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“Taako.”
“Mm.”
“You have to talk to her eventually.”
It’s somewhere around the witching hour. Taako blames Lup’s words on that. They’re in bed together, with Kravitz and Barry both away on a mission and Taako still uncomfortable sleeping by himself. She’s absently stroking his hair. She hasn’t slept. She doesn’t really need to.
“I actually don’t,” he says. He sits up and makes to get up, but Lup grabs his arm before he can stand up all the way.
“It’s been a year.”
“Uh, yeah, Lup, I know.”
“Taako.”
“I don’t have to fucking do anything for her,” he snaps. He jerks his arm out of her grip and moves to his expansive vanity, where he pulls on a black silk robe with a T embroidered on its breast. “I’m done doing things for her and you should be too.”
“She was trying to help.”
“She fucking didn’t!” Taako turns around. His face is quickly reddening, making the bags under his eyes stand out further. He looks like shit. “She fucking didn’t, okay? She almost ended the fucking world.”
“I know.”
“And she fucking--”
“I know, Taako. But I’m here now.”
“But you weren’t,” he insists. His voice breaks and he turns back around, covering his face with his hands. A pale light glows underneath them.
“I know,” Lup sighs. She feels guilty about her absence, although she knows Taako doesn’t blame her for it. She can’t help but wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t been stupid enough to go looking for the gauntlet herself. She wonders what she could have done to fix what time’s done to Taako. He’s still Taako, of course, and she wouldn’t trade him for anything in the world. Only he’s colder than she remembers. He’s angrier than she remembers.
“What’d Cap’n’port say, huh? In that fucking courtroom? Haven’t we earned a little wrath? Haven’t I?” he asks. His voice is more even now after a few long moments of silence, and when he turns around the bags are gone. His skin is flawless, his lips are rosy, his eyes are bright. The glamour doesn’t hide the look on his face, though, desperate and sad and angry and scared.
“For fuck’s sake, Taako, she’s your sister.”
“You’re my sister.”
Lup exhales and stands up from the bed. She walks around until she’s facing him and puts her hands on his arms. He’s shaking. “Taako,” she says, managing a moment of eye contact before they both have to look away. She pulls him into a hug, tangling her fingers into his hair and leaning her head on his shoulder. He doesn’t return the gesture.
“Come on, dingus. What’s a year?”
“It was a fucking decade, Lup.”
“Compared to a century?”
He pulls away. His illusory mascara doesn’t run, but she can see the tears rolling down his plump cheeks anyway. “You don’t understand,” he croaks.
“I missed you too,” she says.
“You don’t understand. I didn’t miss you.” His voice is bitter. His words hurt both of them. “I didn’t fucking know you were someone to miss. Okay? And for fuck’s sake, Lup, you might have had twelve years without me, but I had twelve years without you.”
“What?”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he says, “to not have you.”
And then he storms out of the room past her, slamming the door behind him as he goes downstairs. It’s too early for breakfast, which means he’ll be making cupcakes or something. Lup follows him out of the room but is distracted by Angus poking his head out of one of Taako’s not-at-all specific guest rooms, looking confused and anxious. She reaches over to ruffle his hair. “What happened, Miss Lup?” he asks quietly.
“He’s a stubborn ass,” she whispers back.
“Oh. About--”
“Yeah.”
Angus nods to himself, furrowing his brow. “What can we do?”
Lup takes a deep breath to steady herself. She’s getting better at that -- at breathing again, at feeling. “I don’t know, squirt. We’ll think of something.”
Sunday is for tea. This weekend they’re at Merle’s cottage, decorated with seashells and copious amounts of non-beach foliage. Most of the guests are running late, as they’re wont to do, but Lup is bang on time. The teleportative aspects of her scythe are extremely convenient. She knocks on the front door and Merle answers, grinning up at her. “Oh, no, has Death finally come to claim me?” he asks, but when he sees the look on her face his brow furrows slightly.
Not enough to wipe the grin off of his face, but he offers her his wooden hand as they walk through to his kitchen.
“Remind me why we ever get together here, huh? It’s so cramped.”
“Yeah, well, sorry for bein’ a dwarf,” he chuckles. As she sits down at the table (a Magnus Burnsides Original) he moves to the stove to put the kettle on. When he speaks again, he’s using that voice, soothing and mollifying without losing its humor. The Peacemaker through and through, she guesses. “What’s on your mind, Lup?”
“Oh, you know. Taako’s an idiot. Nothing new.”
The door swings open and a voice bellows “coming through,” followed immediately by a deerhound bounding into the kitchen followed by Magnus himself.
“You leave the door open, asshole?” Merle asks.
“Yep!” Magnus says, looking between them. The grin falls from his face quickly. “Oh, fuck, am I interrupting something? Me and Johann can wait outside.”
“You’re fine,” Lup says, smiling wistfully as she holds her hands out for Johann to lick.
“Taako’s an idiot, apparently,” Merle says.
“Oh.”
“He’s the smartest idiot I know,” Lup says, “but he’s a fucking dumbass.”
“He still won’t talk to her, huh?” Magnus asks, his voice low.
“He’s always been prickly,” Merle says, back in Peacemaker mode. “He’ll come around in his own time.”
“It’s been a year, Merle, and you know how he holds a grudge.”
“He can’t stay mad forever, though,” Magnus chimes in, trying to sound hopeful. “They were so close. There’s no way he’ll be mad forever.”
“But he’s mad now,” Lup groans. “He has a stupid room decorated for her in his mansion but he won’t talk to her. I know he misses her. He’s just--”
“A stubborn ass,” Merle finishes.
“Yeah,” she agrees with a sigh. Magnus furrows his brow thoughtfully.
“We could lock ‘em in a room together,” he says.
“You think that’d work?” Lup asks dryly, raising an eyebrow at Magnus.
“Worked for me and John,” Merle says, turning around from the stove to look at the two of them almost appraisingly.
“Except he set your guts on fire, like, a hundred times,” Lup says. “No. That’s asinine. That’s, like, from one of those sitcom scrolls.”
“Well, yeah.”
“It’s just crazy enough to work?” Magnus says with a grin.
Heels clack on the floor in Merle’s living room and the door closes. The three of them grow quiet.
Lucretia walks in.
“How’s it goin’, Luc?” Merle asks by way of greeting. He gestures towards the table. She sits down next to Lup.
“I’m well, thank you,” she says. “I’ve been keeping busy. How are you three?”
“Covered in dog hair,” Magnus says. The grin on his face makes it clear that’s not a bad thing. Johann tries to climb into his lap.
“Political office is a lot of work,” Merle says. The soothing quality of his voice has been replaced by his usual slightly brusque tones. It’s like they weren’t just talking about her.
“I’m great, Luc,” Lup says. She forces a smile and reaches for Lucretia’s hand, which she squeezes in her own. Lucretia squeezes back.
“Good to hear,” she says. Her eyes fix on Lup’s face, searching. Lup looks away.
There’s a tacit agreement between the two of them: Lup lets her know how Taako’s doing, as he’s the only one of them who won’t respond to her letters. There’s no other half to the bargain. They’re just a family. They should know these things. She’ll give Lucretia the rundown later as they sit outside on the beach.
“I think it’s time for me to stop writing him,” Lucretia says glumly. She stares out across the ocean.
“Nah, fuck that,” Lup says. “I’m done with this.”
“Lup?”
“Don’t worry about it, Luc.” She stands up from the sand and offers Lucretia her hands to pull her up. Lucretia is almost a full foot taller than Lup is, but nonetheless Lup reaches up to straighten her tie. “I’m gonna fix it.”
“If he doesn’t want to talk to me--”
“He does, though, dummy. He has a whole guest room decked out for you that he won’t let anyone use.”
Lucretia’s mismatched eyes well up with tears. “He does?”
Taako hosts dinners at least once a month. Correction: he hosts family dinners at least once a month. There’s always a number of them with Neverwinter’s social elite, as well, or sometimes over breaks with students at the School with nowhere else to go. The attendees are always as follows: Lup, arriving early to help with the cooking. Angus, coming home from school and telling the two of them about his day. Barry and Kravitz, neither of them allowed in the kitchen. Merle with his kids. Magnus with at least one dog. Davenport is still away at sea, but they’ll share tidbits they garnered from his postcards. Magnus always tears up at the signature: joyfully yours.
And there’s always a seat left open.
But not tonight.
Lup’s jaw is set and Lucretia’s hands are shaking. Lup knocks on Taako’s front door and Angus opens it, having come home early under the pretense of being sick. He doesn’t like missing school, but this is important. This is truth and justice. This is his family.
“The fuck are you doing knocking?” Taako calls from the kitchen. Lup glances at Lucretia. She’s the bravest woman Lup has ever known, the most powerful wizard in the plane, a force of nature. She looks ready to pass out. Lup reaches down to squeeze Lucretia’s hand quickly before making her way to the kitchen. The familiar sounds of twin banter fill Lucretia’s ears and her heart aches.
Angus looks up at her and offers his hand, too. “It’s gonna be okay, Miss Lucretia,” he says softly. She slips her hand into his and nods, too afraid to speak in case Taako hears her. Angus tugs her up the stairs. She’ll get a proper tour later, but right now she needs to see her room. Angus opens the door and gestures inside. “I’m not really supposed to go in here. Nobody is,” he says. A cat weaves its way between his legs and he quickly bends down to pick it up. “Especially not you, Sherbert.”
“Sherbert?” Lucretia repeats quietly. Despite the anxiety written on her face, she smiles slightly. Fondly.
“Yeah, they’re all named after desserts. He mostly calls them mean names, though.”
“Sounds about right,” she says.
She steps into the room. It’s full of pale wood (not white oak) and silk drapery, decorated in silvers and blues. There’s an exquisite painting of the moon on one wall, and a huge desk (which, given the tiny MB carved towards the bottom of one leg, she assumes he had Magnus make specifically for this room.) There’s a wall full of empty bookshelves. The bed is big enough for seven, if not more.
She wipes at her eyes with a handkerchief and turns around to face Angus and Sherbert again. “Thank you for showing me this,” she says.
“It’s yours,” he says simply. “Wait here, okay, Miss Lucretia? We’ll tell him you’re here once everyone else is.”
“Yes, sir.”
Angus beams up at her and sets Sherbert down, closing the door behind him quietly as he moves back downstairs. Lucretia hears his footsteps recede, hears Taako and Lup singing in the kitchen. She doesn’t dare disturb the furniture. It may be hers, but she’s not welcome here. After some time, she hears the sound of fabric ripping and smells ozone in the air, which can only mean Barry and Kravitz have arrived. Then there’s excited barking, followed by a shout from Taako.
“I told you to stop lettin’ your mutts terrorize my boys!”
“Aww, they’re playing, sir!”
It sounds happy downstairs. It sounds like home. Lucretia wants to cry. It’s selfish, she thinks, to wish she was a part of that again. She doesn’t deserve it. It’s not for her. When the door opens again she hears Merle call out a greeting, followed by the reedy voice of Davenport.
“Hey, what the fuck are you doin’ here, old man?”
“Can’t a captain stop in on his crew?”
Her heart breaks. They’re all here. They’re all here. That hasn’t happened since the Day. Her legs feel weak, but she doesn’t sit, standing stiff and still like she did in the moonbase’s throne room the day they “met.”
There’s more sound from downstairs, more bickering and laughing and loving. She’s crying now, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. She knows it wasn’t Lup’s intention, but this feels cruel.
And then the sounds change.
“Hey-- hey, what the fuck, Burnsides, put me down!”
“Can’t do that, bud!”
“Kravitz, chop his fuckin’ head off!”
“About that, babe…”
“Put me down!”
The arguing comes up the stairs and closer to the room she’s standing in. She stares at it, dreading the moment that it swings open.
It swings open.
“Don’t put me in that fucking room, I swear to--” Taako is saying, but he’s cut off as Magnus steps over the threshold and sets him down anyway before quickly backing up and slamming the door shut behind him.
The lock clicks.
“What the fuck,” Taako says. He hasn’t seen her yet. She could make an escape, climb out the window, Blink away--
“What the fuck!” Taako says again as he turns around. He stares up at her, eyes burning, fists clenched.
“Taako, I’m sorry, I didn’t--” she starts, but he turns around again. He isn’t yelling anymore as he cuts her off. His voice is low and cold when he speaks.
“Let me out,” he says. There’s no response. He bangs his fist against the wood. “I said let me out.”
Again, there’s no response. Taako inhales deeply and then exhales. She watches him rap his knuckles more lightly across the wood, and though she can’t see it with his back to her, she can imagine the look of dawning horror on his face as he realizes casting Knock didn’t work. He doesn’t turn around, although she watches his hand lower slowly. He’s shaking. “Fuck,” he whispers.
“Taako--” she tries again, but he cuts her off with a loud, humorless laugh.
“I don’t wanna fucking hear it,” he says, not moving. “I want you out of my house. Undo whatever anti-magic shit you did to this room and get out.”
“I didn’t do this.”
“Bullshit. You’re a liar.”
“I didn’t know they were going to lock us in here.”
“Bullshit,” he repeats, finally turning around to glower up at her. “Why the fuck should I believe anything you say, Madame Director? Huh?”
“Because I’m telling you the truth,” she says, her voice strained.
“Fuck you,” he spits. “Fuck you. What, did you tell Lup we made up, huh? Did you lie to her to force your way in here?”
“No, of-- of course I didn’t. This was her idea.”
“Fuck you.” His voice sounds the same as it did a year ago. She can still hear his words echo in her head, how utterly destroyed he was when he thought Lup was gone. He pushes his way past her to a large window, which he tries to open to no avail. “Fucking hell. Did they think this was gonna work? It’s fucking asinine. I’m gonna kill Magnus.”
“Taako, please--”
“You’re lucky about this fucking field or I’d kill you too,” he says, a hint of a snarl in his voice. “Do you honestly think that after everything you’ve done to me, everything you’ve done to us, everything you’ve done to Lup, that I wanna see your fucking face ever again?”
“No,” she pleads. “I don’t. I understand that you hate me. I deserve it.”
“You’re damn right you deserve it!” he says, voice raising to a near hysterical pitch as he rounds on her again. “What the fuck did you wanna achieve from this little home invasion, huh?”
“It was Lup’s idea,” she repeats desperately. “I didn’t want to--”
“Didn’t wanna fucking face consequences for your actions?”
“Taako, I live with the consequences of my actions every day. I don’t-- I don’t sleep, Taako.”
“Join the club. You’re not special.”
“I’ve devoted my life to rebuilding.”
“Rebuilding what you fucking broke to begin with.”
“I don’t… I don’t know what you want me to say, Taako.”
“I don’t want you to say anything.”
She nods. He forces himself to breathe evenly and moves to sit on the bed. She stays where she is, not daring to move or speak, barely daring to breathe.
There’s quiet for a long, long time. They can hear their family downstairs, although the mood is considerably less jovial than it typically is. They can barely make out some story Davenport is telling to fill the dead air. Taako huffs an angry laugh as he realizes he must have come specifically because of this scheme.
“Did you have to take her away?” Taako asks. He’s lost track of time, staring at the empty bookshelves. Lucretia hasn’t. It’s been twenty minutes.
“I saw what losing her did to you,” she replies after a moment.
“You didn’t have to take her, you could’ve just left her dead.”
“I thought--”
“She’s everything,” he says, choking back tears. Lucretia can hear it in his voice. She exhales slowly, a ragged sound.
“I know,” she says softly. “I thought you’d be happier if you didn’t know you’d lost everything.”
“Yeah, look how that worked out,” he says with a derisive laugh. “You ever watched forty people fucking vomit themselves to death, Lucretia?”
“I had no way of knowing Sizzle It Up would end that way.”
“Really? I thought you knew everything. I thought you knew what was best for us. You know Magnus still has nightmares, right? A hundred years of that thing chasing us and he sleeps like a baby, but now he dreams about Raven’s Roost. About Julia. You did that. You did that to him.”
“I know,” she says quietly.
“Cos he’s too much of a pushover to cut you out. They all are. They’re fucking morons if they think you’re ever going to change.”
“Taako,” she says, unable to hide her tears any more. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. You can tear me apart if you want. You can hit me, you can curse me, I deserve it. I can’t take it back.”
“You’re a fucking moron,” he says. “You’re the smartest fucking moron I’ve ever met.”
She’s caught off-guard by the backhanded compliment, stunned into silence.
“We would have tried it. We would’ve destroyed the world.”
“Taako?”
“Your stupid fucking plan. We would’ve tried fucking anything. And you decided for us. You took everything from me. You took everything from all of us.”
“I know.”
“How am I supposed to be fine with that?” he asks. He looks across at her, where she still stands in the middle of the room. His eyes look angry, but more than that, they look exhausted. He looks like he wants an answer, and Lucretia begins to understand.
He’s afraid of her.
He let her in, let all of them in. She knows how hard that is for him. But he trusted the six of them with his life, with his secrets, with his heart. And she hurt him. It isn’t just that he hates her. He’s scared of her hurting him again.
She feels like her legs are going to give out, so reluctantly, she sits down at the desk.
“You don’t have to be fine with it,” she says softly. “You can be angry with me for as long as you need to be, Taako.”
“Oh, fuck off with that self-pitying martyr shit. You don’t have a say in whether or not I’m angry at you.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“I don’t… I don’t know, Taako. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t fix this.”
“I know.”
He sniffs and wipes at his undereyes. His fingers come away black with mascara. “You remember that night in the kitchen?”
She furrows her brow. She remembers a lot of nights in the kitchen. “Which one?”
“After Candlenights,” he says. “After we came back from the lab. You sat there and you talked to me like you didn’t ruin my life. How’d you do that, Lucretia? Didn’t you care?”
Despite the fact that his voice is shaking, that he’s crying, his words are even and measured, lower in pitch than usual. He doesn’t speak like this often, she knows. Not that she didn’t understand the gravity of the situation without it, but it makes her feel worse, weighs on her shoulders. “Of course I did,” she says quietly. “I wanted to tell you everything. I wanted to tell all of you everything.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You could’ve. If you hadn’t fucking ruined everything already.”
“But I did.”
“You did.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and burying his face in his hands. “I just don’t understand,” he says quietly.
“You..?”
“You’re the one who fucking sat with me, Luc. You remember that? The first time we lost her. I don’t remember much of that year, but you sat with me.”
“Oh.”
“You braided my hair and you held my hand and you told me she’d be back.”
Lucretia looks down at the floor. There’s a soft carpet embroidered with forget-me-nots. She had one like it on the Starblaster. Looking more closely, she thinks it might be the same one, restored carefully by Taako’s transmutation magic.
“How could you do that and then take her away?”
Her mouth feels dry. She doesn’t say anything. There’s a gentle knock on the door.
“Sir? Miss Lucretia?” comes Angus’s voice. “How’s it going?”
“It’s fine, Ango,” Taako says, finally lifting his face out of his hands. He’s trying to hold it together. He doesn’t want Angus knowing how upset he is.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Peachy keen, boychik.”
“Can I let Creme Brulee in?”
“Only if you let me out.”
“Only if you let Luc stay for dinner,” Lup’s voice comes through.
He’s silent.
“It’s fine, Lup,” Lucretia says after a long moment. “You tried your best. I should go.”
“Shut up,” he says coldly. There’s no sound from the hallway.
“I’m sorry?”
“Shut the fuck up, I said.” He stands up from the bed and goes to the window again, eyeing his reflection in the glass panes. He lifts his hands to his face again for a moment, a pale glow emanating from behind them. When he turns it’s as if he hasn’t been crying at all. He walks to Lucretia where she sits in the chair and stares at her, just past her eyes. “If it’ll get them off my back, fine. You can stay for dinner. There’s always leftovers anyway.”
He reaches down, touching her hand for just a moment, which clenches in her lap as she nods.
And then he walks to the door again. “You hear that, you nosy fucks? You can let us out.”
The lock clicks again, and when the door opens the two of them are faced not only with Lup and Angus but with everyone. Magnus is standing with a handkerchief in his hands which he’s clearly been crying into. Angus is holding a seal point cat in his arms that immediately wriggles free and rubs against Taako’s legs. Kravitz looks concerned, Barry looks anxious, Merle looks reasonably pleased. Davenport has his eyes on Taako -- they’ve written back and forth about this, something none of the rest of them know. Taako bends down to pick up Creme Brulee and stares Lup down for a moment.
She steps forward to wrap him in a hug. “I’m proud of you,” she whispers so only he can hear.
“Shut up,” he whispers back.
The party moves back downstairs. Conversation is stilted and awkward, but it’s conversation. It’s not Taako’s most successful family dinner.
Or maybe it is.
As he’s serving dessert he catches Lucretia’s eyes, and she mouths to him: thank you.
He nods, just a little bit.