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It’s over. Really over. It’s really over, and it feels like Taako is truly breathing for the first time in a decade.
His knees ache, his back aches, his head hurts more than he can ever remember it hurting in his 214 years of life, but the air tastes fresh in his lungs despite the ash. He’s looking at his sister’s face again (skeletal though it may be). He’s looking at everyone . He still has everyone. He may be Mr. ‘what if there was a third option’, but he never really considered that this was an option.
Taako is not religious. The gods have never held an importance to him that he couldn’t find within himself.
It feels like he can’t do anything but stand, and breathe, and stare.
Then he’s keeling over.
“-ko? Taako!” He hears a whump , and vaguely recognizes that Magnus has bodied him to soften the landing as he topples, at the desperate call of Lup. Of course. The world fuzzes away.
It feels like there’s something watching him sleep. It feels like there’s a hand in his hair, fingers tangled in the strands the same as they get tangled in strings to be woven.
When he’s next aware of anything, it’s to sleep-softened breathing, and dimmed purple light filtering through his eyelids. He shifts, opening his eyes - he’s on his couch, back in the HQ ( his couch, not Mag’s or Merle’s, because he goddamn chose and paid for it). The light source is his favourite lamp that Magnus keeps taking from his room to put in the common area, no matter how much he chews him out for it. His brain still prickles within his skull like a discontented hive of bees, and he’s not entirely convinced he still has all his toes, but the coiled pressure around his lungs is easing, fast enough for him to feel it. His ribs have forfeited their role as constrictor. He can breathe. An echo of touch lingers on his scalp.
He’s propped up against who he’s assuming is Kravitz, whose head is deadweight against his own. There’s a firm arm wrapped around his stomach, heavy from sleep rather than force. Angus has tucked himself between Taako’s legs and the back of the couch, and his hat is held to his chest. Taako doesn’t think he’s ever seen the kid’s face so free from burden.
Seemingly everyone else is somewhere to be found around the room. Magnus has draped Taako’s legs over his lap and is pillowing his head on his arms in a way that can’t be good for his back. Craning his head, Taako spots Merle spread eagle on the floor, his kids curled on either arm, snoring like everyone else in the room has earplugs. Lucretia’s tucked small into their armchair, arms wrapped around her knees, and he can’t tell whether her ragged breathing is just how she sleeps, or if she’s still awake. His eyebrows crease with worry, like he isn’t still flooded with anger just at the sight of her. Like he wouldn't be sick at the sight of her if he wasn't so exhausted. Davenport is passed out leaning against the side of the chair, on the floor. Carey is wrapped up in Killian’s lap on their loveseat. He thinks he sees Avi's hair pooling on the floor on the other side of it, but in the din of the room he can't be sure.
Barry and Lup are somehow tangled up on the floor below Taako’s couch, despite their clashing levels of corporeality, and he can’t say he’s surprised.
He breathes a sigh, shakier than he’d like - out of contentment, relief, frustration or what, he doesn’t know.
He’s not religious, he doesn’t thank the gods. He thanks himself. He thanks his hands, and he thanks his shitty and imperfect heart. He’s been doing something right, to be here. All of the pain-
He must make a sound, because Lup shifts slightly to look at him.
“How’re you doing, Koko? You gave us quite a scare there.”
Taako shrugs, careful not to disturb Kravitz, and makes a low sound at the back of his throat. When Lup keeps looking at him expectantly, he replies, “You’re not getting a better answer than I dunno, except from completely fucking exhausted.” He doesn’t have to consciously lower his voice for the sleeping people in the room, because he doesn’t think he could raise it above a whisper if he tried. “Nice save there, by the way,”
“I try.” He feels her weary smile, even though she can’t physically emote. He pictures it in his mind’s eye, and shudders, minutely. Blinks back the burn. “I gotta make up for all those times I couldn't cover your ass. Merle said you were fine, anyway, so we all decided to call it a day,”
“You trusted Merle with my physical well being? I could have been dying,” He doesn’t have the energy to put incredulity into his voice, doesn't even have the energy to keep his head angled down towards his sister, so lets it slide back into place on Kravitz’s shoulder. The idea that she thinks she owes him for the time she’s been away makes bile rise to the back of his throat. Maybe because of the ugly part of him agrees with her.
Lup snorts, weakly, with laughter. Barry snorts in his sleep. Taako would have taken that as a compliment to his incredible dialogue, if he didn’t know Barry slept like a fucking corpse for half a day cycle, completely un-disturbable.
“Sleep, Taako. I’ll be here in the morning, you know,”
He closes his eyes, and finds it rather easy to fall back into darkness. He doesn’t know whether the “Will you?” he’s thinking is voiced or not.
He doesn’t dream.
When Taako wakes again, it’s less of a maze of limbs than the last time. He is missing his footrest and his boy detective. He tilts his head, finding an awake Kravitz, who looks vaguely embarrassed that he has been discovered unwilling to move his sleeping partner. The hand on his stomach squeezes lightly. Taako breathes.
“Morning, handsome,” He says, snaking his pressure-numb arm around Kravitz’s waist, him arching his back slightly to accommodate. A blanket that had been draped over him slips down his chest, and he repositions it before Taako can think to ask him to.
“Good morning, Taako,” Kravitz smiles down at him, then returns his gaze to where it had been before, the other side of the couch, where Lup’s gaunt bones stare him down. Taako doesn't jump .
“I still can’t believe you two are dating,” She says in a way of explanation. Taako scoffs, then scrunches his nose at her until she stands up from where she had been hovering, as if leaning, over the arm.
Lucretia is still curled up on the arm chair, this time a steaming cup of coffee cradled between her hands. She also has a blanket draped over her shoulders now, and a small smile on her face. Taako doesn’t make eye contact.
“Kids successfully moved,” Magnus says, retreating from his room. “I didn’t even wake Ango up, so Merle’s coughing those ten gold pieces -oh, welcome back to the land of the living, Taako.” he doesn’t raise his voice back to it’s normal level, drawing Taako’s attention to the fact that Dav is still dead to the world, now entirely horizontal on the floor next to Lucretia’s chair, having also been attacked by some mystery blanket benefactor. There’s a pillow pushed under his head.
Barry huffs a laugh from one of the stools beside the kitchen island, also with a cup of coffee in his hands, soft denim blue fabric draped over his shoulders like a cloak. Did he bring that from his weird fucking cave? They didn’t own that . “Nice one, Mags,” Carey is once again in Killian’s lap, a couple stools down from him. Both look still half asleep, with soft smiles on their faces. Carey lowers her forehead into the crook in Killian’s neck, making sure not to poke her with her horns. She’s holding on very tightly.
“Where is Merle?” Taako asks, not properly awake yet. He pushes up from Kravitz’s side, who immediately readjusts his position, now free of his burden. Doesn’t move his arm, though.
“Right here,” Merle speaks from behind the couch, holding two cups of coffee. Taako untangles his hands from the blanket to make a grabbing motion at him, and Merle pretends to pass one to him, before swerving and handing it to Magnus. Taako makes an affronted sound, and Magnus passes the cup to him with a quiet laugh. It’s terrible coffee. Is everyone drinking this?
“So, we saved the world,” Barry yawns.
“Apparently,” Lup responds, moving to the stool next to him.
The gods hold no real significance to Taako, never have before, and especially don’t after all he’s seen. This moment is not divine, because divinity has never been a virtue to him. Merle would call it that anyway, and he would scoff.
If Taako was religious, this moment would be gospel. It is something, nonetheless.
--
They all crash at the HQ for a few weeks (or in some of their cases, months) while they figure out what the hell they’re going to do now. It’s a dazed in-between time that turns to syrup in Taako’s memory. He can’t really wrap his head around the fact that the battle they had been fighting, mostly consistently, for almost 110 years is over. The future, as a concept, as a taste, sits sickly on the back of his tongue. He thinks of the spices of Tesserelia, lost to the past.
Taako is in the room while Kravitz talks to Barry and Lup about their options as liches. He feels like he’s going to throw up, because no way is he losing Lup again (and Barry too, obviously), and he’s afraid - but not of possible conflict, he’s used to that. Of what’s up in the air, not tied down to the ground, and to him, and to the taste of the future on his tongue. He is so incredibly ready to throw down with his boyfriend over this. Like, it’s not even a question. He’s going to pick the nails right off of his fingers.
When Kravitz gets a missive, big and dramatic and arriving in a flurry of raven feathers falling all over Taako’s floor, saying the three of them are invited for an audience with the Raven Queen, Taako’s sure his face must be green.
When they return through a tear in the fabric of space, in the same state of not-in-an-eternal-prison as they were before, Lup tells him the Raven Queen’s offer - join her ranks as reapers, or forfeit existence to the eternal stockade.
This is good news.
Taako’s already trembling body gives up a little bit more, and he slumps heavily against the wall he had been failing to lean nonchalantly against whilst waiting for them. When he gets a concerned look from Lup, he shrugs it off.
“I’ve got a bad leg now, Lulu. Chaboy’s been humbled, and honestly, it’s going to take a lot of work from you two to get me to forgive liches as like, a concept after that team rocket shitshow.” he says, sticking his nose up in the air.
Godhood has never been something for Taako to chase. The gods are beings, he is a being. He manifests lightning out of an umbrella, out of his fingers. He is worshipped, in some circles, now.
Lup doesn’t look at all convinced, but it hadn’t been Taako’s finest performance. It might have also been concern about the fact that he very much does now have a bad leg. Now that he thought about it, yeah, it hurts like a bitch, so he limps gracefully to the couch, where Lup sits next to him, flourishing the bare bones of her fingers as she starts describing the Raven Queen’s palace.
He also has to pretend it isn’t excruciating , the way Lup stares at his face, mapping out all the differences and inconsistencies, Taako having been too tired to re-apply his glamour. It feels like having the safety net underneath him set on fire. He’s going to fall, and it’s going to hurt, and his faceless audience will clap. Because they will have been waiting.
(Lup doesn’t give a shit. What she does care about is seeing her brother’s face after over a decade apart.)
–
He’s seen Ren quite a lot over the past few weeks, thanks to the various reasons that so many people have just been around , and is very carefully aloof when he mentions to her his ideas of opening a magic school. She’s delighted, more like fucking ecstatic, and Taako breathes slightly easier when she expresses her interest in helping out, coming to his door one day with a ‘job application’ and some incredibly intricate blueprints, and a bag of diamonds. Taako’s first thought is ‘ yeah, this’ll work.’
She tastes the future too, maybe. It doesn’t scare her. He wishes she could taste Tesserelian spices.
Merle’s getting a business set up with his kids, Xtreme teen adventures, which Taako can’t help but snort at. Magnus is getting a cabin built somewhere , along with his own school (for dogs), which, Taako can’t believe both of his best friends are stealing his idea. And it’s all being funded by Lucretia.
Lucretia is a topic of which Taako is decidedly undecided, but similarly unmoving. Even months after he regained his memories. He can’t- he can’t look at her without thinking of the fact that this woman is his sister in all but blood. Don’t get him wrong, Taako is about as good at holding grudges as he is at everything else, but he makes eye contact with her and his heart melts. He hates it. She took everything from him . Ten years is nothing to an Elf. It was longer than a lifespan to Taako. It makes him want to grind his teeth to powder.
He thanks his heart, anyway.
At one point, he stumbles, still so fucking unsure on his feet, (he needs the umbrastaff back already, damn) Lucretia is the one there to rush and catch him. In the split second he has, he makes a stupid decision - he angles himself to crash into her in a hug, like an idiot, and squeezes, like an idiot.
Lucretia is stunned out of breath for a second. Taako has acknowledged her a precious few times since the Day of Story and Song, and never made physical contact. It’s also not great, positioning wise. Sue him.
Taako tries to force himself not to shake, and his voice not to wobble, but it doesn’t work. “I am furious at you, Lucretia.” He wants to grip her arms with all his strength, to leave bruises there. He, childishly, emphatically, wants her to hurt. He keeps his hold as it is.
She breathes in.
“I am so angry, but I'm also so tired. And- and although I'm awesome and can do anything I- just don’t have it in me to do this anymore. I’m a long way away from forgiving you, because fuck you , honestly, but I’ve known you for a hundred damn years and that’s a lot longer than I expected when I met you, and I love you so damn much. God, Creesh.”
Silence crawls over their skins like swarming ants.
“It’s gonna take time, but you- I'll get there. We- we will.” He’s forced his face into the shoulder of her coat, in a futile effort to muffle his words from the world completely. He hates that this shit is so hard. He hates that everything is always so hard.
She presses her cheek into the side of his head, and Taako hears her tears in her breath. “Okay. Okay, Taako, I think I can live with that.”
They breathe out.
--
Afternoon sunlight filters through the skylight, and almost everyone is together. Ren is talking to Taako about how construction is going. He’s designed his own house to sit just outside the school grounds, and it’s being built alongside the school. Commuting is for bitches, and he’s always been ahead of the game.
To build something permanent like this- it’s not something he ever thought he wanted. Not before the Starblaster, when it was just him and his sister, following their whims and empty pockets and need for control over their own lives. Not during their time kicking hunger ass, for obvious reasons. Not when he was a shell of himself, masquerading as whole, swallowing ghosts down with his meals.
It’s something he really, really wants.
His focus pulls to the other sofa, where Magnus talks to Angus. He’s apparently finally given up asking Lucretia whether he can bring his new puppy, Johann , up onto the base (Taako knows Magnus is very close to sneaking the dog up here, and so does Lucretia). “You know, I’ve got a couple spare rooms in my big ol’ house they’re building, and I wanted to let you know one of them’s always gonna be yours,”
Magnus has clapped a hand on his shoulder, and Angus looks up at him through his dirty glasses (Taako needs to spend some time prodding him about how to polish glass with magic properly, because Angus is apparently struggling with it) and wobbles out a “Thank you, Sir,” with his eyes welling up. What a fuckin’ baby.
“I know you’re gonna be spending a lot of time at Lucas’ fancy school, and you’ve already got a more permanent home, but it’ll be there whenever you want it,”
Angus’ tears finally overflow, and he whumps into Magnus, giving him the biggest hug his little body can manage, and repeats, “Thanks,” It turns out Magnus, and his giant body, is much better at giving big hugs than he is.
After a pause, Merle walks up to them, looking slightly hesitant. Ren has stopped talking to Taako, pretending to try and find a specific piece of paper, knowing she’s not going to hold his attention again yet. Merle clears his throat, and says something Taako didn’t really see coming.
“There's, ah, always space at mine, too. I know Mavis and- and Mookie would love to see more of ya, and if you ever wanted to come on an Xtreme Teen Adventure , especially now that you’re actually a teen,” Merle clears his voice again, clearly struggling to fill his sentences with words that aren’t mean to the kid, “We’d be happy to have you,”
Angus stands up to hug Merle and give his thanks again, and Taako finds it hard not to laugh at the way Angus now completely towers over him.
Ren ‘finds’ the right sheet of paper, blueprints for the second floor of his house, and tells him that construction of the main body is almost completely done, then showing him some pictures of the rooms.
“Babe?” Taako calls Kravitz over first, finding his opinion - which is, as always, a happy affirmative and a peck to the cheek, despite Taako’s pretend umm s and ahh s over whether they really followed their directions to a T. He then calls over Angus, waving one particular picture in his direction. “There’s your bedroom, Whiz kid, everything you ever imagined and more, so far?”
Angus smiles wide and nods.
He’d have to update Lup and Barry later, since they were off checking up on the progress of Lup’s new body. They had entertained the idea of them living separately for a very small amount of time, before deciding they hadn’t conquered the Hunger just to go and live hours away from each other. Fuck that noise.
It all feels like too much. It all feels like exactly enough.
--
The day Lup’s body wobbles out of the tank is one Taako will probably remember forever. It’s been seven months since the day of Story and Song, and Taako and Lup had spent a substantial amount of that time looking after, and eagerly waiting for, her growing body (which, conceptually, Taako doesn’t really like). That day, he focuses. He pays attention to the thinning of the grass under the summer heat, the almost fizzing quality of the heat-burdened air outside, the imperfect grain of the wooden railing he leans his weight on while descending the stairs into Barry’s creepy basement, the cool of the stone seeping through the soles of his shoes. The silence, before the rush.
The way the world sits, magnified. Ready.
Taako is ready with a towel (for the goop - ew) and a fresh set of clothes, and embraces his sister for the first time in what feels like eons, Barry also wrapping his shaky arms around her. She’s here.
Back soon. Back now.
Just before Taako promises to never let her out of his sight again, she looks at Barry and says “I’m gonna smooch your fucking brains out, babe,” and yeah, Taako’s comfortable leaving them to it.
–
Taako’s house is completed, and it’s kind of everything he’s ever wanted, with his favourite people sweetening the deal. Don’t tell them he said that, or his cred’s on the line.
The rest of the birds all have keys, and Taako sincerely, desperately hopes they drop by often. Don’t tell them that, either.
There are claimed rooms for the people they care about, with a conservative amount of guestrooms piled on (listen, what’s the point in saving the world if you can’t get a fuckhuge house out of it?), but Taako knows there’s going to be some switching around with which room is who’s (Magnus and Merle had a very in depth argument about who should get one particular room, for no reason in specificificity that Taako could parse). Taako is just self-satisfied with just how they managed to wrap a stupidly extravagantly designed house in a cosy and modest exterior. It’s comfortable.
And that’s not even mentioning the kitchen.
The garden and subsequent vegetable herb patch was one of Kravitz’s few requests for the house, and although somewhat surprised at his boyfriend’s apparent green thumb, he couldn’t be happier watching him pull weeds all fucking sunday morning. He loves him, after all. And the only thing that improves Taako’s shit-hot baba ganoush recipe is home-grown aubergine.
His life and destiny have always been, will always be, held in his own hands. He isn’t naive enough to believe there are hands to catch him other than his own, and his sisters’, and his brothers’. Like the dust motes drifting in the sunbeams here, like the inexplicable creak of new floorboards, like the vicious and welcome snarl of the hearth. He sits among gods in his home, venerated.