Chapter Text
Taako wakes up that day to the earliest rays of the single sun poking into his room. Fuck, it’s early. Well, he can get started on breakfast at least. Maybe make both French toast and pancakes, get a good breakfast going for Lup before she gets up. She’d seemed better after sharing the weight of Cordelia and the laughter of Taako’s lip syncing, but...
Listen, sometimes you just gotta do something nice for your sister.
Taako stretches, getting out of bed, and goes to the kitchen. It’s there that he finds a note.
It’s like he’s holding his breath. No, it’s like he exhaled normally, with every expectation of breathing in again moments later. Except he didn’t. It’s been three days. Three days, and Taako feels like he hasn’t taken a full breath once.
It’s Lup, he tells himself, pragmatic as always. She’s gotta be fine. She’s one of the most powerful wizards in this plane and a lich to boot. Besides, it’s Lup. She promised to be back soon, and Lup keeps her promises. Especially to Taako. Always to Taako. Unless…
He squashes that thought down immediately and aggressively, throwing as much force into silencing that small insidious voice as he would into Disintegrate. Even if… even if, you know, the worst thing happened and Lup died, she would still come back. She’s a lich, and their hearts are as bound to each other as they have been since birth. Not death nor the Raven Queen nor the Hunger could stop Lup, let alone just one of the damned Grand Relics.
She’s just gotten held up with the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet is all. Lup cares, deeply, about this most final of worlds, and they’ve still barely even been in it for real. So of course she’s going to want to do the job right and hide the thing properly. She’s probably just looking for a hole deep enough to drop it in. That’s why there’s no indication that his Messages (or Barry’s, or any of them) are getting through. She’s just… she could be chucking the damn thing onto another plane, that’s all. Hell, Taako doesn’t care where it ends up; he just cares about getting his sister back.
But he’s going to get his sister back. Taako is definitely going to get his sister back. Lup is definitely going to come back.
They’re just going to have to have a long, long discussion on the definition of the word “soon” when she does.
Time ticks inexorably on. The hours add up, unforgiving and unrelenting, turning three days into a week. Taako hasn’t slept. None of them have, beyond fits and starts. Officially, someone is always on watch for any kind of sign or distress call from Lup. Unofficially, they’re all alert, watching, waiting on a razor’s edge.
Meanwhile, the world below continues to tear itself apart in every way but by fire.
Taako is in the kitchen, for once finding no solace in it. He’s sprawled listlessly across his own chair, eyes fixed on Lup’s. Endlessly tracing the letters of her name, artfully burned into the sturdy oak wood, unequivocally marking her place in the whole of the family. His ears, however, are perked, unerringly, unflaggingly, toward the door. He’s listening, constantly, for any unexpected noise, any sound that might herald Lup’s return.
After an argument loud enough to shake the ship, to shake the world below, Davenport had banished Taako to the kitchen, to do something, anything besides pace and stare down at the world below as if he can make Lup appear by sheer force of will alone. Davenport had likely sent him here (and Barry to the lab) hoping that perhaps the incalculable weight currently sitting on Taako’s chest, still keeping him from breathing in even as everything inside Taako screams for relief, would be assuaged by the comfortable, familiar environment. But everything in here only speaks more of Lup, and Taako can’t focus. He hasn’t been able to focus properly on anything for days. He can’t think to cast spells, can’t cook without reaching out to hand something to a sister no longer there.
They’re past the point of “back soon.” But it’s still Lup. It’s always Lup. She always comes back.
Taako is just hoping for “back” at this point.
Eighteen days. Lup has been gone for eighteen days. Eighteen days is too long.
They’ve started searching, actively. Davenport couldn’t stop them, didn’t even want to. They’ve all gone down planetside, splitting up, asking about every town they can find near Cordelia, the last town they can confirm as destroyed by the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet. Each time, Taako asks if they’ve seen the woman with his face. But no one does a double take, no one remarks on the uncanny similarity, the freckled skin (though Taako’s is near sallow with exhaustion), the mouth (though Taako’s is drawn tight most of the time now), the eyes (though Taako’s are tired, searching, full of fear).
They can’t find a goddamn thing.
Taako is talking with Barry in hushed voices in an unfamiliar town when an unfamiliar voice interrupts them. “Oh, there you- oh. I’m sorry, pardon me, I thought you were-”
“Lup?” Taako nearly shouts his sister’s name, filling this small town square with sound as he looks up to see a sturdy Halfling woman, her eyes nearly level with his as he’s hunched over and sitting.
“Oh. Well, yes? It was the hair, you see, at a distance with the braids and all, but plain to see you’re different people. But you know her?”
The laugh bubbles up in Taako without warning, and he chokes out around it, “Yes, yes, she’s my- of course I know her, we have the same face, she’s my sister, have you seen her, have you seen Lup?”
A hand, warm and heavy, a grounding line, is placed on his shoulder. But it tightens, almost painful, and Taako looks up to see Barry, just as frenzied, just as desperate, just as in need of a tether to the world around them as Taako is when both Taako and Barry’s hearts have vanished along with Lup.
“Oh. I- I’m sorry.” The woman looks concerned, looking back and forth between the two of them. “Yes, she, she was here, must have been… must have been a little over two weeks back? Oh, seventeen days, because that was only two days before the… before I got news about Greenhold.” A grief of her own sweeps over the woman, and Taako tries to care, really tries to force himself to care, because Lup would care, Lup would care so much. But he can’t; everything else is dust until he knows Lup is safe. “Is she… is she all right?”
“We’re trying to find her.” Barry says simply. “Do you know where she is or where she went? Please.”
“She… she asked about the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet.” A shiver visibly goes up the woman’s spine. “I told her… I told her some Grand Relics warlord-” she nearly spits the word “-got it from, from that glass circle that used to be Cordelia before it had even stopped smoking. I told her not to go near it; I saw the damage myself, and-” the Halfling woman stops, choking up. “As far as I know… nearer to Neverwinter. Can’t have been that close. We’d hear if the capital city burned. Gods… she looked so desperate, and I couldn’t believe a woman looking like she did would want to harm… anyone. Why would she…”
“She doesn’t.” Taako’s answer is harsh, immediate. “Lup doesn’t want to fuckin’ hurt anyone. She wants to save everyone. She cares, she-” He stops, before the rest of the words, the ones about righting the wrongs they’ve unleashed on the world, can follow.
“Then I pray she does not succumb to that which she would prevent.” The woman says softly. “There was such sorrow in her eyes. I see it in yours as well. I hope you find her.”
Taako and Barry race back to the ship. No one else has found anything. It doesn’t matter. They’ve found their first clue.
Six weeks. And no closer than they had been a month ago. Taako and Barry have tracked every glassing, all seven cities and countless smaller circles. Lup would have known how many died in each, in total; no, she definitely did, the numbers and names in mind as she’d left the Starblaster that final (but not final, no, never final) time. Taako only knows how much the black circles look like scorch marks against their map. Barry has marked the surrounding locations they’ve searched in red.
Taako hates the red, the hue of the IPRE, the reminder that the family that has been forged and re-forged across a century of as many apocalypses, has been broken not by the end of everything but by their own actions in trying to find a new beginning.
This world can burn, this world is dust, the Hunger can have it and everyone in it, if only he can have Lup back.
Two months. The destruction of five of the Relics -the Philosopher’s Stone, the Gaia Sash, the Oculus, the Bulwark Staff, the Animus Bell- continues, leaving no corner of the map of the world unmarked. The Phoenix Fire Gauntlet, however, is no more easily found than the Temporal Chalice, and Lup with it. Taako almost wishes he could find the Chalice in his quest for Lup; turning back time would be one way to find Lup again.
Perhaps a search for the Temporal Chalice would yield better results, Taako thinks to himself with a dark laugh that has Magnus and Merle looking to him in worry and fear. Barry doesn’t look up.
Or perhaps, perhaps he ought to track down the Animus Bell, that almost as elusive creation of Barold’s. Ring that shit until the Raven Queen comes running, then stare down a death goddess until he can get an answer as to what fuckin’ plane his sister’s even in.
Because she’s somewhere. Lup is somewhere. She’s not gone. She can’t be gone.
Taako is going to find her.
Thirteen weeks. It seems both longer and shorter than this, a thousand stolen centuries and the blink of an eye.
Thirteen weeks, dragging on into eternity with each false start, each fruitless search, each and every dead end on their way to finding Lup, alive or dead, but finding her.
Thirteen weeks, passing by in an instant, the space between heartbeats, with time mercilessly ticking onward, fate weaving its way forward, impossibly, agonizingly, without Lup.
Taako’s been without Lup before, even been without Lup for longer than this. But always, always with the certainty that he would see her again, could count down the days to when his sister would be alive and well and back in his arms, in all of their arms.
Now? Now time stretches out before them, daunting in a way it’s never been, threatening unending eternity in an all too brief moment.
Four months. Four months since Lup vanished. Four months, and they’ve felt every moment of it, the fracture lines of Lup’s loss cracking through the IPRE in fractals to the point where they’re barely being held together.
Four months, one hundred and twenty-two days. And Taako has felt his sister’s loss every moment of it.
Barry has too, and Taako feels another surge of affection for his brother. They’ve all felt this (how could they not?), but Lup’s disappearance has excised Taako’s heart from his chest with brutal and near surgical precision, and there are times when it seems Barry is the only one who can fully understand, his own love leaving no heart behind, naught but a weight in his chest.
The two of them are searching, planning, running through every trace and hint and clue they’ve accumulated in their search. The others are scattered, almost a perfect reflection of the IPRE across a broken mirror. Magnus is carving, which, natch. If he hasn’t been helping, struggling to keep the family together, protecting them from themselves, forcing Barry to eat and Taako to sleep and dragging Lucretia from her room, he’s been carving, satisfying the constant need to keep his hands busy if only to be doing something. Taako’s pretty sure that Merle managed to drag Cap’n’port away from the helm (if only a few feet) for a game of yooker, just to stave off the, the death and destruction – for the Relic Wars are yet ongoing, unabated by the loss of one, even made more furious with only six ready and waiting . And Lucretia? She’s been in her room, as she has been for nearly weeks on end. Taako’s scarcely seen her in that time, feels almost like he’s lost a second sister as he strives to find Lup.
Taako looks away from the distant world far below the deck of the Starblaster. It’s so far away that it seems impossible that the horrors they released could have reached up even here. But they themselves reached back, Lup reached back, trying to halt the destruction. Taako snaps his gaze away from the ground and back to the deck of the Starblaster. He’s not going to find her just standing there, but Taako will find Lup.
Barry is standing over the table, hands flat against it and the map drenched with red that marks every location searched. His brother is exhausted; even standing, his head nods with sleep.
“How…” Taako clears his throat. “How’s it goin’?” The question falls flat. It’s been going, or not going, the same as it has been for four months now. Four months. One hundred and twenty two days. Two thousand nine hundred and twenty-eight hours. One hundred seventy-five thousand six hundred and eighty minutes. Ten million five hundred forty thousand and eight hundred seconds. Had she saved more lives than seconds passed? Had any of them saved more lives than seconds passed, keeping the Hunger at bay? Taako wonders. It’s as stupid, as useless a question as the one he had asked of Barry.
At least the one he asked Barry has the intended effect. Barry startles into wakefulness. “Oh, sorry, I- sorry, so, um, anyway, there’s a- there’s a, uh, dungeon of sorts out beyond the Felicity Wilds? It’s a-” Barry flips through some of his notes, his thoughts apparently swimming about his head as much as Taako’s own are. “It’s a… subterranean… demonic keep… thing. There’s a bunch of arcane energy coming off of it. Not sure about any kind of Light signatures, but those shouldn’t even be all that detectable… anyway. I was gonna check it out tonight, if you wanna come with.”
It’s better than standing here, waiting, when he knows- he knows-
“Yeah, where were- where were- remind me, how far is that in relation to the last glassing?” Taako rubs at his eyes, and Barry reaches up to rub at his own. When was the last time either of them had slept? Taako’s not sure.
“Um. I’ve triangulated it here.” Barry points out the black circles on the map. It’s close. It’s possible. They could find her this time.
“Yeah, it seems like as good a place as any.” Would she have chosen a demonic keep? She certainly could have gotten in, and she certainly could have had difficulty getting out. “Do you want to do the usual? I’ll go down and start casting around, see if I can pick up anything, and then- you start talking to folks?”
“Yep. That’s uh. I mean. It hasn’t worked so far. Not, not fully. But… it’s gotta work one of these times.” Barry hesitates. “Taako, what if… what if she’s just gone?”
Taako opens his mouth, about to brusquely reassure Barry that of course she’s not gone, just as they have said and done for four months now, whenever doubt has crept into the darkest spaces of their minds. But then he stops, half closing his mouth. He opens it again. Of course she’s not gone. The words are on his tongue. Of course, of course- she keeps her promises. Of course she’s not gone. Why can’t he say the words?
She’s- she’s not gone-
She’s not gone because death is-
She’s not gone because she’s a-
She’s not gone because she always keeps-
She’s not gone because she’s Taako’s-
She’s- she’s- she’s-
“Who?”