Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lucretia is used to coming across unexpected sights in the Bureau of Balance headquarters.

She is not certain whether the nature of the work attracts people with their own unique ways of doing things, or whether living on a moonbase lowers one’s inhibitions, but between Carey and Killian’s antics, the increasingly complex contraptions that Avi builds in the cannon bay, and the roulette wheel that is any trip to the Fantasy Costco, she thinks that there is nothing left that could possibly surprise her.

But nothing could have prepared her for entering the dining hall to see Lup’s name burned into the wall.

She stops dead in the doorway when she sees it. The letters are six feet high, charcoal black; the edges of the "P" are still smoldering. For a moment she is completely empty. She can't form a single thought, she can't breathe, she's fairly certain her heart stops beating.

And when her brain restarts, all she can think is, no one here knows Lup's name.

Lup has been erased, as thoroughly as Brian or Bain or any of the other fallen Bureau employees--more so, because she’s been erased by Fisher’s child, too. No one here should know Lup's name.

So how can it be here?

“Director?”

Lucretia starts. She hadn’t realized that she wasn’t alone. Now she looks, and realizes that Angus is kneeling behind one of the tables near the back of the hall. He looks like he was probably examining the bottom of the “L” scorched into the wall, but now he is examining her.

“Ma’am, are--are you okay?”

Lucretia doesn’t know how to even begin answering that question. She knows that she should move, should look at Angus, should be calm and professional and tell Angus that yes, of course she is all right.

It would be a lie, of course. But how is that different from anything else she says these days?

Instead what comes out of her mouth is halting and not at all Director-like.

“Who--how--Angus, who wrote that?”

Angus’s face lights up the way it always does when there is a mystery to solve.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to ascertain, ma’am! There’s something wrong with Taako’s umbrastaff. We were doing a magic lesson, and it suddenly went rogue and incinerated my macarons! They were pretty bad, but I don’t think Taako would have burnt them up on purpose. Then the staff blasted this word into the wall.”

“The--the staff did?”

“Yes, ma’am! Taako didn’t know what L-U-P was anymore than I did. He said the staff moved all by itself.”

Lucretia has to close her eyes for a moment. Taako not remembering Lup was her choice, her attempt to spare him a sorrow he would have no way of repairing. But the reality of it, when she is confronted with it, still hits her like a freight train.

She forces her thoughts away from her guilt and back to the situation at hand.

The staff blasted Lup’s name into the wall.

Lup’s staff, her arcane focus, that she took with her when she left. That Taako took from the remains of her body. That had been next to her, presumably, when she died--

Oh. Oh, gods.

Lucretia remembers Lup talking about the abilities of the umbrastaff, how it consumed the power of defeated magic users.

When Lup died, she would have emerged as a lich, a being of pure magic, and if the staff was next to her when she did--

Oh, gods. Oh gods oh gods.

Lucretia has to fight to keep her face neutral, her breathing steady, as the realization washes over her.

It would explain why Lup hadn’t returned, why they had never found her, how she had managed to vanish without a trace. Why even when they finally came across her bones, her soul was nowhere to be found.

When Magnus and Merle and Taako had told her about the skeleton they had found in Wave Echo Cave, Lucretia had resigned herself to the possibility that Lup might just be gone--that the grief of what they had done to this world had been too much, and she had lost herself. She had cried in her room that night, for Lup’s loss, and for Taako, that he had found all that was left of his sister and hadn’t even known.

And all that time, Lup had been right there.

"Ma'am?"

Lucretia blinks. She doesn’t know how long she’s been lost in thought, and she realizes that Angus is still watching her. She wonders how much of what just went through her head played across her face. Her heart is pounding so hard in her chest she wouldn't be surprised if Angus could hear it.

“Angus, where is Taako now?”

“He went back to his room, I think.” Angus is looking at her with far too sharp an expression. “Ma’am, do you know what L-U-P is?”

“No--that is--I don’t--we can talk about it later, Angus, right now I need to--excuse me.”

She turns and rushes out before Angus can ask any more questions, cursing herself as she goes. She couldn’t have done more to raise Angus’s suspicions if she’d been wearing a sign that said “I have secrets.”

Well, it can’t be helped. She’ll have to find a way later to put Angus off, give him a false trail to follow.

Right now, she needs to find Taako, and figure out some way to get the umbrastaff from him. And then…? Her steps slow as she tries to work through the problem.

She can’t let Lup out in the headquarters. Being in the umbrella seems to have protected her from the lich wards so far, but once she’s free they’ll activitate at once. Lucretia isn’t sure what state Lup is in, but the last thing she wants to do is damage her more.

She’ll have to take the staff down to the surface, then. And then--what? Break it? Would breaking it set Lup free, or would it hurt her? Is there a way to somehow extract the magic that the umbrella has absorbed?

The corridor is empty, so there is no one to see Lucretia drop her head in her hands in despair.

This was never the sort of problem she was good at solving. Barry and Lup were always the ones who could think through a problem and see all the potential consequences of one solution or another. 

She wishes Barry were here. A stupid wish, she knows, given that she’s the one who cast the wards that are keeping him out.

But still.

She tries to think of what he would say, how he would approach the problem. 

One problem at a time, Luce, says Barry's voice in her mind. You can't fix everything at once. 

Lucretia takes a deep breath, draws herself up, and squares her shoulders. One problem at a time.

First, she’ll get the staff.

And then, she’ll find a way to set Lup free.

She makes it all the way to the door of the Reclaimers quarters before she stops again. She hasn't been down here since Candlenights; apart from the spa trip with Merle, she hasn't seen any of them much in recent weeks. The distance between them keeps collapsing--they know her name, now, and they keep finding ways to get under her defenses. The best thing she can do is stay away, even if it hurts.

Lucretia reaches out to knock, then hesitates. What will she say, if Merle opens the door, or Magnus? She would like to avoid involving them in this if at all possible. Would asking to speak privately with Taako put them off, or just raise their suspicions? Do they even know what happened? Taako is tight-lipped enough that he might not talk about it with them, but keep it a problem to solve on his own.

Her mind is swirling with questions and indecision, so much so that she doesn’t notice someone come up behind her.

'Hey, Madam D. What brings you down here amongst the peons?"

Lucretia startles a little and drops her hand. She turns and there is Taako behind her, casually holding the umbrastaff across his shoulders. She tries hard not to stare at it as she greets him.

"Oh, Taako. I was looking for you."

Taako smiles, and a now-familiar stab of pain goes through her heart. His smile is so much sharper now.

"Boss coming down to find me in my room after hours? Either you're about to suggest something wildly inappropriate, or you're here to fire me."

It's all Lucretia can do to not burst out in wild laughter. Her nerves are all raw edges right now; the adrenaline of her revelation spiking again as she looks at the umbrastaff in Taako's hand, and the idea of her coming down here to propose some sort of tryst almost sends her over the edge. 

"Neither, I promise," she says, forcing a smile. "Angus told me what happened with your staff. I just wanted to check on you."

"That's sweet of you," Taako says. "I'm peachy. Feel kind of bad about Ango's cookies, but." He shrugs. "All good in Taako-land."

"And the umbrastaff? Has it...does it seem...normal?"

"Yeah." He holds it up for her to see. "Just an umbrella. I mean, a super magic one, but, you know. No more stray fireballs."

"May I see it?" She holds her hand out, trying to be calm, trying to not seem too eager, but her hand is shaking and her heart is in her throat.

"Sure," he says. He hands it over, and as she takes it she thinks her heart might burst out of her chest. Lup is here, right here, nothing separating them but a few layers of cloth and metal and some powerful magic.

Hey, Lup , she thinks. Just hold on. I'm going to get you out of there.

She runs her hand along one of the spokes, trying to get a feel for what magic might be holding Lup captive. But it's too complex to parse just from feeling.

"Has it ever done anything like this before?" she asks. How active has Lup been, since Taako found her?

"Has my umbrella ever taken on a mind of its own before and written a word I don't know into the wall? No, can't say it has. Does it matter?"

"Well, if it's a repeated instance, it could indicate that something's gone wrong with the construction--" she's talking like Barry, she realizes, analytical and technical, and she stops at the look on Taako's face. 

"I just want to make sure it's safe," she says. "I don't suppose you have any ideas?"

"Yeah, I dunno. I thought I just cast the wrong spell when it toasted Ango's macarons, but then it moved on its own; nearly tore itself out of my hand. Think it's possessed?"

He grins at her, inviting her to join the joke, and it's all she can do to keep her composure. 

"I doubt it," she says, as drily as she can. "But I've never heard of an umbrastaff acting autonomously before. Would you mind if I take it for a bit to run some tests? If there is something wrong with it, there may be a way to fix it."

Taako's demeanor changes instantly. He crosses his arms, and something about his expression hardens, all the humor that was there a moment ago suddenly gone.

"Do I mind you taking my very powerful arcane weapon off to run mysterious tests? Uh, yeah, I mind." He's studying her now, too closely. "What's this all about?"

Trust Taako to pick up that there's something else going on. He's always been sharp, and this new version of him is twice as suspicious of everyone's motives, especially hers.

"I'm only concerned for your safety, Taako; if something were to go wrong again--"

"Well, don't be," Taako says. Lucretia can't help but be hurt at the curtness in his tone. "If something happens again, I'll handle it on my own. It's how I work best."

He holds his hand out to her. 

"I'll take my umbrella back, now."

Lucretia looks down at the umbrastaff. She imagines what would happen if she just bolted right now, umbrella in hand. The thought of the look on Taako's face if she did brings a laugh bubbling up in her chest. It's something the old version of her might have done, back on the Starblaster; she can hear Lup laughing and egging her on as Taako shouts indignantly after her. 

But none of those people exist anymore, and she can't risk everything she's built on a stunt like that.

She'll have to find another way.

She hands the umbrella back to Taako, reluctantly.

"Please think about it," she says. "And let me know if you change your mind. If that staff is unstable it could be dangerous, and I don't want you to get hurt."

Taako twirls the umbrella nonchalantly before resting it on his shoulder. "Don't worry about me. I know how to take care of myself."

He winks at her, his mask of nonchalance and charm firmly back in place. Then he pushes past her and disappears into the Reclaimer suite, closing the door with a firm click behind him. Lucretia is left standing alone in the hallway, contemplating her failure.

That didn’t go quite as planned.

She looks down at her hands, remembering the weight of the umbrastaff in them, the knowledge that Lup was so, so close.

Well. If Taako won't give the umbrastaff to her willingly, she's just going to have to steal it.

Chapter Text

Angus McDonald notices things.

He has always been this way, as long as he can remember. Little details stand out to him, things that nobody else seems to notice or care about. And he's able to put those details together into pictures that seem, once they've come together, so obvious.

He's good at patterns, Angus is. Always has been.

What he's had to figure out is how to talk about them.

Angus learned from an early age that adults did not always like it when he pointed out the things he noticed. Sometimes, they got angry. Sometimes they brushed him off or ignored him completely. Sometimes they simply did not believe him.

No matter how many times it happens, or how used to it Angus thinks he has gotten, it always hurts a little when adults dismiss him just because he is small. He doesn't understand why it matters. His brain works just fine. But he has learned to take that hurt and set it aside, push it down into a corner of himself where he can deal with it later. And more importantly, he has learned that sometimes, he needs to come up to things sideways, to hint and suggest until he gets people to come to the same conclusion he has--but because they think they've come up with it themselves, they never question it.

 It’s exhausting, but it gets results, and Angus is resigned to the necessity of it, at least for now.

And it's one of the reasons that he loves working at the Bureau of Balance so very much: since the Director recruited him, he hasn't had to do that once.

He actually feels useful here: a part of the team, rather than a child to be tolerated and humored. When Angus talks, the Director always listens to him. She doesn’t question him, or tell him he’s being silly, or brush him off. She listens and talks to him the same way she talks to all the other Seekers: like a person, like someone to be trusted. She has never once made Angus feel small.

No one other than his grandfather has ever made Angus feel this way, and he loves the Director wholeheartedly for it. 

But as Angus spends more time at the Bureau, he begins to notice things.

He notices the way that Taako never seems to let the umbrastaff stray far from his reach, though he doesn't seem to do it consciously.

He notices the way the Director looks at the Reclaimers sometimes, with such sorrow and longing in her eyes that it hits Angus somewhere deep in the chest, reminds him of the way he felt the year his parents died, when all he could feel was the hole in the world where they used to be.

He notices the growing urgency in the way the Director talks about the relics, the way she stares at the sky at night sometimes when most of the base is asleep, like she's counting the stars.

He notices all these things, but he doesn't say anything, because he doesn't know what any of it means yet. 

He's sure he'll get there in the end. He's good at patterns, after all. He files them away in his mind, building the patterns piece by piece, and he says nothing.

Then he has his magic lesson with Taako, and all the patterns he has been building in his head shift.

When the Director came into the dining hall that day and stopped dead at the sight of the letters on the wall, at first he thought she was just horrified at the violence of it, mystified as he and Taako was at what L-U-P might mean. But then she kept staring, and the way her face changed the longer she looked at those letters made him wonder if maybe there was more to it than just dismay at property damage. 

By the time she left, stammering an answer to his question in a flustered way he'd never expect from her, Angus's mind was spinning with new questions.

He has always trusted the Director implicitly, believed everything she told them about the relics and the Bureau's mission. He is too young to remember anything about the Relic Wars, but from the stories the others at the Bureau have told him, they were just as awful as the Director says they were.

But he has seen the way that she looks at Taako and Merle and Magnus, and he has seen her growing anxiety over the search for the relics, and he saw, today, how shaken she was by the word that Taako's umbrella wrote on the wall.

And a sick, sinking pit starts to grow in his stomach as he wonders, for the first time, just how much the Director hasn't told them.

A week after their explosive magic lesson, Angus goes looking for Taako. 

He looks in all the usual places--Taako's room, the training arena, the Fantasy Costco. Finally, he checks the residential wing's tiny staff kitchen--even though he rarely sees Taako in there. He doesn't know the details, but he knows that something happened to Taako, back when he was a chef, and that he barely ever cooks anymore as a result. 

So he's a little surprised when he finds Taako standing at the table in the tiny kitchen holding an oven mitt, glaring at a filled baking tray.

“Hello, sir!”

Taako responds without looking up from the tray.

“Perfect timing, Ango. Taste this.”

Taako hands him a--well, Angus thinks it’s a cookie. It’s an uneven lump of brownish-greyish dough, so full of chocolate chips that it’s more chocolate than anything else. Angus cautiously takes a bite--and the chocolate part is okay, but the dough around it is tough and salty and Angus has to use every bit of effort to keep his expression even as he chews.

It's about as far from the macarons Taako made at Candlenights as you can get. Angus tries to think of something nice to say as he finally manages to swallow.

“It’s...it’s certainly interesting, sir.”

Taako turns to look at Magnus, who Angus now realizes is standing behind him at the counter, covered in flour.

“See? Even the kid can’t think of anything good to say about it.”

Angus looks at Magnus in surprise.

"You made these, sir?"

"Sure did, Mango," Magnus says. "I figure one of us should be able to cook. But it's a lot harder than it looks."

Taako snorts behind Angus. Angus ignores him, smiling up at Magnus instead.

"They're a good first effort, sir! But I think you used too much salt."

Magnus looks back at the counter, at the containers of sugar, flour, and salt lined up against the backsplash.

"Ooooh."

Taako gives Magnus a look. "Did you--did you seriously swap out salt for sugar by mistake?" 

"Um...maybe..."

Taako barks out a laugh, throwing a dish towel that Magnus catches easily with one hand, grinning.

"Get out of here," Taako says, shooing Magnus towards the door. 

"But shouldn't I help clean up?"

"Nope, I've got it," Taako says. "You've done enough damage for one day."

“I can help you clean if you want!” Angus pipes up.

"See? Agnes will help me clean. You get out of my kitchen. Go help Merle with his plants or something."

"Ew."

Taako rolls his eyes. "You know what I mean."

"See you later, Mango," Magnus calls through the door.

"Bye, sir!'

Magnus disappears around the corner, and Taako and Angus begin the herculean task of cleaning up his mess. For a moment, they just work in silence, sweeping up the frankly astounding amount of flour that Magnus managed to get everywhere. It surprises Angus, how comfortable it is just moving around this little space with Taako, not talking. He wouldn't have thought that energetic, ever-moving Taako would be so good at companionable silence. It almost seems a shame to break it. But he came to find Taako for a reason, and he is too curious to just let the matter drop. He worries his lip as he helps Taako wipe down the tiny counter, trying to figure out the best place to start.

“Sir, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, Agnes.”

 “Where did you get your umbrastaff?”

If Taako is surprised at Angus's question, he hides it well.

“Took it off some dead cat in a red robe," he says casually. He smiles a little when Angus gives him a horrified look. “Chill, little man, they had been dead in that cave a long time. All bones, you know? And well, they weren’t using it anymore, so finder’s keepers.”

But the dead part isn’t what Angus was so horrified about. “But sir--a red robe? Like the people that made the relics?”

Taako shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”

“But they were evil, sir! How do you know your staff isn’t dangerous?”

“I don’t know, Ango,” Taako says. He picks up the staff--kept close by as always--and twirls it a little. He sounds more thoughtful than Angus has ever heard him. “It’s never felt dangerous to me. It feels...right. Like it’s looking after me. It’s gotten me out of some pretty tight spots.”

Angus considers that. 

He supposes it would be possible to make a dangerous weapon that also protected its owner-- but that doesn't seem quite right. The umbrella belonged to the dead red robe, before Taako found it. Why would it protect Taako, the person who stole it?

"Sir, what do you know about the red robes?"

Taako shrugs again. "Not much, to be honest. Just what the Director told us. Weapons of mass destruction, danger to the world, blah blah. I never really looked into them. I'm here because the money's good, not to get back at some pack of dead wizards."

"But you didn't hear anything about them during the wars?"

Something strange happens to Taako's face, then. He opens his mouth as though he has an answer ready--then he stops, and his eyes go blank for a moment, like whatever he was just about to say has vanished before he could get the words out. For just a second, his expression is terrifyingly empty.

Then he furrows his brow and shakes his head, rubbing his temple. "I guess not. I don't really--I don't remember--it all kind of blurs together, you know? Being on the road, new places all the time..."

He trails off. It sounds, as he says it, like he's trying to convince himself of something.

Then he shakes his head again, and his face smooths out, a nonchalant smile spreading over his face that Angus is beginning to recognize. It's the smile Taako puts on when he's hiding how he's really feeling.

"It was a long time ago, right? And I wasn't exactly running in the same circles as world-ending warlocks." 

"That's true, I guess," Angus says. "But--"

"Just drop it, Angus," Taako says sharply. But before Angus can feel hurt by his tone, Taako sighs. "Look, it's just not a fun topic to talk about, huh? War and all. Not a lot of good memories." He claps Angus on the shoulder. "Come on, let's finish cleaning up."

Angus says nothing, just obediently starts sweeping the flour on the floor into a pile. But his mind is whirring with details and questions as he does so.

Angus is good at patterns.

He thinks about the way that Taako always keeps the staff close, the feeling of safety it gives him. He thinks about the red robes, and weapons, and a war that nobody but the people in this base can remember--that Taako still doesn't seem to remember much about. He thinks about stories told to give a group of people a common cause.

And as soon as he and Taako are finished cleaning the kitchen, he goes to find the Director.

Stealing the umbrastaff has proven more difficult than Lucretia expected.

She supposes she shouldn't be surprised; Taako is canny enough, and has spent enough time on the road to keep a close eye on anything that is precious to him. And the umbrastaff is the most precious thing in the world to him, even though she knows he doesn't fully understand why.

She hates having to take it from him, even if she's doing it in order to get his sister back.

Figuring out how to get Lup out, it turned out, was the easy part. After a bit of research and some discreet questions to Leon, she knows how to free her. All she has to do is get the staff.

She thought about sneaking into Taako’s quarters to take it, but the risk of getting caught was too high--there would be no reasonable explanation for her being there, and given the conversation they had after the crystal lab about trust, and she can’t afford to do anything to make them question her.

She thought, briefly, about requisitioning it, using her power as the Director to take it by force. But that would raise questions of a different kind, dangerous questions of what she needed it for, and why. And she can’t quite bring herself to use her power that way--she has never been really comfortable with being seen as their employer; abusing her power to get what she wants feels impossible.

As she tried to figure out how to get it there was a moment--just a moment--where she faltered. Where she wondered whether getting Lup out was a good idea, whether it would ruin her plan. The thought only just formed in her mind before she pushed it away, horrified and ashamed of herself. She has done so many terrible things this last decade, in the name of saving the world. But now that she knows where Lup is, she can't just leave her there.

In the end, it’s Angus who provides the solution.

She's sitting in her office, trying to get through the stack of papers that have accumulated on her desk the last few days. All the time she’s been working out how to free Lup, the business of the Bureau has gone on, and there is only so much she can neglect before the others start to notice.

It's difficult, though, to focus on budgets and spreadsheets and even reports of possible relic sightings, when she knows that Lup is here, on the moon, trapped in some magical prison, when every day she waits is another day that Lup has to endure alone. 

She is trying to wrangle her brain around a particularly dense report when her thoughts are interrupted by a small knock on the door. She looks up to see Angus standing in the doorway, looking nervous.

"Director, do you--do you have a second?" he asks.

She hasn't had a chance to talk to him since finding Lup's name on the wall. She can only imagine what investigating he's been doing in the meantime.

One problem at a time, Luce.

She sets her papers aside and folds her hands on her desk.

"Of course, Angus. What do you need?"

I need to talk to you about something, and I need you to tell me the truth."

Lucretia raises her eyebrows, pushing down a bitter laugh. The truth is a tricky thing for her, these days.

She wishes she could say that she would never lie to Angus, but that in itself would not be true. She can only hope that the truth he's asking for is something she can talk around.

“All right," she says.

Angus hoists himself into the chair across from Lucretia, folding his hands on the edge of the desk in a perfect mirror of her.

“You know something about what’s wrong with Taako’s umbrastaff.”

It's not a question. Lucretia supposes she shouldn't be surprised. A child half as sharp as Angus would have noticed her reaction to Lup's name on the wall. 

“Yes,” she says.

“But it’s a secret.”

Lucretia smiles a little. Trust Angus to cut right to the chase. “Yes, it is.”

“Is it dangerous?”

Lucretia hesitates.

She wants to say that of course it's not dangerous. How could Lup be dangerous to any of them? 

But she thinks again of the fireball that burned up Angus's cookies, of how long Lup has been in there, untethered, alone. She doesn't want to consider that what she finds when she breaks the staff open could be anything other than Lup, whole. But she can't help but admit the possibility.

 "I...I'm not sure, Angus. It's possible. I wanted to examine it more closely, but...well. I understand why Taako is perhaps unwilling to let someone else tamper with it."

Angus looks at the desk, biting his lip--a sure sign that he is thinking hard.

"Taako says he doesn't think the staff would ever hurt him."

Something inside Lucretia gives a sharp twinge.

"He said that?"

Angus nods. "I asked because he said it used to belong to a red robe. And any weapon they made is bound to be dangerous, isn't it? But he's not afraid of it at all."

Lucretia swallows past a sudden lump in her throat. "Well, I--I suppose that's good," she says quietly.

"Is he right, though, ma'am? Is he safe? Even though the staff was made by a red robe?"

Lucretia considers. What can she say to Angus that is, at least, a version of the truth?

"I believe he is right that the staff would never hurt him," she says carefully. "But the...the reason it is behaving the way it is--it could lead to others getting hurt, without Taako meaning to. I want--I would like to fix it, before that happens."

Angus is quiet for a moment. He looks down at his hands, still folded on the desk. He rubs one thumb over the other, worrying at his cuticles.

Then he says,

"Would it--would it help if I got it for you?"

Lucretia is so surprised that for a second all she can do is stare at him.

"Angus I--what do you mean?"

This time Angus looks her in the eye. "If I got Taako to let me borrow the umbrastaff, and gave it to you? Would it help?"

There is more intensity in that look than any ten-year-old has any right to have.

"I--yes. It would be an enormous help."

"And it--it would help Taako? If you--fixed whatever is wrong with it?"

Lucretia thinks of Lup and Taako together, how they always balanced each other, made each other better. She thinks of Taako's emptiness after Lup disappeared, of how sharp and cynical he became once he forgot she existed. Of how much less he seems, without Lup by his side.

She had thought she would never see him whole again. Even after everything was over, after the barrier was cast and their memories restored, she had thought that Lup would still be gone. But now--now there's a chance for Taako to be truly happy again. 

"Yes," she says. "Yes, it would."

Angus nods. He does not look at her. He's staring hard at her desk, worrying his lip with his teeth, as though he's coming to a decision.

Lucretia holds her breath. She shouldn't be doing this, she thinks. She shouldn't be taking advantage of Angus's relationship with Taako like this. But what else can she do? She has tried and tried to think of a way to get the umbrastaff from Taako that won't hurt him or arouse his suspicions, and she has come up empty. 

Sometimes she wonders whether she will ever again have a life where she doesn't have to justify her actions to herself.

"Okay, then," Angus says finally. "I can get the staff for you."

Lucretia tries not to let her relief show on her face, instead giving Angus a warm, sincere smile. "Thank you, Angus."

"But I have a condition."

Lucretia hesitates. That's reasonable, she supposes. 

"All right."

Angus's hands twist in his lap, and he will not meet her eyes. Lucretia realizes she's never seen Angus look nervous before.

Suddenly, he seems very, very young.

"I--I want to know if you've been telling us the truth."

Lucretia's brain stutters.

"The truth?"

"Yes. About the wars, and the relics, and the red robes. You seem to know so much about them--more than anybody else here. And you know about the umbrastaff, which used to belong to a red robe. I asked Taako about the wars today, and he could barely remember where he was when they happened. Something is going on here, ma'am, I know it, and I just--I just want to know if you've been honest."

It takes everything in Lucretia to keep her expression neutral.

She should have known this was a risk, when she brought Angus into the Bureau. She hired him because he was figuring out too much on his own, even before he was inoculated. She should have known that once he was on the base, he would keep making connections.

She wishes, in that moment, that she could tell him everything. That she could live up to the trust that he has put in her.

But the full truth is not a burden that she could ever place on his shoulders. This plan, these secrets--these are hers to carry and hers alone. As much as she might want to, she can't give Angus the answers that he is after. She can only give him what she has given all of them: the base truth of everything she has worked for here, the story she has kept telling herself, over and over, to reassure herself and help stay the course.

She makes sure to not avoid is gaze when she replies.

"Angus, everything I have told you about the relics is true. They are dangerous, and by reclaiming them, we are...we are making the world safer. I promise."

"But what about everything else?" Angus says, and Lucretia can see that he desperately wants to believe her. But she can also see the deep curiosity in him, the drive to know. "There is something more to all this, ma'am, and I--I want to know what it is. So that's my condition. If I get the staff for you, I want to know what's really going on."

Lucretia pauses, as though she is considering--even though there is, of course, nothing to consider. 

"All right," she says finally. "I promise. If you help me with the umbrastaff, I'll tell you what I can."

Even as she says it, Lucretia knows she is lying. But what else can she do?

This is for Lup, she thinks. This is to save Lup. She will lie to Angus now, and she will lie to him more later, but if it means she can get Lup free from the umbrella, it will be worth it.

It has to be.

Angus proves as good as his word. Several days after their conversation, he comes into Lucretia's office and lays the umbrella carefully on her desk.

She doesn’t know what he said to Taako to get him to give the staff up, or if he found a way to sneak it out. She almost asked him when he handed it over, but then she thought better of it. Better that she not know.

Now, Lucretia stands in an open field far from the outskirts of Neverwinter, holding the umbrella in one hand and the Bulwark Staff in the other. The wind whipping through the grass sets the edges of her robe fluttering, cold enough on her face to bring tears to her eyes. She came down to the surface to avoid hurting Lup with the Bureau's lich wards, and picked as isolated a spot as she could find. Leon had warned that breaking the staff might prove...explosive.

She thinks about her promise to Angus, to tell him what is really going on. She isn't sure what she is going to say to him when she gets back. She’ll have to think of something.

One problem at a time.

She lays the umbrella down in the grass, resting her hand briefly on the intricately carved handle.

"Hang in there, Lup," she says.

She steps back, squares her shoulders, raises her hands and takes a deep breath. Then she brings the Bulwark Staff down in a swift slashing motion, and the umbrella splits neatly in two. For a split second, nothing happens--it's just two pieces of an umbrella sitting in the grass.

Then the staff explodes.

Lucretia is thrown backwards onto the ground, only instinct born of a century of danger keeping her from broken bones as she casts a shield below herself to cushion her fall.

She still lands hard, and she takes a moment to get her breath back, lying in the grass staring up at the sky, her ears ringing from the blast. The air is full of smoke and the smell of burnt grass. Through the ringing in her ears she thinks she hears laughter--a sound of ecstatic joy. She scrambles to her knees, looking back to where the staff was--

And she sees Lup.

Finally, after all these years, she sees Lup.

She is floating above the remains of the umbrastaff, a black circle burnt in a wide swath around her. Her face is a dark void in the hood of her red robe, her eyes two glowing embers. Her hands are coated in flames that twine and wrap themselves around her until she is wreathed in them. She is phantasmal and resplendent and utterly terrifying.

For a heart-stopping second, Lucretia is afraid she got it wrong. Did breaking the staff somehow break Lup, too? Or did she simply wait too long? Was Lup only just hanging on when she wrote her name on the wall, a last desperate attempt to let someone, anyone know where she was? In the time that Lucretia took between that day and now, has Lup lost herself?

Then Lup speaks, and it's not a ghostly rasp or echo. It's Lup's voice, exactly as Lucretia remembers it--although she has rarely heard her sound so angry.

She looks at Lucretia with her fiery eyes, and she spreads her arms wide, and she says,

"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO, LUCY?"

Chapter Text

Lup is so used to numbness, to fighting for sensation, that the moment of breaking out of the umbrella almost overwhelms her.

There is a tearing and an explosion and suddenly her black-curtained prison is gone, torn apart, and she is free, feeling the full scope of her power crackling through her like she hasn’t in years. She is engulfed in flames, in pure sensation and power, and there is a moment, just a moment, where she teeters, in danger of going from one extreme to the other, of being consumed completely by magic and emotion.

But then the moment passes, and she pulls herself back. The flames still burn around her, but she has control of them, they are a part of her, and she laughs in sheer joy at the feeling of it.

She looks around for whoever got her out--she hasn't been very aware of the outside, since she used up all her energy burning her name into the wall for Taako to see. Did he figure it out somehow?

She looks, and then she sees Lucretia.

Lucretia, who tore their family apart and scattered them to the winds. Lucretia, who banished Barry to who knows where and left Lup stranded, with no one left to look for her. Lucretia, who made Taako forget her .

The fires around Lup burn bright with her anger. She keeps herself in control--just. But she knows she looks terrifying right now, and she is glad of it. She spreads her arms and lets the fire in her hands grow and she lets all her rage flow into her voice as she shouts her question at Lucretia.

"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO, LUCY?"

Lucretia cowers and ducks her head, her hands clutched tight around a white oak staff that Lup recognizes--the Bulwark Staff. Lucretia's relic.

“Lup, I’m sorry," Lucretia says. "I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Lup looks down at Lucretia kneeling in the grass in front of her, a century of love battling with her satisfaction at Lucretia's fear. She looks, and she really sees her for the first time in almost ten years.

She’d been able to perceive a little, from inside the umbrella. Enough to tell that Taako and Magnus and Merle had changed--that they had forgotten. Enough to tell that Lucretia, when she appeared, was different, somehow.

But she hadn’t realized how different she was until now.

Lucretia's curls are bright white; her hands clutching the Bulwark Staff are worn. She’s so much thinner than Lup remembers; she has never seen Lucretia look so small. The fires around Lup dim a little at the realization.

Lup leans down, and takes Lucretia’s face in both of her insubstantial hands. She has to stifle a gasp when Lucretia looks up at her, hide her surprise and horror at the years that have drawn lines across her forehead and at the corners of her eyes.

Lucretia looks a full thirty years older than she did on the Starblaster--their baby sister, now a grown woman, middle-aged.  And more than that--she looks so tired. She can't be older than fifty-five, physically, but her face seems to hold the weariness of all one hundred and thirty of her actual years.

And as Lup looks at Lucretia's newly old face, the lines of fatigue and sorrow etched there along with the lines of age, all her anger--the fire that had burned in her at what Lucy did, everything she took from them--dissipates. Or at least is banked for now, buried under this new shock.

“Oh, Lucy,” she says. “What happened to you?”

Lucretia just shakes her head. "I don’t know,”  she says. “I didn't mean for it to go this way, Lup, I didn't want--"

“No, I mean--” Lup hesitates. “You’re--you--”

And of all things, Lucretia actually laughs. It's not much of one, but it's still a laugh. “Oh. That.” She sighs. “Wonderland. It’s a--a couple of liches got hold of the Animus Bell. They made themselves a torture chamber, to keep themselves going off the suffering of the people they lure in. I went there to get the Bell and I...I failed.”

Lup pulls back, her hands dropping to her sides. A part of her is thinking about Barry--how it must hurt, to know that his relic is being used to torture people. Where is he now? Does he know? Last time she was near him, he was a lich; so he, at least, remembers everything. 

But before Lup’s mind can go too far down that track, she forces herself to return to the more immediately alarming part of what Lucetia said.

"You were trying to get the Bell back. You're collecting the relics? You know what that will do.”

"Of course I do. But I have to get the Light back in one piece to cast the barrier. It's the only way."

Lup huffs a frustrated sigh. “We already told you that won’t work. It’ll kill this world, Luce. A different kind of death, but it’ll kill it all the same.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually. Think about it--what will happen if the bonds of this plane are cut off? Not just from other systems, but from the rest of the planes in this one? Souls couldn’t get to the astral plane, Merle couldn’t get to Pan; gods know what it would do to magic--is that what you want?” 

“It’ll just be temporary, just while we starve out the Hunger--it has to be weak now, we’ve kept it away so long--”

The fires around Lup begin to burn hot with her frustration. Ten years later, they are still having the same argument.

“Lucretia, come on! You know it doesn’t work like that. You can’t just mend those broken bonds once your wall comes down. If you cut this plane off from the others, that’s it. For good. You can’t do it; we can’t do it this way.”

Lucretia shakes her head, pushing herself to her feet with the Staff. It doesn't escape Lup's attention, the effort it takes for her to stand.

"I have to do this, Lup. I have to cast the barrier, I have to protect them." Her voice is rising, almost frantic.

“You don’t, it’s not--” Lup stops suddenly. She looks, not at Lucretia’s face, but at the Bulwark Staff in her hand.

"Hey, Luce? That staff. That's your relic, right?"

"Yes."

"Can I see it for a second?"

Lucretia's grip tightens instinctively on the Bulwark Staff. "Why?"

"I just want to look at it. Just for a moment."

Lup holds her hand out, and Lucretia takes a step back, her eyes fixed on Lup's hand.

Lup freezes. Then she sighs.

"Okay, how about this? Set it down, and I'll pick it up. How's that? You can set it down, right? You don't hold it all the time."

Lucretia shakes her head. 

"I--I--"

Her brow is furrowed, that tiny crease that always appears when she is confused or worried. She seems to be having difficulty processing what Lup is saying, and the dreadful suspicion in Lup's mind grows stronger.

She holds her hand out again, this time palm out, like she's calming a wild animal.

"Come on, Luce," she says softly.

Lucretia shakes her head again. She puts a hand to her head, to her ears, like she's trying to block something out--Lup's voice, or something else.

"I--I don't--"

"This is me, Luce. It's Lup. I promise I'll give it right back," Lup says. 

Lucretia nods, slowly, and her grip behind to loosen on the Staff, her knuckles no longer white.

“That's it. You can do it. Just set it down.” 

Lucretia holds the staff out in front of her and then she inhales sharply and lets go, all at once, as if she's been suddenly burned. The Staff falls with a soft whump into the grass and lies still: an innocent, unremarkable piece of white oak.  

Lup leans down, and hesitates only a moment before she picks it up. She gasps.

It’s been a long time since she held a Grand Relic, but she remembers what it felt like: that pulse of power, the--what was it Magnus called it?--the “cravability” of the Light.

This is so much more powerful than any of them ever felt. Lup is a being of pure magic, and when she touches the Staff, the power of it crackles through her like lightning.

And then a voice twines through her head, a voice that, if she doesn't listen carefully, sounds almost indistinguishable from Lucretia’s. You wanted to save the world . It says. You know the price the world has paid for what you did. You can still fix it. You can save everyone. You can save your brother, your love. You can make sure no one else dies because of you.

It is so seductive, that voice: all the things that it promises in the tones of her little sister.

Lup closes her eyes, and thinks of Barry, of every conversation they had in their tiny room on the Starblaster about their plan, and Lucretia’s, and ways to save this world that didn’t take such an awful toll. She remembers every detail of him, the warmth of his arms, the sound of his voice, the weariness and resignation in it as they went through, again, why the barrier would never work. She lets his voice wash over her and drown out the voice of the relic in her mind.

If she hadn't been so practiced at remembering, at making those memories so real in her imagination, she's not sure she would have won. She can only imagine what it has been like for Lucretia, living with this voice in her head for the last ten years.

The thrall of the Staff doesn't explain all of it--it was still hidden when Lucretia made the decision to feed the memories of their journey to Fisher. That decision, that first betrayal, was all her.

 But Lup can see how the Staff must have blinkered her since, has turned her ordinary determination into an obsession. The Staff has kept her on the path she started, even as things have gone wrong.

And then she started collecting the relics, and she made it stronger .

Lup opens her eyes.

"Oh, Lucy."

Lucretia stands watching Lup, her shoulders hunched, somehow looking even smaller without the Staff.

"I'm so sorry, Lup," she whispers.

Lup sighs, and places the Bulwark Staff gently, carefully back on the ground.

“Lucretia, what were you thinking?”

The question seems to break something in Lucretia. Her whole body starts to shake, and she presses a hand to her mouth to hold back a sob. For a moment, it seems that she might just collapse.

Then Lucretia drops her hand, and takes a breath, and steadies herself. It's a routine that seems born of long practice, and when she speaks, her voice is almost calm. Lup sees, for the first time without the distance of the umbrella dimming her perception, Lucretia as the Director.

“I had to do something. The relic plan wasn’t...we couldn’t go on the way we were. You know how it was. The way we were pulling apart. We were dying, and the world was dying, and we couldn’t see a way out. And then you left and...it just got so much worse.”

Lucretia's composure wobbles, and her voice begins to shake.

“You were gone, and Barry and Taako were killing themselves looking for you, and I was so afraid that they would--that we would lose them, too--and then--then--” She takes another breath to try to steady herself, but she is losing her careful Director mask. “Someone figured out how to use the Bulwark Staff to--to imprison people, to keep them contained while they--it was supposed to be for protection, but they were using it to do such awful things--”

“Babe…”

Lup reaches out to her, but Lucretia shakes her head and steps away from Lup's embrace.

“The wars kept getting worse and--and I needed to talk to someone, I wished I could talk to you, but you were gone and none of us--we didn’t talk, anymore! We didn’t do anything anymore. We just sat up there while the world destroyed itself with the weapons we created and I--I couldn’t--I had to do something and--Fisher was there in my room and I--”

“You erased it all.”

Lucretia nods. “But it--it’s gone all wrong; it was only supposed to be for a little while, while I got the relics back, but it’s been so much harder than I thought it would be and--and everything I tried to do to keep you all safe and happy has--it’s all gone so wrong, Lup. Magnus and Merle and Taako--everything fell apart for them, and you and Barry were missing, and Davenport--” She presses a shaking hand to her mouth, trying to hold herself together, but she’s disintegrating, falling apart, just like everything she’s tried to do over the past ten years. “I made my choice and I had to keep going but I--it’s been--”

And then she’s gone. Lucretia falls to the ground, her head in her hands, and Lup's heart cracks in two. She watches as Lucretia collapses in on herself, a decade's worth of suppressed emotion all flowing out at once--and the banked embers of her anger dim and go out. She can't stay angry at Lucretia, even a little, when she's hurting so much.

She has never wished more fervently that her lich form could be a little more solid, so that she could reach down and take Lucretia in her arms. But she can't; her body remains frustratingly insubstantial. So she does the next best thing. She lowers herself next to Lucretia and wraps her arms around her as best she can, and stokes the fires within her so that her whole form emanates a gentle warmth. She leans her head as well as she can against Lucretia's, the space where her cheek would be against Lucretia's temple.

“It’s okay, babe. I’m here. You’re not alone anymore. I’m here.”

Lup’s words seem to only make Lucretia cry harder. The sobs that wrack her are so strong that she barely has a chance to draw breath between them. Lup wishes she could cry with her, could have some sort of release for the sorrow building inside her. But her lich form has no capacity for tears. Lup can do nothing but wrap herself as close as she can over Lucretia’s shaking form, and whisper soothing words into her ear.

They stay like that for a long time, so long that by the time Lucretia calms, her sobs subsiding into hiccups and sharp breaths, the sun is low in the sky, the shadows of the grass casting long, skinny stripes across their bodies.

Lucretia finally pushes herself up. Her movements are so slow, so tired. She looks up at Lup with eyes red from crying.

"Where did you go, Lup? Were you in the staff the whole time?"

"More or less." She pauses. "I went to hide the Gauntlet."

She thinks back to that moment of decision, to sneaking out of bed while Barry snored, unaware. To standing in the shadowy kitchen, placing a careful kiss on her note before leaving it on the table--the note that she now knows was so false, so inadequate a thing to leave behind.

She wonders what might have happened, if she had made a different choice.

"What you said, about us sitting up there while the things we made destroyed the world--you're right. I felt it too, and I couldn't fuckin' stand it. It was tearing me apart. Taako shut down and Merle was trying to be positive through it all and even Barry--Barry tried to help, but what could he say? We were the ones who proposed this plan. The blood of this world was on our hands and--there was nothing we could do."

"Oh, Lup."

"So I decided to do what I could to take one relic at least out of circulation. I didn't tell any of you about it because I didn't think you would agree. I decided I could fix it on my own."

"Sounds familiar," Lucretia says, with a wry twist of her mouth that is almost, almost a very bitter smile.

Lup laughs, a small, bitter laugh to match.

"Too bad we never tried to talk to each other about this, huh?" she says. "Maybe things would have been different."

"Yeah." Lucretia looks down at her hands. "Maybe."

The wind hisses through the field, rattling the tops of the grass.

"So what now?" Lucretia asks.

“Now?” Lup says. “We’re going to do what we should have done in the first place. We’re going to talk to each other. We’re going to figure out how to fix this. And we’re going to get our family back.”

She smiles at Lucretia, a fierce smile that she thinks is probably a little terrifying.

“You and me, Luce. We’re gonna save the world.”

Chapter Text

Lucretia leans back in her seat in the cannonball, watching the world fall away below as she drifts up back to the moon base. Even in the gathering gloom, from this height she can see the full circumference of the blast scar the umbrastaff made in the grass, a perfect circle of black with the broken pieces of the umbrella still sitting at the center. 

(She had meant to bring it back with her, to maybe find a way to fix it so she could give it back to Angus and buy herself some time. But when she'd leaned down to pick it up, Lup had reached out one incorporeal hand to stop her. Her eyes had glowed orange beneath her hood as she looked down at her former prison.

"Leave it," she'd said.

Lucretia hadn't argued.)

She feels wrung out, her limbs heavy and her eyes still sore from crying. She has gone through so many emotions in the past hour--the joy at seeing Lup again, the grief at all the pain she has caused, the confusion and terror of realizing the Bulwark Staff's thrall and the enormity of the task still before them--but now she's settled into a sort of fugue state, as if she's observing herself and the world from a little ways off. It's a little worrying, because she knows she's going to have to have her wits about her when she gets back to the Bureau. Angus will be expecting answers, and Taako will eventually want to know where his staff has gone. And that's not even getting into what she and Lup will do when they arrive, what their next step will be in finding a new way to stop the Hunger.

Lucretia had laughed a little when Lup made her proclamation, both warmed and a little frightened by the confidence in Lup's voice.

"Do you really think we can?" she said. She's been trying to save this world for the last ten years, and all she has to show for it is an overpowered staff and a plan that, it turns out, was never going to work.

Lup floated down to slip an insubstantial hand through Lucretia's. "Of course I do, babe. Aren't we experts at world-saving by now?"

Lucretia thought about all the worlds they'd left behind over the cycles. The ones where they'd gotten the Light, but still watched as the Hunger crashed its opalescent pillars into the earth, its armies spilling out of the columns like swarms of ants.

"You know it's not the same," Lucretia said softly.

There's a difference between the way they've usually saved a world--keep it from being eaten, but leave it behind, broken and devastated by an enemy they could never truly defeat--and what they're trying to do here. She wants something more for this world. She wants it to be whole. And what's more, she doesn't want to leave. She wants it to be home .

Lup's hand warmed a little in hers. "I know," she said. “But I know we can figure it out. We’ll find a way.”

“We don't have a lot of time."

Lup tilted her head in clear question.

“You felt the Staff. I've been collecting the relics. Yours was the first, and after they brought back the Oculus, enough of the Light was in one piece again and--”

She didn't want to say it. To put into words the end that she has been dreading now for months. But luckily Lup has been doing this just as long as she has, and she understood immediately.

“Oh."

“The scouts arrived at Midsummer,” Lucretia said quietly.

"Right."

The sun slipped below the horizon as the unspoken implications of that statement hung in the air, and Lucretia shivered at the sudden chill. Lup must have seen, the warmth of her hand in Lucretia's gently increased.

"I guess we'd better get a move on, then," was all she said. 

It hadn't been until she reached to her bracer to call a cannonball that Lucretia realized another problem.

"I can't take you with me," she said. "The wards--"

"What wards?"

Lucretia hesitated. How could she explain to Lup what she'd done? The steps she'd felt were necessary to keep her plan on track?

"Lucretia." No more secrets , Lup's tone said.

Lucretia sighed. "Anti-lich wards."

She couldn't bring herself to say why she cast them, and she knew from Lup's stillness that she didn't need to. There's been only one person that she could have been trying to keep out.

There was a pause, and Lucretia could practically feel Barry’s presence, an un-named ghost between them.

"Do you know where he is now?" Lup asked.

"No," Lucretia said. "I've tried to keep track of him, but he's--he's good at hiding. The last time the boys saw him, at the lab, he was still a lich, but..."

"I know," Lup said quietly. "I was there."

Of course. Taako had found the umbrella by then.

"How much could you hear?"

"Enough."

This time it was Lucretia who reached out to take Lup's hand, hoping Lup could somehow feel the comforting press of her fingers.

"We'll find him, Lup. I promise."

Lup nodded. The embers of her eyes flickered a little, like flames guttering in the wind. "Thanks, babe."

They were quiet for a moment, then. Lucretia could see Barry's face clearly in her mind, the way he'd looked the last time she'd seen him alive: tired, spent. The guilt rose up in her again as she thought of how alone he'd been for so long--just like her, just like Lup. How she'd pushed him away over and over again, even when he'd managed to make it up to the moon to try to talk to her--

Her thoughts stalled as she remembered finding Robbie at the entrance to her quarters, the moment she realized why his stance and the way he looked at her were at once so wrong and so, so familiar.

Of course.

"Lup," she said. "I have an idea of how to get you onto the moon."

Now, as Lucretia watches the ground fall away below her, Lup's voice echoes through her head. It would remind her uncomfortably of the voice of the Bulwark Staff, if it weren't for the warmth of Lup's presence that she can feel pressing against her consciousness, at once within her and totally separate from her own mind. Possession, she thinks, is not a sensation she will ever get used to.

This is some ride, Lucy, Lup says.

Lucretia laughs. "I can't take credit," she says. "Several people who are much smarter than I am came up with this particular system."

I didn't know there was anybody smarter than you, Lup teases.

"Stop."

How many geniuses can a plane hold, really?

"Plenty. Besides, you know engineering was never my thing. Remember when I tried to help Magnus rebuild that bridge in cycle 70? I think we were stranded twice as long as we would have been if I hadn't helped."

Fair.

Lup's laugh echoing through her mind thaws a part of Lucretia that she hasn't let herself go near in years. The rush of emotion it causes is so strong it hurts, like the tingling burn of fingers beginning to thaw after coming in from the cold.

So wait, the balloons get you back up, how do you get down?

"Oh, you'll love it."

Lucretia explains the cannon apparatus to Lup, and all the improvements that Avi has made in the last few years to increase the accuracy and lessen the danger. A side effect of the possession that she hadn't considered is that Lup's emotions bleed through into her mind; the glee as Lucretia describes her first cannon ride is infectious, and she finds herself grinning as she talks.

She's missed this. The ease of it, the warmth. Lup's laugh.

She's been so alone for so long. This reminder of what they used to have, what it used to be like, fills her with a painful mix of joy and longing, grief and guilt.

She knows that they lost much of this ease long before the redaction--even before Lup left. Ever since that split vote on whether they should create the relics, they had all started to drift apart, to close themselves off from each other. 

They had already been cracking. But she's the one who put a pry bar to those cracks and shattered them to pieces.

Lucretia realizes that Lup is saying something, but she hasn't processed it at all, her mind far adrift in memories and guilt. She makes a noncommittal noise, hoping that Lup won't notice her lapse–but of course Lup knows her too well for that.

You all right, babe?

Lucretia can't help but laugh a little at that. What is all right, anymore?

"I'm fine," she says. "But…" She pauses. In thinking about the redaction, she realizes that there is one thing she and Lup haven't talked about yet. 

“Lup, there's something else I need to tell you, before we--before we get there."

Okay.

"I--I’m not sure how much you could see, in the umbrella, or hear--how much you know about--” She stops. This is hard, impossible, but she has to say it. “There’s something I need to tell you about what I did and--when I do, you--you don’t have to--I’ll understand if you can’t forgive me.”

Lup doesn't say anything, but Lucretia can feel her attention as she waits, expectant. 

Lucretia takes a deep breath, and lets the confession come out in a rush.

“I--I erased you.”

Lup says nothing. Lucretia can still feel her presence at the back of her consciousness, but it's just a constant warmth--no indication of what Lup might be thinking.

“Lup?” Lucretia says. She can hardly bear it, this suspense. Hoping, praying, that Lup somehow can forgive her for what she did--even if she doesn’t deserve it.

Finally, something unwinds in Lucretia's head, a release of tension that might have been a sigh.

I know, Lup says. Lucretia doesn't feel any anger from her, only a quiet sort of sadness that in some ways is almost worse. When they found me in the cave--I could hear enough to tell it was them, to tell when Taako picked the staff up. They were-- she stops. 

Lucretia has never asked the boys about what they did when they found the umbra staff. But she knows them, the way they are now--all jokes and ribaldry. She can only imagine what they might have said over Lup’s bones.

I could tell they didn’t know who I was, Lup says finally.

“Lup, I’m so sorry.”

Another wave of emotion brushes against her consciousness--love and grief and hurt all mixed up together.

I know you are, babe, Lup says.

She does not tell Lucretia that it’s all right, and Lucretia doesn’t blame her.

It’s so inadequate, after all, those three words. She feels like she will be saying them to all of her family for the rest of her life, and they will never be enough. All the apologies in the world cannot give back what Lucretia has taken from them.

You have a way to put it all back? Lup asks after a moment.

"Yes," Lucretia says emphatically. "Yes, I do. I promise I do. As soon as--"

She stops.

She was about to say "as soon as the barrier is cast." It's the goal she has been working towards for a decade, what she has repeated to herself over and over to keep herself going. When the barrier is cast, the world will be safe. When the barrier is cast, I can bring them all back.

But now that Lup has pulled her out of the Bulwark Staff’s thrall, even a little--she finds she can’t say it.

She doesn’t know, now, how much of the determination, the single minded focus on that final goal, has been her and how much has been from the Staff. She only knows that she is no longer sure that this goal that has been her one constant, her one certainty, is the right thing to do.

She already misses the comfort of that certainty, the one fixed point that she has clung to in all this. Without that firm goal, that rock--she has no idea what to do next.

“I was going to inoculate them all once--once it was done. The barrier,” she says. 

And now?

“Now, I...I don’t know.” 

Lup is silent for a moment. Then warmth curls through her mind, a strong sense of love and comfort and reassurance.

Okay. That's okay, Lup says. Let's get there first and then we'll…we'll figure it out. You don't have to do this alone, Luce.

Lucretia nods and swallows around the lump in her throat. She leans her head back so she can watch the moon base growing closer through the glass ceiling of the cannonball. She can feel that numbness tugging at her again, the temptation to sink away from this mess of emotions. But she resists it, focusing instead on the sensation of Lup's consciousness pressed against hers.

"Thanks, Lup."

--

By the time the cannonball comes into the dock, Lucretia finds herself wishing for a little emotional distance–if only to get herself to calm down. Her heart is hammering and she can't stop twisting her fingers in her lap. On the surface, the next steps are not difficult: get to her office, deactivate the wards. Easy.

She just hopes she doesn't run into anyone on the way. Lup's presence is like a glowing ember in the back of her mind, and after the emotional turmoil of the last few hours, she's not sure how well her Director mask will fit.

She hasn't felt this anxious, this much like her old self, since the day Magnus and Merle and Taako arrived on the moon.

You made it through that day , she tells herself. You can do this.

And you're not alone, Lup reminds her, and Lucretia smiles.

It's starting to feel a little less foreign, that sentiment.

The cannonball settles into place, and Avi gives a light tap on the roof to let her know that it's safe to get out. Lucretia unbuckles and makes her way out of the hatch, trying to ignore the way her knees and back protest. The blast must have taken more out of her than she thought.

Don't get old, she says to Lup. It's no fun at all.

One advantage of being a lich, I guess, Lup replies. Can't have joint pain if you don't–don't have–

Lucretia doesn't have to ask what made Lup stutter to a halt. As she straightens, she looks up expecting to see Avi's grin welcoming her back. Instead, Taako is leaning against one of the control panels of the cannon bay, his arms crossed. Angus is next to him, his hands clasped tight in front of him, looking determinedly at his shoes.

'Hey there, Madam Director," Taako says. His tone is light and casual, but there is a cold undercurrent to it that makes Lucretia's heart sink. "How was your trip?"

Chapter Text

Barry has been drifting for weeks, unsure what to do next.

After seeing Taako with Lup's umbrastaff at the lab, it hadn't taken him long to work out where they must have found her. He had made his way to Wave Echo Cave as fast as he could--they had said she was dead (but dead didn't mean gone with Lup, he'd been dead for months, he'd died so many times in the past decade, dead didn't mean gone, it couldn't), but he had to see her for himself.

When he finally arrived in depths of those mines and found the empty, dust-filled robe that was all that was left of Lup's body, it took every bit of strength and will to keep from losing himself right then and there.

Lup was dead.

Lup had been dead for a long time. 

But if she had been dead for so long, if she'd been out of her body with all her memories intact for so long, then where was she, where was she , why hadn't she found him, why hadn't he been able to find her, what if–?

Barry did not lose himself in that moment, but it was a close thing.

Since then he has been drifting, unsure how or where to look, fighting off the black despairing thoughts that whisper that she's gone, she's gone, you were too late and you've lost her.

He knows that if he listens to that whisper, then he will be lost, and so will his family, and so will this world. So he doesn't listen.

Instead he watches the moon, and he waits. He knows where the two remaining relics are--Magnus's in Refuge, where it's been since the beginning, and his own in Wonderland. He knows it's only a matter of time before Lucretia sends the others after one or the other. The idea of sending them unprepared and unknowing into the time bubble that has sprung up around Refuge--or worse, into the torture chamber those liches have created with his relic--fills him with such anxiety that tiny crackles of red lightning run their way up and down his body whenever he thinks of it. It would be hard enough to tackle these particular relics with their memories intact, but without them--

Barry doesn't understand how Lucretia can keep doing this. How she can reconcile the danger she is putting them in, the risk. They have all changed so much in the time since they arrived here, but even at her most bloody-minded, the Lucretia he knew before would never have been capable of taking such calculated risks with her family's lives.

He alternates between a slow-burning anger at her and a deep fear that if they ever make it out of this, he won't recognize her anymore.

He wishes there was more that he could do. He wishes he could get up on that moon-base and talk to her, or failing that, find a way to reverse what she's done to their memories. But he's tried that once already, and he failed.

The most he can do is wait to see where she sends them next, and be there to help however he can.

So he drifts, and he watches, and he waits.

It is only by chance that he hears the explosion.

He's scouting near Neverwinter, halfheartedly re-tracing old steps in the hopes of finding some sign of Lup, some clue to where she might have gone after she left her body. He keeps half an eye on the moon, as always, and he sees the speck of one of those transport pods launch away from it (and who thought up that transport system anyway? Barry wants to have a word with whatever engineers Lucretia found to build her moonbase). He traces its trajectory and it seems like it's headed towards the outskirts of the city, rather than towards Refuge or the Wilds--a supply run, maybe. He doesn't pay it much mind.

Not until he hears the explosion in the distance.

He doesn’t know for sure that it has anything to do with the moon transport, of course, or indeed anything to do with him and his at all. Still, he begins to rush towards the site, to see if anyone is hurt, if there is any way he needs help. He knows there might be nothing he can do–-he has learned that most people will not accept help from him in this form, no matter how desperate their circumstances.

He goes anyway.

By the time he gets to the field where the blast happened, there is no one left, just a circle of blackened grass where whatever it was exploded. The air is still tinged with smoke, but any embers from the explosion have burnt themselves out.

Barry approaches slowly, in case there's any residual magic, though he can't feel anything. When he gets close enough to see what is at the center of the circle, it feels like his whole being flickers out of existence, just for a moment.

Lying in the burnt, ashy grass are two halves of an umbrella.

Lup's umbrella.

Barry has no breath to lose, but his whole body starts to vibrate as he stares at that umbrella.

Has something happened to Taako? Was he attacked? There doesn't seem to be any sign of a fight, no bodies or blood, nothing but the perfect circle of the explosion with the umbrastaff dead in the center. Did something go wrong with the umbrastaff somehow?

He looks up, remembering the transport--and sure enough, high above he can see the glint of a round glass ball, moving slowly upward. They must have come down just long enough to do whatever it was that broke the staff--but what? And why?

Barry's mind is running in circles as he tries to work out what could have happened, and why Taako would have left the umbrella behind.

Maybe it started to malfunction somehow, became so unstable that they had to bring it somewhere safe to deal with it. Is it possible it tried to consume something that was too much for it, some power that it wasn't built to hold–?

And then his thoughts grind to a halt as several disparate thoughts–-the umbrastaff's function, Lup's body, magic too strong for the umbrella to hold–-connect in his head.

Oh.

Oh.

He has no proof that he's right, no guarantee that the umbrella wasn't broken for some other purpose, some other way–but as soon as he thinks it he knows it's true. It explains everything–-why Lup disappeared, why he's been unable to find her. 

Barry leans down to touch the broken halves of the umbrella. If he could cry, he would be in tears, but as it is his whole form just shivers, and a shower of sparks cascades onto the already-singed grass.

Lup .

Lup was here. Lup was here , just a moment ago, and he is torn between the joy of knowing she still exists in the world and despair at how close he came to finding her, only to miss her again. If he had just gotten here a little faster–! 

More sparks rain down around him and for a moment all of Barry's focus is taken up with keeping himself grounded, keeping this tidal wave of emotions in check. He tries to focus on the sound of the wind through the grass, the way the shadows stretch long around him, the faint tinge of smoke still hanging in the air. Now that he's near enough, he can feel the broken strands of the umbrella's magic, and he latches onto that, following the patterns of the magic and how they came apart when the umbrella snapped, letting his mind fall into the familiar mode of analysis until that overwhelming wave recedes a little.

Eventually his shivers subside, and Barry straightens.

The question he asks himself is the same question as always: where to next? But this time the question feels different. Lighter. It doesn’t sit on his chest like a weight; he doesn’t have to fight off those black thoughts telling him that it’s all hopeless.

Lup is out there somewhere. It's something he's repeated to himself over and over, something's he's forced himself to believe because the alternative was not an option--but now, it's real and true and he doesn't have to make an effort to convince himself.

Lup is out there, and he will find her.

Where to next?

Barry drops his shoulders and lets his head fall back, gazing up at the sky. And in the distance, he sees the sun glinting off something that, if he squints might just be a glass ball, drifting up towards the moon.

Chapter Text

Lucretia is having a hard time staying upright.

The sight of Taako had set Lup stumbling to a momentary halt, but now that they are out of the cannonball, standing in front of him, she is filling Lucretia's head with such a heady mix of joy and sorrow and regret and longing that Lucretia can barely think straight. 

Lup–

Lup doesn't respond—at least not in words. Instead a jumble of images and emotions and fragmented words appear in Lucretia's mind: Taako-family-finally-home-Taako-freedom-please-Taako-home-please.

For a moment, Lucretia is terrified that the sight of Taako has overwhelmed Lup too much–she's so fragile in some ways, in this form. But after a moment Lup seems to gain control of herself, and Lucretia can feel her pushing at the edges of their shared mental space.

Lucretia, he's right there, I have to—

Lucretia's heart clenches as Lup starts to pull away.

You can't, Lup. Not yet—the wards!

Lup backs off a little, but she’s still pushing, like she can’t help but move as close as she can to where Taako is.

Lucy, please. I have to—please.

Lucretia’s stomach is in knots, her guilt and sorrow all tangled up with Lup’s longing and joy. 

Soon, Lup. We’ll get to my office, we’ll make it safe, as soon as I can. I promise.

She can feel Lup pulling back, holding herself carefully within the confines of Lucretia’s mind. It gives Lucretia just enough space to finally focus on Taako and Angus, standing in front of her. 

Taako is standing with his arms crossed, looking at her a challenge in his eyes. Angus continues to stare at his shoes, his fingers twisting themselves into anxious knots. It's clear that since she left the Bureau, Taako has gotten Angus to tell him everything.

Lucretia can't even blame either of them. They surely want answers, and she has no idea how to go about giving them.

The umbrastaff is gone, and she has no story to give Taako about how she lost it that he will accept.

She has betrayed Angus’s trust, making him promises she never intended to keep.

And Lup—Lup is here, she found her, she freed her, and she can’t even tell Taako the good news, because he wouldn’t understand it.

Lucretia takes a deep breath.

“Taako. Angus,” she says. It takes everything she has to keep her voice even, to only let a bit of Director-ly concern bleed through. “Is everything all right?”

Taako laughs, a sound so short and bitter that it takes Lucretia entirely off guard. She has prepared herself, on some level, for Taako to be angry with her when he finds out she got Angus to give her the staff. But this is different from what she expected.

“Oh, we’re just fine, Luce,” Taako says, smiling without a hint of humor in his eyes. “Peachy keen.”

There’s something wrong about what he’s said, but she can’t place it; she’s so thrown by the open hostility in his tone, but she swears that—

Just then, distantly, an alarm bell begins to ring.

Lucretia knows instantly what it is: the alarm in her office, the alarm that protects her deepest and most precious secrets. For a moment she is confused—who could have found their way back there, and why now—?

Then she sees Angus’s wide-eyed expression, and Taako’s cold, defiant glare.

Taako says something, but Lucretia loses it entirely as a wave a realization washes over her, mixed and muddled with a burst of exaltation from Lup in the back of her mind—and she realizes what has happened.

The alarm in her office is ringing, and Taako just called her Luce.

Oh.

Oh, gods.

A few days earlier

Taako is not an idiot.

Oh, he might put on a facade, a mask of good-natured stupidity and slow-wittedness, but that’s all it ever is: a facade. He makes mistakes as much as anybody else (though he’d be the last to ever admit it), but he hasn't made it this far, years and years on the road, without knowing how to keep his wits about him.

So when Angus starts dropping hints about his umbrastaff, he knows something is up. The kid is no slouch as a detective, but Taako has years of experience on him in the arena of deception. 

What he can't decide, at first, is whether Angus is asking for his own curiosity, or something else. He wouldn't be surprised if Angus decided to investigate the umbrastaff on his own, after the display it put on in the dining hall. It's just the sort of mystery it seems like the kid would latch onto.

But after the strange conversation he had with the Director outside his quarters, Taako can't help but wonder if she is somehow involved.

Taako sits on the couch in the Reclaimers’ living room, the umbrastaff balanced across his knees as he inspects it. It doesn't seem any different from the day he picked it up. As always, it glows with a gentle warmth under his hands–a sign, he's always assumed, of the power within. It's comforting, that warmth, and he rests one hand on the spokes, letting the other trace over the intricate carvings on the handle. He wonders if the Director would be able to figure out what they say.

If she's recruited Angus to help her, then the staff is clearly more important to her than she let on.

Taako lifts the umbrastaff up, scrutinizing it, as if the answers to his questions will appear inside its fabric, if only he looks close enough.

Why does she care so much about a stupid umbrella? Granted, it's a super powerful, magic umbrella, but it's not like it's a Grand Relic. Compared to the weapons she has them chasing down, the umbrastaff is like a–a chef's knife next to a broadsword. What could she possibly want with it?

"If it belonged to a red robe, sir, how do you know it's not dangerous?" 

It would make sense, Taako supposes, if the Director’s interest is because of the staff’s possible connection to the red robes. Even if the staff isn’t a Grand Relic, she is probably wary of any weapon they left behind. 

But if that’s the case, why hasn’t she just said that? Why has she let him keep it, all this time?

Why, even knowing that the staff was made by supposedly some of the most evil magic-users in the world, does it feel so right in Taako’s hands?

"Sir, what do you know about the red robes?"

Angus’s question echoes in Taako’s mind. It bothers him more than he wants to admit that he wasn’t able to come up with a better answer. Every time he tries to think about the red robes beyond the details that the Director told them, a strange, buzzing pressure starts to build behind his eyes, like his brain is being slowly filled with cotton wool and bees. He has to stop and press the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids, trying to keep a headache at bay.

It doesn’t make sense.

He should know more. He should be able to remember more. 

Shouldn’t he? 

But then, maybe there wasn’t much to know. Just because he lived through the war didn’t mean he learned all the details about the people who caused it. Like he told Angus, it’s not like he was moving in those circles. He’s just a traveling chef. It makes sense that he wouldn’t know much of the details of a giant, global war.

Right?

Taako leans forward, cradling the umbrastaff to his chest, and lets out a long, frustrated groan. 

Beneath his hands, the staff pulses warmth—almost like it can feel his frustration, and is trying to comfort him. Normally, he’d welcome it. This time, though, that response only heightens his feeling that he’s missing something.

Taako groans again and sits up.

Running in circles inside his own head is useless. As much as he likes to pretend that he doesn’t care, that he’s good out here, thank you—he knows that now that he’s noticed this…absence, this lack, his brain won’t be able to let it go.

He needs more information—about the umbrastaff, about the red robes. 

And, he realizes, he knows exactly how he can get it.

The next time Angus hints to him, clumsily, that he might want to borrow the umbrastaff for a short time—it's important to examine all the evidence, sir! —Taako gives it to him. 

And then he waits.

–

To Angus’s credit, he doesn’t go to the Director immediately. Taako tails him discreetly for the next couple days, and watches him go through all the motions of his usual research. He takes it back to his own little workspace first, where Taako can only assume he is examining it thoroughly and taking copious notes. He brings it to Leon, too, and comes out of Leon’s chambers with a small furrow between his brows. Taako wonders what Leon told him.

It’s only on the third day, after he’s done all he can on his own, that Taako sees him leave the Seekers’ quarters with the umbrella tucked under his arm, walking just a little too fast to the main bubble that houses the Director’s quarters. It’s late enough that the grounds are dim and mostly deserted, but Angus still stops a couple times to check over his shoulder, one time even almost managing to catch Taako before he ducks out of sight.

After Angus goes inside, Taako leans against the outer wall of the main bubble to wait. He stares up at the stars, searching for the familiar constellations he used to pick out on clear nights on the road.

It’s weird. There are some he recognizes—at least one that he remembers Sazed pointing out to him, and he scowls at it—but it feels like there aren’t as many as there should be. These are the same stars he’s been staring up at his whole life, and for a moment, they seem intensely unfamiliar.

Before he can think too hard about it, though, he hears the faint sound of Angus’s footsteps from inside. He forces his gaze back to the ground. Now isn’t the time for another mystery.

He’s managed to re-assume his casual pose against the wall by the time Angus pushes out of the door of the main bubble and turns almost directly into him.

“Hey, Ango.”

Angus stifles a gasp, and Taako can see him take a second to square his shoulders and steady himself. It reminds Taako of the way he's seen the Director collect herself in moments of stress, and he can't decide if he finds that fact endearing or concerning.

“Hi, sir,” Angus says.

“Whatcha up to?”

And then suddenly Angus looks just like a ten-year-old who has been caught doing something he shouldn’t. “Um,” he says. “I was just—the Director wanted to check in about the results of our latest searches.”

“Oh, nice,” Taako says, keeping his tone carefully casual. ‘Have you found anything?”

“Not yet, sir, but there are several promising signs that we might be close to finding the next Relic! There are anomalies out towards Woven Gulch that we think might—”

Taako hurries to interrupt him—he knows how excited Angus gets about explaining his Seeker duties, and he wants to keep them on topic.

“Great, great, I’m glad you guys are on top of all that,” he says. “Hey, listen, do you think I could grab my staff back from you real quick? I know you were looking into it, but Magnus asked me to charm this new chest he just built, and it’ll go a lot better with the staff than my shitty spare wand, you know?”

“Um,” Angus says again.

“Just for a minute, and then you can investigate to your heart’s content.”

“Well,” Angus says, looking now distinctly uncomfortable. “Of course, sir, I just need to—”

And Taako goes in for the kill.

“Unless you think the Director’s not done with it yet?”

The effect is instantaneous, and Taako almost feels bad at the look of pure horror that Angus gives him. Then Angus catches himself, and tries to school his face back to something more neutral—he’s definitely been taking tips from the Director—but he’s still only a kid, and his mask is imperfect.

“Um,” Angus says. “What do you mean, sir?”

“Come on, Ango, give me some credit.”

And then, to Taako’s own horror, Angus’s little face crumples.

“I’m sorry, sir!” he says. “I didn’t mean—I wasn’t lying, exactly. The Director said she could help figure out what was wrong with the staff, and make sure that it was safe for you, and I thought—she knows so much about the red robes and their magic, and, well—”

Shit. Now Taako actually feels bad. “Hey, hey, slow down,” he says, holding out his hands. “I’m not mad, Angus.”

Angus pulls up short, and Taako hopes that using his real name helped show the kid that he really means it.

“You’re not?”

“Noperooni,” Taako says. “But I am curious. Did the Director say what she was going to do with it?” 

Angus hesitates. “Not exactly. She just said that she wanted to try to fix it, so that it wouldn’t hurt you or anyone else. She said she thought she knew why it was acting the—the way that it was.” 

It made sense, Taako thought, and lined up with the way the Director had talked to him about the staff that first night. Except— 

Except then, she had acted as though she didn’t know what was wrong with it. She’d wanted to run tests, she said. Had she been lying then? Or had she found out more information afterwards?

Either way, why hadn’t she told Taako?

“She sure seems to know a lot about it, for something that was made by her mortal enemies or whatever,” Taako says, half to himself. 

“I agree, sir.” 

Taako looks down at Angus, surprised. He always thought that Angus worshipped the ground the Director walked on. The way he’s seen her interact with him, he can’t really blame the kid. 

Angus continues, “The Director knows so much about the red robes, and the relics, more than any of us. I told her—” he hesitates. “I gave her a condition, for me getting the umbrella. I said that I would get it for her if she promised to tell me the truth.” 

“The truth?”

“About the Bureau, sir, and the Relics, and what we’re all doing here. There’s something strange going on here, sir, something we’re all missing.” He pauses, his face determined. “The Director promised to tell me what it is.”

This kid, Taako thinks. He understands why the Director brought him in. He also thinks it might be the biggest mistake she ever made, if she has secrets she wants to keep safe.

“Hey, do you know where the Director is now?” Taako asks. 

Angus shuffles his feet. “I heard her asking Avi for a bubble down to the surface,” he says finally. “On my way out of her office.”

“You heard her, huh?” Taako says, giving Angus a sideways look. “Just by accident?”

Angus blushes. “It’s not eavesdropping sir, it’s sleuthing! A good detective always keeps his ears and eyes open.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

The wheels in Taako’s head are turning as he goes over everything he’s learned in the last few minutes. The Director knows something about his umbrastaff, more than she’s been saying. She as much as admitted to Angus that there is something going on with the Bureau that she has been keeping from them all. There’s the strange gaps in his own memory, that static whenever he thinks about the red robes or the wars, which seemed to concern the Director—but didn’t surprise her.

And now the Director has left the Bureau, taking Taako’s umbrastaff to the surface, for who knows what purpose.

And Taako remembers that the last time he was in the Director’s office, there was a door behind her desk. 

It could be just a supply closet or something, of course. There had been no magic on it that he could detect, no traps. There could be nothing to find.

But he does have the world’s greatest detective on his side.

Taako gives Angus a sly look.

“What do you say to doing a little more sleuthing?”

–

As it turns out, the door in the Director’s office isn’t even locked.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t any traps, though.

Luckily for both of them, Taako is the one who steps into the hallway first. He has a brief moment of panic as the floor seems to give way underneath him, sucking him under until he is engulfed completely. He flails for a moment in the darkness, trying to orient himself—and he realizes that he can still breathe, and that the Director having a quicksand floor on the way to her private quarters makes no sense—

And then he’s lying on his back in the hallway, looking up at Angus, who is still standing just on the other side of the door, his wand outstretched.

“Hey,” Taako says. “Be careful where you step.”

Angus rolls his eyes. “Thanks for the tip, sir. Are you okay?”

“Oh, yeah. I wasn’t kidding about being careful, though.” He sits up. “Just remember, whatever you see when you step in here, it isn’t real.”

Angus nods solemnly, and takes a careful step into the hallway. Taako reaches out, ready to shake him out of whatever illusions the trap might throw at him—but Angus only takes a sharp breath, screws his eyes shut and shakes his head firmly once. 

Then he opens his eyes. “Okay, sir. Do you think there are any other traps? I already disabled the alarm.”

Taako looks where Angus is pointing, and sees a large alarm bell standing against the wall, ringing frantically, and making no noise at all. A Silence spell. And he would have had to have been fast—the alarm probably went off as soon as Taako stepped over the threshold. He looks back at Angus.

“You did that?”

“Ive been reading about first and second level spells, sir,” Angus says. “But it’s the first time I’ve tried casting one. It’ll only last about ten minutes, though, so we should keep moving.”

Taako can’t help but stare at him for a moment.

This fucking kid.

He takes Angus’s hand and lets the kid help him to his feet.

“Pretty good for a first try,” he says.

Angus blushes.

“I think this means we must be on the right track, right sir?” he says.

“It sure does, Ango,” Taako says, staring down one more door between them and answers. “It sure fucking does.”

–

Between Taako and Angus, the lock on the door at the end of the hallway poses them little issue. (If Taako were a different kind of mentor, he might be concerned at Angus’s skills at breaking and entering. But as it is, he’s kind of proud.)

The Director’s inner sanctum is somehow exactly as Taako expected: it’s fastidiously neat, just like her outer office, and lit with soft, glowing lamps the brighten automatically when they enter. There is a bed in one corner, the covers so smooth it might not have been slept on in days. To one side is a desk holding two precisely lined-up stacks of journals, two quills, and two new journals lying open, ready to be used. On the corner of the desk is a disk with some kind of symbol floating over it. Taako examines it for a moment, but he’s no cleric, and given the alarms they’ve encountered already, he knows better than to touch anything here until he’s sure he needs to.

“Sir, look over here,” Angus says. 

Taako looks. Angus has moved over to the corner of the room, behind the Director’s desk, and is pointing to a tank with…something inside it that Taako can’t quite wrap his mind around. Looking at it makes his brain feel the same way it does when he thinks too hard about the red robes, or tries to remember too specifically where he was during the Relic Wars, and—oh.

An idea starts to form in Taako’s mind—-except that something stops the idea from taking hold; each time he tries to grasp it, it slips away like a dream.

“I have a theory,” Taako says. “Here, hang on.”

He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a flask. The light inside the tank pulses as he approaches it, and the pressure building behind Taako’s eyes pulses in time. He looks away quickly, and notices another alarm bell mounted on the wall.

“Hey Ango, can you take care of that one too?”

Angus nods, and casts another Silence spell on the alarm bell above the tank. He looks uncharacteristically grave. Taako can only imagine what he must be thinking—the kid loves the Director like a parent, and this is proof that she’s been lying to them all.

Once Taako is sure the Silence spell has taken effect, he dips the flask into the tank, trying his best to avoid looking directly at it, and scoops out some water.

“You said the Director promised to tell you the truth, right?”

Angus nods.

“So there’s—clearly there are things she’s been keeping from us. About the Relics or the red robes or—something.” Taako holds up the flask. “I think this could help us get some answers.”

“Oh!” Angus brightens. “You think it could be—” Then he stops abruptly, putting a hand to his head. “Oh boy, that makes my brain feel weird.”

“Yeah, don’t think about it too hard,” Taako says. “Just give us a sec.”

He looks down at the flask. Ugh, this is going to suck. The stuff tasted bad enough the first—but Taako finds he can’t even finish that thought without the static washing over his brain.

Nothing for it, then.

“Bottom’s up,” Taako says, and takes a swig.

At first, nothing much happens.

Taako’s vision clears, and the faint feeling of nausea he had when looking at the tank dissipates, and he can see now that inside is a miniature voidfish. A child, he realizes. It must be Fisher’s child—

A sudden sense of something huge and heavy looms over him, like a wave about to crest and break over his mind. He remembers the voidfish’s name. He remembers it because he remembers where they found it, the seven of them, in cycle 47—

And he remembers the cycles—flying out of the planar system, over and over, watching his body be pulled apart into threads of light—

He remembers the Light—

He remembers the Hunger—

Taako can hear what he thinks is Angus calling his name, panicked and frantic, but he can’t answer. His knees buckle as the wave crashes down over him and a hundred years of memories begin to flood his mind. It feels like his brain is going to shatter into a million pieces under the weight of it, and all he can think to do—for however much he is capable of thinking, right now—is to latch onto some kind of through-line, something to help put these memories in sequence so they don’t crush his mind entirely, and what he finds is—

Lup. His sister.

He remembers applying for the academy. He remembers the Institute, the fierce pride he felt at being chosen for the Starblaster mission.

He remembers that first day on the Starblaster, watching their world get eaten.

He remembers learning languages with the mongoose family in their first plane, going scrapping in the robot kingdom, tasting all the food he could find on Tesseralia. Teaching Barry—Barry—how to swim on the beach world. The Judges, looming overhead. World after world, year after year, the constant running and searching and running again. Making the Relics, searching for a world where they could use them, where they could finally stop and rest.

And everywhere, across all those memories—he remembers Lup.

Above all, Lup. Through everything, Lup. Long days on the road, late nights spent cooking up good food and better schemes, fighting with her and laughing with her and curling up next to her at night in their bed at Tía’s house, in their too-small caravan, in their somehow even smaller cabin on the Starblaster. The emptiness he’s carried with him as long as he could remember, the gaping hole beside him, the feeling that something, someone was missing—it was Lup. 

How could he forget Lup?

Taako takes a deep, ragged breath. The torrent of memories is slowing, the weight of them no longer crushing. He can think a bit, as the old-new memories slot in amongst more recent ones.

He remembers the wars now, fully. He remembers putting the Philosopher’s Stone into the world, and how, as the news of the havoc it wreaked began to trickle in, he took all the sorrow and grief and guilt and locked it away securely inside himself, where he could pretend he didn’t feel it. 

He remembers fighting with Lup about it. She hadn’t been able to do the same, had felt each loss so acutely it was destroying her.

And he remembers, now, those last few months. Lup’s note, his and Barry’s desperate search. Triangulating every location the Gauntlet razed, looking for places she might have gone.

Places like Phandalin, reduced to a vast circle of black glass.

Places like Wave Echo Cave, where they found the Guantlet—Lup’s Gauntlet.

Where they found—

Where they found—

The image of a skeleton in a red robe flashes across his mind, and Taako presses a hand to his mouth as his stomach revolts at the memory of the red robe’s bones—Lup’s bones—crumbling to ash beneath his fingers.

Lup is dead. 

She might be gone forever, and all he has left of her is her staff, and now even that is—

Wait.

The Director—Lucretia, holy shit, the Director is Lucretia—had wanted the staff after she heard about Angus’s magic lesson.

The letters the umbrella blasted into the wall—

L-U-P.

The wash of shame and anger at the fact that he didn’t recognize his own sister’s name is swiftly overtaken as the dots suddenly all connect and Taako can’t suppress another sob as he realizes where Lup is, where Lup has been all this time, and—oh, of course.

Lucretia would have recognized the Lup’s name.

She would have made the same connections he just made, realized what had happened to Lup, why they had never found her.

And she would have wanted to get Lup out.

Wouldn’t she?

The thought gives Taako pause. The Lucretia he knew—she would never have left Lup imprisoned once she realized where she was. 

But he never would have thought the Lucretia he knew would have erased all memory of Lup, either.

Because that’s what happened. That’s what must have happened.

Maybe he hadn’t known her as well as he thought.

Maybe none of them had.

Taako sits up slowly. His head is spinning with the weight of a century of memories and the realization that Lup is alive. It takes a moment to realize that the feather-light weight on his shoulder is Angus’s hand, steadying him.

“Taako? Sir?” Angus’s voice is small and scared and it sounds like he’s been crying. “Sir, are—are you okay?”

“I’m good, Ango,” Taako says. His own voice is hoarse—he wonders if he’s been screaming. He hopes not, for Angus’s sake. His upper lip and chin feel wet and sticky, and when he reaches up to touch them, his fingers come away red. “That fish poop had a hell of a kick this time.”

A couple more bright red drops fall from Taako’s nose, leaving shining black spots on the deep blue rug. He rummages in his pockets for a second before a small hand comes into view, holding out a neatly folded handkerchief. He looks up at Angus. The kid’s eyes are still red, but he’s done an admirable job of pulling himself together.

“You—you staticked out there for a second, sir,” Angus says.

“Right. Right. Thanks.” Taako takes the handkerchief and dabs at his face, wincing at the smudges of red marring the pristine white fabric. “You’d better drink up,” he says. “Don’t worry, it won’t—there’s nothing for you to remember that would hurt, I don’t think.”

Angus retrieves the flask from where it fell when Taako collapsed. He looks at it for a moment, and Taako can almost see the wheels turning behind his small, serious face. 

“I’ll be right here, Ango,” Taako says. He’s not sure how much comfort that is, as he’s still half collapsed on the floor and covered in his own blood. But Angus meets his eyes and nods seriously.

“I know, sir.” 

And he takes a swig from the flask.

Taako watches him carefully, but he only makes a face at the taste (and okay yeah, it is kind of adorable). He looks around, and his whole face lights up as he sees the tank.

“Oh! A baby voidfish!” Angus says. He goes up to the tank to get a closer look, his eyes bright. “Of course! Did it—” He turns to Taako. “There was more, wasn’t there? That you remembered just now?”

Taako gives a tired laugh. “Yeah, little man. There was more. I’ll—I can fill you in later, if that’s okay.”

Angus visibly swallows down what must be a million questions, and nods.

“Okay. What now, sir?”

What now?

It’s a good question. Taako sits back on his heels and takes stock.

The Light is in pieces. The scouts arrived at Midsummer, which means the Hunger is coming, and soon. Barry is out there, somewhere, and Magnus and Merle and Davenport still remember nothing. And Lup is—Lucretia has—

Taako clamps down on his anger. He has to be able to think straight right now.

Deep breath.

There’s a whole lot of new-old info in his brain and a whole slew of problems to solve, but Taako doesn’t have to think too hard to know his way forward.

Find Lucretia. Get the umbrastaff. Get Lup back.

He doesn’t know yet how to free Lup from the staff, but he’ll figure it out. Lucretia has kept Lup from him for ten years. He won’t let her keep them apart a minute longer than he has to.

Taako stands, and pretends not to notice how Angus reaches out to steady him when he wobbles a little. He gives his face one last swipe with Angus’s handkerchief and shoves it in his pocket.

“Now, we need to find the Director.” He pauses. "And I'm going to need to borrow your wand."

Now

Lucretia tries to steady herself as the bottom drops out of her world for the second time in as many weeks. 

“Taako,” she says. “Did you…?”

Taako’s gaze is hard and cold and unflinching, with an utterly foreign look that Lucretia realizes might be hatred.

“Those traps in your office were doozies,” he says. “It’s a good thing Angus and I were together.”

Lucretia feels like she’s in free fall. Her own emotions and Lup’s are all jumbled up inside her so she’s no longer sure whose is whose, and her brain is almost entirely empty of words. She knows what it means, that Taako and Angus went to her office, got past the traps. She knows what it means that Taako is looking at her like that, calling her by that name. But her brain can’t seem to process it.

“You…you inoculated yourselves.” She looks him up and down, taking him in fully for the first time. His posture is different; all his studied nonchalance has deserted him, and instead every muscle is tightly wound like a coiled spring. There are traces of dried blood under his nose and on his chin.

Remembering a hundred years of memories on his own, with only Angus there to help him—it’s a wonder he’s still standing.

“Are you all right?” she asks, before she can stop herself. Taako scoffs.

“Golden,” he says. “I mean, it hurt a hell of a lot more the second time. You know, there was just so much stuff to cram back into the old noggin.” He taps his temple, and the look he gives her is so cold she hardly recognizes him. “But I’m all good now.”

“Taako, I—”

She has no idea how she planned to finish that sentence. An apology? An explanation? They all seem woefully inadequate. 

But it doesn’t matter, because Taako doesn’t let her get that far.

“You know, I don’t really have much interest in anything you have to say to me right now, Lucretia,” he says. “I just want the answer to one question.”

He raises a wand—and she has a moment to wonder where he got it before she realizes it’s Angus’s wand—and points it at her.

“Where the hell is my sister?”