Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lucretia has so much work to do in the days after the Story and Song. The world-churning excitement and ubiquitous celebrations have begun to fade, leaving only the work of healing in their wake. And yet, she struggles to concentrate on basic questions of logistics through the fog of worry and regret that clouds her mind. The demands of her lonely leadership have kept her from the task of cleaning out her suite, and worse, Davenport’s. She dreads the inevitable nostalgia and the confrontation with her memories, but it's work that must be done. She sinks into thought, staring through her desk into the nothing beyond, until a knock on her office door snaps her back to reality. “Come in,” she calls, unprompted dread running ice-cold through her veins.  

Davenport isn’t sure whether or not he hoped she would be there. When he followed the others back up to the moon, he realized that almost nothing in his room had ever been his, and many of his things were not on the Starblaster. Which means Lucretia must have kept them somewhere.

Even being here makes his skin itch, makes him want to turn and run and keep running. He tugs the sleeve of his shirt down over his bracer again so he doesn't have to keep looking at the thing.

He takes a deep breath, sets his shoulders steady, and steps inside. He doesn’t shy away from her hard gaze, and he forces his attention away from the ragged ache in his chest, the ache that burrows deeper with passing second.

“Lucretia, I—I take it you kept some things of mine here,” he says, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. “I was hoping I could get them back.”

She freezes, mouth open with an aborted platitude, searching for words that fail her. She settles for a quick nod, takes a deep breath, and stands. When she turns to face her portrait— their portrait, it should be theirs now, it can be theirs again—it’s another gut punch. She can’t bear to look at it. She reaches out blindly and touches the canvas, dispelling the powerful illusion that covered bittersweet memories.

The portrait surprises him. It’s been so long since he’s seen it, and they all look so happy . He wonders, not for the first time, how could she have done this . It aches just as much to know that, somewhere deep down, he understands.

Lucretia opens the heavy door to her sanctum sanctorum and gestures down the hall.

It occurs to him just how close it all had been. Junior and the ichor and a room full of secrets. He’d been living in an unlocked cage, he just hadn’t known how to open it. Rage bubbles up in him, and he swallows it back.

“It’s in here, I’ll have to—the lock—I haven’t...” she trails off, explaining nothing, implying everything.

He swallows the rage and steps past her and down the hall, assuming she’ll explain either way. He takes two steps past the door and on the third, the room shimmers. Another illusion. It’s fitting. Nothing here looks like it truly is. The melody of Dispel Magic comes through his lips, unsteady and out of practice, but still clear and sharp. The shimmer stops, but the long white corridor stays the same.

He thinks he remembers this spell, a kind of magical tripwire. It was something he and Barry had constructed during the later years of their journey. And by the looks of it, Lucretia had recreated it precisely. If it hadn’t still had the touches of his own magic style, he might have missed it entirely. Words of praise that once would have come so naturally, don’t even begin to form. He keeps walking.

She hasn’t had time to take down the series of traps and alarms that she set— all in vain, she reminds herself ruefully. She swallows bile when she sees Davenport wave away the carefully crafted illusion that she had woven after his example. Words of apology die ignominiously on her tongue.

They make their way to the vault door in silence. Lucretia sees her hand, steady as ever, punch the seven digit number — the count of every single person who died at home —  into the keypad, and it’s a searing reminder of who she used to be.

Davenport watches her too. Watches her with a new understanding of how much she's changed, from the chronicler he recruited, to the director he served, to the woman standing before him now. Lucretia has to know he’s watching, and he doesn’t look away, allowing himself this small cruelty. His gaze burns with intensity, and she fiddles with the door in an attempt to avoid meeting it.

He’d only ever seen this room once or twice, and even then it had been years since she’d allowed him here. Before the second voidfish, when the main focus of the room was a map he couldn’t understand. Now, without the Hunger bearing down and with a mind awake enough to see it, he takes a good look around. It’s painfully familiar, organized in the way she always kept her quarters. The juxtaposition of the past and the present knocks him off balance and makes him thrum with anxiety.

She hasn’t touched it since — since everything happened, and it’s jarring to see the room in disarray, furniture piled up, tank empty. There’s a part of her that pauses to wonder if Fisher and Junior are alright, on their intergalactic journey of love or whatever it is they’re pursuing. Better than being my pawns , she thinks savagely.

Lucretia makes her way to a beautiful lavender-scented wooden chest, one of seven, all uniquely handcrafted. She runs her fingers over the silk-smooth varnish, the bas-relief of geometrically styled maritime motifs, and pops open an invisible lock with a quiet click.

“All of yours is here, Davenport — ” She cuts herself off and winces, damage already done.

He flinches before he can stop himself, and doesn’t look at her. He’ll have to deal with that eventually, but not now, not here.

He opens the chest and looks down at a remains of a life. His jackets: the sharp captain’s jacket of his uniform and the red leather jacket that the crew had gotten him for Candlenights one year. The star charts from their home plane. His toolbox and work gloves. A compass. A songbook. His set of daggers. A small duck that Magnus had carved and Taako then transmuted into smooth amber sea glass. The roughly woven rope bracelet that Merle had given him on the beach.  A camping backpack enchanted to make its contents lighter. Everything is there, and it is a stark reminder of how much he had opened himself up to her. She knew precisely what he would have wanted to keep.

He tries to steady himself as he opens the backpack and starts to pack his things, the same way he always has.  But his tools feel clumsy and his daggers feel unbalanced, and he tucks them away with the memories they carry.

Lucretia notices, of course she does, and she steels herself reflexively. “There’s a journal, over there, one of yours. I gave — I — I don’t have the others, anymore. I’m sorry,” she says, catching herself before she makes things worse, trailing off to avoid losing control. She gestures at the thick red leather-bound journal, none the worse for wear after its century at sea. She can’t decide if this is worse than seeing him broken and incomplete.

Davenport looks it over and nods. Something possessive flares up in him. His journals were never personal, mostly logs of supplies, notes detailing repairs to the ship, avionics calculations. But he wants to have them now. Their journey, or a piece of it, in his own words. He grabs the book and slides it into the bag. He looks at her, trying to think of something to say. Just saying ‘ goodbye’ feels wrong. Saying ‘ thank you’ feels worse.

He eventually decides on the truth. “I, uh, I’m leaving soon,” he says, plain and simple. He tugs his backpack up onto his shoulders. “This plane is home now, and I—I want to see it.”

Lucretia nods wordlessly. ‘ Safe travels’ is somehow disingenuous, ‘ goodbye’ is permanent, and she settles on another nod. She busies her hands, thumbing through a journal of drawings, pages rife with happy memories that spill out and assault her. Davenport pauses for a moment before walking out. He doesn't look back.

Davenport lets out a ragged breath as he reaches the receiving hall. Even seeing Lucretia prods at wounds he’s desperately trying to hold closed. Despite his best attempts, it all wells up, making his chest and his head and his heart ache in equal measure, with the anger and shame and pity and familiarity and love. He saw so much of her in the last ten years, her best and her worst, but now, it leaves a sour taste behind.

He just needs to not be here for a while, so he leaves the moon base as soon as he can.

Lucretia locks the door when she leaves a few minutes after her captain, willing the deadbolt to seal the memories she doesn’t want to face. It only works so well. She returns to her office. She pulls out fresh paper and plans to heal the world from the wounds left by their weapons and their wars. All the while, she hopes for a semblance of peace.

###

A few short months after he sets sail, Davenport docks at a small town and discovers that his birthday had passed nearly a week before. It’s so easy to lose track of the days at sea, and he is almost grateful for it.

Birthdays had never been especially important to him. Gnomes will have hundreds of them in their lifetimes. But each one had always been a quiet reminder of what he's survived, and a day to be deservedly selfish.

Now, birthdays carry more baggage than they seem capable of bearing.

The next year, he dreads it too much to forget. He can ignore the fear and the restlessness, but the nightmares and the tremor in his hands are impossible to avoid.

A message from Merle arrives like the sweet wind from the west that arrives to push a storm out to sea. Davenport feels a rush of hope and gratitude at the invitation to spend his birthday in Bottlenose Cove. He agrees before he can second-guess himself.

He sails into port a few days later. Merle says hello, hugs him tight, and invites him inside. Merle has changed in the time they were apart, and seeing that is reassuring in a way little else can be. It’s a reminder that things are different. That history won’t— can’t repeat itself.

Davenport expects a quiet day in, a day of easy company and not playing cards. Maybe a few drinks, a few local friends of theirs, some food from Chesney’s. That’s not what he gets.

Chapter Text

Lucretia never forgets his birthday—how could she, how dare she, when she’d sullied the day enough?  It’s funny, she dreads it too, now, but for different—selfish—reasons.

During their decade alone, together in only their proximity, Lucretia swallowed her pride and remembered. One year she baked a cake, haphazardly remembered from years lost to the haze of memory, too painful to verify in a tucked-away notebook that meticulously recounts every recipe she learned during their peripatetic century. The texture was wrong, the flavors were buried under sugar and vanilla, but everyone loved it. She pretended to celebrate, ignoring the sourness and bile in her throat.

When Lucretia gets an invitation from Merle, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. He’s scrupulous about including her in family gatherings and making sure she occasionally shows up. When she gives the invitation more than a cursory glance, she's taken aback. It's for Davenport.  It's easy to conclude that she's not wanted, that Merle is inviting her as a courtesy.

The front of the invite is standard: a date, a time, an event, a platitude. But there's a note in Merle's messy scrawl tucked in the margins: “C’mon. You really wanna be alone for this?” She resigns herself to another painful reminder of who she used to be.

Davenport is rendered speechless by the assemblage of friends and loved ones that Merle's put together for him, that he didn't know he needed. He's practically bowled over by a cannonball hug from Mookie, sprinting to greet him from the opposite end of the room. Mavis trails behind him, more out of habit than genuine concern.

While the party itself is a not-entirely-unwelcome surprise, Lucretia's presence is a less-than-welcome surprise of the same magnitude.  Of all the days to see her, this one carries the sharpest sting.

But ultimately, there is nowhere he would rather spend this day than with family. He shoots Merle a knowing look, and Merle grins. He lets himself get drawn into the social whirlwind.

The party may be an outstanding success, but Davenport has been alone at sea for months, and he quickly becomes overwhelmed. He refills his glass of wine and slips outside to the balcony in search of fresh air.

Lucretia wraps a shawl around her shoulders, girding herself against the chill wind on the balcony. She sips her drink—something refreshing, with gin and cucumber—and tries to soak in the atmosphere, be in the moment, whatever garbage Merle keeps trying to push on her.

It takes him a bit to notice that Lucretia's there too. He looks at her for a moment, just enough be sure that she’s really there. He turns back towards the water and takes a long drink.

She can’t ignore the heavy tension that settles over her shoulders, a familiar well-worn cloak. Despite her urge to flee, Lucretia screws her courage to the sticking place and speaks.

“Happy birthday, Captain.”

The tension is mutually shared; the familiarity with it isn’t.

He isn’t afraid of her. He shouldn’t be afraid of her. But nestled in with the anger and the tension is a spark of apprehension, a quiet pit of distrust that refuses to acknowledge the past as the past. “Thanks,” he replies, tightly.  “It, uh—This whole thing was Merle’s idea, wasn’t it?”

She nods and shrugs in response. After all, who else would orchestrate this? She tries to keep her features even, wiping her face clean of emotion, projecting an aura of preternatural calm. She can't afford to let her façade show cracks, not here, not with him. Surely he's seen enough. Surely he's had enough.

Davenport sighs to himself in frustration. He hasn’t seen her this reserved in decades, and she’s clearly trying to to unobtrusive, too much like the wallflower he recruited a century ago. It does not bode well for the conversation he had hoped would relax a bit of the tension between them.

Instead it seems like a clear sign, telling him to let the uncomfortable silence continue until one of them leaves. If it was any other day, it it was anyone else’s party, he might do just that. But this is his party to disrupt and his birthday already soured and he’s had this question on his mind for too long. One of them had to give first, and waiting for her to act first did him no favors the last time. “What is it you want from me?” he says, edging on frustration, anger starting to burn cold in his chest. “If you want to talk, then talk. If you want to leave, leave. I just— gods, if we’re going to have to do this let's just get it over with.”

Lucretia considers her options, trepidatious. “I don’t have the, the right to ask you for anything. I just.” She takes a deep breath. “I want to apologize, not that it’ll mean anything.”

“After everything, that's—that’s it ?” He scoffs. “You say that like it's something I don't know. Because maybe not in those words, but you’ve spent the last ten years apologizing. And now that's all you have to say?”

“I don’t want to push my luck. I’d rather not ruin another—I can’t—shouldn’t… There’s no good words here, you see?”

She’s exhausted again, not in the way she was when working late nights and early mornings, burning the candle at both ends to do seven times the work with only twice the hands. The wellspring of hope and energy that colored the start of their journey so long ago has run dry. She is a shell of her former self, a few decades older physically, with lifetimes come and gone behind her eyes. What is left is ugly: despair, guilt, pity, shame.

"Good? Yeah, no shit, there’s nothing good to say here,” he snaps. She sounds so fucking defeated and it only makes the anger burn colder in his chest. He doesn’t want to look at her, doesn’t want to try and reconcile the girl he hired with the woman who became his family with the stranger standing beside him now.  “If a century and a mutiny didn't already ruin this, a few words tonight won’t either.”

She winces. “Mutineer is a nicer word for it than traitor, I suppose.” She seems smaller, younger; despite her silvered hair and lined skin, her nineteen year old self, just as idealistic, shines through. “Though you know what they say, road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.”

His hands grip the glass tighter. Mutiny is the kindest word he can think of. “What—what would you call yourself, then?”

“Desperate, maybe? I didn’t mean to... to let things go the way they did, it was just supposed to be a—a little while, not even, just long enough to stop the carnage and the, the spiraling, the evil, whatever, and you have to understand, I didn’t mean...I didn’t know what I was doing to you.” Lucretia takes a deep breath. “I really didn’t. And then there was no going back.” She twists her hands, bunches her dress and examines the fabric with keen sharp eyes that cannot meet her captain’s gaze, and she remembers her sleepless nights, so careful to take as little as she could while still redacting enough, dancing on the edge of the surgeon’s knife, and toppling.

She feels the ice in her veins, the spinning nauseous moment of realization that she has destroyed something irreparable, suffused with the knowledge that she has sealed her own fate. Years later, the feeling is as fresh as it was in the dissociative aftermath, with the sickening task that stretched before her.

The knot of anger in his chest starts to fray under the tension. His self control starts to slip. He speaks his mind. “I know, Lucretia. I—I get it! I was there! And all of that, it fucking showed!” He was there for all those years, saw how her work tore her apart, saw her struggle to pull herself back together. Even when he didn’t remember her, her facade never fooled him. “I saw the whole thing, and I fucking— I felt bad for you!”

Lucretia lets out a sharp noise, not quite a laugh, not quite a sob, but whatever it is, it hurts . “You pitied me?” She looks at him in disbelief. “Why?”

“It wasn’t—it wasn’t pity .” The word feels like poison on his tongue. Hearing it from her stings more than it should. “It was worry, or empathy, or something— I don’t know!  I just knew you were in pain and that I— that you were family.”

“Did you, really?” She’s on the verge of tears and she hates it. “How could you have known what—who I was to you?” Her words should be venomous, but they fizzle into melancholy as soon as they leave her lips.

He takes a deep breath and puts the glass down. He can't find words to describe that time, not easily. It’s mostly feelings and memories and absences that didn’t make sense in the moment, that now fit together like puzzle pieces of retrospection.  “It’s confusing, a lot of— of that time was. But even when I didn’t remember you, I knew you.” He pauses for a second, trying to find the right way to explain it. “Do you know that feeling when you just recognize someone you know really well? That familiarity? When I saw you, then, I felt that.”

Lucretia’s face crumples. She puts cold hands to her face, at a loss for words.

Davenport pauses for a minute, letting the silence hang over them. “Did you know— How much did you think I understood?”It’s not a question he knows how to ask. He remembers how she talked down to him, pitied him, but he wants to hear it in her words. As his anger resurges and the words roll off his tongue, his words come out sharp and bitterly cruel. “What did you think of me, hm? Butler? Child? Pet? ” She doesn’t answer. Can’t answer. Because as much as she tried to remember who he was, there were days where it was easier to believe the lies she told everyone else. He’s more right than he knows. She remembers that day like it was yesterday.

Her memory is glassy-sharp, rolling over her in a visceral wave that nearly brings her to her knees. She is nineteen for the last time, and she is done grieving, done standing by and witnessing, done with complicity and fate and conflict. She is fierce and she is stalwart and she is so, so sorry.

###

Lucretia hadn’t expected him to be as impaired as he is, and she struggles, at first, to push away the memories of how competent he used to be. But over time, it becomes easier to forget who they both used to be, to fall into the roles she had crafted for them: the fearless leader and her quiet ward. The irony stings, yes, but it’s the price she has to pay. As the years stretch on, as they run headlong into dead end after dead end, as they live past hope, it feels futile to remember. She can't afford to forget.

She waits with bated breath for Killian to return with her precious cargo: one seventh of the Light of Creation, a haunting reminder of Lup, and three sevenths of her heart. What she doesn’t expect, what she hasn’t planned for or calculated out, is the effect they have on Davenport. In a few short hours, he goes from being able to say simple sentences to single words to his name, his name, his name, over and over again, with thinly veiled frustration and anger coloring the only thing he can say. His delight in their presence is palpable. She aches with pity, explaining him away. The protean swirl of emotions that she has suppressed for years comes roiling out. She keeps a desperate hold on herself. As soon as she is alone, she cries.

Davenport’s world is small. A campus, a few familiar faces, a bag of coins. His mind is even smaller, precarious and stifling, surrounded by a storm so unending it reaches every horizon. But he's spent years carving a safe path through the storm. He has followed the endlessly branching paths, found the few things he can think and say and know before the static and confusion become truly overwhelming.

Then, three strangers arrive. “Strangers” who make his pulse jump and his chest ache. And his hard-won paths begin to disappear. The ground he gained, the few precious waypoints he mapped, lost to static. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand these strangers, he doesn't understand what's happening, he doesn't understand himself. He tries to tell Lu— the woman in blue who carries a staff that something is wrong, but he can’t reach the words. They’re out there, beyond the fog, but he’s lost on a path he cannot recognize. Did he— did he ever have words? Why can’t—

“Davenport?” She asks, tremulous, without a hint of the gravitas she conjured just hours before. “What’s wrong?”

The static builds into a buzzing panic. His hands are shaking. He is sure that something is wrong, but he doesn’t know what wrong is . “Davenport.”

Lucretia kneels. She takes his hands. “You’re Davenport. I’m Lucretia. Okay?” She tries to tamp down the maelstrom of dread in her gut. She waits, expectant and desperate.

She makes his heart ache the same way the strangers do, but he can’t remember her name. She just told him, and he understood. She said his name and then hers. But while his is burned sharply into every inch of his mind, hers is gone as soon as it leaves the air. He clutches her hands and the static quiets but does not subside. And now this moment feels familiar: his hands in hers as static surrounds him. “Davenport,” he tries. It doesn't work. “Davenport.”

“Please,” Lucretia whispers. She doesn’t know or care if it’s a prayer or an order. Cold panic swells in her chest, slips over and through her, and she would fall to her knees if she wasn’t already there. She would do anything, anything, if he would just say anything else, any words at all.

“Davenport,” he tries. She’s asking something of him, he understands that much. He wants to try, but he doesn’t know what she’s asking for. “Davenport. Davenport. Davenport.” Again and again and again. He doesn’t want to stop trying, he can’t stop. It’s like he’s pacing, like he’s turning around and hoping a door will be behind him but it never is, and there’s nowhere else to go.

“What have I done?” she asks, quiet, anguished. She doesn’t expect an answer. She doesn't get one.

She hadn’t imagined any of this would happen, and she had been so, so hopeful at the start. The irony of pitying someone she used to respect—still should, but can’t—hangs heavy on her shoulders.

Her voice changes, full of a pain that Davenport can understand. His name dies on his tongue as some instinct of his says that seeing her in pain is not okay. That he has to help her somehow. It comes from somewhere out in the fog, somewhere he can't place, but he takes hold of the lifeline. He takes a shaky breath and tugs his still-unsteady hands out of hers and wraps them around her, pulling her into a clumsy hug.“D—Davenport,” he says softly, nodding his head against her shoulder.

She sees frustration in him through the tears that spark unsolicited in her eyes and make her vision swim. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re going to be okay,” she murmurs in a soothing, meaningless cadence. She stands and leans down to take his hand.

He holds on tight and looks up at her. The churning anxiety fades into exhaustion, and words seem so far away. He stands in silence beside her, seeking shelter in the eye of this storm.

###

Lucretia reels from the assault of her memories, knowing that the truth will out, and the truth will damn her. She sets her jaw.

“I...pitied you, more than anything.” She continues through sheer force of will. “You— you were getting better, not much, but still, it was something, and then I went and ruined it again, and...and I could barely look at you.” Her words carry a weight of guilt, of shame, of regret and hope and relief.

He clenches his teeth, but it's not a surprise. As bright shame flares up in his chest, some cruel part of him feels good. He needed to hear her say it. It justifies the anger he can't stop. “That’s—that’s what I thought.”

She doesn't, can't, meet his eyes. “I had no idea how much—how much of you was left.”

“I didn’t—” he begins, taking a stilted breath,  “I didn’t know I had lost so much. All that time, I thought that was—was all of me.” It's a struggle, a painful, frustrating exhausting struggle, to put the things he felt into words. “I knew something was missing, and sometimes I’d get hints. Skills I couldn’t remember learning, feelings I couldn’t explain. But I— there wasn’t enough room in my head to understand it.”

Lucretia’s face twists and she hates herself for the tears that well up in her eyes, for not knowing, for turning him into a shadow of his former self. She tries in vain to maintain her carefully crafted visage. “I didn’t mean to, you have to understand, I didn’t mean things to go the way they did,” she says, barely more than a pained whisper.

Davenport takes another breath and looks at her, just for a moment. “Lucretia, of course I understand. I know that desperation. That desire to act. That fear.” His mask is faulty after a decade without use, and he can't keep the anger from bleeding through. “I understand that... sometimes there are sacrifices that have to be made. But—but being the collateral damage still fucking hurts .”

She turns away, trying to escape his burning glance. “I’m sorry.” It’s not enough, it never will be, but what else is there to say? She broke him, she treated him like a child, less an employee than a charity case, and she can’t earn his forgiveness, no matter how hard she tries.

A little bit of the tension leeches out of his shoulders. He can't look at her anymore. “If I didn’t know that, if—if I didn’t understand, I would have already asked you to leave tonight.”

“Do you remember...do you remember the planet with the robots? The one where they, they were so powerful, and you…” She trails off. There’s no need for her to recount. He remembers just as well as she does the Machiavellian decisions they had to make, not just then, but again and again. The no-win scenarios, year after year.

“Yeah, I— of course.” That year changed so much, for all of them.

“You were so ruthless. Captain. Pushing to do what we had to do. Rolling the hard six.” She’s quiet, still, but steadier.  “I learned it from you.”

Her words kick the air out of Davenport's body, and with that, his waning fury comes back stronger. “You—you see the difference, don’t you?” His voice gets wilder and slips farther out of his control. “I trusted my crew! And when—when one of them said ‘no’, I listened! I was ruthless when I had to be! When there were no other options! If there are other choices, that’s not ruthlessness, it’s cruelty.”

“There were no other options, how could you not see that?” Her voice is high, thin, a little hysterical, colored with the frantic desperation that pushed her past reason. “The world was in chaos, we were powerless to fix anything, and Lup—“ her voice catches and breaks.

“Lup knew your plan wasn’t going to work!” Frustration pours off of him, and he snarls. “Your plan didn’t work! If it wasn’t for Taako we’d all be dead right now!”

It’s almost a relief, to confront this fact that’s been hanging over her head for so long. “There was nothing else to try, and I wasn’t about to stand by and do nothing and be complicit in the destruction of yet another world. I couldn’t, couldn’t stand it anymore, and you were willing to let this world burn? Leave it behind? How is that better?” She’s sharp and breathing heavy and staring as if she could bore a hole in him.

“This was always bigger than just one plane, and you know that! If—if we stopped here, that would mean the end of everything!” He meets her eyes, unafraid. “And—gods, that’s not even what I meant! The other option was—was just talking to us!”

Lucretia’s face burns hot and angry. “I did, and you didn’t listen. What choice did I have?” she hisses, and draws herself up to her full height.

“Oh, I don’t know, not going behind our backs to enact a plan none of us believed in!” He does the same, and after a lifetime of arguing with humans, is not intimidated. “Not putting five of us out of commission to make yourself feel better and putting all of existence in danger in the process!”

She scoffs. “Are you calling me selfish?” She braces herself against the railing. Her shoulders wilt. “I gave up everything,” she whispers, anguish seeping through.

“Everything? Everything?!” He doesn’t look away from her. “You—you took my mind, Lucretia! I know how much you lost, but you didn’t even give us the choice!”

“I thought I would never get you back.” She still can't face him.

“What—what are you talking about? I wasn’t missing. You knew what was wrong! You had a thousand chances to bring me back. And you didn’t!” His voice is more hurt than angry.

“I had no way of knowing if - if it was permanent, if you would sabotage my efforts, if you would even let us stay here - it, it, was too much of a risk.” She looks around desperately, tucking her arms around her waist, reaching for a staff that's not there.

“But ten years?” He needs to know. “Ten years of watching me h-humiliate myself?!”

She draws a shaky deep breath and closes her eyes. He’s asking her all the questions she asked herself in her darkest hours, blaming her for everything she remembers when she flagellates herself in an attempt at atonement. “I was….needlessly cruel. Unkind. I kept you at arm’s length, I suppose.”

“How much closer could you have kept me?” He remembers years at her side, at her beck and call. How his proximity to her had let everyone in the Bureau see him so debased. “I barely left your side! I was—it was like you put me on display! Couldn’t you have—“ He stops, unsure and suddenly afraid of what he could have said.

Lucretia sneers reflexively. “Couldn’t I have what? Left you to fend for yourself? Left you to die? You needed a purpose, you were, you were, I don’t even know,” she waves her hands in frustration, “you were adrift! Maybe I pitied you, but you had nowhere else to go, what else could I have done besides give you a semblance of a purpose? A duty? I gave you that, I made sure people respected you, I—I did my best.”

He avoids her question, asking another in its place. “And what—what purpose was that? The relics? The Bureau? Being your— your ward?” Among the many ways she introduced him, that stood out, sharply outlined in his memory. Proclaiming that he was incapable of being trusted with is own wellbeing. That he was someone to be watched over like a child. It’s one of the thousand small moments that sting in hindsight.

“What else could you have been? What else could I have done? What, were, were you living some fate worse than death ?” She snaps at him, perilous control faltering with every word. “What did you want me to do?”

Davenport rears back. “You don’t get it, do you? I couldn’t think! I couldn’t even exist!” He looks away, staring out over the ocean and clenching his fists. His voice loses none of its bite. “How’s that any different from dying?”

Lucretia opens her mouth to speak, to say anything, but no words come out. She buries her face in her hands for a moment and in that moment, becomes someone else, someone perfectly composed, someone crystalline, brittle underneath. She turns on her heel and glides through the door, through the party, and leaves without a word of goodbye. She doesn't look back.

Chapter Text

One early spring morning, a letter arrives for Davenport, inviting him to the grand opening of the Neverwinter Repository. He thought Lucretia’s library would have opened by now, especially with the time it takes for mail to reach him.

He vacillates for a week before he realizes that he’s already headed to Neverwinter. Despite it all, he wants to go. He wants to see what she’s accomplished, the good she’s doing for this plane.

Neverwinter sits on the bank of a wide river, and as he sails up it nearly a month later, Davenport is grateful for his small ship in the increasingly shallow waters. He leaves the boat at the dock under a false name, and makes his way into the city. As he weaves through the crowded streets, he realizes that he’s afraid. Afraid of what seeing her will feel like. Afraid of what she’ll think of him actually showing up. It’s the kind of fear that comes with rebuilding trust, and he doesn’t like it.

Something occurs to him. It’s cowardly and ridiculous but he can’t just walk in there . He whistles a short tune and with a flick of his hand, casts Disguise Self. It’s a time-tested disguise, still gnomish but distinctly different in features. Graying hair, a wider face, dark brown eyes, about two inches taller. He looks more like a scholar than a sailor.

The library looks like her, like every version of her all at once. It is beautiful in its intricacies but not so complicated as to detract from the beauty of the whole. There are fewer domes than he expects, given her architectural taste, but it's clear how much work she put into it. He chest burns with dread and pride in equal measure.

It’s a breezy, fair weather afternoon, perfect weather for a grand opening. The event is held in the perfectly appointed courtyard, surrounded by a graceful cloister and colonnade, the waters of the reflecting pool lapping at the wind, and Lucretia is bursting with pride. Wooden folding chairs painted ivory are arranged in perfect rows before the dais set up in front of the colonnade, and slowly fill with luminaries eager to show their support. Davenport sits quietly in the back, and no one looks at him twice.

The ceremony itself is standard and boring, but mercifully short, and the attendees disperse before the party to explore the building.

Davenport, still disguised, stays for the party and walks alone among the shelves, wanting to see more of the library that Lucretia has built here. Unsurprisingly, the collection of books is enormous and impressive. And the magic woven into the library itself makes those inside capable of reading in any language. The tall shelves are easily more than twice his height, taller than a human could even comfortably reach, but small platforms at the bottom seemed to function like miniature elevators. He is reminded of the thousand little ways the Starblaster had been built to accommodate races of all heights.

A tall elf is looking up at the walls of books, and she practically trips over Davenport, nearly knocking him off his feet. She apologizes immediately and he tries to brush her off with a quick, “It’s—it’s fine,” before they part, walking purposefully in different directions.

Lucretia, mesmerized by a shelf of obscure linguistics books, whips her head around in search of a familiar voice. She looks out beyond the edge of the aisle and sees professorial gnome and it may be the set of his jaw or the cant of his limbs, stately posture without a hint of contrapposto, or it may be that she saw this disguise once before, dozens of worlds ago, but she knows. She hesitates.

“Hello, Captain,” she says, just barely audible in the hush of the library. “Thank you for coming.”

He startles, but he recognizes her voice just as easily. To his surprise, he’s kinda happy to see her. It’s not surprising that she found him, but he didn’t expect it so early. He takes a breath and realigns his jacket. “Thank you for inviting me. It’s—its appreciated, and, um, the library is beautiful.”

She can’t hide the smile that blooms on her face. “That means a lot. You’re — you probably don’t want to but — you’re always welcome here.”

He looks around the library and sees a thousand tiny details that remind him of her. And the idea of staying here for any significant time fills him with a cold dread, which he tries to push away.  “Not right now, maybe someday,” he settles on, voice a little tighter than he had hoped. “But I might want take a closer look at your maps.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” she says, and she can’t tell if it’s patronizing or appeasing, but it’s the best she can do.

He doesn’t know what to make of it. The implication that she was just waiting for him to come back, and that she was sure he would. He doesn’t say anything, just stood there, looking at the books. If she wants to talk, she’d have to be the one to open that door.

Lucretia waits a bit longer than is strictly necessary before deciding that there’s nothing more to say. She slips away in silence to browse the aisles.

It will be years before they see each other again, but the tension they’ve borne between them begins to dissipate with time.

Magnus is dying for the last time. As summer turns to fall, he spends more time resting, eats less, slows down, a diminuendo at the end of a coda. He lived longer than he had any right to, especially given his recklessness, rock-eating and in-rushing and arm-chopping. The morning after the first frost, Lucretia wakes up and knows it’s time, and begins to gather their far-flung family.

The call from Lucretia is not unexpected. Davenport is keenly aware of the lifespans of humans. He had long-since accepted that much of his crew would die of old age within a few decades. But with the quasi-immortality Barry had gained due to his career change and Lucretia’s loss of years, he had assumed she would be the first. He hadn’t really considered another outcome until Magnus’s health started to fail a year or so before. It’s no surprise, but it is a stark reminder of his family’s mortality.

He immediately charts a course back to shore. He’s in Raven’s Roost within two days, and as he knocks on the door, he hopes he’s fast enough.

Lucretia opens the door and it’s obvious from her relieved smile that he’s made it in time. She’s even older now, leaning heavily on her staff and moving like the old woman she never quite believed she could become. Even after decades of mellowing, she’s anxious to have Davenport in their home for the first time. She’s been loath to break the fragile peace between them, but Magnus, ever forgiving, has forced her hand from his deathbed.

It’s always a small shock to see her like this, when time and sacrifice has changed her so quickly. Lucretia had always carried herself with a dignity and strength that is gone now, replaced with a quiet fragility. Age has eroded the straightness of her back and, even though she’s still far taller than him, she seems small . But her smile is still so familiar, and he relaxes a bit at the sight of it. “How—how is he?”

“Hanging on, for a little while yet.” She gestures inside. “Most everyone I could find is here already, there’s probably food and definitely tea.” She attempts a wan smile. “Make yourself at home, Captain.”

Davenport nods. “I’d like to see him first, I want to let him know I’m here.” He follows Lucretia’s gesture and steps inside. The threads of their tentative treaty strain as he enters, and he can feel it.

Lucretia notices the way the cold settles aching in her bones, another reminder of her endless numbered days finally running out. She stops inside the threshold. She worries for a moment. “Captain, you should know — he’s not, he’s not what he used to be.”

He takes a few more steps and then stops, hearing the hesitancy in her voice, and turns to face her again. “What— what do you mean?” It’s the most he’s asked of her in a very long time.

“He’s gotten worse, since you saw him last,” she starts in, carefully, evenly, choosing her words deliberately to avoid thinking too hard about it. “It’s just — he might not remember you.”

Davenport takes a small step back in surprise. Senility wasn’t something he had ever considered for his crew and hearing her say it unsettles him in ways he can’t describe. Magnus is the first of those who forgot who has aged like this, and Davenport swallows down the panic as he considers what the future might hold for him. And for Merle, who will reach that future first. He bites back unfair words and looks away. This isn’t the time. “Thank you for— for the heads up.” He means it. If Magnus doesn’t recognize him, he wants to be prepared for it.

She nods and hopes he doesn’t see her grief. It’s too early for that, after all, or perhaps too late. He's died before, but this death is not only permanent, it is slow and it is agonizing and it is ultimately a mercy. Lucretia thought she understood mercy, once.

When someone leaves the world, those exits are not made equal. Some are impermanent, rendered moot by silver threads that warp reality. Some are devastatingly sudden, leaving raw wounds in their wake. And others, others are slow and inevitable and gasping. These are the ones that seduce with hope, that present good days to be savored unknowingly. When the end nears, some hold on because they have unfinished business. Others need permission to pierce the veil. Some cling to life out of sheer stubbornness. Some live because they know nothing else.

The days have blurred together for months, now. The inexorable march of dementia beats on, every smidgen of decline noted, acknowledged, filed away. Better days smear into good days smear into bad and worse and worse.

This is not the first time Lucretia has watched someone die, but she has never had to wait so long for the inevitable. She knows how Magnus has died before, at the end of a sword, at the hands of a sorcerer, in another apocalypse, and she knew how to grieve him, then. But now, every day is a little death, a diminuendo, a barely perceptible decline.

Forgetting is the slowest death, the unkindest cut of all. It does not discriminate, does not gently dissect and pluck a memory from the depths, does not redact with kindness or love or mercy. It hacks and slashes with disregard and leaves an empty husk.

Lucretia listens as she falls asleep, his strong heart thrumming apace, blissfully unaware that it is purposeless. She prays guiltily that it will whisper into silence.

Magnus does recognize him. He calls him Captain and smiles wearily. But it doesn't take Davenport long to see that Magnus does not call him by name. Of all the things to forget.

Davenport has seen minds go sour like this before. He lost his great-grandfather in much the same way: confused and bed-ridden. But Magnus is different. Magnus had been so vibrant , so alive. A dread settles in his stomach that he can’t shake.

And Magnus sleeps more in those few days than Davenport has seen him sleep in a whole week. It gives him a lot of time to think. He thinks about the future. Taako's future, Merle's future, his own future. A question is so sharp in his mind that he can't ignore it.

Did those ten years cause this?

If they didn't cause it, did they accelerate it? Would Magnus be— he stops himself, forcing himself away from that thought. It will only lead to a fight, and he can't do that to Magnus.

And besides, its only one person. Maybe this was always the way he was going to age. Maybe the others will be fine.

A dark thought reminds him that Lucretia will be long dead before he can ever find out.

He really does try not to think about it, but gods he thought this was behind them. He thought it was over. But the remnants of it are still following them all these decades later. It's infuriating, of course, but in quiet moments, that anger gives way to a deep-seated terror that keeps him awake at night.

He wanders the house instead, silently as ever, and tries to piece together the life Magnus and Lucretia had together here. There is such life in their home. Walls covered with picture frames and scuff marks. Shelves full of memories.

He missed so much. Of their lives, of their company. His chest burns like there’s no air left in the room.

His avoidance feels petty in the face of all of this . A house he was welcomed into. A family gathered together. Magnus so close to leaving them. Lucretia likely not far behind.

Alone here, surrounded by shadows of a life, it is too easy to forget why he kept such distance.

When it gets to be too much, his wanderings move outside. He can just barely see the stars over the lights of Raven’s Roost, but it’s enough. And when he returns, he does so as quietly as he can.

When Magnus takes a turn for the worse, Davenport is wandering as he is wont to do. Lucretia is too tired to let the ball of anxiety and grief in her core grow. She is so tired, and she has grieved a thousand smaller deaths with him. This one is final, yes, but it is also time, she cannot help but berate herself for hoping he passes quickly, because shouldn't she want more time with him? Shouldn't she take every scrap of time she can claw from Death and fight until the last weary moment slips out of her grasp? Perhaps she should, but she has fought for so very long and he is so very tired.  They are both so tired and as Lucretia well knows, long past their natural lifespans, rock-eating or no.

Everyone in the house filters upstairs, some called by the sweet clarion scent of impending death, others by a sixth sense telling them that it's time.  Hearing is the last sense to go, and gentle words surround the deathbed. Lucretia sits quietly in a rocking chair at his bedside, at the eye of the storm.

Davenport returns to a mostly empty house, and hurries upstairs to where he is sure they all will be. He’s seen Magnus’s deathbed a dozen times before, but this feels different. He remembers the first cycle. The terrifying moment where he thought they were going to leave Magnus behind. An deep seated sorrow that comes with the kind of true loss that so little of the century carried. There is a small open space near the end of the bed, and Davenport gravitates to it. From there he can rest his hand on Magnus's ankle.

Now, for a very different reason, Davenport has no words.

The inevitable spiral of death ticks on, and between the murmured prayers and words of comfort, Lucretia has nothing to say. She holds one of Magnus’s hands with her own, weathered and almost unfamiliar, worries at Julia’s wedding ring, running her finger over the warm metal, and hopes. She hopes it’s quick, hopes it’s peaceful, hopes he stays asleep so she doesn’t have to face what he’s become in this last moment. There is grace, in this moment, and everyone feels it. It's the grace of these long, drawn out deaths, with diseases that take someone piece by piece, faculty by faculty, not in one fell swoop. It's the grace of moments allowed to finish, it's the grace of the closed circle, it's the grace of people coming together. It's the grace of goodbye. But, Lucretia knows better than anyone, grace is not painless or kind. Especially for those left behind.

As Magnus breathes his last, his heart winding down, lungs allowing one final sigh, everyone is so, so still. They wait, holding their breath and waiting for his next, and it never comes. He is silent, they are still, and no one wants to be the first to break the spell that death has cast upon them. But one by one, they give in to emotion. One by one, the veneer of calm and fortitude breaks. Fat tears roll down Lucretia's weathered cheeks, and she looks askance around her, seeking something, something she can't describe, can't find the words for. There comes a peace in finality and in the inevitable passage of time. Her heart breaks, one last time.

Everyone has come to witness this final goodbye, this first permanent death, this unthinkable marker of progress. After Magnus dies, they begin to filter away, whittled down to a few who can't bear to say goodbye for the last time. There's an afterlife, yes, but for every one of these wanderers, there is an animosity, a fluttering uncertainty of their place in this alien world. Of whether they have earned their peace, done enough to avoid eternal torment. “Ghost jail”, as she so fondly recalls. For her part, Lucretia hopes they have.

Chapter Text

Davenport doesn't shatter the day Magnus dies, but the impact of it resonates through his whole self. It is one thing to understand that Magnus will die centuries before he will, it is another thing to witness it.

He wants to run. He wants to get as far away as he can and let himself grieve alone. But it’s been decades. If he doesn’t stay now, when will he? When could he?

After the funeral, Lucretia expects Davenport to head back out to sea, his obligation to his crew fulfilled, eager to remove himself from the constant reminders of their past. But instead, he stays. And he seeks her out. It's already been far too long.

He finds her in the living room. She's knitting, and while her hands have aged, their skill has not. Her sight isn't what it used to be, so she knits by feel with weathered hands, gnarled by age, still startlingly dexterous.

Davenport stands in the doorway for a long moment, waiting just beyond the threshold. He’s so tired of this, so burned out on sorrow that he has no room left for anger. He pushes onward into the room and takes a seat at the table beside her. The deck of cards he pulls from his coat pocket is old and well worn. After a quick shuffle, he deals himself a hand of solitaire.

Lucretia watches him play thoughtfully for a moment, hands moving in practiced patterns of their own volition. "That's a real shitty hand you dealt yourself," she says mildly, and continues knitting.

The corner of his mouth twists up into almost a smile, and he doesn’t look up from his cards. “Yeah,” he says slowly, “But if I only ever got good hands, I’d be pretty awful at cards.”

Lucretia pauses for a long moment. “But some hands… some hands aren’t worth playing,” she says deliberately, a quiet murmur, needles moving in steady rhythm.

His fingers pause, and he flips over another card. It’s not exactly the card he hoped for, but he has a feeling that this might be what he needs. “This one isn’t— this hand is still worth seeing through.” The new card sets clears out most of a row and reveals an ace.

Lucretia watches him finish out the hand with interest. She puts her knitting down. “Deal me in?” she asks, leaving like we used to mercifully unspoken.

He looks up at her for a long moment. Not judging or glaring, just seeing. Then he deftly reshuffles the deck, and holds it out to her. On instinct, she raps it with her knuckle. He deals.

“Aces high?” It’s how they always played, but Lucretia hasn’t played a hand with him in decades. She remembers the rules that they learned early on in their journey to pass the time, but this detail eludes her. She fans out her hand.

It’s been more than eight decades since the two of them have played cards. It feels familiar, and for the first time in years, he enjoys that familiarity. He nods. “Aces high, left of the dealer starts.”

Her heart aches, playing cards like this again. It worked as a distraction, then. She places a card with considered grace and sits back. The silence becomes companionable through the overwhelming melancholy.

Davenport considers his own hand. Once again, it’s not a good hand, but there’s potential in it. He puts down a card and waits, almost more excited for her turn than his own.

She regards her cards critically. She plucks one from her hand and plays it, making a face, hoping Davenport takes the bait. "Thank you," she says in a low murmur.

He thinks for a moment, about the game, about her, before playing a card. It’s a risky move, edging closer to her trap than he likes, but he can’t resist. “F—for what?” he replies in the same quiet tone. There’s a very good chance he knows the answer already, but he’s learned the hard way that it’s better to ask.

“For keeping an old woman company.” A sly smile blooms across her weathered face.

Davenport smiles too, slow and almost reluctant, but clearly a smile, unafraid, unapologetic.

“I’ve missed you, Captain,” she says, deliberately, quietly, sure of herself.

The honorific used to feel good, the detachment and the respect of it creating a purposeful distance between them. Now it just feels heavy. His words come easily as he shakes his head. “You don’t need to call me that.”

Lucretia looks at him, willing the unbidden, hot tears that prick her eyes to subside. “In that case, I’ve missed you. Davenport.” His name feels wrong, somehow still forbidden, the last bastion of the barriers they built - she enforced - between them crumbling into dust.

Davenport knows how good anger can feel, but he also knows its weight. This takes that weight off of him in a way that feels bittersweet and so important. And while he knows all of this will never really be behind them, it doesn’t threaten to tear him apart anymore. “I’ve—I’ve missed you too, Lucretia.”

In the companionable silence that fills the shrinking space between them, their game continues. It’s like sailing an unfamiliar boat. You know the rigging and the tides and it should be like any other voyage, but its not . It’s different: unpredictable and uncanny.

They’ve never ended in a draw before.

But they both run out of cards before either can win, and they’re left with no more cards to play.

They sit in companionable silence that evening, just Davenport and Lucretia, neither Captain nor Director. Cards lie strewn on the table, undisturbed. They share a bottle of wine, the last one that Lucretia had saved from their home plane. It certainly doesn’t taste as good as it did at a hundred and twenty five, but it’s less about taste than nostalgia. Besides, Lucretia’s not supposed to drink, but the heaviness in her chest and the sixth sense whispering in her ear tell her that it’s not going to matter much longer.

As she drifts off, she notices a considerable lightness pulling under her breastbone, a rushing in her ears like she’s been upside-down for too long, and she sees the room around her in perfect clarity. Lup is there, reaching out. She takes her hand, and can’t look back.

He sees her nod off and for a moment, he sits there in the peaceful stillness. But her breathing hitches, her body shakes, and then she is still. And unbearable silence weighs heavy on him, and it dawns on him what exactly is happening: she’s not breathing. Davenport jumps to his feet and is by her side, checking for a pulse he is so sure won’t be there. He blinks hard, looking around the room for something that he can do.

He doesn’t know much healing magic, but he tries, unwilling to lose her that easily. Davenport sings softly, the first tune he can recall. Something gentle and slow, and he weaves whatever magic he can into the melody. But he knows too fast that it’s not enough, it can’t be enough. She’s just gone.

And as he lets the magic slip from between the notes, he realizes what he’s singing. It’s a melody he learned from her, one of the many pieces of home they all had shared to ease the burden of being the only one left alive to remember it.

The song winds down and that overwhelming quiet settles back down over him. He sinks to the ground and looks around the room. He feels alone, and he feels small. Left with an empty house and a shrinking family.

His hands shake as he pulls out his stone.

There are so many things he should do. Get Lup or Barry, notify the Bureau, handle whatever he can so the others don’t have to. But he’s lost two of his tiny family in a matter of days, and he hasn’t truly been their captain in a very long time. So he lets himself call Merle.

Davenport doesn’t call Merle often, preferring to write, and so had personally set Merle’s stone to ring when he called. Merle is halfway asleep, but sound startles him awake. It’s not the first midnight call from Davenport, but it has been a while. He rolls over and tries to feel for the stone on the table beside the bed. “Dav? What’s goin’ on?”

“It’s— She— god, Merle—she—” he pauses, takes a deep breath. If Merle wasn’t awake before, he definitely is now. Dav’s voice comes out tired and soft. “Lucretia’s gone.”

“Shit.” Merle can’t bring himself to be surprised. He’d seen it at the funeral, the way she was declining. His voice is candid and tired, honest in a way that Davenport knows better than anyone. “Was she alone?”

Dav could almost laugh. “Merle, it was maybe five minutes ago. And she was asleep when it happened, but no, I was with her.”

There’s another pause, comfortable and familiar.

“I tried to—tried to heal her, but—” he finally said, trying to explain.

“Hey, you can’t think like that.” Merle cut him off gently. “You did what you could. And, you know what, I’m pretty sure the fact that you hung around did more good for her than any sorta healing.”

Davenport was quiet for a moment, letting the words hang in the air. Merle is good at this, better than anyone gives him credit for. And Dav knows he’s right , as he so often is.

“Merle,” he says finally, dragging his hand through his hair, “I—I should go. It’s getting kinda weird sitting here with her body.”

Merle smiles, and Davenport can hear it in his voice. “Take care of yourself, Dav. You’ve got as much reason to grieve as the rest of us.”

He nods, knowing that Merle can’t see him. “Thank you.” It’s rehearsed, the way they always ended these kinds of calls.

“Any time.”

It takes a few centuries and many more losses, but even gnomes eventually grow old. That inevitable ache settles in Davenport’s joints and the world loses some of its sharpness as his eyesight starts to wane. It’s slow but persistent, and he gradually finds himself preferring the solidness of the land to the shifting deck of a sailboat.

After so many years, it almost feels like the past has released its hold on him. The nightmares have faded, and now his hands only shake with the weakness of age. And, he tells himself, most people have some lapses in memory as they age. It’s not too alarming that he keeps forgetting where he put his glasses. Or that he got lost on the way back from town. Or that he can’t always remember what day it is.

Of course it's too good to be true. Of course it comes back for him. Of course he finds himself staring at out at the sea with no idea where he is.

He tries to speak, and the words don’t come . Tears well up in his eyes and he stands there, trying to wade through a too-familiar fog. The endless haze is the same but his haven is not. It’s smaller than it’s ever been, with the fog wrapped so tightly around him that it nearly takes his breath away.

It all comes flooding back soon enough, language and memory and the freedom to think. It’s the first time in nearly three hundred years that Davenport has been wordless, but it is not the last.

As his mind starts to crumble in its unsure foundations, each setback pushes him further. Those wordless voids get longer. Within six months, he starts losing days at a time. It is a spiral, pulling him towards the inevitable.

It hits him one morning. One day I’m not going to come back . And he makes a choice.

Davenport spends the next two weeks making plans. Ensuring that his things are taken care of, split between Bottlenose Cove, his crew, and his grandchildren: Mavis’s twins and Mookie’s daughter.

The he hears about the storm rapidly approaching. One of those once-in-a-century storms that churns the ocean and darkens the sky. It feels like a gift .

There is still a boat tethered to the dock, out of use but kept in working order out of habit and a desire for normality. The sky is already beginning to turn dark as he unties it.

Two days later, when the storm has cleared, Davenport’s ship does not return.

Davenport had, of course, heard tale of Magnus’s house on the soul sea, but he had never understood the difficulty in describing it until now. It isn’t l ike things on the Prime Material Plane. He can feel something inexplicably Magnus woven into the very essence of the wood, along with an unfamiliar presence he learns is Julia. The longer he spends there, the more he feels the others' presence, not embedded as deep into the fabric of it like Magnus and Julia, but still decidedly there.

It’s equal parts strange and totally natural to be back in close quarters with them all again, especially when Magnus and Lucretia look, once again, like the young adults he had known.

It’s been a few days, such that days have meaning here, and he’s not yet gotten a moment alone with Lucretia. This arrangement seems to be set for for the foreseeable future, and he doesn’t want their unfinished business to hover over them. So he goes looking for her.

Unsurprisingly, she's knitting again. She seems peaceful here in a way Davenport hasn’t seen in a very long time. It is relieving to see, in some ways. She found some kind of happiness here.

He breaks the gentle silence. “It’s— it’s good to see you.”

She smiles at him beatifically. "I was wondering when you'd find your way here." Some part of her is uneasy, still unsure of the etiquette of welcoming someone into death, but she forges ahead. "It's good to see you, too." Here, her hands are no longer gnarled with arthritis. Here, she moves freely. Here, she is the avatar of her younger self with the wisdom of the years behind her soft eyes.  

He smiles right back. “I was hoping you’d still be here when I did.”  Davenport feels that vibrance too, the familiarity of the unchanging body he spent so long in. Age had taken its toll so slowly, and only once he was young again had he noticed just how much he had lost. His mind was clearer than it had in been years, as was his eyesight.

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Lucretia says with a smile that doesn’t clear the fog of melancholy from her eyes.

It’s been centuries since he’s seen her, but he’s thought about this moment more than a few times. Wondering what he would feel when he saw her again, worrying that it would be the same consuming rage he spent so long keeping at bay. But while it’s a little odd, he's happy to see her. “It gave me a—a lot of time to think.”

She looks at him with a depth of compassion he hasn't seen in decades. There's a part of her, the part of her that knows her crewmates as well as she knows herself, that senses something amiss about his presence. "I could say the same."

“We’ve—I—there are things I never got to say to you.” He pauses, and when she doesn’t speak, he continues, fumbling with the right words. Davenport takes a moment, looking for how to do this. Even with all of his mind, this was never his strong suit. There isn’t a clean way to make this work, but he has to at least try .“I don’t think I can forgive you,” he finally starts. “It happened, and it screwed me up, and it took me a—a very long time to leave it behind. But—but you’re family, Lucretia. And I missed you.”

Lucretia smiles and nods with the gravity of understanding the olive branch he's extending. "I think we're past the point of needing forgiveness." She exhales, a weight lightening on her shoulders. "I missed you too, Davenport," she says tentatively.

Davenport’s smile turns toward a grin. “Sorry to, uh— hit you with something so heavy,” he says, lightly. “I just—I wanted to just get it out in the open.”

"Speaking of getting things out in the open," she begins, pausing to take a breath her spectral form doesn't technically need. "I talked to Lup and Barry earlier, and they said I should ask you something. Uh, ask you, why they're acting weird around you," she fumbles through her sentence, treading uneasily through fraught territory.

Davenport’s whole body shifts, and his smile falters. He had hoped, rather foolishly, that the circumstances of his death wouldn’t follow him here. But with so many Reapers in the family, the chances were slim; Barry and Lup weren’t known for their subtlety. When he finally speaks, its quiet. Not angry, not bitter. Just open, and tired. “Did I ever tell you that dementia runs in my family?”

Lucretia nods slowly with a dawning understanding, putting together the pieces that lay themselves out in her mind. "A long time ago, yes." She lets the pregnant pause stretch over them, hoping he'll fill it.

As the silence hangs over them, Davenport looks away. “My best guess is that, um, my mind already knew how to exist without memories?” He stands a little taller, crossing his arms. “So when my memory started to fail, I—I sorta fell back into old patterns.”

She winces reflexively. She's put it together, it all adds up, but there's a part of her that hopes he didn't die the same kind of slow, awful death that took Magnus so long ago.

He sees the small moment of revelation, and knows she’s figured it out. “Yeah, that’s where the reapers come in. Going by my physical health alone, I probably had a few decades left in me. But they really weren’t decades I wanted to be around for.” He pauses, and smiles darkly. “You know, it’s kinda funny, I think I’m the first one to go out that way. Me . Of all people.”

Lucretia's wince quickly morphs into a look of shocked understanding. She looks for the right words, as if there is such a thing when someone admits to taking their own life. "At least you didn't have to, you know," she trails off, hoping she gets the sentiment across.

“I wasn’t about to let it happen again,” he says firmly, but there’s no bite in it. “And I—I don’t know if the others understand that. Why I did it, I mean.”

She reaches a tentative hand out to touch his shoulder and swallows the bitterness that threatens to creep up her throat. "I don't blame you," she says in a quiet murmur, laced through with relief that he didn’t suffer the way Magnus had.

He tenses for a moment at the touch, but then looks up at her and reaches up to squeeze her hand. It’s a relief, in a strange way. Most of the others know. Barry, Lup, and Kravitz are reapers, and Merle knows him too well to not see that something is up. But she’s the first one to say that. That what he did makes sense. He’d had a feeling she would understand.

She nods, and there's really nothing more to say. They sit in companionable silence. Various friends and family begin to collect in the little house on the island, talking and laughing and loving one another. Lucretia gets up to set the table for dinner, Davenport curled up in an armchair with a book almost as big as he is. After they eat, everyone lingers around the table long after the meal is done, welcoming Davenport home.

The mood that night feels lighter somehow, easier. Like a home they had thought was lost or left behind. Conversation flows the way it used to: loud and irreverent and lively. For the first time in years, talking is easy.