Davenport watches Taako fall into rage, Magnus fall into grief, and Merle fall into prayer. He watches Kravitz slice through flesh as easily as a hot knife through butter. He watches Lup and Barry disappear into the void. He watches Killian and Carey and Avi fall to their knees and weep. He watches, takes a good, long look, and then he turns and places his hands upon the desecrated altar of Istus.
"Goddess," He prays . "I ask of you a boon."
Light fills him, floods him, drowns him-until soft hands grip Davenport's and pull him out of the light. Before him, knitting needles pinning her hair up, is Istus. Her mouth is a very thin line as she lets Davenport go and steps back to pick up her knitting.
"What, dear Captain," she asks, arch and omniscient, "could you possibly want of me on the day my temple is destroyed in the name of vengeance against one of your own?"
Taako wakes up without knowing exactly when he lost consciousness. He jackknifes upright, gasping, only to find himself in an entirely white room. His stone of farspeech is sitting by his bedside. Kravitz jerks to beside him, half-rising out of his seat as Taako's hand slips from his grasp.
Taako gasps again, gagging on air, and stares around wildly. He doesn't even hear Kravitz as he starts speaking, words tinny and faraway in the elf's ears. Where are they? How did they get here?
His side is tender, his fingers wrapped in gloves of bandages; he feels the skin there stretch and chaff-he'd burned them. He'd burned them on his own spell. Right after-
Lucretia died.
Taako's air leaves him again, and even though the pain in his aching muscles tried to drag him into unconsciousness again, he throws a hand out to grip at the reaper next to him. He needs-he needs something to ground him, because if he thinks too hard about holding Lucretia's rapidly cooling corpse in his arms, his vision will start tunneling just like it did in the temple, his lungs will contract to the size of acorns, he'll lose himself again just like he did when Magnus held him back from hurting Merle, because, because-
Because Lucretia is dead and Taako held her as she died.
"Krav-" He chokes.
His boyfriend pushes him back down onto the mattress gently, irrevocably. "Taako, it's okay-you're in the healer's wing, you're in a private room at the Bureau. You're okay. Just breathe. Do you need me to get a cleric?"
Taako realizes suddenly, looking into Kravitz's eyes, wide and dark, that he's been making a high-pitched keening sound in the back of his throat. The world is going wavery around the edges.
She's dead. She's dead. You feel like you killed her-and why wouldn't you? You wanted it for so long and now you have it and you want to throw it away from you but you can't because it's real, it's reality, you're going to have to figure out how to live in a world where Lucretia is dead and you killed her .
"I-I killed her."
As his soft words, the ultimate expression of guilt, he feels Kravitz's fingertips twitch, hesitate, and draw away in shock. Kravitz takes a half-step back before raising his arms, as if he's not sure what to do with them. He reaches out to stroke Taako's cheek but revulsion overwhelms Taako and he winces away. He can't do this, can't taint Kravitz's touch-if he let this happen to Lucy, how can he be sure he won't let it happen to his other loved ones?
" Oh no . Taako, no. You didn't hurt Lucretia."
"I did-I did-I didn't save her, I could've helped but I left her to die, I looked her in the eyes as they slit-" His words build behind his teeth, wanting out, wanting to tumble into the air and cut him like knives, razor sharp and poisonous. He tastes belladonna in the back of his throat. He heaves, retching, but he's dehydrated and weak and nothing comes up when Kravitz pushes his head between his knees. He heaves again, gasps, "I wanted to help her so bad, Kravitz. I failed her. They cut her open as I watched. I failed, I failed-"
"Taako, breathe. You have to calm yourself down before I get a cleric to do it for you. Just-just hold my hand and breathe, dear. Come on-"
"I can't! She's fucking dead, Krav-"
"She's not dead!"
Thoughts stall. The world narrows to a pinpoint. Bile and saliva collecting in a putrid mess on his tongue, hair hanging lank and sweaty in his face, Taako manages to gather the strength to heave in one breath, two. He spits the evidence of his betrayal, his guilt, his weakness, onto the tile floor, the words you killed her swimming before his very eyes. He can't quite comprehend what Krav is saying. "I-she's-Lucretia is dead, she died-I was holding-I had her and she-"
"Lucretia was only dead for a little while, Taako," Kravitz shakes still when he grips Taako's shoulders, but Taako can't throw him off this time. His heart beats so hard he thinks it'll break through his ribs. The words don't make sense. His world has come crashing down around his ears in a way Taako isn't sure he knows how to live with and yet Kravitz is playing a sick joke on him. "She was gone for-for longer than Merle was comfortable with, but he got her back with a Resurrection. The Raven Queen gave her special permission to come back to life. Lucretia's back Taako-she chose to come back. She's alive ." His trembling palms tighten, curling into the rough fabric of Taako's borrowed healer's wing tunic.
She's alive. She's alive. She's alive.
"Where?" Taako breathes.
"The healers are-"
Taako himself rips away from the reaper. Kravitz gives a concerned shout but Taako's already thrown his sheets at his boyfriend's feet, which proceed to get hopelessly tangled. Barely a flick of his wrist summons his wand to his hand, and then Taako bursts through the door to his chambers, jarring his shoulder on the doorframe as he goes.
"What you ask of me is nigh on impossible."
Davenport inclines his head. This is true. It also will not stop him from asking for it. "But it is not out of the realm of possibility."
"Your request may as well be, if not lingering on the very edge of it."
"Yet I still ask that you would do it."
"Why?"
Davenport thinks for a long moment. Then he shrugs. "Because I am tired of being angry. And I love her, which helps."
Taako skids around a corner, bare heels slipping over the waxed tiles. He overbalances slightly, almost fails his dexterity save, and ends up tumbling into a group of Bureau agents passing by. The dwarf goes down and becomes tangled in Taako's legs. But the wizard just huffs and, using the beanpole of a firbolg who was thrown against the wall as support, yanks his feet out one by one. He steps neatly over the screaming woman, shakes the disorientation from his mind, and whips around the next corner.
He's got to be close. How big could the healers' wing be?
"Taako! Wait!"
Taako ignores Kravitz shouting two corridors away and swings through the next doorway, narrowly avoiding going ass over tea kettle when he almost slams into a rolling cart loaded with cleric supplies. Feathers, powdered silver, and other spell components flutter through the air like some kind of demented snow flurry. Taako swipes them out of his face, panting. His legs scream at him and his ribs feel like they're about to slice through his very skin. He can't take in enough air.
You killed her. You killed her. You killed her.
He pelts onward, only years of navigating the Bureau guiding him. His vision is blurred with unshed tears; Taako isn't too sure what he's even crying over, if it's the stress or the grief that chokes him or just the sudden exertion. He doesn't have time to figure it out.
"Taako?" Says a voice that sounds like Magnus's as Taako rushes past a burly figure, but he can't stop now. He won't. "Taako, wait!"
Kravitz could be wrong. He could just be telling you what he thinks you need to hear. He just wants you to feel better.
You killed Lucretia.
Others scramble out of his way as Taako jolts into the next room; he vaguely recognizes a few of the team who originally helped him when he brought Lucretia here all that time ago. They'd helped him wash her blood from his hands. Taako isn't sure he deserved it then-he's almost sure he doesn't deserve it now. He opens his mouth, demands coming to his lips. But his voice fails him. Instead Taako stands, panting and exerted, on the precipice of completely deranged. He's not sure what type of sight he makes, but it's definitely not a good one.
Something sparks in the halfling cleric's eyes when he looks at her, though, because she ignores the animal fear and grief and desperation he knows lurks behind his own gaze. His fingers creak on the doorjamb, threatening to break it apart entirely. The halfling, silent, raises her hand and points to a doorway across the room.
Taako sprints towards it, vaults over an empty stretcher laden with soiled bandage and towels, all that crimson burning a violent blur into his retinas. But he can't stop because suddenly the door is coming up on him and Taako barely gets it open in time not to simply slam right into the surface, and he jerks with the motion of the door as it swings inward, one hand clenched in a death grip around the knob, and he's looking around at yet another stark white room and there's nothing here, there's nothing, nothingnothingnothing -
Except a very much alive, very unconscious Lucretia, breathing shallow and steady where she's propped up on her pillows. Her face is dark against the cream of her sheets, and her throat is clear of any wounds. She does not stir.
Taako lunges for her, falling to his knees at her bedside. He can't seem to register too much of her now, not when his eyes are greedily attempting to drink in every detail at once-he's not sure this is real, it can't be, she has to be dead, but there's one way he can know for sure-
Taako snatches her hand hungrily between his own sweating palms, and casts Detect Thoughts.
"If you do this," Davenport points out in his most reasonable tone, "you will have effectively reversed time. So, in a way, your temple will never be desecrated at all."
Her gaze is shrewd and otherworldly. He can feel it pick his very soul apart. They stare at each other, the clock tick-tick-tick ing in the back of Davenport's mind, sweat gathering on his brow. Istus sighs, shakes her head, and tells him, "I'm only doing this because I feel the Raven Queen has already given her own blessing, as a gift to me."
Istus picks up her scissors, which gleam silver and iridescent in her natural glow. She plucks a single, deep violet cord of yarn from her tapestry, and shears away a length of it.
After a second, Davenport sees Istus pale. The bottom of his stomach drops out as she wavers. "Oh. Oops. I might have cut that a little too short. Well. That's probably fine. I think."
"Wait, what-"
Taako plunges into Lucretia's unconscious mind, met with little resistance.
He finds himself standing in a garden. There are hedges carved into figures around him and after a second Taako jumps; he recognizes these shapes. Magnus raises the Flaming Raging Poisoning Sword of Doom near his right, entirely composed of bright verdant foliage. To his left and a little further down the stone path he's standing on, Carey and Killian hold a gift box between them, smiles made out of twigs. There are roses and violets and bluebells lining the path and rolling grass in the distance. The moon hangs heavy and low and full overhead.
It takes a closer look for Taako to realize these figures are slowly moving . Carey's smile extends; Killian lifts the box as if in offering. Magnus deflects an invisible missile with his sword and twists in slow motion, bringing the blade down on an unseen attacker. Taako has seen this move before; he'd watched Magnus pull the same thing over and over-he'd done the same just days ago in Istus's temple.
These are memories.
Twisting his head, Taako looks around, bewildered. There doesn't seem to be anyone else here; he's alone. But he can't be. This is Lucretia's mind. So where is she?
He walks a little farther down the path, ignoring the large entrance into a hedge maze as he passes it; above the plant life is a wooden arch labeled The Day of Story and Song . (He doesn't need to look.) Taako passes another hedge, this one shaped like Avi. It motions as if to throw the wooden spear in its hand; as the weapon leaves the plant, it evaporates into thin air and reappears in hedge-Avi's palm again. Taako recognizes this, too; it's the day Avi saved them after Taako's Rope Trick ran out. There are other memories scattered along his route, but Taako doesn't stop to observe them; it isn't his place, and not what he came here for besides. He tries to breathe evenly before remembering he's not actually in his physical body. Taako can vaguely feel his own lungs moving of their own accord, his fingers wrapped perhaps a tad too tightly around Lucretia's. But his link to the physical world is thin and unimportant right now.
His own thoughts whirl as he continues ever onward. She's alive. She's alive. You're in Lucretia's mind, which means she's here. She survived.
The path takes a gentle bend around a curve and Taako follows it almost absentmindedly, eyes darting to and fro as he searches. And then, just as suddenly as he arrived here, he sees her.
Lucretia of Faerun sits, posture erect and robes arranged in an orderly fashion, on a wrought iron bench in front of yet another hedge-memory. She's just off the path, in plain view, and for a moment Taako can do nothing but study her profile. She has a strong, prominent nose and a sloping, intelligent forehead. Her hair has gotten a bit longer, or perhaps that is simply her own perception of her appearance; either way, white curls look good on her. Her robes are free of blood and dust. Her hands fold over themselves in her lap. She doesn't look as old as he remembers her. It is the calmest he's seen her in a long, long time.
Taako finishes his inventory of her just as Lucretia turns her head, and smiles at him. "Taako," she says, genuinely surprised, and he's never heard her voice sound so warm. "You're here."
"Lucy," Taako releases on a single breath. Between one heartbeat and the next, he is at her side. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, which part of her he wants to touch first, the simple need for reassurance stalling him with its potency. Lucretia looks up at him with wide, dark eyes, and unfolds her hands to pat the bench beside her. Taako sinks down, words fleeing him.
You're alive. You're alive. You're alive.
When he settles, she reaches out and Taako allows her to take his hand. He links their fingers and feels for the first time since he woke that he might be able to breathe on his own. "Thank you for coming."
"Thank- gods, Luc. You are the single most uptight person I have ever met. Could you make this sound more like a conference meeting?"
Her laugh is deep and void of her usual raspiness. Taako clutches her hand between both of his all the tighter. "I suppose you're right. But what do you think I should say to the guy whose arms I died in?"
"Well, you could start with a promise to never ever do that again ."
She bumps her shoulder against Taako's and he inhales sharply, disbelief still clinging to his sharp edges. "It's a deal," Lucretia vows. "I'm sorry you had to go through that. And I never did get to thank you for it."
Taako feels his throat close to the size of a straw. "You don't have to."
After a long second of staring at each other, Lucretia's smile wavers a little and she flicks her eyes away. Taako frowns, crushing the urge he gets to make her stay, make her look at you because if she's looking away it means she's thinking about leaving. His muscles lock, forcing him into unnatural stillness as Lucretia raises her arm and gestures at the memory Taako hasn't taken previous notice of. "I suppose you'll want me to get rid of this one, then."
Taako looks up and jolts in his seat. The instinctive need to tear Lucretia away from danger almost raises him to his feet-but it is only a memory. It's nothing more than an image.
Hedge-Taako holds hedge-Lucretia against his chest as he kneels on the plinth the plant is raised upon. Hedge-Lucretia's hand is on hedge-Taako's cheek; as he watches, heart pounding, her hand falls away from him, dropping to the floor and rebounding once before lying still. After a second, the hand raises again, and the moment repeats. "Oh gods," Taako mutters, squeezing his eyes shut. "Can we burn it?"
Lucretia's quiet laugh is not mocking, and does help Taako feel a little better. The sickness in his stomach stops before it reaches his throat, at least. "Sorry, but I think that'll do me more harm than good. You're using Detect Thoughts, not Modify Memory, anyway. And I-I want to keep it."
" Why? "
Lucretia doesn't tear her eyes away from the memory, content to let Taako study the side of her face. She squints, then opens her mouth. "I think it's because this is the moment I knew-really knew, not just had an idea or inkling-that I wanted to stay. It's dumb, isn't it? I realize that hope isn't lost, and I die right after."
"Pretty dumb."
Lucretia glances at him out of the corner of her eye. "It-that is what you want, too, right? You told me-I-that I should stay." Lucretia bites her lip, squeezes his hand. He squeezes back gently.
"I just-I just want you to get better ."
"It's going to hurt," Lucretia warns. Her face takes on just a hint of her usual drawn, serious continence, and Taako can't help himself; he reaches out and grips her shoulder with his left hand, turning her to face him fully. He leans in and rests their foreheads together, letting his hand slide to the knobs of her spine just under her nape and rest there. Taako lets them both breathe together for a moment. Lucretia sighs, and folds her free fingers over where his right hand still grips her left. After a calm moment, she continues. "I'm not going to be-be good at this, at least at first. I'm not good at taking care of myself, or taking people at their word, or trusting my friends. Obviously. So. I can promise I'm in this for the long haul, Taako. I can promise I'm trying . But I can't promise I can come all the way back-and I can't promise I won't need help getting there."
"You have it," Taako assures her. "You have me. I'm not going anywhere."
"Neither am I. I guess that means we're stuck together now."
His heart twists and Taako tries not to clutch at her robes too tightly. "I've heard of worse things."
Lucretia's smile is soft around the edges. She reaches up and brushes his fringe out of his eyes, cups his cheek. His stomach roils at the memory of what happened last time she did that, but Lucretia just sighs. "You're looking pretty tired, Taako. Maybe you should drop the spell and get some rest."
"Will you be there when I wake up?"
Lucretia nods gravely. "I will. And you'll stay with me?"
"Don't be stupid, Luc." Taako tells her, scoffing. "That's what you do for the people you love."
Taako lets Detect Thoughts slip through his fingers. When he opens his eyes inside her private healing rooms, Taako doesn't hesitate to climb up on top of the covers and curl around Lucretia. He nestles her head against his shoulder, flops an arm over her ribs as she unconsciously turns into his chest, and lets himself sleep. The room is dim, now, and silent. It's easy to let go.
Davenport blinks, and he is standing in the Bureau of Benevolence, watching Lucretia and Taako sleep. Relief gushes down the old captain's spine and he has to grab for a nearby chair to sink into as he spies Lucretia's chest moving with her breath. Neither stir as he sinks down at their bedside, except for Taako tightening his grip on her just slightly. It pulls a smile to Davenport's lips.
Istus has been true to her word, and reversed Lucretia's fate in her temple. Davenport should go tell the others what he'd seen and done-they must be worried about where he's been-he should get a report about what Lup and Barry said to the Raven Queen, and ask Kravitz if there will be any repercussions-he should find out what Merle had to do to help Lucretia's soul back to the Mortal Plane-
But the light is cool here, and his crewmates are breathing, alive but battered, and Davenport's knees ache, shaking with the weight of what he has done. He will stay here, just for a moment. Just to make sure.
Lucretia's face is different in sleep, smooth and unbothered and soft-and unwrinkled. What? He leans closer, thinking that perhaps the light is to blame, but no-her face is smoother than it should be, less drawn, even a little more filled out than Lucretia's worry usually affords her. It is as if her years from Wonderland have disappeared from her skin. Istus's last words begin to make a little more sense, and Davenport has to laugh quietly to himself. He won't ever ask the goddess of fate to wind a clock for him, that's for sure-she'd turned Lucretia's back a little too far. Davenport really can't wait to see the disgruntled expression Lucretia will get when she finds out she's going to have to stick around and age naturally just like the rest of them. She looks about Magnus's age now; the man is going to have a field day.
Davenport leans back, content to watch over two of his crew and wait for morning light. Taako seems to have stolen the first Lucretia-came-back-from-the-dead hug. He'll be damned if he doesn't get the next one.