his mouth half the time, like who even is that--”
She snorts, softly, but it’s enough to silence him for the moment.
“And what did I get, Lucretia?” he asks softly, viciously. “What did your little trick get me? A jealous asshole and the blood of forty people on my hands.” He laughs, then, bitterly, no humor in it. “But it’s not on my hands, is it? No, that one’s all you.”
She’s silent, for a second, even though that whining voice is rising in strength, agreeing with him, whisper-screaming about how right he is, how guilty she should be, how dare she have done this to her friends, to her family-- she grits her teeth and imagines digging her heel into the sickening softness of this voice, and finds her own.
“Glamour Springs was not my fault, Taako,” she says, slowly, carefully. She can feel him turn to look at her, incredulity warring with open anger, ears drawing back, but she chooses not to look. She chooses to forge ahead. “It was not my fault, just like Kalen destroying Raven’s Roost wasn’t my fault, and Merle’s marriage to Hekuba wasn’t my fault.”
“How could you possibly--”
“I don’t control everything that happens,” she says wearily. “I put you in the precursor to those situations, yes, but the events that transpired? They were not my fault. And you know what, Taako?” she turns now, and meets his burning eyes, unflinching. “It wasn’t your fault, either.”
They stare each other down in silence, and Lucretia is reminded painfully of the last time they made this much eye contact, when he was pointing an umbrella at her with intent to kill.
“You can’t say you didn’t “get anything” out of this either,” she says, daring even more. She’s gone this far, after all. He stiffens, his tight shoulders the only visible warning. She waves a vague hand at his chest, at the brilliant red emerging from his chest, connecting him irrevocably to the Grim Reaper currently being cornered into trying a disgusting looking drink from a particularly enthusiastic tiefling.
“Don’t you dare bring Kravitz into this—”
For a moment she forgets, falls back into a century of habit, and rolls her eyes. “I didn’t bring him into anything. And it’s not just him, either, you know.” She focuses on his gut, his arms, and he follows her gaze down at his own body and folds his arms defensively, as if that would hide the shimmering green and orange strands that stretch from him towards the upper level of the house, where Angus is presumably changing out of whatever absurd outfit Taako put him in.
She lets him think about that for a moment. His body didn’t change, but his ears relaxed a fraction at the mention of Angus. “Enjoy the party, Taako,” she says softly. On impulse, with a wry “Hot diggity shit,” she reaches out a hand too swiftly for him to stop her, snatching a cookie off the tray. She’s bringing the cookie to her mouth - blueberry and lemon macarons, it looks like - when slim, powerful brown fingers close around her wrist, a ring of burning iron. She looks up in shock to find Taako’s hand on her, stopping the cookie inches from her mouth.
She doesn’t dare speak.
They haven’t touched in more than two decades.
Taako isn’t looking at her, eyes instead on the cookie in her hand. Without saying a word, he reaches into his apron pocket and pulls out a single saltshaker, tapping out some crystals onto the cookie, watching intently. They watch together as the salt fails to turn pink.
Silently, he lets her hand go, but they both see it.
Whisper thin, barely there, is a narrow thread encircling Lucretia’s wrist, connecting to the slim lines on Taako’s fingers.
It glows a faint, but steady, green.