Work Text:
For Kravitz, work is work. Foil the plans of a few necromancers, take down a cult, fill out some paperwork, clock out. It’s all the same to him.
Most days, that is.
On this one particular day, Kravitz is ready to sit down at his desk, file away his cases, and come home to an excellent dinner from Taako, when he feels a violent tugging in his stomach, summoning him away to the throne room of the Raven Queen. He follows orders and allows his essence to rematerialize in the dark, obsidian room with its high, dark pillars. He bows before the Queen of Death. “What can I do?” he asks.
Kravitz, my most faithful reaper, the Queen says in Her low, scratchy voice, I need you to take care of one more occult gathering this evening. Their rituals are most horrific. They need to be stopped before they summon something dreadful tonight. Go.
Kravitz nods and summons his scythe into his hand, ripping a hole through the planes and stepping out into coordinates given to him by the Queen. Before he begins his work, he takes out his Stone and calls Taako.
“Ye-e-es?” Taako sings. Something sizzles in the background. Just the sound makes Kravitz hungry.
“Hello, darling,” Kravitz says, unable to help the pet name nor the smile on his face from Taako’s voice. “I’m afraid I will be a little late coming home; I have to stop a cult ritual last-minute. Go ahead and eat without me; I’m not sure when I’ll be getting home.”
“No problem, Krav,” Taako hums. “I’ll see you whenever you get back.”
“I’ll see you soon,” Kravitz promises, “I love you.”
“Ditto, babe.” And the line goes dead.
Kravitz pockets his stone, summons his cowl, puts on his skeletal form, and strides straight into the den of the cult.
If Kravitz had had a stomach he would have thrown up. As soon as he steps into the front room he is hit with the stench of decay, and blood, and fear. But that’s not even the worst part--he’s used to those smells. What is truly awful is that, lying in the middle of the floor, is the body of a child. It looks to be about Angus’s age. (He is relieved to come to the conclusion that it is not Angus.)
Kravitz, reeling, takes a moment to steady himself. There is no soul in the child’s vicinity--that means either the cultists took it or it has already moved on. Gingerly, he steps over the corpse and ventures further into the house. A trail of blood and that horrible odor leads him to a closed door. Kravitz, unimpeded by such mortal things, steps through it.
If one body was bad, the sight that Kravitz now beholds is a thousand times worse. At least thirty other small corpses are strewn about the room. The carpeting is soaked through with blood.
The cultists, kneeling around a chalk circle, which is currently full of-- oh Her Ladyship are those hearts, hardly look phased by an emissary of the Raven Queen stepping through their door and regarding them with glowing red sockets. Their level of calm when surrounded by such small corpses fills Kravitz with some unholy rage. When he speaks, he has to fight to keep a tremor out of his voice. “The twelve of you have committed numerous crimes against Her Ladyship the Raven Queen and broken at least a dozen laws of life and death. I have come to collect your souls and put you in the Eternal Stockade to atone for your crimes.”
“I mean--you can try, ” one of the necromancers says smugly, his bloody hands folded in his robed lap. “There’s way more of us than of you.” He shrugs, and something inside Kravitz snaps.
“I will do my job,” he says, his voice booming with the power of the Queen, and he swings his scythe with a mighty blow and tears out the souls of three necromancers viciously. Anger thrums in his ears like a heartbeat, pulsing hard and fast as he fights and swings and kills and makes these terrible people pay for what they have stolen from the world today. He demolishes the cult in a matter of minutes.
When he finishes, he is bloody and his hands are shaking.
His skin folds over his skeletal body and he rips a hole into the Astral Plane, falling to his knees before his goddess, trembling with rage and grief and pain and exhaustion. “Please,” he says, his voice weak and threatening to break, “please, I did my job, please, just let me go home, I can do the paperwork tomorrow, I just want to go home .”
Oh, Kravitz. Her voice is soft and sad. He knows She can feel his grief. Go home. Rest your mind.
“Thank you,” he breathes, almost a sob. He stands on wobbly legs and cuts a jagged hole into the space between planes. He’s weeping before he’s even in the house.
“Welcome home, Krav,” Taako’s voice calls from the kitchen. “You’re not too late, I kept dinner warm for the both of--”
Kravitz collapses onto the couch, his face in his hands, and finally, finally breaks down.
“Woah, woah, baby, Krav, what’s wrong?” Taako immediately changes his tone and hurries into the room, sitting beside Kravitz and putting a careful hand on his shoulder. “What--what happened?”
Instead of answering, Kravitz just turns and wraps his arms around Taako, burying his face in the elf’s chest and sobbing openly into his shirt. He can’t speak of what he’s seen tonight. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to.
Taako sighs and holds Kravitz tight, petting his hair and whispering soft assurances to him. “Shh. It’s okay. It’s alright now.”
Kravitz just shakes his head and holds him tighter, unable to stop his wild sobs and the endless flood of tears. He will never be able to rid his mind of the image of that child in the front room. It’s not alright. It will never be alright. There are childless parents now, people who will keep on looking for their babies and never find them alive and whole--the thought just makes him cry harder.
“Come on, baby,” Taako says into his hair, “come on. I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”
“C-can’t,” Kravitz manages. “I--can’t.”
“That’s--that’s okay, too.” Taako kisses the top of his head and Kravitz just keeps crying, he can’t stop. It was too much tonight, he’s never seen this level of murder before.
Eventually, the flood slows, and Kravitz is left hiccupping, tired and spent and a little numb. “That’s it,” Taako whispers. “You’re gonna be okay. Whatever happened tonight, you’re gonna be fine. Do you want to go upstairs? I can run you a bath, or I can braid your hair, or we can just go to bed if you want.”
Kravitz nods, even though he knows it’s not helping.
“What do you want? You have to tell me, so I know how to help.” Taako sits Kravitz back and studies his face, using his thumbs to wipe away Kravitz’s tears. “I can just do all of that for you, yeah? A bath and then I can do your hair and then we’ll get a good night’s rest and tackle whatever this shit is in the morning, hm?”
Kravitz nods, still trembling slightly with the weight of his emotions.
“Excellent,” Taako says, and he gives Kravitz half-smile. “Let’s get you upstairs and you can get yourself out of those clothes while I get the water going.” He stands, helps Kravitz up, and leads him gently up the stairs to their shared room.
Kravitz is silent as Taako leaves him in the doorway with a sweet kiss on his cheek and slips into the bathroom. The sound of running water fills the silence, and the sound of Taako humming quietly soothes some of the buzzing anxiety in Kravitz’s mind. Mechanically, he strips, his clothes disappearing in puffs of black smoke on the floor, and he slides his arms into his soft, comfortable black bathrobe and ties the sash loose around his waist. He takes a moment to close his eyes, breathe in, breathe out, and shut out the screaming in his mind. He is going to relax for Taako.
“Krav?” Taako appears in the doorway. His eyes are tinged with concern. “The bath’s ready for you.” Kravitz sees Taako hesitate, then reach a hand up and caress his face. “Did you want me to join you?”
Kravitz nods. “Yes. Please.” His voice is hoarse. He takes Taako’s thin hand in his own and holds onto it for a long moment, closing his eyes again and willing his turbulent emotions to calm. Then he bends down, brushes his lips against Taako’s forehead, and steps into the bathroom.
The room is warm and humid and dimly-lit by Dancing Lights. It smells of lavender and jasmine. A hot bath has been run, and a layer of bubbles sits quivering on top of the water. A record player starts in another room, filling the air with soft music. Kravitz sheds his robe, pulls his long, shiny hair out of its braid, and steps into the water, steam rising from his chilly body as he sits and settles into the water.
Taako enters in another minute, draped in his pink fluffy bathrobe, which he drops unceremoniously to the floor before stepping into the water and sitting right between Kravitz’s legs, his back to Kravitz’s chest. “Is this good, or did you want me to hold you instead?” he asks as Kravitz’s arms snake around his waist.
Kravitz just presses his face to Taako’s shoulder and takes a long, deep breath. His arms are wrapped tight around Taako. He shakes, just a bit, despite the heat of the water. His skin is still cold.
“O-kay, looks like this is just fine.” Taako resolves to make himself comfortable, and he closes his eyes, relaxing against Kravitz.
Things are quiet, except for the soft, muffled music. Taako’s hands find Kravitz’s and rest on top of them. There’s a sniffle in Taako’s ear. He ignores it. Kravitz continues to tremble behind him, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
Taako just lets his own heart beat against the silence of Kravitz’s chest and he waits for things to pass.
“They were children,” Kravitz whispers, eventually. If his mouth had not been right beside Taako’s ear, he probably wouldn’t have heard the words.
“Who, the necromancers?”
There’s a muffled sob. “The victims.”
Taako’s breath hitches. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
“He looked like Angus,” Kravitz says. His voice is haunted. “I thought it was Angus, for a moment. The one in the front room.”
“Krav--”
“And then, I went into the room where they were--they were doing a ritual, and--” Kravitz stops, and there’s a low, pained noise. It sounds like his soul is being ripped from his body. “There were so many bodies, Taako,” he breathes, his shoulders shaking. “So many children.”
“Kravitz.” Taako’s fingers clutch at Kravitz’s hands. Kravitz’s arms tighten around Taako’s ribs.
“And in the circle--in their ritual circle--there were--” A sob, loud this time. It rips from his throat, sharp and ugly. “They were sacrificing the hearts of children to summon some otherworldly undead army. Children. ”
His fingernails dig into the flesh of Taako’s stomach. He can’t bring himself to ask him to stop. Instead, Taako turns, curls himself against Kravitz’s body, holds onto him tight as Kravitz once more breaks down in his arms.
He doesn’t know what to say. He can’t say “It’ll be okay” because it won’t. He can’t say “You’ll be fine” because how does someone recover from seeing that? He can’t say “Everything’s okay,” because it’s not. So he just holds Kravitz, and the two of them sit there in the cooling bathwater and just hang onto each other, anchors in a storm of emotions.
Eventually, when Kravitz’s body temperature matches the lukewarm water and Taako begins to get cold, he disentangles himself from Kravitz’s arms and stands, stepping out of the tub. Kravitz remains there, his gaze focused elsewhere, until Taako touches his shoulder and says “Hey, let’s get you out of there.”
With a silent nod, Kravitz climbs out of the tub and allows Taako to use magic on the both of them to dry the water. Robotically he slips on his robe and he’s out of the room without a word to Taako, flopping down on the bed, turning on his side, staring at the wall. He is silent. He doesn’t breathe.
Taako sits down on the other side of the bed. He watches Kravitz, who is still as death. The soft music continues to play, the muffled, lilting sounds of a piano the only sound in the silence. He sighs, touches Kravitz’s shoulder, and lays down beside him, facing him but not touching. He knows Kravitz will come to him when he needs him.
He lies awake, waiting, watching. He knows Kravitz isn't asleep either. They remain, silent, together in presence but alone in their emotions.
And then Kravitz turns, surges, throws himself into Taako’s arms, and Taako holds him close, closer, trying to draw Kravitz into him, wanting desperately to make things better and knowing that he cannot. And Kravitz shudders, and he sighs, and he breathes.
“I’m here,” Taako whispers, arms tight around him. “I'm here. I'm here.”
Silence. Breathing. A sluggish, cautious heartbeat--once, twice, stop. Once, twice, three times--stop. Once, twice… continue. “I know,” Kravitz says finally, his voice thin. “I know.”