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1: Barry
Barry was always noticing Lup. He noticed the sly glint in her eye and sideways smile she gave him the day he first met her at IPRE. He noticed how strong her grip was when she shook his hand, and that her nails were painted purple and matched her twin brother’s.
At the press conference, before they left in the Starblaster, he noticed how her knee bounced under the table. Up and down and up and down while Davenport fielded questions. He noticed that when she stood to answer questions of her own she put her hands on her hips and planted her feet. She held the mic with all the confidence in the world. Barry thought, then, that maybe there were two Lups: the one who grinned brighter than the spells she cast and called him a nerd, and the Lup who was made quiet by fear, or expectation, the Lup who put a steadying hand on Taako’s shoulder when one of their co-workers riled him up, the Lup who took a moment to collect herself after the journalists were gone, before she gave Magnus a high five and followed the others to the bar.
When it became clear that they would have to fight, every day, in every plane, year after year to stop the Hunger and protect the light, the list of things Barry noticed about Lup grew.
She hummed when she cooked.
She had absolutely illegible handwriting.
She was usually the last person on the ship to go to bed. He’d find her hunched over a book or rehearsing spells in the latest, stillest hours of the night.
“Lup?”
She startled, for a second, before he saw her shoulders relax. She was at the kitchen table, her legs folded under her as she stared at a map.
“Hi, Barry,” she said, voice hushed and weary. “I’m just—“ she trailed off and he watched her eyes flicker over his form in the doorway. He’d just come for a glass of water. His hair was mussed and he’d traded his jeans for pajamas.
“It’s taking awhile to find the light this time,” she said. “All the places it could be keep buzzing around in my head. Can’t sleep.”
He nodded. “It’s early though. We’ll find it.”
“I know,” she said with a smile that looked like it was more to comfort him than something genuine. “I’m not underestimating my own brilliance. Or yours for that matter.”
“I’m not brilliant,” Barry said. He felt his face heating up. He hoped Lup wouldn’t see, but then he remembered she had night vision.
“You are,” she said, easy, nonchalant, and turned back to her work. “I’ll go to bed soon. Don’t worry,” she said, glancing up at him once more. “Goodnight, Barry.”
“Goodnight Lup.” He said. He wanted to say he thought she was the most brilliant person he’d ever met. But he didn’t.
Barry noticed that Lup took her coffee black, but always remembered to bring him cream and sugar when they were working together.
He noticed that they were working together more often now. It was cycle 15. Fifteen years that felt at once like no time at all and also impossibly long. He hadn’t gotten used to looking at himself in the mirror and seeing the same face that had boarded the Starblaster on day one. Sure, each cycle made them different, changed them. Barry was learning to love scars and bruises because they meant change. If his face was roughed up early in a cycle he savored it: a point of aesthetic newness that disappeared when the year was up.
Lup, Barry noticed, looked different in every cycle. She’d try new hairstyles and colors, intricate braids and buns and in some instances shaving her head entirely. She’d try different clothes: long flowing skirts, fitted tops that showed off her tanned and freckled shoulders, artfully ripped t-shirts beneath her IPRE jacket and robe. She always looked like Lup, though. Beautiful and strong and singular. She looked so much like her brother, but Barry had had nearly 15 cycles to count their differences, to memorize her face and all its minute changes, the things that reset each year and reminded them all of the people they’d been when they began.
The world of cycle 15 was a dense jungle. The people lived in the thick of it, in vast hidden kingdoms that Lup, Taako, and Lucretia had explored with some basic spells for clearing brush and dispelling camouflage. Lup was sitting on the deck of the Starblaster, staring out at the sun setting over an expanse of green. Barry sat down beside her.
“Lucretia has been talking to some of the locals,” Lup said, glancing over at him. As of late he felt like they were always in the midst of one big, yearlong conversation. Lup would pick up topics and Barry would know what she was saying instantly. Sometimes they could speak without speaking at all. “You know that they have millions of plant species here? And hundreds of thousands have been catalogued and studied. They know so much.”
“Wouldn’t that be amazing,” Barry said, trying not to sound too grim. It was a tough year. Most of the time he was too tired to distinguish the plethora of plants in front of him.
“Wanna hear something crazy, Barry?”
“Sure,” he said, caught off guard for a moment by the way she said his name, softer than she usually said it.
“Lucretia told me that the people here worship these gods who are prophesied to exist in constant states of rebirth and—“ She gestured vaguely with her hand, a loose circular motion. “Time isn’t linear for them. It’s a circle, a constant loop and sometimes it twists and turns, like animal tracks or ocean waves, they say. And they worship these gods because they believe that living like that, ageless, formless, with no purpose or certainty—or maybe it’s hyper-certainty somewhere in all that time—is divine. You know who that sounds like? Those gods?”
“Us,” Barry said. Lup’s eyes were wide and expectant.
“It’s just crazy. I get it, but it’s crazy being here. Doing this. Do you think about death,
Barry?”
“Sometimes,” he said. He hadn’t died in a cycle yet, Lup had and Magnus and Davenport. And each time it happened, though he knew it was only temporary, it emptied everything out of him, all the fight, all the joy, and he felt numb until they were allowed to begin again.
“Elves live long lives,” Lup said. “Longer than humans. But death still means something. Not like now. In this plane they think beings like us are divine. But how can we be divine if we can’t stop it? We’ve had 14 tries already and it doesn’t feel like we’re any closer. It doesn’t feel like I know anything more than when I started.”
“Lup...” She was looking out at the landscape, her jaw clenched and head held high.
“And sometimes I just don’t care,” she said. She looked over at him, and his heart spasmed in his chest when she grinned. “Sometimes I love being here anyway, with everyone,” she said. “With you.”
“We aren’t as lost as when we started,” Barry said. “We’re getting closer.” He wanted to reach out and take her hand, to touch her and prove that they weren’t formless or purposeless or anything other than flesh and blood and breath and emotion that seemed to seep out of him on some days and burn within on others. But he didn’t. He just watched her nod, slowly, like maybe she believed him.
But what did Barry know, anyway.
In the ensuing cycles, Barry noticed himself falling completely and devastatingly in love with Lup. At first he tried to ignore it. He convinced himself that he loved everyone aboard the Starblaster in the same way. Lup was his friend, his dear friend who he’d die for, and had, at that point.
But it wasn’t the same.
***
And then it was cycle 47, and they were at the conservatory.
“What should we make?” Lup asked him. The rest of the group had splintered off to make their own offerings to the light of creation. Truthfully, Barry thought he’d be on his own too. He was already dreading the prospect of making something beautiful and creative. He was good with magic, sure, but it was always about survival. The light wanted art, and he wasn’t sure he could manage that.
“I’ve played the violin,” Lup said. “A bit, back when Taako and I were on the road.”
“Oh,” Barry said. He was never quite sure how to proceed in conversations regarding her past. He didn’t want to touch a nerve or say something he shouldn’t. And sometimes he was certain she made up things about her life to trick him. She didn’t, would never, but it still felt that way.
“I wanted to make myself as useful and versatile as possible,” she said. “That was why. I wasn’t very good, for that reason. I wasn’t playing because I loved to; I was playing because I was afraid.”
“Of what?” Barry asked.
She shrugged. “Losing everything. Being on our own again. Taako and I always managed, but it was never easy.”
She ran a hand through her hair (long in this plane, loosely curled and deep brown) and shook her head. “I want the music to feel different now.”
“Should we write a song then? I could—I mean I’ve always wanted to learn the piano,” he said.
“You have?” She said, suddenly playful, eyebrows raised. “Well, I would very much like to hear that, Barold.”
“We only have a year,” he said.
“I think we can do it anyway,” she said, and she put her hand on his knee.
He’d known for awhile now, that Lup had become everything to him. He knew it when she smiled at him from across the room and when she sacrificed herself time and time again to protect the fragile worlds they still didn’t know how to rescue. He knew it when she took the lead in their search, her magic prowess increasing with every passing year (and it had been many years). He knew it when she took his face in her hands, gently wiping away tears when he felt like everything inside him was crumbling.
Lup had become everything.
This cycle moved in slow motion. Every practice, late into the night and the early hours of morning, passed in a dream. Each time Lup played something and then began again felt careful and necessary. She sat next to him sometimes, when he was at the piano and she was too tired to hold up her violin, and she just watched him play slow scales.
“Are you ready?”
Barry was in the kitchen, washing dishes. He looked up and saw Taako in the doorway. He had his arms crossed and was leaning on the door frame.
Barry shrugged. The ceremony was tomorrow. They’d done everything they could. “Maybe I am. I believe in Lup.”
Taako nodded. “You know, Barold, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
“Is that from your book?”
“That’s confidential. But do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“Maybe?” Barry said.
Taako sighed. “Look, man. It has been literally 47 years. I know they say not to kiss and tell but this is a bit extreme.”
“We haven’t...Lup and I aren’t...”
“Well then get on it, my man. Life’s too short.”
“Is that also in the book?”
“You two play your little song and I’ll show you what’s in my incredibly brilliant book.”
Barry sighed. “I just...she’s...I don’t know. If something goes wrong it’s not as if I can hide from her. Who knows how long we’ll have to keep doing this and—“
“Barry, you’re my friend so I’ll be honest with you. Literally everything about this mission so far has gone wrong. Everything. We’ve made so many mistakes. And we’re learning, of course, but everything is still hard and bad a lot of the time.”
Taako rubbed his temples, like the sheer exhaustion of his existence was hitting him all at once. “And still, in all of that, you and Lup loving each other makes perfect sense to me. Everything else is on some goddamn shaky ground.”
“Well...thanks, Taako,” Barry said. “I’ll try my best.”
***
“You look nervous,” Barry said. He was so accustomed to the feeling himself that he laughed when she rolled her eyes at him.
“Thanks for noticing,” she said. “You look nervous too.”
She gripped her bow tightly and stood in a wide-legged, firmly grounded posture he’d seen so often it was becoming a cliche. This time, though, she was in a crimson dress that fell just past her knees, with matching heels that had her towering above him. They were next. Magnus had just presented his duck. The audience was applauding wildly and then they were dead silent.
And then the audience disappeared, or at least it felt like they did because all Barry could see was Lup. He’d spent weeks memorizing his part; the learning and the writing and the keeping in time with Lup were hard, but somehow the home stretch, the committing of a handful of notes to memory was the most difficult step.
He practiced alone, in the end, because watching Lup threw him off. Every stumble, every wrong note, every movement that built to nowhere was because he was watching her and forgetting his own part. Lup’s playing was a new kind of magic, separated entirely from the magic she used to save them, nothing like the flames that rose from her hands and yet exactly the same in passion, in feeling, in the warmth the radiated from her as her bow glided over strings, as her fingers moved fluidly and deftly.
And so when they had arrived, just the two of them on stage, the audience an invisible, prickling force, Barry put his hands on the piano keys and realized the song was there in his brain, his fingertips, and all he could do now was watch Lup.
It was a blur, the next moments. Lup had her eyes closed. Her whole body moved with the music, a gentle sway that seemed dizzying from his angle. Her silhouette cut against the sky. The sun was just starting to set: one sun, on this plane, the clouds a mess of deep purples and blues. When she played her last note, Barry held his breath.
She opened her eyes and looked over at him. He knew that they’d done it. The world came back in, around them, and the applause was deafening. And they stood and bowed and Lup laughed and her hand was in his and she didn’t let go.
So he didn’t either.
“Barry,” she said. “Do you wanna go talk somewhere for awhile?”
“Sure.”
2: Lup
Lup noticed Barry sometimes . In all fairness, there was a lot happening on the Starblaster. There was a seemingly infinite multiverse of worlds to save, unfathomable energy to protect, and a bastard of an all-consuming evil entity out to get them and everything in their path.
Still, Lup never thought of her life’s story as a tragedy. She didn’t think it was a romance either.
“I’m not good at talking in front of a lot of people,” Barry said, wringing his hands. The press conference was about to begin.
“It’ll be alright, buddy,” Magnus said at the same time as Taako said “Wow, Barry I never would have guessed,” in his particular sarcastic lilt that made her smile but also feel a little bad for the very nervous Barry who’d taken off his glasses and was now cleaning them frantically with the sleeve of his robe.
“Just pretend they’re all in their underwear, or something,” she said, winking at him. “We’ve got this.”
Barry flushed red and nodded. Lup was nervous too, though she’d never say so out loud. Their work would likely be dangerous, and further from home than she’d ever been...not that home had been all that constant for the twins. That was the other thing: the being part of a team thing. It had been her and Taako against the world for so long. And now everything would be different.
She didn’t know then, how different it would be.
“How long do you think we’ll be at this?” Lup asked. It was the twelfth cycle. She was laying on the bed and staring up at the ceiling of the room she shared with her brother. It was early morning, sunlight was coming in through the window and strange calls of birds that only belonged to this plane filled her ears.
“Who knows,” Taako said, rolling over. “What’s wrong Lulu?”
She turned her head to look at him. She wondered if she looked as tired as he did: dark circles beneath his eyes, messy hair, tight jaw.
“You mean, besides the usual?”
He nodded.
“I don’t know. Barry said something about devoting more time to research on the Hunger and I just...realized that we honestly have no idea what we’re up against. We know zip, zilch, nada, and that freaks me out.”
“So we’ll learn about it, like Barry said.”
“Yeah, okay, like Barry said,” Lup repeated. She closed her eyes. When she closed her eyes and laid flat on her back, sometimes she could convince herself that she was somewhere else: their room at the IPRE headquarters, a caravan during their years on the road, sitting, barefoot on the cool earth at their grandpa’s farm. She didn’t want to return to any of these places, per say, but lately she’d been reaching for any place that felt vaguely grounded.
Hurtling through planes with no rhyme or reason did that to a person. She’d grown up with change, with transformation of body and evolution of mind. She changed her clothes on a whim. She tried new spells with reckless abandon. But now everything was moving too fast. Now the ultimate goal was to make existence halt and bend to their will long enough to save everyone.
“Lu?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you think about Barry?’
She opened her eyes. “What do you mean, what do I think?” She said, but she realized a moment too late that she was whispering, and that her tone was a little bit defensive.
“Nothing,” Taako said, smile curling at his lips. “Nothing at all, it just seems like you spend a lot of time with him.”
“I spend time with everyone.”
“Fine, dodge the question. That’s as good as an answer.”
Lup rolled over and wrapped an arm around him. She buried her face in his neck and sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s my friend. It’s complicated.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “Everything’s complicated right now. I just don’t want to be out of the Lup loop.
“You won’t, ever,” she said, seriously.
“I know,” he said. They were still for a moment, listening to the creaks and groans and faint murmurs of the Starblaster and its occupants waking up.
“I think about getting to the end of all this. I don’t think about going back to the way things were, but just finding someplace safe,” she began. “And I think about the things I’ll need when we find that place. I think about a house, or something like it. I think about wide open spaces to do magic where I don’t have to worry about wrecking anyone else’s shit...unless, of course, they deserve it.”
“Natch,” he said.
“And you’re there in the house with me, obviously, and all our friends come visit. But Barry…”
“Is Barry in your house too, Lu? Does he have his own nerd study. Oh! Or a necromancy dungeon?”
Lup laughed. It was halting and a little breathless and her heart was pounding hard, but she laughed. “Maybe,” she said. “The details are still blurry.”
“C’mon,” he said, taking her hand. “Let’s make breakfast.”
Cycle after cycle, Lup let herself notice more things about Barry.
He loved it when she made banana pancakes.
He lost his glasses constantly, and broke them at least once a cycle.
His palms would sweat and he’d stumble over his words every time they met someone new. But he remembered every name, cycle after cycle, even though it hurt. Sometimes she’d find him with Lucretia, listening attentively as she read back a bit of writing, which she did only rarely.
Sometimes he’d get angry and frustrated in a way that made him wring his hands and lock his jaw or cry. She found him crying once. She was lingering outside his bedroom with a leftover piece of Taako’s pie. Barry hadn’t eaten much at dinner.
She knocked on his door, gently, and heard him sniffling. “Hey Barry? It’s me. Can I come in?”
She heard more sniffling and then a weak affirmation.
“I brought pie,” she said, holding up the plate and giving him her best smile. He was hunched at the foot of the bed, wiping at his face with his shaky hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He repeated it. “I’m sorry Lup. I don’t know why I’m—“
“Don’t apologize,” she said. “It’s okay.” She crossed the room and knelt in front of him. He didn’t meet her eyes, looking down at the floor and stiffening.
“Barry,” she said. She reached up and took his face in both hands. And then he looked at her, eyes wide and watery. They were quiet for a moment. She leaned in and kissed the top of his head. She wiped away the tears left on his face and she watched him watch her.
Barry looked at Lup like she was more than she was. It was a look that had taken her years to pin down.
“Lup?” He said, quietly, nearly a whisper.
“Mm?”
“Thank you.”
***
When their song was finished, Lup never wanted to let go of Barry’s hand. He tethered her in space, in time, kept her from floating away on days when she was certain she’d dissolve if she thought too hard about who she was and what she was trying to do.
“I love you,” she said. They were the first words out of her mouth when she got him alone. He was still in his suit, tie looser and stance more casual without the stage fright. He grinned.
“I love you too, Lup,” he replied, instantly.
She took both his hands. They should have done this years ago. “No, I mean I really love you, Barry. I’ve been wanting to say something for a while now. I’ve loved you for cycles and cycles, babe.”
He flushed. “I feel the same,” he said.
“Good,” she breathed. “That’s so good to hear. I thought, for a long time, that it wasn’t a good idea to start something. I thought we’d end up hurting each other.”
He looked at her, gravely.
“But I’ve been hurt so much, through all of this, and I’m still here. And I still love you.”
She embraced him, burying her face in his neck and clinging to him. “We did it,” she said. “I got so caught up in loving you that I nearly forgot.”
He laughed. “It was beautiful. You’re beautiful.” They came apart. She realized she wanted to hold him forever. She missed his arms around her the second they weren’t there.
“Lup?” He said. “Can I—?”
“Yes,” she said, before he could finish. And then he was leaning up to kiss her.
“I love you,” he said.
“You said that already,” she said.
“Making up for lost time,” he said.
Lup’s image of home, the distant, distorting one, began to solidify in the coming cycles. Late at night, one cycle, the light of creation’s energy burned too passionately in them for sleep. Lup lit candles and sat on Barry’s bed (their bed now) with a mess of notes and scrolls and half-baked diagrams for experiments. They were working on the whole lich thing, an idea they’d talked about for the last five cycles in clandestine whispers. Every bone in Lup’s body ached but she couldn’t close her eyes. Barry was at the desk beside her, similarly engrossed in his work.
“Babe?”
He looked up and over at her with exhaustion, but interest. “Find something?”
She shook her head, and pulled her knees to her chest. “Nothing yet.”
“It’s complicated magic,” he said.
She nodded.
“What are you thinking? You wanna call it a night?” He asked, voice gentle. Candlelight flickered on his face, casting warm shadows.
“I don’t. But I think we should try, to sleep I mean.”
He stretched, languidly. She cleared away her work and nestled into her side of the bed. She watched him lay down beside her, and for a moment they just looked at each other.
Lup’s imaginary home was full of Barry. His books were on the shelves. His favorite cereal was in the kitchen. And their bed was like this one: soft and inviting and stable. She reached out and they folded into each other, legs tangled together, breath soft, and chests warm.
“I’m worried,” she muttered, eyes closed. “Even if we feel confident to try, there are risks. We could die trying.”
“We won’t,” he said. “I believe in you.”
“I believe in you too, sweetie. But I don’t know about any of this.”
He drew back and met her eyes. “We’re not ready yet, but I know we will be. We’ve made it this far,” he said. “We’ll make it to the end.”
“Okay,” she said, dazed with the intensity of the eye contact, the urge to kiss him. She thought about the end of all of this. She wondered how many more nights she would sleep pressed to his chest, breathing in unison.
She tried her best to commit this moment entirely to memory, to cling to it even as their surroundings shifted and the Starblaster soared through unknown after unknown. Barry had blown out the candles and their smoke hovered: delicate, fragrant, plumes in the dark. He dozed off quickly, holding her tight to him as if she’d slip away in the night. Most mornings Lup had to detangle herself from him, carefully, to go to the kitchen and make breakfast. Sometimes, though, she’d let him keep her from the rest of the day. Gladly, she’d close her eyes against the glare of the sunrise and stay a few moments longer in his warmth.
“Barry?” She said suddenly.
“Mm?” He was half asleep, but still shifted to look at her with sleepy eyes.
“I love you.”
He smiled and kissed her. She’d said it hundreds of times but it never felt like enough.
“I love you too,” he said.
***
“Where is he?” Lup said. Rage tore through her chest, blind and confused. Taako’s hands were on her shoulders. Magnus and Lucretia were standing in the doorway, looking bedraggled and forlorn.
“He’s going to be fine, Lulu. Merle did his best with healing spells but he’s lost a lot of blood. He’s all bandaged up in there, but he’s pretty out of it.” Taako said, slowly. He didn’t break eye contact. She felt her whole body tense.
“What happened?”
“Thieves,” Lucretia said. “They ambushed us. I...I tried to counter their attacks but they had strong magic and we were outnumbered. Lup, I’m sorry.” She looked at the floor and Magnus put a hand on her shoulder.
“Let me see him,” she said.
They’d died before, too many times. They’d been hurt. They’d suffered to the end, clinging on pointlessly only to be reset. But it never got easier, seeing Barry pale and stiff in their bed.
“Are you in a lot of pain?” She asked, trying to keep her voice even.
“I’m fine, Lup. Don’t—” He stopped, because he’d tried to sit up and couldn’t. He winced and Lup felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.
His eyes were glazed over and his face was cut and bruised. He swayed against the pillow and gave her his best, clearly strained, smile.
It was like this when anyone got hurt. Her heart started beating out of her chest. Her hands shook. It didn’t matter that’d they’d been through hell and back countless times. It didn’t matter that everything was going to reset.
“I’m okay,” he said. Even incapacitated, he read her expression, she knew, because his eyes widened with panic to reassure her. “Honestly, Lup. Merle stopped the bleeding; I’m just sore and a little dizzy. ”
“Let me see,” she said, crossing the room. She perched on the edge of the bed.
“Lup…”
“Show me how bad it is.” She stared him down until he lifted his shirt. His bandage was already soaking through with blood. It was a big gash, from the look of it, and he frowned as her chin began to wobble.
“It’s fine. We’ve done this before.” She reached out and took his face in her hands.
“How many people attacked you?”
“Six. We got out. It’s okay.”
“Lucretia said you passed out. You could have died. The cycle’s not even half-over. That would have absolutely sucked, Barry.” The words were pouring out of her now. “And it’s not fine. Being without you for most of a cycle would’ve been terrible and it’d be the first time you died since we got together . And, fuck...it’s not your fault babe, obviously, but you scared the shit out of me and I kind of want to go blow something up now.”
He smiled, but she could see the exhaustion in his eyes. He was trying to keep himself upright but it was a struggle. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know. I won’t die on you this time. But…”
“What?” She said.
He laughed, which consequently doubled him over with pain. He was getting further away from her. Sleepier and loopy with blood loss. “You died two cycles ago,” he muttered, like it was a secret. “And I…” he trailed off.
She remembered. A bad fall off a rocky cliff they were exploring. It was stupid, really. She’d hit the ground fast.
“And, what?” They hadn’t talked about that particular death. Normally, Barry didn’t talk about death at all, unless it was about liches.
“It was bad,” he said at last. He laid back and stared up at the ceiling. “We’ve got to figure out how to stop dying.” He closed his eyes. “Maybe I’ll dream an answer,” he whispered.
She laughed. “Maybe.”
Lup asked Lucretia later. Lucretia was at the kitchen table with an ice pack at her temple and her journal open in front of her. She looked up when Lup took a seat across from her.
“How are you feeling?” She asked. Lucretia shrugged.
“Stupid, for not stopping them. Happy, that I’m still here.”
“You’re not stupid,” Lup said. “It’s not your fault.”
She smiled, that gentle smile that Lup noticed was rare. All these years and Lup could only recall catching a few of them.
“How’s Barry?”
“He says he’s fine.”
“Good,” Lucretia breathed. “If he says so.”
“I—” Lup’s chest tightened. “What was he like, the last time I died?”
Lucretia looked down at her journal. “Lup, I write it all down, but I don’t...I can’t—“
“That bad, huh?” Lup said.
Lucretia sighed. “He wouldn’t leave his room for weeks.”
Oh Barry.
“He didn’t tell me.”
“We’re all wrecks, when we lose someone,” Lucretia said. “And you love each other, so much. It’s all in here.” She tapped the journal.
“Greatest story ever told,” she muttered. “Honestly.”
She retreated to Barry’s room a while later.
“Hey, hot stuff. How’s the bleeding?”
He blinked, sleepily. She handed him a glass of water and took a seat on the bed beside him. “I’m just here to tell you I’m going to spend the night with Taako so I don’t accidentally hug you too hard and take you out.”
“Okay,” he said. “I appreciate that.”
He turned to look at her, gaze softer, and more adoring than it had any right to be.
“You could’ve told me about what it was like in the cycle I died,” she said. “You can tell me anything, you know.”
“Did Lucretia say something?”
“I twisted her arm.”
Barry sighed. “I worked harder that cycle than I ever have. I...I don’t want to watch you die again.”
“I know.”
“I’m so sick of watching you die, Lup.”
“I know,” she repeated. Her voice shook. “You want to know what else I know?
“What?”
“We’re ready,” she said, softly.
“You think so?” He was wide-eyed again. “I don’t know if I’ll be well enough.”
“Next cycle.” She held out her pinky. “Promise.”
He grinned, and inelegantly linked his pinky in hers. “Promise.”
3: Barry
“Emotional anchors,” Lup said, matter-of-factly. She was cross-legged on the bedroom floor. “I have my list. Do you have yours?”
He was about to tell her that this was another anchor he could add to his list: the image of her, long legs and bruised knees, mess of curls pulled into a bun (this cycle her hair was light and unruly, and always smelled like flowers or cinnamon), toenails freshly painted and wild look in her eyes. But he didn’t. If he wrote down every moment he was in love with Lup, the list would be miles long.
“Yes,” he said, pulling it out of the pocket of his robe. “But you have to go first.”
“If you insist,” she said, retrieving her own list. She grinned.
“When Taako and I think up the same dinner before we even talk about it.”
“Twin telepathy.”
“Of course,” she said. “And the beach, cycles ago, swimming with everyone in the sunshine. And the mongoose family. And the wooden ducks Magnus leaves everywhere. And breakfast. And late nights and…”
“Go on,” he said. “It’s great.”
She got up, brandishing the list triumphantly, as if giving a speech.
“And you. Every memory I have of you. Even the bad ones, the missing you. Waking up next to you. Holding you. Making you coffee. Your brilliant mind.The way you look at me sometimes, like I have all the answers, even though I don’t. Those jeans.”
“Don’t feel like you have to keep going on,” he said, face bright red despite the years and years of sweet things she’d said to him.
“Oh, but I want to.” She leapt onto the bed and kissed him.
“Your turn,” she said. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Barry.”
He took out his list, but suddenly his hands were shaking and he couldn’t get them to stop.
“Barry,” she repeated, putting her hands over his.
“Maybe you could read them,” he said, voice quivering. “I’m sorry Lup. I...it hits me in waves, you know? What we’re doing. What this means. The risk.”
“We’re ready,” she said. “You said it yourself.”
“I know,” he said. And he meant it. “I just never want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to lose you either, sweetie, and I won’t. Because we’re ready.”
She squeezed his hand, in the way that made it an item on the list.
“And we’re gonna look sick as hell as liches,” she said.
***
It felt strange, at first, being formless, intangible. And then she was there, radiant, red-robed, grinning as much as a skull could, and the euphoria hit.
And Taako was laughing, tears in his eyes when Lup dabbed. Only she could make something entirely terrifying feel ridiculous and light-hearted and beautiful.
Barry reached out to hold her, but he couldn’t, neither of them could because their bodies were somewhere else.
“We did it,” he breathed. If he could cry he would, out of relief or joy or both.
It was freeing to feel disembodied after years and years in a body that remained so static it was like it didn’t belong to him. It was freeing to look at Lup, with her robes billowing and fire at her fingertips, and recognize her perfectly, even in this new, frightening form.
It took time to process, living out the rest of the year as ghosts, hovering above the rest of the crew while they had meetings, spending all night researching because they didn’t need to sleep.
But it felt good, after awhile, to be made of power, energy, might when they never felt mighty. Lup was a force of nature. She radiated. She struck fear in the hearts of her enemies. She was incredible.
It still felt better to be embodied, beside her. And a year spent as a lich made it all the better to be a body. It made it all the more electrifying to hold her hand.
They did a lot of hand holding in the next few years, when the Hunger got closer and yet more elusive. And when they created the relics, a decision that kept Lup up at night, arms curled around her knees, staring off into some place he couldn’t reach.
“We’re doing the right thing, right? It’s hard but…”
“It’s the best solution we have right now. We’ll keep working. But this plane is safer.”
“For who? For how long? People are dying because of something we made.”
“The Hunger would’ve killed all of them,” Barry said, as gently as he could. She was right, he knew, but there was nothing else they could do, not now when their existence was stable enough to stop spinning, to give them a moment to breathe.
“I know,” she muttered, running a hand through her hair. They were on the deck of the Starblaster, again, again, again for the thousandth time, looking up at the stars from earth that didn’t belong to them. They were sharing a bottle of wine, which was in theory romantic, but in practice had brought thinly veiled sadness to the surface. Barry didn’t know it yet, but this was their last date—for a long, long time at least.
“I’ve thought about settling down,” she said. “Really settling down.”
“You have?” He said, struggling to contain his grin.
“But I can’t, in a world that we’re hurting. No matter how much I love you.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He’d spent 100 years close and yet infinitely far from the future they both dreamed about, the one they spoke of softly, in the thin space before sleep. It was a future where they slowed down, where they lived in a warm house together, and friends visited. They threw dinner parties and danced in the living room and grew old. Adventures were chosen, not forced upon them by cosmic rule. They became attached to some place, a new home after years of saying goodbye to worlds, communities, people they’d grown to love. The future was safe and open and theirs, together.
“We’ll get there. We’ve made it so much farther than we thought we would, already.”
“We have,” she said, softly, nearly a whisper. She was quietest with him. She could be so loud, so charismatic and self-assured. But now he could see fear in her eyes. And sadness. And exhaustion. All the things she ordinarily liked to keep hidden.
“We just have to keep working,” she said, putting her hand over his.
“Together,” he said.
“Together,” she repeated.
***
They weren’t together for a long time after that night. And time was slow, excruciatingly so, without Lup. Back soon. Back soon. Back soon. It cycled through his brain late at night, when sleep wouldn’t come and he laid there in the dark, staring at the ceiling.
And when it happened—when the past was pulled out from under him, when his home tumbled away— back soon became a mantra, a hope half-remembered in bodies that were his but not quite.
The years of planning, of getting somewhere and then missing his chance, of finding the boys and then losing them again. Remembering and forgetting and remembering again and sometimes, he’d look up at the stars late at night and miss the Starblaster. He missed the movement, the purpose, and the unity of their team. And missing Lup took root in his soul. It was a dull ache that never went away. In his lich form he’d talk to himself, looking over his shoulder expecting to see her there, expecting her advice or a smile or joke or eye roll. Anything.
And when he didn’t remember he still had the faint traces of her absence, an emptiness that filled up every room and made it feel cold.
Then he found them, his dear friends who looked at him with such blank eyes, and convinced them to trust him again. And Taako broke the umbra staff.
He’d forgotten how it felt to look at her, to find her looking back and to understand her every thought from that look, even as a lich.He’d forgotten the brilliance of her power, the fury with which she attacked the Hunger, the defiance in her stance.
Back soon. Back soon. Back soon. Back.
“Hear that, babe? We’re legends,” Lup hovered just above him, looking out at everyone who had joined their fight, the fight that had gone on for more than 100 years, the fight that had consumed so much of them, even their bodies, making them spectral.
“Let’s end this,” he said, grinning at her, weary but overjoyed, overcome with love for her.
4: Lup
When it was all over, and a year of settling down had settled them down (and given Lup a new body), Lup got her dream house. It was a cottage, really, but they never wanted any place big. It was a quick commute to the Astral Plane (though technically everywhere was a quick commute to the Astral Plane.) Best of all, though, was that it wasn’t going anywhere.
Lup was in the kitchen making crepes for brunch. They were lemon with blueberry sauce, Barry’s favorite, and fragrant enough to fill the whole house with sweetness. Barry was still asleep, and it had been tough to remove herself from his grasp that morning, when she felt she could lay there in his arms for hours, exhilarated by the gentle steadiness of his breathing when she’d spent all those years trapped in the umbra staff, alone, until Taako found her.
But another freedom she’d missed was of movement. She flipped a thin, golden brown crepe in the pan. She missed cooking. She missed long walks, like the one she’d taken with Barry the night before. She missed stretching out on a couch, feet tangled with Taako’s, catching up on all the things she missed and grilling him about his dates with death (both in the sense of evenings out with Kravitz, and untimely demises she’d heard second hand from within the umbra staff.)
The house made her calm. It was becoming a home she could trust to be there, not one that flew away year after year or confined her. The kitchen was small and bright, with big windows that looked out to the forest beyond. They had a campfire outside for when Angus visited and wanted to make s’mores. Inside she had a full set of appliances, a stand mixer from Taako’s new cooking line, a blender Barry had bought her as a “welcome to your new flesh body” present, and a set of dishes, pans, and measuring cups from fantasy IKEA.
The living room was connected to the kitchen. It was cluttered with mismatched furniture: a chair Magnus had built them, a coffee table Lup had bargained aggressively for at an antique sale, the massive pull out couch that many a drunk friend had crashed on already, one of Lucretia’s new paintings on the wall (a landscape of the moon base), and an upright piano in the corner for Barry to practice. He’d taken music up again, as had she. She was considering writing some more music...with badass violin solos. She had plenty to write about.
Down the hallway was their bathroom, laundry room, and a study, which they shared, though as of late most of their studying consisted of day long conversations about everything they missed, studying each other in a way that felt brand new, despite the many years behind them.
And at the end of the hall was their bedroom, the room from which Barry Bluejeans was now emerging. Their bed was big and warm and they had a record player in the corner for nights when they felt like dancing (and Lup felt like dancing a lot now). When she has nightmares he’d wake her up with gentle hands on her shoulders and she’d fold into him, as close as they could be.
Barry would wake with bedhead, like now.
“What are you making?” He asked, glasses smudged and grin wide. He took a seat at the kitchen table. She already had coffee waiting for him: two sugars and a splash of soy milk. “Can I help with anything?”
“Am I not a master in this kitchen, babe?” She said, turning to wink exaggeratedly. “Thank you, though.”
“To be honest, I’m sure I’d ruin any crepe I tried to make.”
“Oh, so crepes are harder than necromancy?”
“We’ve all got different skill sets, Lup.”
She laughed, and she was happy, so much happier than she ever thought she’d be. She finished off the last of the crepes and split them into two piles, drenching them in the berry sauce and garnishing them with a few mint leaves from the plant in the window sill (a housewarming gift from Merle.)
“Brunch is served,” she said, placing the plate in front of him and plucking the glasses from his face to clean them on the corner of her apron. “Nerd,” she added, with the utmost affection.
They sat in silence for awhile, eating and taking turns filling in clues in the newspaper crossword puzzle. Soon, Lup rested her chin in her palms and just stared at him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” He asked, expression puzzled and bemused in the mid-morning sun.
“No reason,” she said. “I just like looking at you.”