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Here’s a thing that doesn’t happen very often: Barry recognizes someone’s face.
It’s just for a moment, in a tavern that smells of bad beer and worse food — stuff that would be no good even for stronger stomachs than Barry’s, with its only saving grace found in the price. Barry’s on his way to the bar with his gaze lowered when he misjudges a stranger’s course, and the stranger on their way out misjudges Barry’s. Their shoulders bump, knocking a wide-brimmed wizard hat askew —
And Barry sees a sun elven face. Faint freckles, curly hair with a choppy cut, and bags under the stranger’s eyes that might be even bigger than those under Barry’s own.
Before Barry can stammer out an apology, the elf mutters something curt under his breath — pulling the hat back over his eyes, and a scarf over his mouth for good measure — but Barry recognizes something there. He’s seen this elf before — with a rounder face, with longer hair dyed bright colors, and certainly, with a less cagey look in those eyes — but he’s seen him nonetheless.
Most recently, though: he’s seen that face on a wanted poster.
It was some town out east, wasn’t it? Where Barry saw the poster a few weeks ago, yeah, but it was another town, even further out, where the stranger — the chef — had done the thing. Was it thirty, forty people? More than forty? Barry hadn’t read that poster far at all, because his skin had started crawling.
The chef — Taako. From Sizzle it Up with Taako — has basically gotten out the tavern door. Barry still hasn’t moved an inch. The reason he remembers that skin-crawling sensation so well is because now, it’s happening all over again, and the hair on his neck is standing on end.
And Barry’s not a snitch. He’s done his fair share of technically not-quite-legal shit, himself — sparingly at first, back in college, but then again, a lot more recently, and at the behest of a voice he might just be fucking imagining. Hell, he’s not sure if he’s called the police or militia once in his life — let alone here, in this hole-in-the-wall town, where he doesn’t even know where he’d look if he wanted to —
But gods, Taako — and his assistant, right, some now-absent assistant — they’d apparently murdered dozens. Knowing the size of these towns, that — that would feel like even more, out in a place like this. Gods. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know which picture of Taako to believe.
Because, see, Barry’s got this cookbook.
When he woke up in that place he doesn’t want to think about, there were his clothes, and there was a coin, and there was a cookbook. Same face on it — happy, bright colors and bright smile, nothing suspicious or murderous in his eyes. Might’ve been an act, or heavily editorialized. Barry’s not sure anymore.
But then again, those recipes that he found inside, covered in bookmarks and annotations…
He holds those close to his chest, and thinks he has no choice but to keep holding them close forever, because he doesn’t know why they make him feel the ways they do. Warm. At peace. At home. It’s impossible to explain, because he can’t imagine that he and Taako grew up anywhere near each other —
(But was the person that he’s looking for a chef, too? Does his heart hurt like this because recipes remind him of her?)
About half the dishes in that book are beyond his skill level, no matter how flippantly Taako has written about them. The savory meals and the grand desserts, especially — things for which he’d waste so many ingredients and so much time attempting, if he was foolhardy enough to try. But he still reads those pages, and can tell from their rumpled state that he’s read them countless times before — and he cannot help but long for them. He can’t help but imagine making them anyway.
Raspberry flan, mushroom carbonara, pozole rojo. Chocolate marble cake. Thirty garlic clove chicken.
They’re a flickering portal to another world — a portal he can’t traverse, but that he never wants to stop gazing through, either. A portal to a world where he has something to give to other people, and there are people with something to give to him —
Spending too much time in those pages is never a good idea. Same with the recipes he could theoretically stumble through, but never eat in practice — thanks to ingredients that he can’t find or afford, or that his body just can’t tolerate, or whatever reason.
But among the remaining recipes — and even moreso, buried in the appendix — there’s still good advice for ingredient substitutions, for scarcities and allergies alike. There’s good advice for getting things to cook evenly, when you’re out on your own and all you’ve got is a campfire —
It’s good, good advice; it’s helped him countable times that Barry remembers, and probably uncountable times that he doesn’t. But Barry has always noticed that it’s buried deep.
As if the writer was almost ashamed to be so well-versed in it. To have once needed it.
…To possibly ever need it again.
Taako’s long, long gone from the tavern now. At first, Barry had thought of the look in his eyes as cagey, but… now, he’s not so sure.
It might’ve just been hungry.
Fuck.
Barry doesn’t say a thing to anyone about what he saw. Not to anyone in the greasy-plated tavern, and certainly not to anyone in the militia — and he doesn’t see the chef again when he heads out the next day.
It’s strange, though. ‘Cause Barry doesn’t know what he’d say if he did, but even so, he feels like he really, really wanted to.
*
Here’s a thing that doesn’t happen very often: Taako’s not out adventuring on his own for this job.
Course, the big guy — what was his name again? Magnus. Course Magnus, and to a lesser extent Merle, and Taako himself — of course they took no less than half an hour off-road to get themselves involved in a hostage negotiation. Some gerblin’s holding a truly pathetic, beat-to-shit-looking human man over the edge of a cliff, and Magnus is trying to strike a deal, turning up the rustic charm for however much that’s worth.
What was that hostage’s name, again? Barry. Right, Barry Bluejeans. Hard to forget a name like that. The universe threw Taako’s shit memory a bone there; must be his lucky day.
And Taako wouldn’t love to see Barry Bluejeans die, of course, but lucky day or not, he also can’t say he’s willing to stick his neck out all that far to keep ol’ Barry off the chopping block, either. Taako doesn’t care about this chump, because not caring about chumps is the Taako default — but Taako’s still not the kind of person who likes to dwell on not caring, and whatever things that not caring says about him, so he’s also kinda looking for a distraction.
He thinks he’s just found that distraction by kicking through the junk around the gerblins’ firepit, knocking aside ash and charcoal absentmindedly, when his boot strikes something with a hard cover.
It’s a heavily dog-eared cookbook, with a very familiar face on it. Okay. That’s why the gerblins’ roast smelled so familiar — Taako had already had his suspicions. Damn recipe thieves, dastardly plagiarizing right from the book he published for anyone to read and use. They’re lucky he’s not still in the business.
…Lots of people are probably lucky he’s not still in the business.
Taako glances up, to make sure no one’s looking — and on both sides of the dispute, they aren’t, because bless their souls, they’re just that invested of the life of Barry Bluejeans. Taako crouches, surreptitiously slips the cookbook into his bag, and returns to his feet before anyone is the wiser.
Bandits like these gerblins wouldn’t be in a spot to go turning him in, but there’s no need for Magnus and Merle to see this, to get any idea of what rough roads Taako’s been down to wind up here with them. And frankly, if Taako has to be honest with himself, he really doesn’t want to look at that book any longer than he has to, either. Let the past stay in the past, where it fucking belongs, and all that shit.
He’ll hold onto it for now, but get rid of it once it’s safe to. Probably.
It’s not like he’d miss it, or anything.
*
Here’s a thing that doesn’t happen very often: Taako misses Sizzle it Up. He misses being Taako from Sizzle it Up with Taako.
He’s been with the Bureau of Balance close to a year now, and never has the vibe been rougher than after this mission. After coming back with the Temporal Chalice.
‘Cause see, Taako needs a fucking vacation after that shit, but the Director won’t stop reminding him — and reminding Merle, and Magnus — that training will ramp up again soon, boys, and you better not say she didn’t warn you. Every time Taako sees her, she’s all “the early Reclaimer catches the worm.” Like, that metaphor makes no damn sense, Madam D. They’re not birds, and they already beat the worm.
If Taako were back on Sizzle it Up, though? Back then, he could take a vacation whenever he wanted — money permitting, yeah, but money was less of an issue then than it had ever been before. If Taako had died eleven times in a day while running Sizzle it Up, he’d tell ticket holders to take a rain check for at least the next week…
Back on Sizzle it Up, he wouldn’t be saving the world, but he definitely wouldn’t be dying eleven times. Shit would be simpler, and he’d still have a steady income to show for it. He’d just have to self-advertise, and convince an audience to love him, and… you know, he’d… he’d just have to cook, again, and…
Right, right. He’d just have to cook again.
Fucking Chalice. Giving him a glimmer of hope that he could ever go back. That he could ever mentally be up for that again. Fucking Chalice.
He’s glad to know that he’s innocent, obviously. So damn glad that he feels numb instead of happy about it. But if he’d known earlier, then maybe, just maybe, he could’ve stood his ground, made his case, saved the show from —
No, no, no. Who’s he kidding? There’s no one else in the world who thinks, or would want to think, that he’s innocent; he’d seen enough wanted posters to know that for a fact. No one even fucking ripped them down on his behalf, or whatever. If his pretentious fucking show ever meant anything to anyone, and it probably didn’t ever mean much, that all went out the window a long time ago — as it fucking deserved, with Glamour Springs still being half Taako’s fault.
From those wanted posters, he knows the militia was already gunning to sentence Sazed too — but from being Taako, a jaded old elf who’s been in trouble before and will be again, he also knows that the militia would never take his word over Sazed’s. He knows he couldn’t have beat that backstabbing little snake in a game of Prisoner’s Dilemma. What was Taako thinking, “argue his case?” Running, and making himself look a thousand times guiltier, was always the only option.
…He still wishes he knew earlier, though. Then, at least, he would’ve kept… his cooking. His transmutation.
He wouldn’t have… deprived himself of that, for all those years. He wouldn’t be left wondering how the fuck to start any of it up again.
Taako rolls out of bed, his hair a mess in the mirror, and kneels, wiggling open the creaky bottom drawer of his dresser. Beneath the white blouse that got washed with Magnus’s reds, and then the singed tunic he hasn’t had the energy to fix since Phandalin, there’s an old cookbook lying there among the fantasy mothballs, sitting right where he half-heartedly left it.
Gods, he can’t even put himself in the headspace of trusting his recipes enough to write this damn thing. He can’t imagine having the energy to write and typeset and proofread this damn thing.
Yet he still sits down with it at his desk, flips open to a random page, and starts reading.
Right away, he gets the impression that the bandits snagged this copy off an unsuspecting traveler — and pretty recently, too, at least relative to when Taako found it. The recipe the gerblins used, the rosemary mutton roast, has no annotations, but so many of the other pages do, and all in the same handwriting. (Different ink colors, though — mostly red, but sometimes blue.)
And the funny thing is, with a lot of the writing, it’s not even structured like little reminders for oneself, like Taako would’ve expected. They’re almost like little notes to some other person, but with the emphasis on “almost,” because some of them are just… well, they’re just weird.
“Try this when you get the chance. Easier than it looks — you’ve done it before, I promise.”
“Try this one too. Just don’t panic when you separate the eggs. Worth the effort. You don’t realize how much you miss eating it.”
“Don’t you dare try this one without substituting out the yogurt. Like T mentioned in the footnote, soy-based works okay. Not always easy to find, let alone find cheap, I know — but you’ve been able to buy it in Neverwinter, remember?”
When Taako gets there, he turns that page a little faster than the rest.
“Once you can’t choke down trail rations any longer, check p. 121 for how to make this over campfire w/ extra wild onions, because T is a lifesaver. Spoiler: skip the alcohol flambé thing, so not worth it.”
Who wrote these notes, and who were they written for? Did the cookbook ever even make it to them? Not much Taako can do if it didn’t — not that he’d, like, turn his life upside down to reconnect it with its owner anyways; it’s just a cookbook. But someone spent a lot of time with it, and had someone in mind to receive it; that much, at least, seems clear —
“Okay, I know you think that baking is the best you can do, & proper cooking is out of your league. But I think you can throw these cucumbers in a broth, no problem. I know cause I could do it too — but maybe not quite with my eyes closed. I figure you could have it with dinner, and then have the leftovers for breakfast, I guess? Or find someone to share it with? Maybe? No, probably not — because once she’s back, once she’s here, you probably won’t be the one cooking, anyway. But I guess you never know…”
“These are good to make ahead of time, if you’re lucky enough to be in town for a day or two. Wrap em up in wax paper, they won’t dry out. And if you find her alive, well, she loves em. Actually, she loves them with extra anise seed. Even more than T says in the recipe, more by a couple tablespoons; she never agreed with him on that. And turns out, bud, you love them her way too. You grew to love so much anise seed in your cookies that it makes you feel like some some licorice-breathing dragon, all cause it reminds you of her.”
Shit. Fuck.
Taako’s shaking, and he doesn’t know why. He’s a side character in this letter at best; it’s not like it’s written to him. To anyone he knows; about anyone he knows. He’s shaking and he doesn’t know how to stop.
And as if this wasn’t enough, one of the next few pages is particularly rumpled. The blue ink’s smeared at points too, leaving a few words just barely legible, and the note’s a long one.
“I usually don’t write in here when I’m having my memory issues. Or at least, I think I don’t. I guess I wouldn’t actually know. But I have to write this down before I forget, because I got to see the show today. I actually got to see Sizzle it Up, and Taako made this incredible cake.”
“Chocolate-coffee marble cake with buttercream filling, chocolate ganache and chopped nuts. Couldn’t have been his intention, but it really reminded me of my mom’s tiramisu. Which I probably shouldn’t have eaten so much of as a kid. Because of the cream.”
“But Taako asked the crowd, you know, if anyone had any allergies. And I might’ve let it slip, not an allergy, but lactose intolerance, close enough. Dunno why I was so honest — maybe he cast Zone of Truth, or something — point is, I was sure he could see in my eyes that I was hungry anyway, that I didn’t care that it would really, really mildly poison me —”
“He just laughed, though, and told me he couldn’t have the peanuts from the topping. Or the pecans. Or the starch in the powdered sugar, or — well, then he waved his hands, laughing some more, and said ‘but we’d be here all night if I gave the whole rundown’ — and he pulled out his wand. And I’ve never wished for magic powers more, because he transmuted every single ingredient anyone at the show had a problem with right into something harmless.”
“And gods, it was such a good cake. And I wasn’t sure if I trusted it at first, because I hadn’t even known there were wizards who could do that. But really, it didn’t poison me at all, my gut didn’t churn at all that night. And I felt so safe.”
Fuck.
Taako doesn’t remember that show. Doesn’t remember any faces from it. But he doesn’t doubt that it happened — he can hear himself saying all that. He can hear his own laugh, downplaying the hell out of it.
And now you’re telling him people loved him for it?
He turns the page, because he just doesn’t know what to do with himself as long as he’s looking at this one, and comes face-to-face with a red scrawl that just reads:
“taako if for some inexplicable reason you ever end up reading this: crêpes beurre sucre are NOT just an ‘easy baby recipe for babies who’ve never set foot in a kitchen before’ and you know it. fuck you.”
The laughter in Taako’s chest is almost explosive, and he slams his fists onto the table as he wheezes, trying and probably failing not to let anyone overhear. Yeah, he remembers writing that, at least — and he sure fucking did call them an easy baby recipe.
Hell, he wouldn’t even stand by it today, being so terribly out of practice — but writing as much was still a favor to his future self, because he needed to read Red Ballpoint Pen Guy’s reaction to it. Gods, he needed this. Die mad about it, Red, ‘cause this was for Taako.
He catches his breath, and flips back to the beginning, still smiling the widest he’s smiled in days, maybe since talking to Ren and Paloma — but almost immediately, Taako notices two things he hadn’t before. Because, right, he hadn’t started at the beginning before.
First, the cookbook’s a collector’s edition. The inner cover is signed. This is a book that’s been in Taako’s hands before — and it’s not even one of the ones that he made Sazed forge, because he used a purple sparkle gel pen.
But second, the reader’s red scrawl is all around Taako’s author bio, too. Right above it, and right below.
And those notes, which could not have been written less than a year ago, which could not have been written by anyone Taako knows — which had been right here, right in his purse and then his dresser, right under his nose all these months —
Those notes just read:
“No longer touring. Framed by assistant for arsenic poisoning.”
“If you meet him, don’t tell him you know who he is. Don’t tell anyone at all.”
The crime. The culprit. The murder weapon.
All right under his nose.
How could a random fucking person, with nothing to go off of but a cookbook, even know that? How could a random fucking stranger, with what seems like a hopeless memory and an even more hopeless loneliness, just fucking know before even the Chalice did?
(Just fucking trust Taako’s magic, for years when Taako didn’t trust it at all?)
Because, gods, detective skills aside — because every fucking day since he got back from Refuge, Taako’s been wishing he knew earlier. He was wishing that today. Just minutes ago. And would he have actually believed it, before the Chalice showed him the bottle in Sazed’s hands, the proof that he had no way to deny? That hardly even matters. On some technicality, he would’ve known.
He was supposed to be a fraud. A fraud and a hack. Not as a chef, but at wizardry. He self-taught every transmutation trick he knew, back as a punky little kid; hell, he single-handedly invented half of them on his own, on the spot, without a single second thought for rigor or safety. Just that first thought of I need something I can eat today. You know, like a hack. Priorities wildly out of whack.
How’s he supposed to turn around now, and cope with knowing that he had a knack for something? That he was onto something?
That he went half a decade without cooking (and worse, without transmuting his cooking) all for nothing?
Taako remains at his desk, rereading the note again and again, easily forty times. Like he missed something last time, like it could somehow change on him. But it stays the same; it never gets any less blunt, or any less impossible. He casts Detect Magic on the book, and aside from it having been Mended with a cantrip once or twice, it’s completely ordinary. It really was right there the whole time.
He rests his head in his hands, locked in place over his desk, and doesn’t move even when his neck stiffens. He doesn’t move even when his face starts to ache, right where his cheeks start to ache, from the force of everything he’s holding back.
But once his stomach starts to rumble…
He closes the cookbook, gingerly, and then opens it again — this time not to the front, but to one of those rumpled pages in the middle. To a recipe he used to have memorized, once upon a time.
How is he supposed to turn around now? Where is he supposed to go from here? Well…
I got to see the show today…
…And I felt so safe.
Taako has a feeling he’s going to regret this, but he’s pretty sure he needs to bake a cake.
*
Here’s a thing that’s finally starting to happen again: Barry wakes up well-rested.
He’s in Taako’s bed, which has both nothing and everything to do with it, all things considered. Barry and Lup have all but annexed, conquered, and fully claimed control of Taako’s dorm room, as in the meantime, plans to move the whole family off the moonbase slowly develop — plans spearheaded by Taako, if you can imagine that. Right now, though, Barry’s got the room all to himself — if only because he’s the only one old and creaky enough to need power naps as early as noon, much to the twins’ affectionate mocking.
He stretches, retrieving his glasses with a spectral red Mage Hand, and tucks all five of Taako’s blankets back in their rightful place. When he opens the door to step out, though, he almost runs into Taako on the other side, stopping just short of bumping his shoulder and jostling his hat.
Taako just smiles and clicks his tongue, unsurprised. “Eighteen minutes again. Precise as always, Barold —”
“Yeah, I’ve got, uh — got that circadian rhythm —”
He tries to step out, into the den of Tres Horny Boys, but Taako takes him by the shoulders, gently and matter-of-factly pushing him back inside.
“Sorry, Barold. I just remembered something,” he tells Barry, voice almost excessively casual, and Barry sighs — but fondly, because he knows that tone, as he obliges and backs up.
Taako follows him in, and goes right for his desk, ignoring the half-repaired Umbra Staff atop it to wiggle open one of the drawers. He holds out an arm so that his robe will obscure it from Barry’s view (except clearly trying not to look too much like he’s obscuring Barry’s view on purpose, gods forbid anyone know he try to build up suspense), and with only a moment’s hesitation, he turns, and hands Barry a cookbook.
“So, uh.” His expression’s a little inscrutable for a second there. “So this is yours…”
At a glance, the book’s clearly from Sizzle it Up — which has Barry thinking, for a second, that Taako had been hanging onto some extra merch — but the spine is worn in a very familiar way, and the bookmarks are color-coded but not numerous enough to have kept an old owner from dog-earing the pages, and — oh. Oh.
“Taako, I — did you steal this off me in Phandalin? I thought I lost this! Or — or was it the gerblins, they stole it, and then you —”
Taako snorts, waving him off in the universal gesture of I want to be mysterious about this, so don’t worry about it. He hands it over, cracking a knowing grin as he says: “So you’re good to whip us up a lunch now, right? I heard you’d been practicing.”
Oh, he really read that thing cover-to-cover, didn’t he? If that was before he got inoculated, and it probably was, he must’ve had some questions. But even so, Barry’s heart warms at the realization, for reasons he can’t quite explain.
Maybe something about not being fully erased. Something about remaining a part of Taako’s life, even when he wasn’t properly in it.
And something about how, though he can only remember so much of what he’d written in the margins, he remembers damn well how highly and sincerely he spoke of Sizzle it Up. In hindsight, he’s so fucking glad that he scribbled down all his incoherent feelings he didn’t understand about Sizzle it Up.
Instead of telling Taako any of that — it’ll be for another time, Barry decides — he replies: “I mean, you can’t possibly be surprised that I mostly stuck to the baked goods section. If you want lunch, real lunch, I’m sure Lup could still outdo me even when she can’t taste, or smell, or —”
Taako shakes his head and turns up his nose, crossing his arms — tight, though, tight so they stay close to his body, Barry notices.
“Well, if you insist,” Taako says, “if you insist, I’ll sweeten the pot. If you’re the kind of roommate who needs bribes, well, I’ll make you something too.”
Then a little more quietly: “I’ve been practicing too.”
Barry doesn’t tell Taako he already knows this. He’s seen Taako in the kitchen, and he’s seen whole meals wind up in the trash — but even in the mere two weeks since the day they’re starting to call Story and Song, he’s also seen the rate of trashed food go down, and the rate of served, delicious food go up.
Especially when Taako’s not alone in the kitchen. Whether he’s with Lup, or with anyone else — and yeah, even when he’s with Barry.
Honestly, Barry’s real fucking proud.
“Well… maybe if what you make has frosting. Or cream cheese, or ice cream, or —” Barry says, and Taako rolls his eyes.
“Read between the lines, bud. That was always implied.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets, pulling out one of his backup wands. “We got a deal?”
Barry sighs, flipping open the cookbook — cucumber soup, okay, now there’s a classic. “Alright, alright. We got a deal.”
“Excellent.” Taako puts a hand on Barry’s shoulder again, pulling him along to the kitchen, this time —
And Barry plays at acting reluctant, flicking the brim of Taako’s hat and dragging his feet along the way, but he knows that Taako knows the truth —
That secretly, Barry’s been waiting for a moment like this for lifetimes.
They’re home, both of them, and they’re safe.