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Something is terribly wrong inside Taako’s mind. He wakes up breathless most nights, clutching at his chest and panting, looking around desperately for something, someone to hold onto. The worst part of it is he knows there’s no one there. Why would there be? There never has been, except—
The old migraine kicks in, the one that always seems to find its way to him when he’s alone and frightened and wishing he had a hand to hold. Stupid. Taako doesn’t hold hands, doesn’t tell others about his dreams and fears, doesn’t rest his head on a chest and sob into it, except—
It was never like that with Sazed, you see, and who else would it have been like that with? Of course Magnus loves to offer a shoulder to cry on in the daytime, on adventures, on the rare overnight occasions they’ve been adventuring and both awake after Merle’s gone to sleep. Merle never seems to have trouble with his dreams, but Magnus and Taako both do. The difference is Magnus can remember them. “My wife,” he says simply one night when Taako asks what’s got his panties in a bunch. “I miss her.” Taako is endlessly caught off-guard by things like that (he’d swear he remembers a Magnus with no ring on his finger) but refuses to show it, so he reaches out to awkwardly pat the big guy on the shoulder and say nothing at all.
“What woke you up?” he asks. “Bad dreams too?”
And Taako has no choice but to scoff and shrug as the images of his dream recede into nothingness. Something about his aunt's old farmhouse, something about fire. “It’s fuckin’ cold out here,” he says. “I’m used to better accommodations. You think— you think I’m used to roughin’ it like this?”
“What, was your wagon heated?”
“Chyeah, duh,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “I’m a wizard. I don’t need to fuck with the cold.”
And that’s when Merle snores loudly, says clearly boy, I wish I could sleep when it’s loud without opening his eyes or acknowledging the two of them. Magnus gives a slight, sleepy giggle, just a little bit too hollow to mean it, and Taako throws a pebble at Merle’s head.
“Well. Sleep well, I guess,” Magnus says before turning over in his bedroll.
“I always do,” Taako replies transparently. Except—
He closes his eyes. It takes some time for him to fall back asleep, long enough that Merle’s snores become natural again and Magnus’s fade in, and Taako is alone in the clearing where they’ve set up camp. He doesn’t notice himself falling asleep. When he wakes he’s standing, back on the moon base, mid-conversation with Angus.
“Sir?” the kid says. “Are you… even listening to me, sir?”
“Yeah,” Taako says too quickly, stepping on the end of his sentence. “Duh. Pff. C’mon, Agnes, I listen to you.”
Angus looks doubtful, but more than that he looks concerned. “Are you feeling okay, Taako? Do you want me to walk you to the infirmary? You look a little bit pale.”
“I’m fine, kid,” he replies. “Worry about your own— your own self. I mean, look at you, you skinny little fuckin’ thing, have you even eaten today?”
“You made me breakfast.”
“I— yeah! Duh!”
“Twenty minutes ago, sir.”
“I know that.”
Taako looks away from Angus and adjusts his hat with a haughty sniff, crossing his arms over his chest and feeling a sudden burst of panic when he realizes neither hand is touching the Umbra Staff.
Why?
No reason.
Except—
The Chalice showed all of them static. They don’t talk about it, but Taako knows. From the looks on their faces, the confusion and fear, he knows. Except he doesn’t, can’t know what they saw, not without them telling him. He can’t stop thinking about it, though. All that static, the confusion — was it there for them, too? Did they see holes and rips and tears in their lives? Empty spaces that looked like them? Same size, same shape? Forgetting themselves, their identities, their lives, their homes. His aunt couldn’t afford much. Why were there bunk beds in his room? It’s not like he had friends as a child, not like he did anything but cook with his aunt and a black hole in time. Except—
Except—
Taako walks around the Faerun-facing window in their dormitory, spiraling mentally and physically, shaken from the glitches in his mind. He can’t ask the boys what they saw, can’t talk about it to anyone. Who would he even tell? Angus? Kravitz? The latter may have seen him shaken post-Refuge, but this is too much, too personal; he doesn’t need to know about the holes in Taako’s brain that refuse, no matter how many times Merle heals him at the last minute possible, to knit closed again. These glitches in his memory leave him shaken and alone. He could peer into Magnus’s head, he thinks, see what Magnus saw, ask him about the Chalice to guide him towards answers. It would be worth the spell slot not to feel so maddened, so amnesiac and achey. He could check Merle’s brain, too; he’s not sure Merle would even notice if he probed a little harder, given how carefree the dwarf prefers to keep himself (a habit they’ve both indulged in.)
He’s picking up his staff, hands clutching the worn wood of the handle, planning to just take a peek at whichever of them he sees next, when as he leaves their dormitory something about the wood grain seems to seep into his body, to talk him off that particular ledge. He walks past Magnus in the hall and lowers his head in shame that he’d thought of it at all. Something deep, deep inside his heart says it’s okay, Taako. You were scared. You didn’t do it. You backed down. It’s okay. Except—
Except he doesn’t hear the soothing sounds of a long-forgotten voice. Except he pulls the brim of his hat down so far he can’t see. Except he drops a pan full of hot oil on the ground and splatters his designer boots with it, swearing and hissing in pain, and when ever-jovial Avi pokes his head in to see what all the fuss is Taako instinctively points the Umbra Staff in his direction.
Paranoia wears one down, it would seem, and what is more paranoia-inducing than the knowledge that you don’t remember who you are?
He lowers his staff with a shaking hand as Avi backs away apologetically. Except Taako can’t see him right now. He sees a thick-set man with mouse-brown hair, gray at the temples, glasses cracked on his face. Taako doesn’t recognize him, but he recognizes death; and looking down at his hands it’s hard to tell if it’s his staff or a wand he had so long ago he can’t remember where he found it. He recognizes the smile on the man’s face.
By the time Taako comes back to his senses he’s alone in the kitchen, the oil splattered across the tile no longer smoking. How long has he been here? Seconds? Minutes? Except that it’s dark outside. Even on the moon, there is a sunrise and sunset; even on the moon, there is a sense of time.
Not for Taako, though. For Taako, all is except. It’s haze and confusion, static lodged in corners of his brain.
His grip on the staff loosens and she falls to the floor, helpless watching her twin as he stoops to pick up the pan, tossing it in the sink for someone else to clean. “I’m right here, Taako,” she whispers.
Except, as always, he doesn’t hear it.