Archive of Our Own

She is born into a world of joy and colour. Cradled in shaky arms, wrapped in a blanket of sunlight, and kissed tenderly on the soft skin of her forehead. She does not cry for long, when she is born.

Suddenly, the world is drawn into a sharp focus. It’s a beautiful world, a terrifying world, a world that embraces her with wide open arms. Her parents love her more than anything they’ve known in the seven hundred years without her. Joyful tears fall on rosy cheeks, as her tiny hands reach for something bigger than herself.

They call her Aubrey, and she is their sunshine.

***

She is found in the darkness of a quiet night. From great tragedy and violence, she lives, cries out, tiny voice reaching up towards distant galaxies. She is wrapped in the soft folds of a tattered cloak, transported to a peaceful home, slow, even breaths piercing the silence.

A sleepy voice in the stillness, the shrill cry of a frightened child cuts through the dark, and they learn to care for her through abject panic. They were not ready for this. An impulse, a moment of soft-heartedness, brought her into their life. But is anyone ever truly ready for this?

They call her Gandy, and she is their starlight.

***

“Babe, you’ve gotta stop crying at our kid. You’re gonna give her a complex,” says Lup, grinning as Barry cradles Aubrey on the living room floor.

“S… sorry, this is just... the cutest... fucking... thing…”

Lup squats down next to her husband and baby, to see that Barry’s just finished changing Aubrey into her IPRE onesie. It’s super official and everything. Captain’s approval.

When Davenport, in the Astral Plane, had found out Lup and Barry were gonna be parents, he’d insisted on getting this onesie for them. He’s sort of like a proud, dead, grandpa. It’s sweet.

Lup says a private prayer to the Raven Queen as she looks at her daughter. This shit is absolutely the cutest fucking thing she’s ever seen in her entire goddamn life.

Aubrey lets out a happy noise, kicking her legs in her outfit. She’s like a little… planar explorer or something. She’s gonna save the world. Fuck.

“Look at these ears,” says Barry, actually giggling as he runs a finger over the tiny point on the end of their daughter’s right ear. Lup snorts at him, giddy with happiness. She’s never been so exhausted in her life, but moments like this make the emotional rollercoaster a million times worth it.

Aubrey makes some murmuring sounds, pursing her lips and sticking her tongue out, squinting up at Barry with her brand new baby eyeballs. Her eyes are super big and blue, when she opens them. Barry mimics her mouth movements, lips pulled tight in a half-smile.

“Mmmm that means she’s hungry, Bear.”

Barry blinks.

“Oh.”

Aubrey breaks into a loud cry, and they scramble to feed her.

****

“Hey, hey, Lup. You hear that?”

Taako points his stone of farspeech at Gandy, still screaming her brains out after A SOLID HOUR AND A HALF.

“Um, yeah, that sounds like a baby to me,” says Lup.

“Mmmmmmmmmmm, right, how do I make it stop, though?” asks Taako. Kravitz grimaces at the stone, clinging to Lup’s words like a lifeline as he bounces the baby on his knees. He’s been at it for a really long time. The two of them have been swapping out as Gandy cries her little brains out.

Gandy is a few months younger than Aubrey, so basically Lup has all of that good baby-growing-up info fresh in her mind. Anytime Taako needs a lil’ troubleshoot, he gives Lup a call. The sound of Gandy’s crying is stressing him out in a major way, not just because it’s been going for so long, but because he hates seeing her upset, in a way he’s never felt in his life. He wants her to be happy and peaceful and cute again. Always.

“How long’s it been?” asks Lup’s voice, crackly through the stone.

“Like, way too long. We’ve tried feeding her and changing her and all that shit,” says Taako, the words coming out in a rush. He’s new to this. He is so new to this. Sure, he’d thought Aubrey was cute, and his special brand of trauma keeps him wanting to save orphaned little kids, and the young dad thing looks really good on Kravitz but, like, who is Taako to think he can do this? Gandy is so small and so breakable and she deserves someone who can quiet her the fuck down when she’s...

“Is she overtired?” asks Lup. Taako pauses his spiralling.

“The fuck is ‘overtired’?”

Lup’s laughter crackles through the stone. Taako and Kravitz exchange a nervous glance. Gandy wails on.

“Oooooh jeezy creezy, okay. So babies are really small and don’t actually understand the world or themselves or anything. So sometimes they get all tired, and don’t know why they feel like that, and they get all worked up and just sort of scream forever. Sorry about your luck, there.”

“What do I do about it?” hisses Taako, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Um, enjoy the miracle of life, I guess,” says Lup. “I gotta go, I have like a ten minute window to shower and I’m gonna shampoo today.”

She hangs up, and Taako sighs, tossing his stone aside. So this kid is overtired , huh?

Kravitz blinks up at him, eyes all soft and concerned and fatherly in a way that twists at Taako’s heart.

“Taako, what’re you…?”

Taako hikes up his sleeves, whisks Gandy away from Kravitz’s lap, and starts a circuit around the house, bouncing her and singing to her and doing whatever he can think of to try to get her to calm the fuck down. He’s gonna make his kid happy or die trying.

****

“L… Lup, oh God, Lup there’s something in her mouth again....”

Fear surges through Barry’s veins as he snatches Aubrey off of her blanket, grabbing at her mouth until she spits out whatever she found this time.

Barry’s been baby-proofing the house since long before Aubrey was born, and the kid can barely even roll over yet, but somehow she still manages to find every little thing that he missed. Everything has to be so careful and precise with her, or else it can all get real bad real fast. It’s like the highest-stakes experiment Barry’s ever attempted.

“Hmhm, what’cha got there, sweet pea?” asks Lup, kneeling down and watching. Aubrey just giggles and drools, her drool coloured dark with whatever dirt she’s managed to find and stuff into her mouth.

“Aw that’s probably just some dust from under the couch or something, babe, no big.”

Barry’s heart leaps to escape through his mouth.

“There’s so much… bacteria and s…”

“Well how else is she gonna build up that little immune system of hers?” asks Lup, leaning over Barry’s leg to wipe Aubrey’s drool with the blanket. Aubrey giggles again.

Aubrey is a really happy baby. Mischievous, but pretty easy as far as babies go, Barry thinks. He reluctantly gives her a little kiss on her forehead, then sets her back down, every muscle in his body screaming for him to keep her in his arms. Lup kisses Barry on the head, too, and he takes a deep breath, relaxing a tiny bit.

Lup’s radiant as a mom. She always has been radiant, but it’s even more, sort of, colourful now. She glows and bounces and sings and there’s a sparkle in her eyes. Barry’s got some of that too, probably, but all he really notices aside from the soul-consuming love is the soul-crushing anxiety. He wants to protect Aubrey from everything. To pick her up and never put her down until she’s thirty-five. Or maybe just never put her down ever.

Aubrey giggles again, playing with her toes. She has the tiniest feet in the world, Barry thinks. She’s so tiny. It’s hard to let go of things, when she’s this small.

If nothing else, though, Barry’s learning. He takes a deep breath and grins, reaching out to tickle Aubrey so she laughs again. He’ll never get tired of that.

****

“Alright, Taako out,” says Taako, bending in half at the waist for a quick peck on the lips. Kravitz obliges, smiling through the kiss, holding Gandy protectively between them.

“See you soon.”

Kravitz readjusts to sit with his knees up, and sits Gandy with her back on his legs to face him. She starts to whimper, and Kravitz hurriedly cups his hand between the two of them, conjuring a small image of a dog, then a cat, then a bird. She blinks, mouth open as she falls forward into his hand, trying to touch the animals. Kravitz laughs, softly. She’s very interested in prestidigitation. Taako keeps saying he's sure they have a little wizard prodigy on their hands.

Taako heads towards the door, preparing to meet Ren for a quick lunch to catch up on the state of things. He’s on paternity leave for a few more weeks, yet, but the Taako brand rests for no one.

Kravitz delights Gandy with a few more animals, then some shapes. She get restless and starts to wail again, letting him know it’s time for a different game. He quickly lifts her up, readjusting so he can bounce her and hum a little tune. He chooses one of her favourites, an old song he remembers from his own childhood.

Kravitz thinks Gandy’s maybe the fussiest baby in the world, but it doesn’t bother him too much. He’s fairly used to dealing with high-maintenance individuals.

Regardless, Kravitz has been exhausted, solidly, ever since he first took Gandy home. Which is odd, because neither he nor Taako even need to sleep, technically.

As he cradles her, though, he thinks of the old cliche; that he wouldn’t have it any other way. He changes his tune to a calmer song, seeing if he can manage to lull her to sleep. A cat curls up beside them, and Gandy coos at her.

Kravitz senses someone staring at him, and looks up to see Taako, hovering silently in the doorway. Kravitz’s humming fades away, and he grins at his husband.

“Did you need something?”

“Just enjoying the show,” Taako says, giving a goofy grin back. “Originally, though, I was coming up to let you just take a real good look at how I almost left the house .”

Taako holds his arms out, spinning around slowly.

“Wh…”

Kravitz’s confusion is cut off quickly. The more he stares, the more he sees that Taako is definitely not suitable for public viewing.

Taako is glamourless, which is fine on its own, but he’s also just generally ungroomed, hair sticking up in places and eyes drooping with exhaustion. He’s still half in his pyjamas, wearing checkered flannel pants and a dress shirt. To top it all off, a generous baby vomit stain colours the front of the ensemble.

“You look good to me,” Kravitz says, in a teasing sort of singsong. He and Taako pause for a moment, just grinning at each other, sharing in the absurdity of what’s happening to them.

“Gotta raise your standards a bit, handsome,” says Taako, winking as he ducks back out of the doorway.

Gandy starts crying again, and Kravitz resumes singing.

****

From a childhood on the road, to grad school, to IPRE training and one hundred years of running, to centuries spent hunting bounties, Lup is totally used to staying up late. She’s learned to roll with tiredness, and she can go days at a time without sleeping or meditating or anything, running on only a pure zest for life.

So Lup can safely say that she’s never been this tired in her entire existence. She can barely keep her eyes open, and has moved past zest and into pure instinct territory. Poor Barry’s still got human needs, and he’s been slowly unravelling with time. She finds him sleeping in random spots all over the house, usually waking up violently whenever she comes near him. She also likes to snatch naps whenever it’s possible, so she tries to leave him be when she can. Keeps it fair.  

Lup wakes up with a sour taste in her mouth, brain hazily exploding into panic. Where is Aubrey? Was she feeding her? Holding her? Playing with her? She calms herself down, trying to collect her hazy thoughts. Barry’s got the baby somewhere, for sure. Everything is fine. Lup forces herself out of bed, stomach churning. She feels a million times worse than she did when she first laid down, which is, like, real cool , biology.

She makes her way into the living room, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, and instantly softens at the sight in front of her. Collapsed on the couch, peacefully, Barry holds Aubrey to his chest. Both of them are dead asleep, and Lup’s heart melts as she clutches at the wall.

She watches them for a bit, Aubrey’s tiny form rising and falling with each of Barry’s steady breaths. Aubrey’s in her bear onesie today, complete with little ears and everything. This is powerful stuff.

Lup has always taken to shortening Barry’s name to “Bear”, as a cute sort of coupley thing. Now that they have their baby bear, it feels like the person missing from their life has finally arrived, without them even knowing she was missing. Lup has never been happier.

She shuffles her way up beside her husband and daughter. She loves them both so much she doesn’t know if she can even fit all the love in her body.

She leans down and gives them each a soft kiss on the cheek. Not enough to wake anyone up, but enough to send waves of pure joy through every cell of her exhausted body.

****

Taako returns to work with Gandy strapped to his front. He walks through the hallways, students and teachers alike pausing to fawn over her. He’s at his most powerful like this. Compliments on his daughter are compliments for him, too, since he’s doing such a killer job of raising her. He did her hair today in a little sprig on top of her head, and she’s rocking it. They’re taking out fools right and left with all of this combined charm.

Taako works at his desk for most of the day, Gandy alternating between sitting on his lap and dozing in a crib he’d set up for her. Sometimes she starts fussing, or gets hungry, and he welcomes it as a break from the boring paperwork he’s doing.

“Mm hm, you tell ‘em, pumpkin,” he mumbles, rubbing her back as she cries tearlessly. “You’re the most important thing in the room. Honestly, shame on me for even trying. You got this.”

Then he sets her in his lap and hands her a crystal paperweight and she’s good for like ten more minutes.

****

Aubrey celebrates her first birthday in the Astral Plane, surrounded by the whole extended family. It’s one of the perks of being among the Raven Queen’s favourite reapers that Lup and Barry and Kravitz can just sort of yank everyone out of whatever afterlife stuff they have going on, and hold a really great party with a scenic view of the swirling souls of the dead.

Lup’s made Aubrey a giant cake shaped like a bunny (her favourite stuffed animal), and Aubrey slams into it with tiny fists until eventually tasting some icing and immediately face-planting right into the bunny’s stomach. Everyone laughs, and it only encourages her to destroy the cake more. Taako throws Gandy in on the action, and the cake is pretty much ruined by the time the salvageable slices get around to everyone.

Their family has grown quite a lot, in five hundred years on Faerun. Half-elf lifespans being what they are, Barry and Lup had had to wait a long time to bring their daughter into their lives. This first year with her has been both excruciatingly slow and the blink of an eye. Barry stands to the side of the action, thinking to himself that he’s gonna do whatever he can to enjoy the crap out of his kid before Taako dies and the rest of them inevitably follow him. For Barry and Lup, outliving their child was never an option. Barry's heart twists painfully just thinking about it, and he avoids a glance at the sea of souls beneath him.

Magnus has snatched up Aubrey, now, dancing with her in huge, sweeping steps as Julia joins in with Gandy. The babies are passed around from person to person, and Barry follows Aubrey with his eyes, always watching her even as he catches up with all of his favourite people. She’s handed off to Lucretia, who holds her super delicately, like she’s made of glass, until Aubrey gets a huge handful of her hair and Lucretia chuckles, painfully, trying to wrench it from Aubrey’s iron grip.

“Hey, stop that,” says Barry, rushing over to help. He helps uncurl Aubrey’s fingers, and Lucretia is able to pull away. Barry pauses, locking eyes with Lucretia for a moment, Aubrey chattering between them. He knows Lucretia well enough, after all they’ve been through, to know her feelings at a glance. She’s looking at him so softly, eyes warm and shiny, and he knows that she’s just so, so happy for his family. For what he and Lup have finally built for themselves. For how their lives have changed, thanks to this new person they’ve brought into it. None of the shit they’ve been through has stopped them from reaching their happy ending. That means the world to Lucretia, he can feel it.

“Come on, Aubrey, let’s go visit Uncle Merle,” says Lucretia, finally breaking eye contact.

****

Gandy’s first birthday is a national event. Taako sends out a press release a few weeks before, and he rents out an event hall. Adoring fans drop by all day, bringing her gifts and well-wishes and all manner of things. Kravitz carefully thanks everyone for coming, making sure Gandy never leaves the arms of either himself or Taako.

Whenever she does anything, the crowd cheers, and she pauses, a slow smile spreading on her face. She makes a loud “bah!” sound, and everyone around her laughs. Kravitz watches the love for the attention cross her face, and she hesitates before letting out another, louder “BAH!”. More laughter. Eventually, Gandy’s letting out a “bah!” every few seconds. Everyone is clapping and cheering, and she’s totally eating it up.

The attention is only slightly broken up when Lup and Barry arrive with Aubrey. The two kids put on a show together, babbling and reaching out for each other’s hands and squirming in their parents’ arms. The two kids spend nearly every day together, by now, and find a comfort in each other that was, in every sense, inevitable. 

Kravitz and Taako bring their tuckered baby home, lay her down with a soft kiss from each parent, and it’s the first time she sleeps through a whole night on her own.

****

Aubrey is walking, now, and she’s more trouble than Lup had ever dreamed she’d be. Not only does she tend to destroy everything she sees, joyfully pulling things off of shelves and ripping up papers, but she also has the two most hella magic parents in the world, so, natch, she’s also hella magic.

Lup’s never really spent enough time with a magical baby to know when magic usually starts showing itself. She thinks this early stuff means her kid is a warlock, or at least really smart or something.

Either way, their living room is on fire. Which is… troubling.

First things first, Lup snatches her baby out of the fire, checking her frantically for any signs of injury. Her heart races, every nerve painful as she prays to every God she can think of that Aubrey isn’t hurt.

Nope. Her kid is A-ok. Now for the living room.

It takes a few spell slots to put everything out, but Lup is familiar enough with fire that she doesn’t totally panic. It was really only the curtains and the couch that caught, and they were a few decades old by now anyway. Time for some new stuff.

“You little monster,” Lup says, throwing her daughter into the air, mouth curling into a grin. She sets her down. Aubrey laughs.

“Seriously, though, never do that again. You can get hurt.”

Aubrey’s at the age where she’s starting to understand some things, and it’s seriously amazing to Lup. She’d always known that Aubrey was a little person in there, but with the personality and the understanding words and everything, it’s really starting to sink in. Lup has no idea if this particular scolding has gotten through to her, but Aubrey at least stands there looking kind of solemn for a few seconds before laughing and throwing her hands in the air.

“Gen gen gen gen gen!” she chants, wiggling around until Lup sighs and throws her up into the air again. Aubrey laughs, and then Lup is laughing too.

She sets Aubrey down, and watches as she goes back to playing, scattering pieces of a farm playset absolutely fucking everywhere. Lup sighs deeply, and runs her hands through her hair. She really had been worried for a minute there. Time to tackle this thing.

She pulls out her stone of farspeech, ringing up Barry. He answers, and there’s a lot of feedback on the other end.

“Uh, hey, Lup,” he grunts, and there’s a few crashing noises.

“Bad time, babe?” she asks, watching as Aubrey waves her arms around, creating a few puffs of smoke. She sucks in a breath through her teeth, pulse hammering against her ribs.

“Uh… not too bad. What’s… OOF. What’s up?”

He’s definitely in the middle of reaping someone. Oh well, Aubrey is more important.

“You’ll never guess what our little lady has been up to…”

***

Taako and Kravitz blast some really bad oldies music, dancing in their socks with two very wobbly babies, and Taako cannot wipe the smile off of his face. Lup and Barry are away on a mission, so naturally he and Kravitz are on cool uncle duty.

Taako’s never been one for sock-dance-parties, because he has a whole image to keep up. But these kids are so full of energy, and he knows it’s no prob being embarrassing around them and Krav.

Kravitz stands holding Gandy’s arms, trying to teach her to jump. She bobs up and down, yelling joyfully, but can’t jump just yet. Taako watches for a minute, grinning, and then hears a huge crash behind him. Then crying. He should not have turned his back on Aubrey.

“What’s up, little… oh fuck…”

Aubrey herself is fine, still standing and everything. Taako’s coffee table, though, is somehow broken to pieces. This kid is magical as shit.

He snatches her up before she gets splinters or something, and Kravitz comes over to help calm her down.

“It’s just a coffee table, love,” he says, softly, patting her on the back. Taako sets her down near Gandy, sighing. This kid is getting heavier every day.

Gandy is staring at the wreckage of the coffee table, babbling along to the synth-tunes, tiny eyes locked on. Taako raises an eyebrow at her, about to say something, and then…

The coffee table knits itself back together, totally fixed like nothing even happened in the first place. Taako blinks at it, looking back and forth from the table to Gandy. He pushes down on it with his hands. Solid. What the fuck.

“I… Taako, was that you?” asks Kravitz, also totally baffled.

There’s a short silence. Gandy blinks at Taako.

“Aw, hell no, my kid is not gonna be a goddamn bard,” says Taako, scooping her up. “Krav, you’re being a bad influence.”

Kravitz laughs, picking up Aubrey, cheeks flushed.

Taako blows a raspberry on Gandy’s stomach, then holds her close as she squeals in delight. No matter how annoying it is that she did it with music, He’s maybe never felt prouder of anyone in his whole life.

He stands next to Kravitz, and the girls reach for each other, babbling half-formed words.

***

“Bon bon bon bon bon bon bon bon!”

Aubrey reaches a tiny hand up towards Lup, panic her half-uttered words.

“He’s doing great, honey, only a few more seconds.”

Lup puts the finishing touches on the stuffed rabbit, ties off the thread, and hands him back down to Aubrey. Surgery: success.

Aubrey squeaks with delight, hugging the bunny tight around his neck. The thing is almost as big as she is, white and soft and freshly sewn up from the brink of disaster.

“Let’s be nicer to him from now on, mmkay?” she asks, ruffling Aubrey’s hair. “No more trying to rip off his ears.”

Aubrey falls over onto the ground, the bulk of the bunny throwing off her balance.

“You gonna say sorry to Dr. Harris Bonkers?” asks Barry, grinning at her.

Aubrey mumbles something, voice muffled by the bunny. Lup laughs.

“That’s quite the name.”

“He didn’t get that PhD for nothing,” says Barry, shrugging.

“Vassar, I heard,” says Lup.

They’d been calling the rabbit “Bonkers”, up until now, but after all the trials and tribulations that rabbit’s been through, a more noble name does seem to suit him.

Aubrey rolls over and starts crawling away, still dragging the bunny after her.

*****

Gandy learns to talk first, even though she’s a few months younger than her cousin. She starts off as everyone does, with simple words and demands. Her first, official sentence doesn’t have the effect that it should, in all honesty. Instead, it sends a chill down Taako’s spine.

“Unc-le Oni wanss blood.”

Taako whirls around to face his daughter. She’s sitting happily on the other side of the kitchen, unrolling parchment paper all over the floor.

“ What was that, princess?”

Gandy just giggles, tearing at the parchment paper. Taako walks over to her, bends down, and lightly teases the rest of the box away from her.

She screams as he does, face twisting up until he bunches up the already ruined paper and showers her in it.

“Blood, blood, blood blood!” she giggles, scrunching up the paper in tiny fists.

“Kravitz has got to stop talking about work around you,” Taako mumbles, going back to his cooking.

Uncle Oni is Gandy’s favourite doll, a definitely haunted-looking plastic-faced thing that has given Taako the heebie-jeebies since day one. He wishes she could have fallen in love with something a lot cuter, but, oh well. She’d named him “Oni” all by herself, and it seems he’s here to stay.

“Give this a try for me, will you?” says Taako, selecting a freshly cooled chunk of sweet potato and passing it down to Gandy. A lot more of it ends up on her chin and the ground than in her mouth, but good gastronomy starts young, he thinks. She seems happy with it, and Taako whistles a few notes as he goes back to cooking.

****

Once Aubrey is old enough to fully understand friendship, the cousins’ hangouts get a lot more fun. Aubrey loves Gandy so much , and it is scientifically impossible to be bored with the both of them around.

Today is a fashion show day. Taako and Lup raid Taako’s closet, finding all of the flowiest, flounciest, loudest, most ridiculous things for the kiddos to try on. Aubrey runs around in a leather jacket, practically tripping over the bottom of it, sleeves rolled up all the way. Gandy is wrapped around about ten times in a purple thing that’s probably actually a scarf, but is now a dress.

“Which of these, do you think?” asks Taako, holding out three sparkly silver necklaces for Gandy to try.

“Ummmmmmm, this,” says Gandy, wrapping her hand around the biggest, sparkliest one.

“Excellent choice,” says Taako, spinning her around and then slipping the necklace on over her head. She giggles, then joins Aubrey in running around, layers and layers of clothes trailing behind them.

Aubrey’s not big on dresses and things, but Gandy super is. They both love to flaunt their stuff, so it’s not a problem. Lup’s even had a few really good conversations about gender out of it, and now whenever Aubrey corrects some kid on the playground about how girls shouldn’t have short hair or boys can’t play with dolls or whatever shit, Lup’s chest swells with joy.

“We’re raising these kids so right,” she says, catching Taako in a brief moment of reflection. The girls screech and collapse in a pile of clothes.

“Mm, hope so,” Taako says, folding his arms. Gandy and Aubrey attack the pile again, trying on a few hats and cackling.

Lup sighs, shaking off the stress creeping up on her.

Trying to be good parents, without ever having had parents of their own, has been really tough on both twins. They’ve stayed up late many nights talking about it. Definitely some tears involved. But every day that Gandy snuggles up to Taako and giggles, every day that Aubrey plays, carefree, and wrecks shop without fear of backlash, it’s like each of the twins breathes a little easier.

That’s not to say they don’t trip up sometimes. It’s taken a lot of learning, but the kids are happy and alive and things seem to be, more or less, working out. They’d wanted this. They’d needed it. Lup doesn’t know how she ever lived without the sound of Aubrey’s laughter. Taako feels like fate and Istus and whatever grand plan has always been saving a part of him for Gandy.

“Fuck, careful!”

Taako lunges forward, unhooking Gandy’s necklace from a bedpost as she runs off towards the living room.

Lup laughs, lightly, at his horrified expression. Yep, they’re killing it at this parenting thing.

****

Taako stands at his desk, flipping through envelopes, rubbing at a sore spot in his shoulder. Both of the chairs in his office have become casualties of nap time, tied together into a makeshift bed for the kids to share. Aubrey and Gandy lie curled around each other, peaceful, with Taako’s cloak draped over them.

If they didn’t look so fucking adorable, the aching in his feet might actually bother him. As it is, he’s fine. He can focus on fan mail for now, until he has to go back to his paperwork hell.

Lup, Barry, and Kravitz have started going on missions together again. This leaves Taako as the daytime dad and cool uncle, a lot of the time. It’s no skin off his back, the kids are chill. They’re developing little personalities, and it’s a lot of fun to hang out with them.

He starts humming a song under his breath as he goes, opening a few packages full of treats from around the world and people’s books that they’ve written and whatever. A disproportionate amount of fan mail is actually for Gandy now, including toys and books and little outfits that Taako looks over. One of the packages contains a hand-sewn stuffed voidfish, and he gives it a squeeze, smirking. She’s gonna love it, he knows it.

Both of these kids are so spoiled, and they deserve all of what they get and more. He wants Gandy to have a thousand times the stuff he did as a kid. He showers her in joy and love every chance he gets. Kid is gonna rule the world someday.

He sneaks the stuffed voidfish in with the sleeping kids, brushing a hand over Gandy’s soft hair. She curls around the voidfish, letting out a soft and sleepy noise that melts Taako’s heart. He kisses his fingers, and presses the fingers to her temple before getting back to work.

****

“Mommby?”

Lup opens her eyes to a groggy darkness, dark-vision kicking into gear just in time to see every tear on her daughter’s trembling cheeks.

Lup pushes herself up a little, trying to get back in touch with her limbs after the deep sleep she’d been in. She opens her dry mouth, and her words come crackling out as she reaches clumsily for Aubrey.

“Wha’ssuhmatter, babe?”

Aubrey whimpers as Lup scoops her into her lap, planting tiny kisses on the top of her head. Lup adjusts Dr. Harris Bonkers next to them, and Aubrey buries her face in Lup’s chest, crying harder. Lup’s heart aches as she makes calming noises, rocking Aubrey back and forth. Barry stirs beside them, and mumbles something in his sleep.

“Had a badream,” says Aubrey, rolling her head sideways off of Lup’s chest so she can talk.

“Oh no! That’s a bummer.”

She rubs her thumb down Aubrey’s nose, breathing through the hurt in her lungs.

“Do you want to sleep with mommy and daddy tonight?”

“Yeah,” Aubrey whimpers.

She wiggles into the space between them, immediately nestling down under the covers. Barry stirs again, letting out a soft “oof” as Aubrey kicks her way in beside him. Lup smiles, softly, handing Aubrey Harris Bonkers once she’s settled.

Aubrey starts drifting off again as soon as her head hits the pillow. Her eyes are droopy, her mouth parted slightly. Lup reaches over to stroke her nose again, humming a gentle song from way back when. Barry taught her all these cute baby songs that his mom used to sing to him. Lup had even struggled to find and memorize a few elvish ones, having never had anyone to sing them to her, herself. She goes with a Barry song now, something light with long, deep notes. Aubrey’s eyelashes flutter, and Lup brushes away the last of her daughter’s tears.

Lup’s heart swells in her chest, partially from the hurt at seeing Aubrey cry, and partially out of love for the quiet night, and her cozy little family, and the soft breathing of her sleeping daughter beside her.

****

Taako has never been this fucking stressed out in his entire life. And it’s been a pretty long one.

He’s just sort of watching Gandy as she sleeps, a frown on her face, little whimpers slipping out every now and then. She’s sick. She’s real sick. Fever and sore throat and throwing up and everything. Taako has kicked into raw instinct mode, and this has been his whole day.

He wishes for the thousandth time that Kravitz was here. He’s been chasing a bounty all day, although he did promise to pick up some apple juice and shit on the way home. Not that Taako’s been able to get any sort of food or drink into Gandy at all today.

He supposes this is a perk of having the grim reaper for a husband. Gandy will be okay, or else Kravitz would say something. He would, wouldn’t he? God, Taako needs to calm the fuck down.

Gandy stirs, kicking at the blankets weakly. Taako watches as she wakes up, and she immediately starts crying. It’s not her usual annoyed or angry tears. It’s quiet, and whimpery, and painful in ways Taako feels deep in his bones. He immediately pulls himself up to sit on her bed and lays a hand on her forehead, trying to soothe her fever.

“I know, baby,” he whispers, the tips of his ears drooping to his shoulders. “It’s okay, I know.”

Gandy curls into him, breathing heavily through her mouth. It sounds so bad. Taako is freaking the fuck out.

“Can you drink some of this for me, darling?”

He reaches for a sippy cup of water beside her bed. There are three more cups full of various flavours of juice next to it. He sits her up a little and she sips the water, then spits the cup out, whimpering.

“I know it hurts,” he whispers, curling down towards her. “I love you, baby, get some more rest.”

This whole caring-about-people thing is still fairly new to Taako. Other than Lup, he didn’t get a lot of practice in his formative years. He’d gone through a hundred years of being forced to close himself off to any chump who tried to get into his heart. He’s had this facade for centuries. The funny guy, the cold one, the uncaring person who sees through the bullshit and says what’s on his mind. He’s let a few people in, since then, but he’s always managed to keep up appearances when he needs to.

With Gandy, all that crumbled away in an instant. He’s never been this tied to someone else’s well-being, not Kravitz or even Lup or anyone. His love for his daughter lives somewhere inside him, in a place nothing else has ever even scratched the surface of. He’s so fucking scared right now.

When Kravitz gets back, he immediately rushes to Gandy’s bedside. She wakes up enough to crawl into his arms, chasing the coolness of his skin against her fever. Taako knows that Kravitz is sharing in his terror, and the burden feels a little lighter, now that he has someone else to help.

“You’re going to be okay, love,” Kravitz whispers, placing a hand on her forehead. Taako updates him on the day in a hushed, frantic whisper, and he nods along.

The three of them sit together late into the night, until Gandy’s fever breaks and they all drift off.

Gandy is the first one awake the next morning. Taako wakes up with a horrible pain in his neck, having fallen asleep with his cheek pressed against the headboard and his hand in Kravitz’s, Gandy nestled between them. She wakes them both up with sharp knees and elbows to the ribs as she crawls to the ground.

“Bregfast!” she sings, and Taako’s heart soars. He’s gonna make her pancakes with whatever the fuck she wants in them. He’s gonna do anything she wants him to, today.

He checks her forehead, quick. Still a little warm, but defo better than she was.

He reaches down, ready to hug the stuffing out of her, but she squeals and runs away. Well, at least she’s got her energy back.

****

Barry kneels on the ground, poised over a toy piano with Aubrey between his knees.

“Any requests?” he asks, and she frowns slightly, considering.

“Play the Angus song,” she says, hammering at the keys.

Barry grins. “The Angus Song” is Aubrey’s name for Old McDonald, after her favourite babysitter in the astral plane.

Barry feels out the notes, then takes her hands in his own to hammer out a rough version of the song. They sing together, Barry’s voice kind of crackly and rough and Aubrey’s just as loud as she can possibly be. He holds back laughter in between each note.

Lup joins in from across the room. She’s working on some new dessert thing, and it smells fucking amazing. Barry can’t wait to get in on some of that. Lup’s voice is real nice, of course. Barry doesn’t think in seven hundred years he’s ever found something she’s not good at. Maybe he’s biased, though.

Aubrey gets bored of the song, shaking her hands free from her dad’s and breaking into her own free-style tune. She hammers at the keys indiscriminately, making up a song whose words are mostly “mommy” and “daddy” and “bunny” and “poop” and, worryingly, “fire”.

After a few minutes Barry reaches over her shoulder and starts noodling around on the keys. She slows to a stop, watching his hands as he goes. He doesn’t even realize he’s playing their song until Lup snorts at him from the kitchen.

“Didn’t know you still had it in you,” she says. There’s the banging of some metal pots and pans as she feels around for something. Barry smiles, and lets Aubrey take over again.

“Ha, I didn’t even realize. It’s the only thing I remember how to play, I think.”

Aubrey is back to sing-yelling, this time saying stuff about toilets and breaking into laughter every few seconds. Barry laughs along with her.

“Aubrey, that’s maybe the silliest song I’ve ever heard,” he says, tickling her belly lightly. She lets out a happy scream, then starts another verse.

Lup enters the room, wiping her hands on a towel and laughing too.

“Maybe we should start a band,” she says.

“Definitely.”

*****

“This one,” says Gandy, handing Taako a plastic green pepper stuck together with some velcro.

“Hell yeah, kid. Let’s make some stuffed peppers.”

He exaggerates cutting the thing in half with the toy knife. Gandy watches, then wrenches apart a plastic lemon with her hands and passes it to him.

“This.”

Taako nods.

“A bold choice, definitely. We could get some interesting flavour combos going.”

Gandy reaches for a milk carton that Kravitz had just sort of rinsed out and added to her toy kitchen set.

“Um, milk,” she says.

“Gotta have those strong bones,” says Taako, nodding.

“Bones.”

She twists the dials on the plastic stove around about fifteen times, then sets the milk carton down right on the burner. God, she’s a culinary genius.

“You go, chicka. Bring out that flavour.”

“Bring out that flavour,” she repeats, then sets a plastic chicken leg on top. She’s gonna make it big in this field, Taako knows it.

“Dinner is done!” she says, grabbing both things off the stove.

“Alright, serve it up,” says Taako.

Gandy sprints across the living room, feet thumping on the thin carpet. She reaches the tiny folding table they’ve set out, where Kravitz sits across from Uncle Oni. Gandy serves uncle Oni first, giving him the chicken leg. She gives Kravitz the milk carton and half a lemon.

“Oh, my, this looks fantastic,” Kravitz says, immediately pretending to take a huge swig of milk. He smacks his lips, and Gandy giggles.

“My goodness, it’s amazing! My compliments to the chef.”

“Um Uncle Oni no likes it, owe debt,” Gandy whispers, rocking back and forth.

Kravitz grits his teeth, staring across at the creepy doll. Where the hell had she learned the words ‘owe debt’?

“Well I think it’s a wonderful meal, Uncle Oni,” he says.

Gandy shakes her head.

“Debt,” she says, vaguely, before turning around.

Kravits stares into the doll’s cold, dead, eyes, a serious sense of foreboding building in his chest. Why had he ever brought this thing home?

****

Aubrey is three years old before her first haircut. She never told her parents she wanted a haircut, so Lup and Barry didn’t figure they had to do it. Plus, Barry really likes braiding her hair and clipping things into it and brushing it out for her. It’s long and dark and soft and gets tangled up all the time.

“Um, I want my hair like mom,” she says, pointing at Lup in the mirror. Lup pauses in brushing her sick blue bob.  

“What do you mean, pumpkin?”

Aubrey sets the lipstick she’d been playing with down on the counter. It’s smeared all over the lower half of her face. She always wants to try out Lup’s makeup while they get ready in the morning.

“Hair like mom!” she insists, gesturing with two open palms. Lup sets down the brush, mussing her hand through Aubrey’s long hair.

“You want me to make your hair short like mine?” she asks.

“Yeah!” Aubrey says, nodding furiously. “And um, hair blue so I can blend in with the sky and meet a bird like mommy.”

Lup laughs. She has no fucking clue what that means, but Aubrey’s been on an animal kick lately. She runs a hand through Aubrey’s hair again, a million thoughts rushing through her head at once. Barry is gonna be a little sad. Aubrey likes her mom’s hair, which is a cool thing. Mostly, Lup’s just super excited for Aubrey to make her first choice about her own image. It’s important that the kid gets to present herself to the world however she wants.

Well, within reason. She tried to go out wearing a shirt as pants once, which was maybe an issue.

Lup cracks the bathroom door open, shouting down the hallway.

“Hey, babe! I need an opinion!”

“In a second!” calls Barry’s voice.

There’s a rustling in the distance. Lup waits, humming and combing her fingers through Aubrey’s hair.

Barry comes in a few seconds later looking a little tousled, dressed but ungroomed in a sort of ruggedly handsome way that makes Lup lean forward and kiss his cheek. He grins.

“You called?”

“Mm, yeah.”

Lup runs her fingers through Aubrey’s hair, holding it at different lengths just below her chin.

“We’re doing a haircut. Here or here?”

Barry blinks, mouth falling open.

“Uh… you just decided this now?”

“Blue!” shouts Aubrey, bouncing up and down as best she can with her mom’s hands in her hair.

“She decided,” clarifies Lup, giving Barry a meaningful sort of glance. He blinks again.

“Oh. Wow, okay. You really want blue, Aubrey?”

“Blue like the sky!” Aubrey insists, again.

“You heard the lady,” says Lup.

Without further ado, Lup undoes the kid lock below the sink, finds her haircutting scissors, and gets to work. Aubrey moves her head a lot, but it’s nothing a bit of magic can’t fix. A spell for tidying up, a spell for a nicer shape to it, and a spell for colour. Within minutes, there’s a mini Lup in front of them, just with a chubby kid face.

“Wow,” says Barry, folding his arms. “You look so cool! Just like mom.”

“Just like mom.”

Aubrey makes faces at herself in the mirror, immediately reaching up and messing up her new hairdo with curious hands. She shakes her head around a lot, marvelling at the lightness of it. She giggles, then rushes out of the bathroom.

“Come back here and brush your teeth, Baby Blue!” shouts Lup, turning to grin at Barry. Affection rushes through her chest at the old nickname. They’d called Aubrey “Baby Blue” before she’d had a name, back when all they knew was that she was gonna be a baby Bluejeans. Barry smiles at Lup, leaning against the bathroom door frame. Aubrey cackles in the distance.

****

“Um, Daddy?”

Kravitz feels a tugging at the knee of his pants, and glances down to see Gandy, requesting his immediate attention.

“Yes, love?”

“Can we play now?”

Kravitz glances to the laundry he’s folding. A lot of chores build up when one husband is a wildly successful celebrity/chef/principal/name brand and the other is literally Death. Not to mention the fact that they have a small child. They’re lucky neither of them has to sleep.

“In a few minutes, please,” he says, shaking out one of Taako’s flowiest cloaks. He fondly has no idea where this thing starts and ends.

“Now?” Gandy asks again, pouting.

Kravitz sighs. He knows he shouldn’t give into her pouting as much as he does. He also knows that he has objectively the most spoiled child in the entire world. He can always fold laundry later, when she’s asleep.

“Alright, but I do have to come back to the laundry later.”

Gandy screeches in delight, reaching up for Kravitz’s hand and bouncing up and down. He takes her hand, tiny and warm and always a little sticky, and lets her pull him into the living room.

“Okay so pretend Uncle Oni is making a ritual,” she says, gesturing to the scene she’s laid out for them.

“Wh… Gandy, wh...?” Kravitz splutters, trying to understand exactly what’s happening in front of him.

Gandy has laid out her toys and blocks and plastic food in a circle on the carpet, with several dolls tossed in a heap in the centre. Uncle Oni sits removed from the scene, seeming to stare straight at Kravitz as he looks on in slight horror.

“Uncle Oni is the bad guy and we’re the reapers!” she says, picking up a butterfly net lying on the sidelines. “This is my sight!”

Gandy still doesn’t know how to pronounce “scythe” correctly which, Kravitz reminds himself, is good and normal for a three-year-old child.

Gandy breaks into the scene, butterfly net flailing. Kravitz follows after her, knowing that just by following her, she’ll think he’s playing along. She gets very lost in her own world, their Gandy.

No matter how much Kravitz avoids talking about work at home, Gandy still manages to sponge up his worst qualities, somehow. She always covets halloween toys at the store and asks about rituals and wants to read scary books before bed. Taako thinks it’s precious. He seems sure that she’ll grow out of it. Kravitz just likes to encourage her to continue to dress up and read happy books and dance and sing and all of the things most kids her age do.

“Aaaaah, Daddy he’s right behind you! I’ll save you!”

Gandy leaps at him, and he grins, dodging carefully out of the way before whirling around, snatching up a broom and pretending to fight an invisible foe with her.

Worse comes to worse, she’s very in tune with the side of good. He’s sure that, no matter what, she’ll turn out alright.

****

Candlenights is way more fun with Aubrey.

Lup watches her tear apart paper and eat herself into a sugar coma and dance to carols on the radio with Barry, and she wonders how she could’ve spent so many years without this.

“Alright, babe, are you gonna say thank you to Terry the non-denominational gift-giving dragon for your haul this year?” asks Lup, gesturing to her huge stack of presents in the corner. 

Barry sits nearby, working at assembling some sort of robot dinosaur with way too many pieces, courtesy of Uncle Taako. The rest of the family has gone home by now, and Aubrey is getting pretty sleepy. She’s curled up in Lup’s arms, her little candlenights sweater all floppy and soft.

“Thank you Terry the non-omnational gifting dragon,” she murmurs, and Lup’s heart explodes, maybe a little bit?

She looks over at Barry, assembling a robot like the day she fell in love with him, and watches Aubrey’s eyes slowly drift shut, and feels the most peaceful she has maybe ever felt in her life.

By the time the dragon is assembled, and the kid is off to bed, Barry laughs and breaks out the alcohol. Starlight filters into the room as they clink their glasses together, sleepily, curled into each other on the couch in the home that they’ve built, together.

******

The midsummer solstice is way more fun with Gandy.

“1… 2… 3… swing!”

Gandy bursts into a fit of giggles as Taako and Kravitz swing her into the air by her hands, walking her down the busy aisle of the festival grounds. It’s nighttime, and stars twinkle above them. The air smells like smoke and fried food. Aubrey pulls a lock of hair out of her face, and the wind whips it upwards. Everything is kind of perfect.

Kravitz and Gandy have been killing it at carnival games all night, and Kravitz holds a giant stuffed bear under one arm as they walk, the other hand still holding Gandy’s.

She’s all dressed up as Caleb Cleveland tonight, a thing Taako never thought he’d have to come back to, until the franchise was revived about a half-century ago. She looks cute as hell, with a little hat and bow tie and everything. It’s incredible. Taako is dressed up like Caleb Cleveland’s dad from the stories. Kravitz is dressed up like Caleb Cleveland’s magnifying glass, at Gandy’s request. She’s got some weird ideas, but who is Kravitz to say no?

They end the night walking Gandy back, asleep over Kravitz’s shoulder, with a ring of blue cotton candy staining her mouth. Taako takes Kravitz’s hand on the sly as they walk, and it’s maybe the chillest, sweetest feeling in the whole world.

This is his family, he thinks. He built it himself, and he built it just right.

****

Barry has been feeling for a while like he needs some new hobbies. So he’s been on a knitting kick, lately. He’s made some pretty great fucking hats, if he does say so himself.

He sits in the living room, knitting, while the kids throw dolls around, chuckling to himself as their storylines evolve.

“Duck has a magical sword! He’s going to fight the monster!” says Aubrey, rocketing to her feet, waving a carved duck around (Magnus original, of course).

“Um but I think the monster is a ghost,” says Gandy, also standing up to meet her. Gandy’s voice is a little squeakier, and Aubrey speaks all at once, her words running together. Barry could listen to their voices forever, maybe.

“No! No more ghosts!” says Aubrey, frowning.

“Ghosts!” says Gandy, fiercely.

“Monsters!” says Aubrey. She lets loose her best roar, and Gandy covers her ears.

Barry senses a fight on the horizon, and swoops in, tossing a ball of yarn in between them. He starts inventing wildly, basing things on true-to-life events from his personal experiences.

“Hey, here’s one for you. How about there’s a pirate ship, right? And then this kraken thing appears, do you know what a Kraken is?...”

****

Kravitz is grocery shopping with Gandy when some weirdly breathy noises start coming in over his stone of farspeech. He reaches for the stone with one hand, and bats his daughter’s hand away from a candy display with the other.

“Talk into it, honey.”

Kravitz recognizes Barry’s voice in the background, quiet underneath the breathy noises. The breathing turns into Aubrey’s voice, gravelly and confused.

“Um, can Gandy play right now?”

Kravitz grins, holding the stone up to Gandy.

“Hear that, love? Your friend’s on the line.”

Gandy looks at the stone with mild interest, briefly taking her attention away from the candy. She holds the stone, listening as the noise rumbles through it.

“Gandy!”

Gandy perks up at Aubrey’s voice, reaching for the stone now. Kravitz lets her take it, folding his arms to watch what happens.

“Aubrey!”

Gandy giggles wildly, holding the stone up near her ear like she’s seen her parents do.

“Um, can we play now?” she asks, voice still sort of distorted like she’s talking into the wrong part.

“Yeah! Daddy can I play with Aubrey please?” Gandy grabs Kravitz’s arm in a death grip, and he lovingly pries her fingers away.

“Well, since you said please, I think that’ll be doable. I’m proud of you. Hand me the stone, please?”

Gandy rushes out a farewell before handing the stone to her dad.

“I love you bye!”

“Hey there, Aubrey. Gandy and I are grocery shopping right now, but if your mom or dad wants to tear a portal right in the bulk food section, that’d be just fine.”

He hears Aubrey mumble something away from the stone, and Barry respond in his gentlest Dad Voice.

“We’ll be right over, Kravitz,” says Barry, into the stone.

About half a second later, there’s a sound like ripping fabric, and Barry arrives, stone of farspeech in one hand and wiggly half-elf tucked under the other arm. Aubrey cheers as soon as she sees them, and raises up a hand for a high five. Kravitz obliges. Taako's been teaching her that one.

“I’ll pick her up in an hour or so,” says Barry, setting Aubrey down next to Gandy. He messes up Gandy’s hair a bit, grinning.

“Hi Gandy! Are you gettin’ taller?”

“Yeah,” says Gandy, at the exact same time as Kravitz says “never.”

Barry smirks, then turns back to Aubrey.

“You be good. I love you.”

“Love you too,” says Aubrey, already distracted, launching into some surreal conversation with Gandy. Barry squeezes her goodbye with one arm, then tears a portal back home.

Kravitz doesn’t realize someone slipped candy into the cart until it’s already going through the checkout.

****

“Like this, darling.”

Aubrey watches with her mouth hanging open as Marlena Bluejeans writes a huge “A” on a piece of paper, then hands the pen to her granddaughter.

Marlena watches as Aubrey tries to copy the strokes, her eyes maudlin with adoration, mouth curved up in the softest of smiles. She’s always loved kids, and a grandkid is something special, Barry knows.

It breaks Barry’s heart how little his mom gets to see Aubrey. It’s just too difficult with the Raven Queen in their home dimension, and the belts, and trying to pull the ‘savior of the world’ thing after it’s been so many years. As it is, this is only his mom’s second time meeting her granddaughter.

He remembers arriving that first time with the screaming baby, mumbling an apology as his mom lit up, scooped Aubrey into her arms, and quieted her down immediately. She’s magical, he thinks, in lots of ways.

“That’s really good!” says Barry, watching as his daughter scratches out a lopsided “A”.

“She can write her whole name now,” says his mom, grinning up at him.

“What a smarty pants,” he says flicking the pointed tip of Aubrey’s ear. She giggles, not breaking focus from the paper as she scribbles out a few more sort-of-letters.

“Did you have a good day with grandma?”

“Mm, HM!” says Aubrey, popping the last sound with a squeak in her voice. Marlena laughs, soft and sweet and dripping with love.

Barry watches her scratch out a few more barely-recognizable letters, chest heavy with pride. They’ve been working on letters for a while now, but there’s nothing like Grandma to get Aubrey motivated.

Barry stays for a while longer, visiting with his mother, and delights in the calm and joy she brings him. He aches with the thought that he has to leave her again, so soon.

When the time finally comes, he scoops a sleeping Aubrey into his arms, and hugs his mom goodbye.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can, ma, I promise.”

“Mm, I know.”

There’s a melancholy in Marlena’s eyes, even behind her soft smile. She looks at Barry, and he gets the feeling she’s staring straight into his heart and soul. His mom can read everything about him, he’s always had that feeling.

“You’re doing a great job, you know,” she says, brushing a hand down his arm.

He laughs, quickly, adjusting Aubrey on his hip.

“What, with her? She’s uh, she’s great. Hard to mess this one up, I think.”

His mother sighs, giving him another look. She’s a little shorter than him, but he still feels so small compared to her.

“I know it can be scary… and stressful to be a parent. But you and Lup are just wonderful. I mean it. Aubrey is a wonderful child.”

There’s a twinkle in her eyes as she glances at Aubrey’s sleeping face.

Barry pauses, looking at Aubrey as well. She’s smiling a bit in her sleep, and his heart melts.

“Th… thanks, mom.”

****

Taako almost can't believe how much the public loves Gandy.

Whenever Taako is stopped in the street, for an autograph or a conversation or a shake of the hand, the fan who stopped him spends more and more time now just gushing over her. Her chubby cheeks, her tiny hands, everything about her is basically perfect, like, he gets it.

So, natch, the kid is a great addition to Sizzle it Up. Where Gandy had once been a wiggly baby Kravitz fought to keep quiet backstage, she is now something of an accomplished addition to the Taako brand.

“And now, I will call on my lovely assistant to help me with this recipe. Gandy, darling?”

The cheering is deafening, the audience screaming and stomping their feet as Gandy wanders up to the counter of the Sizzle it Up food truck.

“Hello,” she says, with a quick wave.

The audience responds with a roar of greetings, and she grins shyly, hand clinging to Taako’s apron. He clasps it with his own, reassuring.

“Gandy here is something of a wizard in the kitchen, isn’t that right, pumpkin?”

Gandy giggles.

“She brought me a special ingredient for my sponge cake today, didn’t she?”

Without saying anything, Gandy holds up a fistful of cashews. The crowd goes wild.

“Thank you very much! Let’s hear it for her, folks!”

Gandy doesn’t totally love the attention of Sizzle it Up , but she’s happy to be included. She sits backstage and prepares ingredients with Kravitz, grinning when the audience cheers and moving to the front when she’s called.

Aubrey, on the other hand, totally eats this shit up.

When Taako lets Aubrey perform, the kid brings it. She works the crowd, spinning wild kid-stories about riverbanks and ancestors and shit, while the crowd laughs and applauds in all the right places. Taako doesn’t prefer being upstaged by his niece, but he loves her just about as much as he loves Gandy, and is happy to give her the spotlight when she wants it. It’s something he never could have imagined himself doing before these kids were in his life.

“This is… chicken!” says Aubrey, waving at a raw chicken breast. “For cooking… in sauce!”

The crowd applauds, and she takes a deep bow, just cheesing it up and grinning until Gandy takes her hand and pulls her backstage again.

Once Taako tastes his creations, and waits until he feels safe about it, he lets them eat their fill. Kravitz pushes some chairs together, and they collapse in a heap of napping superstars.

****

When Aubrey comes home from school crying, Lup is ready to break some fucking bones.

“What happened?” she asks, blood boiling and hands trembling as she kneels down in front of her daughter.

“The b-boys at school made fun of my ears,” says Aubrey, rubbing at her eyes, face puffy and red.

“Your ears?” says Lup, completely dumbfounded. “What the fuck ?”

Lup had, foolishly, thought that in the fucking modern era they might have some time before the half-elf thing became a problem for Aubrey. Lup knows there are some people who don’t quite understand the whole elf/human thing, but she’d been able to fend off the assholes in her many years with Barry. Aubrey is different, though. She’s eight years old, going to a good school, and STILL, this bullshit.

“Aubrey, listen to me baby,” she says, cupping Aubrey’s face in her hands. “Can you look at me, sweetheart? Hey…”

Aubrey sniffles, fighting to keep her breathing even, and slowly lowers her hands. Her watery eyes, runny nose, and ruddy cheeks double up Lup’s anger, and fear, and the need to scoop up Aubrey and run away forever. Lup had lived so many of her formative years just taking revenge on assholes and dipping out of there. She can’t imagine the fight it’s gonna take for Aubrey to stay. It was a lesson Lup had learned later in life, and, now, looking into the tiny chubby face of her daughter, she feels panic jolt through her at the thought of making her bear this alone.

“Aubrey, the next time those boys talk about your ears, I want you to tell them to fuck off, and punch them square in the jaw. Like I showed you, remember?”

Aubrey sniffles and holds out a fist, curled up all properly with the thumb untucked and everything. Lup feels a surge of pride in her ribcage, despite herself.

“But mommy,” Aubrey says quietly, lip trembling. “We’re not supposed to hit. It’s bad.”

Lup huffs out a breath.

“We’re not supposed to be assholes about the way people look either, babe. They break the rules, you can too.”

Aubrey just shakes her head, and spits out some wisdom in her tiny, squeaky voice.

“What if it’s not them though? What if… their parents teach them that half-elves are bad, or they’re just trying to fit in or something.”

Lup’s brain is wiped completely blank for a minute. The thought of not running away… and also not using violence? Where did this kid learn that? Lup looks back into her daughter’s shimmery eyes, soft and innocent, and sighs, brushing her hands down Aubrey’s arms and taking her hands.

“You do whatever feels right. I promise I’ll back you up no matter what.”

Aubrey nods, pulling away from the serious moment.

“I wanna play with Gandy now,”

“Sure thing.”

Lup calls the school later that night. They don’t hear the end of it until things change.

****

“What do these crown ones mean, daddy?”

“Let’s see…”

Kravitz leans over to see Gandy’s hand. He blinks, sighs, and turns to his own cards.

“That’s a royal flush again. You uh, you got me there.”

Gandy throws down her cards, cheering as Kravitz scrapes more chips into her pile. Taako snorts from the other chair, where he sits reading a book.

“I LOVE this game!” she says. “Can we do one more hand?”

“No, I think that’s quite enough. It’s bedtime, so…”

Gandy bounces in her chair.

“Double or nothing! Come on!”

Kravitz chuckles, setting his cards down.

“We can pick it up again tomorrow, love. You have school in the morning.”

Gandy huffs out an annoyed breath, but hops out of her chair anyway.

“Fine, whatever.”

Kravitz puts her to bed, all kisses and promises and leaving the door just the right amount open, then comes downstairs to see Taako cleaning up the cards. Taako looks up when he sees Kravitz, and breaks into laughter. Kravitz smiles, confused.

“Wh…”

“She was playing you, you know that right?”

Kravitz furrows his brow.

“Wh… at poker? No, I just taught her the game yesterday. She’s pretty lucky, you know, so…”

“I was watching her all night, homie, kid is. On. It,” says Taako, snapping his fingers. “She knows the rules, she’s just pretending she doesn’t so you’ll take it easy on her.”

Kravitz blinks, taking a moment to consider. Taako gestures to their wildly uneven piles of chips, pointedly, before wiping them off the table and back into their container with one arm.

Kravitz knows that Gandy loves games. She’s always been quick to pick up on rules in the past, but poker is more complicated than the other things he’d taught her. Could she really be that sneaky?

Taako laughs again at Kravitz’s dumbfounded expression, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek as he walks past.

“Gotta know when to hold ‘em, and when to fold ‘em, and all that jazz.”

Kravitz grins. He can’t believe Gandy pulled one over on him. She’s too clever for her own good, maybe. Oh well, he’ll win tomorrow for sure.

****

“Aubrey, you staying over tonight?” asks Taako, peeking his head into Gandy’s room.

The two girls look at each other, then back to Taako. There’s some sort of crazy mess of a board game in front of them that Taako definitely doesn’t try to understand.

“Yeah,” says Aubrey, nodding once. Her cool new undercut bobs in her face, and she runs a hand through it.

“For sure,” says Gandy, with her best innocent smile.

“Works for me. Do your parents know?”

Aubrey fumbles in her pocket, then pulls out her fancy new stone of farspeech.

“I will… call.”

Gandy stares at the stone as Aubrey dials, mouth taut. It’s a point of friction lately that Gandy wants her own stone, but Taako knows that that is a birthday gift, and she is going to wait two more weeks if it kills him.

Aubrey waits for a beat, then breaks into rapid conversation.

“Yeah, hey mom... No, yeah, you got it!... Okay, see you tomorrow... Love you too, bye,” Aubrey grins. “Yeah, yeah I’ll tell him. Bye.”

“Mom says you’re a dinkus,” says Aubrey, putting her stone down and shrugging with a sort of ‘don’t-shoot-the-messenger’ look. Taako clicks his tongue.

“She hung up before I could even say anything back, huh?”

Aubrey grins.

“It... would seem that way, yes.”

“Coward’s way out,” says Taako. “Classic Lup. I’ll go get your blanket.”

The talk resumes between Aubrey and Gandy as Taako walks down the hall to the linen cupboard. A whole shelf is just basically dedicated to Aubrey’s overnight things. She stays over a lot. Gandy has a bunk bed now and everything.

The two cousins remind him so much of he and Lup at that age, it makes him laugh sometimes. The gross kitchen mistakes, the snickering to each other about jokes no one else understands, the comparing notes as they learn things way beyond their year at school… it’s almost too much for his cold, dead heart to handle. It’s like, if someone had taken Taako and Lup, and actually let them grow up happy, they would’ve been just like this, probably. Not exactly, though. Those two are no one but themselves, and they’re each other’s, and they’re fantastic.

Not a day has gone by that Taako hasn’t been afraid of fucking something up for Gandy, and not a day has gone by that she hasn’t proven to him that she can learn and grow and handle things in her own way.

“Dad!” calls Gandy, sticking her head out from the door down the hall.

“Mmhm?” asks Taako, turning around with a blanket and pillow tucked under one arm.

“Can we go to the forest tomorrow? I want to show Aubrey all of my cool spells!”

“Well, is Aubrey gonna set the forest on fire again?” asks Taako.

“That was one time!” shouts Aubrey, voice muffled by wall. Gandy glances back at her.

“... no.” she says.

“Sure,” says Taako, smirking as he dumps the blanket into Gandy’s arms. “Goodnight, love you.”

“Goodnight,” says Gandy. She sort of mushes the blanket into him as a half-hug, then races back into the room.

****

“Oh God…”

Gandy covers her eyes, leaning into Aubrey’s shoulder.

The two sit cross-legged on the bed while Lup reads them a story before bed. She pauses, sort of reexamining what’d just been said.

“Oh, sorry Gandy. You don’t jive with this shit, huh?”

Gandy shakes her head slowly, still against Aubrey’s arm. Aubrey gives her back a single pat.

Lup had been describing a pretty grisly murder, the solution to the book’s big mystery that they’d been working on together. Gandy was VERY into the mystery part. The description of the dying, though, she couldn’t do.

Gandy’d been scared of death since… always. Not the dead, or the idea of someone being dead, but the act of the thing itself. It was a weird trait for the daughter of literal death to have.

“We can skip this part,” says Aubrey, pointedly. Lup agrees, turning a few pages ahead.

“I couldn’t handle the pressure of the thing, said Connors…”

Both kids rocket forward at once.

“Aw shoot, I KNEW it was Connors!” says Gandy, at the same time as Aubrey says “FUCKING Connors!”

Lup grins at them both for a few seconds. Of course they had this one on lock.

Gandy giggles and tugs nervously on her braid at the sound of Aubrey’s swearing. None of the four parents involved here actually care about swearing, but Gandy polices herself, for some reason.

Lup finishes up the story, then tucks them both into the same bed. Gandy stays over so much that her favourite green pillow is already there. By the time Barry comes in to say goodnight, both girls are already asleep.

****

“Wow, I LOVE your jacket!”

Aubrey waves at a stranger, sitting on a bench with earbuds in.

“Oh, uh, thanks.”

The stranger goes back to their business, and Aubrey grins and continues walking along the path. Barry sighs, and continues on beside her.

Aubrey is so outgoing, it gives Barry a bit of a heart attack. She’s still little, he thinks, in that awkward age between kid and teenager, but she’s totally unselfconscious in a way that makes Barry as proud as it does terrified. Stranger danger is a real issue with his kid.

She’s all into the punk aesthetic now, with a denim jacket covered in patches and a cool pink undercut and gloves and everything. He doesn’t pretend to understand, but he’s real happy for her, doing her own thing. He’s even the one that got her her favourite denim jacket, and Lup made fun of him for just about a week afterward.

Thing about Aubrey, though, is she’s a good kid. She’s cheerful and polite, she loves animals, she loves showing off, and she’s super smart and good at magic to boot. Barry loves spending time with her, not just as his daughter, but as a person.

As she walks, she flicks her fingers over and over again, making a little flame that she snuffs out with each movement. Barry closes his hand around his wand in his pocket, just in case.

“Hey dad?”

“Yeah?”

Aubrey grins up at him, and he can’t help but smile back.

“What do you think of ‘The Lady Flame’?”

Barry chuckles.

“What, as like a nickname?”

Aubrey bites her lip, considering.

“Sort of. Maybe more like a… persona? For when I show off my magic to people.”

Barry stops to consider it. Really consider it. He thinks it’s kind of cool, sure, but what kind of implications will that have for her? Why a ‘the’ at the front? What’s wrong with her real name, anyway? Aubrey Bluejeans is pretty cool.

“I mean…”

“Aha! Hesitation!” Aubrey points at him, smirking. “You don’t like it!”

“N-no I…” Barry trips over his words, desperately trying not to hurt her feelings.

Aubrey looks pretty happy, though. She claps her hands together, once, a bit of a spring in her step.

“This is great! Mom thought it was cool, and you think it’s not. That means it is cool, guaranteed!”

Barry takes a moment to process that.

“Wait… are you saying I’m not c…”

“Thanks, dad!”

And she runs.

****

“Just for the record, dad thinks they’re neat.”

Taako snorts.

“Your dad is so fucking old. Please don’t listen to a word that comes out of his gorgeous mouth.”

Gandy laughs, adjusting her new glasses on her nose. Except they’re not glasses. Ponce-ney? Pince-nez? Whatever they are, they’re the least practical thing Taako has ever seen.

“Well, I guess there’s no accounting for…”

“No, no you’re not pulling the Aunt Lup card on me. This isn’t about taste , you need to be able to see the board at school… ”

“I can see great! It’s the bomb …”

Taako pauses for a moment, looking into his daughter’s eyes. The goofy glasses really just complete her whole terrible, Kravitz-esque spooky aesthetic. Vest and slacks and everything. She looks, to be fair, incredible. In her own way.

“Well, you look great. At least if you can’t see, you’ll fail your classes with style.”

Gandy nods, as if that settles things. This mimicry of Kravitz is gonna be the end of her someday. She talks about murder way more than any kid should. And the whole look. The old fashioned slang. She is doing a whole thing here that Taako appreciates, and he loves her expression of herself so much it makes his ribs hurt. She’s so cool. Cooler than he ever could have imagined. He wants to hang out with her, like, from an outside perspective.

“I’ve been working on my shielding spells,” she says, apropos of nothing.

Taako raises an eyebrow.

“Abjuration, eh? That’s a new one.”

Gandy jumps to a new school of magic basically every week, now. The point is, kid’s magical as shit. No matter where she ends up.

“I do like it. It’s better than evocation, anyway.”

Ha, eat it, Lup. At least Gandy’s right about that one. Taako drums his fingers on his chin.

“But, to get back to transfiguration, though…”

Gandy shakes her head, and laughs out loud, making her pince-nez falls off. She catches them just in time.

****

“How was your visit?”

Aubrey’s mom’s voice crackles through the stone of farspeech.

“Good! Uncle Merle spent a long time talking about plants, though.”

“Gross, babe. Glad you got out of there.”

Aubrey laughs.

“It was nice, really!”

“Okay. Well I’ll be down in just a sec, gotta finish off this baddy first.”

There’s a loud thumping noise and a tired ‘oof’ from the other end.

“Okay! See you soon.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Gandy finishes humming a little tune, and turns to face Aubrey. The two of them have had more and more visits alone to the astral plane lately. It’s about responsibility, or something, now that Aubrey's twelve, and Gandy’s almost-twelve.

“She’ll be here soon. Wanna throw rocks in the meantime?”

Aubrey kicks a rock from their shifting expanse of dirt ground into the endless void that lies below. Gandy nods.

“I’ve been practicing throwing, you know! So…”

There’s a sudden tearing sound, and disappointment courses through Aubrey. Her mom was way faster than expected…

“Hello. Gandy Dancer?”

It is not her mom. Aubrey stands a little closer to Gandy, on instinct, as the figure of a cloaked man approaches. He’s tall, in skeleton form, and unfamiliar to her. Gandy shifts her feet uncomfortably.

“Wh… I mean, I’m… Gandy? Yes? Gandy Taaco?”

The man shrugs.

“The soul signature is correct. I have a piece of mail for you. From the stockade.”

Gandy wrinkles her nose.

“The stockade? I don’t know anyone in the…”

The man just shoves the letter into her hand, turns on a heel, and disappears, again with the tearing sound that the girls know so well.

They both stare at the letter.

“Gandy…” Aubrey whispers. “You… you can’t open that, right? It’s got stink all over it. It must be someone your dad locked up, or…”

“They wouldn’t deliver something dangerous, would they?” asks Gandy, turning the thick parchment letter over in her hands. The name ‘Gandy Dancer’ is written out in careful, inked letters.

“I don’t know. I still think maybe we should wait for mom.”

Gandy and Aubrey look at each other for a few seconds, and Aubrey can’t help but snort, breaking into a huge grin. Gandy laughs, and tears open the letter in one smooth movement.

She unfolds it, a small collection of browned paper folded into thirds. She glances it over, brow furrowed, and starts to read. Adjusts the paper so Aubrey can read too.

And… it’s bad. Real bad. The more Aubrey reads, the worse her stomach feels. She feels Gandy trembling beside her, and rubs her back as they go. Gandy sinks to the ground, and Aubrey follows her, crouching, reading.

Once Gandy reads the last sentence, she immediately folds the letter up, tucks it into her vest pocket, and buries her face in her hands. There is a silence. The stillness of the astral plane presses in on them. 

Aubrey just stares at Gandy, completely unsure of what to do. She takes a shuddering breath. 

“Gandy, I…”

“We have to get out of here,” mumbles Gandy, weakly, into her arm. She turns her head back up to face Aubrey, and Aubrey’s heart jolts. There are tears in her eyes.

“I can’t face… her. We have to go.”

Aubrey, of course, knows the spell to get them out of here. She was trying to fly under the radar with it, but if there was ever a reason to break it out, this is it.

“Are you sure you don’t want to….”

“Please.”

Gandy’s voice wavers. She shakily gets to her feet.

“Now.”

Aubrey hates this. Her stomach twists into knots inside her. She loves her parents, she trusts them. No matter what the letter says. She knows they’ll freak out if they get here and she and Gandy are gone. But, looking into Gandy’s pale face, as she blinks and the tears spill over, Aubrey knows exactly what she has to do. Of anyone in the world, she chooses Gandy.

With a ripping sound, they're gone.

****

“Are you getting hungry?” Aubrey’s voice rouses Gandy from her deep thoughts. “I could go and get us something, maybe. I have some gold on me.”

“No. I’m fine,” says Gandy, laying her head back down on her knees. Aubrey bites her lip, and Gandy knows she should feel bad about it, but she just feels nothing right now.

They’re sitting under a tree in a big, overgrown field. It’s just outside of a town they visited a few years ago, a happy memory turned sour by uncertainty. The late sunlight casts long shadows, now, and Gandy shivers in the chilled air, wrapping her arms tighter around her legs.

Everything she thought she knew about her life is… sort of in turmoil after that letter.

It began with a simple hello, then an introduction. Her parents, her real ones, trapped in the eternal stockade, put there by… Kravitz. They started by saying they loved her, apologizing up and down for not being there for her. The love flowed through every penstroke, made Gandy’s eyes burn and fingers curl on the paper. Her parents had been necromancers, turned liches, reaped and imprisoned by the reapers known as Kravitz and Lup. Rotting away, eternally, for the same crimes that got her aunt and uncle their jobs. They hadn’t hurt anyone, hadn’t done anything wrong, and they were k… killed, worse than killed for it. And then, in the rubble… baby Gandy was stolen.

Present day Gandy felt horrible. She was maybe going to throw up.

“I can’t go back,” she whispers.

Aubrey stops pulling up the grass around her, and looks up at Gandy again.

“What do you mean?”

“Not until… I solve this,” Gandy says. “It’s not fair that your parents can do whatever they want, and my parents got k… killed for it. And it’s not fair that I’ve lived my life… thinking… this was just a normal thing… I don’t know who to believe, and I have to… figure it…”

“I’m with you,” says Aubrey, automatically. Gandy’s heart swells.

“But… your parents…”

“It… I don’t know who’s right or wrong here, Gandy, but I wanna figure it out with you. No matter how long it takes.”

They’re both thinking the same thing in that moment, and it goes unsaid between them. They’re twelve now. The same age their mother and their father were when they struck out on their own. They’d never heard many stories from that time, but it was possible, and it just makes the most sense to Gandy’s addled brain, now.

“We have to go, then,” says Aubrey, standing up. She offers a hand to Gandy. Gandy sighs, collects herself, and accepts it, letting Aubrey drag her to her feet.

“First things first, okay?

Gandy takes in a huge shaky breath. Aubrey puts a hand on her shoulder, and she nods.

“Okay.”

And they go.

****

Twelve years ago, the reaper known as Kravitz was faced with a difficult choice.

It was a bounty like any other, two souls defeated, dangerous and unstable, crackling into existence and tearing rifts through reality. He and Lup made quick work of them, and Kravitz let her off early, to go back and attend to her baby daughter. He had nothing in his mind beyond paperwork as he escorted the two defeated souls to the astral plane.

“Wait. Please. You have to hear us out.”

It was one of the souls, projecting a thought into his head. Kravitz rolled his eyes. He was used to this pleading.

“You’re not getting a lighter sentence from me,” he warned. “Best to stay silent if you…”

“It’s not ABOUT that! Please! You havetosave Gandy… Gandy is… hrkngk....”

The soul was wavering now, but Kravitz’s interest was piqued.

“Who is ‘Gandy’?” he asked. Another bounty, perhaps? He could use some more hours this month.

“No,” said the other soul, chiming in more clearly. “Please. Our daughter. She’s home now… and she… has no one… we’re her only relatives… please…”

Kravitz’s heart twists. He falters in his path towards the stockade. A child, then. He thinks of all of the children he’s known, pictures them scared and alone. An Angus McDonald, a Mavis or a Mookie, maybe even his baby niece, all alone in the world after their parents made a choice that would destroy them.

“I’ll find her,” he promises, before he even decides to say it. “I promise, no harm will come to your daughter.”

The souls are quiet, then, reverting back into their energy-preserving state.

Kravitz finds the child, later. Just a few rooms away from where the reaping had taken place. She’s quiet, now, although tear tracks stain her tiny face. He hadn’t known. How could he have known? To think that he had put this child through this, hearing her parents’ grisly defeat, sends a chill through his veins beyond the usual push of reaper’s blood.

Her room is covered in rubble from the fray, and he undoes his cloak, wraps her in it, and lifts her to his chest. At once, something greater than himself stretches through him. A feeling, a moment, a bond spinning outward, beyond. His heart thunders with the thought of what is to come.

He doesn’t know, in this moment, that he has just met his daughter. He knows a name, Gandy, and a feeling that extends beyond himself. He knows the gentle rousing of Taako in the still night air, he knows the screams of a baby in the next few minutes, the rush to Lup and Barry’s place to get something to feed her, some help, anything.

Within the day, he loves her. He knows he loves her. And he loves her still.

When Kravitz gets the call that his child is missing, it’s like being hit by the worst blow he has ever been dealt. He leaps into action immediately, trembling through his whole body, asking questions, suiting up, grabbing his scythe. His is ready to tear the world apart to find her again.

****

“Motel in Tethyr, two guests checked in under ‘The Lady Flame’,” says Barry, forcing in a painful breath as he speaks into his stone.

“I’m on it.”

“Fuck .”

“Meet you there.”

Finally, a lead. Barry pushes off from his desk, blows out a candle, throws on a jacket, pulls on some boots that might be Lup’s, and tears a portal straight through the Tethyr. He immediately hears two other ripping noises, and Lup, Kravitz, and a tagalong Taako are in front of him.

In Barry’s worst nightmares, he could only imagine a ghost of what this would feel like. Losing Lup, of course, and searching for her, had been the hardest thing he’d ever gone through. He never could have imagined he’d have to go through it again. But so much worse, the added terror of his daughter out in the world alone. He’s been crying for most of the time he’s been searching. Three days now, Aubrey and Gandy have been missing. Three days, and his heart has been too.

The four of them immediately scan the area, looking for any sign of the kids. Nothing immediately stands out.

“I’m going to the front desk,” says Taako, already taking his wand out in case he needs the extra push. “We’ll ask if they’ve…”

There’s a crashing sound above them, and all of their attention is drawn upwards.

When Barry sees the face of his daughter, guilty and afraid, dappled in moonlight, it’s like everything inside of him unwinds at once. The tension that had been building up for three days now undoes itself, then quickly returns as a primal need to see her, to touch her, to be sure that she’s there and she’s safe and she’s real.

Lup and Taako are already up a level, onto the walkway between motel rooms, having blinked up to see her. Kravitz rips a rift, and Barry, brain all fuzzy and disoriented, just starts fucking running. He takes off for the stairs, thunders up them in maybe the quickest he’s ever run, and he launches himself to Aubrey, past the bucket of ice that she’d apparently dropped.

Lup is already hugging her, breathing heavily into her hair with her eyes clenched closed. Barry wraps his arms around both of them, feeling Aubrey’s warmth, and her breathing, and smelling her smell, and he knows it’s her and he’s crying again.

She’s muttering something, a tiny squeak, towards Taako and Kravitz, and Barry thinks vaguely that they’re probably asking about Gandy, but nothing is going through his head right now except she’s safe, she’s here, she’s safe.

He hears a commotion beside him as a door is flung open, and Taako and Kravitz find Gandy, and he looks over just in time to see her crying, pushing them away, and the look of terror and confusion on Taako and Kravitz’s faces.

“Mom? Dad?” says Aubrey, weakly. “We have… a lot to say to you, I think.”

“I should fucking hope so,” Lup mutters, furious, into the top of Aubrey’s head.

****

They huddle together in the shitty motel room, doing their best to hold separate conversations. Gandy fidgets in a leather chair, while her parents sit together on the windowsill across from her. Barry and Aubrey sit on the bed, Barry still clutching both of Aubrey’s hands, not quite ready to let go yet, while Lup paces up and down, running her hands through her hair, grasping at it until it hurts.

Lup has never been this fucking mad in her entire life. String her up before a giant stone judge, because this shit is wrath unlike any the world has ever seen. She could kill a thousand bad guys. She could spit fire. She could hold her daughter and never, ever let her go until the word fell down around them.

Whatever Gandy is talking about over there, she can’t hear it. Can’t hear anything past her own, thundering thoughts.

“What the FUCK was that about?” she asks, turning on Aubrey.

Aubrey looks back at her defiantly, full in the eyes, holding her ground.

“Gandy found out that you and Uncle Kravitz killed her parents. She wasn’t ready to go home to that, and I wasn’t gonna leave her.”

Of all of the things she could have said, Lup never in a million years suspected this. Her mouth falls open, and she draws back, completely dumbfounded.

“Why?” asks Aubrey, face crumpling a bit. “Mom, why would you reap Gandy’s parents?”

Lup’s chest is on fire. Her parents… the ones who were doing necromacy in a side room while their baby slept? Her parents who left her, performing a ritual that would leave them completely unable to care for her on a good day? Gandy’s parents are here, dammit, picking up the pieces in a shitty motel room. How could Gandy, how could either of them ever think that running away was the answer?

A million images flash through Lup’s head. A terrible family situation. The loss of trust. The running away. The thought that that could even occur to the two of them, after how fucking loved they are, shakes Lup to pieces. The four of them are here, they came looking, why can’t she see…

“I’m a reaper ,” she finally spits out. “It’s my fucking job. I find dangerous people, doing dangerous shit, and I fucking reap them. ”

Barry’s looking at Lup with the saddest eyes, his mouth hanging open, but she can’t let him talk right now. She has to keep talking, get the fire out of her, hold herself together, she talks before she forms the thoughts in her head, stringing words together and holding her hands in her hair.

“This is what I do, Aubrey! I have to keep the world safe! I w-worked that night, I was tired, I can’t even r...emember what they look...ed like, I just wanted t-to get home, I wanted to s-see-my-baby…”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, she’s crying now. Lup wipes angry tears away, burying her face in her hands. She feels a hand on her arm, and she knows it’s Barry, and she tries to remember the last time she cried like this in front of him. Their wedding day? The day Aubrey was born? It’s so fucking stupid, that wasn’t anything like this, nothing is like this…

Her muscles go limp, and the fight drains out of her. Only smoke is left of the fire.

“I’m s-sorry, baby,” she says, looking back into Aubrey’s face. Aubrey is crying too now, and Lup hates it so much, choking on smoke and tears. She doesn’t even know what she’s apologizing for, really, except for this giant feeling outside herself, this wrong that has to be righted.

“I’m sorry too,” says Barry, softly, fingers digging into Lup’s arm as he addresses Aubrey, their Aubrey, their sunshine.

They sit like that for a while, as Taako and Kravitz speak to Gandy, hushed and emotional. Lup still can’t hone in on their voices.

Aubrey bows her head.

“I… forgive you,” she says, quietly. “I get it… that it’s your job.”

She leans into Barry, and Lup takes in a huge breath. A gulp of oxygen against the smoke in her throat.

“And I’m sorry that I ran away. I’m... not sorry for going with Gandy, though,” she says, looking Barry straight in the eyes. “She needed me. I had to be there for her.”

Barry’s face crumples, and Lup can tell that this is a hurt that’s going to take a long time to heal. But… it’ll heal, she thinks, and she exhales.

She looks over to Gandy, Taako, and Kravitz, huddled together on the windowsill, crying into each other.

Lup takes in another breath. Healing starts now.

There’s a long night ahead of them.

****

“And that… is how it is.”

Gandy twists her hands between her knees, and Taako knows how hard she’s trying not to cry. He has never felt this awful in his entire life. He glances back to Kravitz, who sits gobsmacked, his head in his hands. This was never supposed to happen like this.

It wasn’t like they’d kept Gandy’s origin story a secret from her. She knew she came from a reaping mission, and her parents weren’t around anymore. She'd feared death her whole life, the sounds of her parents fighting against it ringing in her ears from days she couldn’t remember. And, yet, this news, this connection, this letter, which Taako clenches in his hands now, is the absolute pits. This whole situation sucks so bad. Taako’s feet feel hot. He wants to run away, and forget about this. But he doesn’t want to run away without them. The people he cares about most in the world are here in this gross motel room… the person he cares about most sits right in front of him, and he knows he can’t leave. Taako has to be all in on this one.

Taako is mad, of course, and relieved, and terrified, but it’s like he’s looking at a picture of the emotions, and not feeling them for real. He’s shelved that shit so far back, and he’s just dealing with the fallout now, riding the waves of Kravitz’s horror, waiting for someone to break the silence, as Lup talks at Aubrey and the world zooms out like it’s in a tunnel.

And Gandy is crying. His daughter, his starlight, is crying and he can’t help her, he can’t touch her without her flinching, doesn’t know what to say, his vision is fading out to grey, and suddenly, Kravitz speaks.

“Gandy I… am so, so sorry. I should have… told you this ages ago. I didn’t… I couldn’t…”

He takes in a shuddering breath, and Taako feels something shatter, dully, behind his sternum.

“Your… parents. They told me to help you. As I was… as I… they talked to me. They told me you were alone, and I went to see you. You had no other family, and I…”

He closes his eyes, and, somehow, for some fucking reason, Taako starts laughing. High and frantic giggles that pierce through the silence.

“You were ours, Gandy, don’t even trip. The second I saw you you were ours. I never met your birth parents, but I…”

Taako feels something slide down his cheeks. Tears, maybe. He’s so far removed from this. He’s not making sense. Gandy’s face crumples, and she crosses her arms.

“You can meet them,” Kravitz says, voice husky with pain. “I can take you to see them. Anything you want. Anything. Just tell me how I can make this right. Please. I’ll take you to meet your parents.”

Taako hears a sniffle, and suddenly Gandy’s crying, and they’re all three crying and everything is terrible and nothing makes sense around him.

“Don’t you get it?” Gandy whispers, pulling her legs up in front of her. “How could you say that? I… I already know my parents! You’re my parents, and you betrayed me!”

Her voice cracks, and Taako feels a million miles away. He doesn’t know how to handle this. He can’t run or deflect or cook something to make it better, it’s just him and his broken little family, alone in a motel room, tears falling onto a hideous orange rug, and it feels like absolutely fucking nothing.

“I’m so sorry,” Kravitz says again, softly. “Never… never again, love. I swear. I’ll tell you anything.”

“I’m sorry too,” Taako hears himself say.

And then, she crashes into them. Her arms wrap around them, push them together, and Taako feels her, hears her sniffling breaths, in between sobs. Everything rushes back to him at once, and he fists a hand in her sweater, tucking his head in between her and Kravitz, all of the anger and hurt and terror rushing over him in waves, in tune with his heartbeat, pouring in through his feet, to his ribcage, and escaping through his throat as a single, anguished sob. He holds the two of them for a long time, just feeling it all crash over him, fading in and out, heart thundering.

They all cry together until they’re out of tears.

“I hate death,” she whispers, into the nape of Kravitz’s neck. “I hate it so much.”

“I know, love,” he whispers.

“Can we go home now?”

Taako inhales, deeply.

“Of course.”

****

The six of them spend the next few days together.

Just talking.

Dawn fades to day.

****

Merle calls her “extreme teen Aubrey” at her seventeenth birthday party in the astral plane. Aubrey laughs, graciously, mouth full of her third slice of cake.

Lup thinks she’s the coolest kid she’s ever known. Bright, and radiant, with a killer sense of style and panache. Lup might be biased, but it’s probably not that, though.

Barry worries over Aubrey all day, getting her things and laughing too loud and just generally soaking her up before she leaves in a few weeks.

Lup and Barry had agreed that after Aubrey graduated high school, she was allowed to do her own thing with her magic show. She’s been working on it for a while, and it’s good. Funny and clever, the kid makes a cantrip into a whole production, a spell into a work of art. Lup is proud of her in a way that radiates through her whole body, but she’s also really dreading seeing her go. She’ll be back, and it’s only for a few weeks, just to test the waters, but still. She remembers holding a baby in an IPRE onesie, and her heart aches.

They return home that night and spend a few more hours just talking. Aubrey eats even more cake, and Barry holds back his usual comments that she’s going to make herself sick. She lets out a huge yawn, and they laugh, and she hugs them both, in turn.

“Goodnight mom. Goodnight dad. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Love you, kid.”

Barry and Lup share a look as she walks upstairs.

Their Aubrey.

****

“Are you going to open it?” asks Taako, smiling at the letter in Gandy’s hand.

“I… yes. Just let me… hoooo…”

She takes in a few deep breaths, and Kravitz grins at her.

“Take your time.”

“I mean you know you got it, right?” asks Taako. “Like, seriously. You’ve had an in from day one.”

Gandy sighs.

“I would prefer to not… um, play the nepotism card, but…”

She tears open the letter, unfolds it, and spends a few seconds just staring, her face blank. Kid is way too good at the poker face. Taako holds his breath.

She grins, throwing the letter back on the table.

“I’m in!”

“Of course!” says Taako, punching the air. Kravitz cheers.

“I mean, if you weren’t, I’d have to call up old Angus McDonald…”

“The Graysons don’t work for him anymore, dad,” she says, grinning.

“Like hell they don’t.”

The three of them spend a moment just grinning at each other, relieved and happy in this moment.

Gandy had applied to work for the Graysons as soon as she graduated high school. The agency dealt in detective work, and had for hundreds of years, after being started by none other than Angus freaking McDonald, who named the organization for his partner. Taako has been donating to them since they first became a thing. Gandy has been following their progress her whole life.

“You got in with your own hard work,” says Kravitz. “I’m so proud of you.”

Gandy glances down at the letter again, embarrassed.

“I start in three weeks.”

Taako’s heart plummets to his stomach. Wait. No. That’s way too soon. He shares a look with Kravitz, all of the pride and joy and fear and loneliness passing between them in a fraction of a second.

“You’re gonna kill it out there, pumpkin,” says Taako, leaning forward to pat the back of her hand.

“Just be safe ,” says Kravitz. “Seriously.”

Gandy smiles up at him, overtop of her pince-nez.

This is just a temporary thing, Taako reminds himself, forcefully. Just a few weeks, and she's back home. A few jobs a month, on and off, until she makes it. She's gonna make it for sure, though, is the thing. 

Gandy smiles at him, and he forces himself to smile back.

“I know. Thanks guys. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I love you the most .”

She excuses herself, and takes the letter upstairs. Taako and Kravitz watch her go, and their hands find each other's under the table.

Their Gandy.

**********

“You know, I’m really glad I know you,” says Aubrey, sitting up from where she’d been stretched out on the grass.

“Oh. Um, same,” says Gandy, blinking at her. “Any particular… reason for that?”

“I’m just gonna miss you, you know? Aren’t I allowed to be honest with my cousin?”

Gandy punches her lightly on the arm.

“Sure.”

They’d been camping out in Aubrey’s backyard, that night, something they used to do all the time as kids. Tomorrow, Gandy would be heading out, meeting with a guy called Errol to discuss a case. Aubrey was already in the talks to do a show at a lodge somewhere a few towns over. It felt weird, to leave each other like this. Gandy couldn’t remember ever spending more than a few days away from Aubrey.

“We’ll call each other all the time?” asks Aubrey, worrying at her bottom lip.

“You know it, sister,” says Gandy. Aubrey laughs, then goes quiet, leaning in for a big hug.

They hug for a few seconds, then break away, quiet. The chill of the air and the dew on the grass bringing out the fresh hint of morning. It smells green. Like something new is coming.

They watch the sunrise together, stars fading to sun.