Two weeks.
"You can make it," Lucretia tells herself. She places one palm on her solar plexus, takes a breath, holds it. She lets it out through her mouth, slow and steady. "Two weeks. You can make it for two more weeks."
It didn't seem like any of the Starblaster Crew were going to take her up on her tacit offer of retribution. For a while after Taako appeared at her door she'd been- well, not hopeful but...was it strange to say excited? On edge, maybe. Anticipation made her heartbeat ratchet up for days afterward.
But then he's simply failed to appear again. Perhaps she'd scared him off. Lucretia knows from experience that planning to do something horrible and acting it out were two very different things.
"Not that killing you is horrible," she reminds herself. Years ago, that idea might have stung but Lucretia has had plenty of time to get used to the fact that she is unworthy of the air she breathes, the space she takes up. Now it is a dull ache, like pressing on a day-old bruise to see if it has healed. The knowledge Lucretia must die is an old friend; she'd even go so far as to call it a comfort- something true through and through and inescapable as the Hunger was for years. But not half as terrifying.
No, what is terrifying is the fact that Lucretia has to last two more weeks. This is torture, all of it: the eating, the sleeping and the looking at herself in the mirror and trying not to vomit. There are scratches on her arms that have been there for months. She keeps reopening them and getting blood on her sleeves. She's using up at least two spellslots a day just to make sure her clothing isn't alarming when it's being laundered. Another spellslot for keeping the food down (or keeping Avi from noticing her getting sick; he'd just fret and hem and haw and put Lucretia on a broth diet and she doesn't need the special treatment).
Lucretia is also getting headaches more often these days. It might be a side effect of the belladonna- she had refused to give her clerics anything to worry about but that might have backfired on her. Protection from Poison is effective but not kind. But she didn't exactly deserve to take up the precious medicine it would take to relieve her symptoms, not when they were dealing with an unexpected wildfire near Raven's Roost still. Lucretia is up here, safe and sound in her cozy office with a headache while the people down there are burning and starving and hurting. She can spare a few painkillers.
But the headaches stay and she's down a few spellslots and she's not sleeping still. The night terrors are getting worse, not better. Usually Lucretia can't remember exactly what goes on in them, but the last few-
Sparks of light, a laugh that cleaves the sky in two, a flash of white, a smile too wide for the face it is set in, the screams are so LOUD-
"Enough." Lucretia snaps herself out of her memories, giving her shoulders a tight shake. Her head bobs, pain lancing through her temples to beat a staccato rhythm behind her eyes. Breathe, Lucretia. In through the nose and out through the mouth.
You just gotta make it two more weeks.
"I can't, I can't , oh gods, please," Lucretia whispers. Shame curls through her gut; after all she's done, she can't face fourteen more days? Fourteen days alone is a small price to pay for what she's done. Look at Taako or Merle or Lup or Magnus or Barry- all alone, for years. And she can't even make it fourteen days.
Pathetic.
This isn't about you. Say it.
"This isn't about me."
There; better, see?
"Better." Lucretia isn't sure when she became such a bad liar she can't even fool herself, but there it is. It doesn't matter, though. Two more weeks and she won't have to be good at anything.
Two weeks. You can do this.
Maybe she deserves this torture. No, she does deserve this torture. It's fitting, Lucretia supposes; she gave up everything to live alone for years because she thought she knew better than everyone she ever loved; now she gets to die slowly, lonely and tired and unable to blame anyone who left her in the dust. It's poetic, and the writer in Lucretia is practically giddy.
Stop feeling bad for yourself. There's work to be done.
She spares a thought to using a spellslot to enchant her pen to write for her, but decides against it. She's down to two spellslots today and she doesn't know if the panic will come back again and make her scratch at her arms again. Her anxieties seem to compound in the night. Unfortunately, Lucretia finds that her hands are too shaky these days to write two papers at the same time, so she's going to have to do this the old fashioned way.
It takes her a lot more concentration than Lucretia would like to admit to hold even one pen steady and that's her excuse for not hearing the elf when they appeared.
One thing about the Bureau of Benevolence she still hasn't quite gotten used to is its lack of anonymity. Anybody can teleport up here if they know the spells now. It's quite annoying, if she's being honest.
One second she's putting pen to paper; the next, her head is rebounding off the edge of her desk and Lucretia sees stars. Her body falls limp instantly and she slides from her chair to the floor. Boots approach her and the sunlight coming through her curtains catch on a glint of blonde hair.
"Taa- aako ," Lucretia slurs, trying to get her arms beneath her on pure instinct. "Lu -up ?"
It's hard to relax, to stop yourself from fighting death when that's all you've been doing for a hundred years. But she won't fight- not if it's them.
Then her eyes meet with brown and Lucretia almost spits in her indignation. Damn it. For a second there she'd thought she could finally rest.
The unknown elf grins at her, a slice of pearly white in the dim of her office, and hands wrench her upright. "Guess again," the elf invites, playful. "I've got all day."
"I don't." Lucretia replies, and casts Shield. It's hasty, and only level one, but it blasts them back from her all the same. Her knees knock together from the force it took her to produce it; she hasn't struggled this much since before the sixty-fifth cycle.
The left side of her face feels wet. Lucretia has to blink as something crimson clings to her eyelashes. The wet reaches her lips and Lucretia tastes copper.
Forget it. You're fine.
"I believe I told Bella to take one month's time," Lucretia forces out, and she only slurs through like half of it so she's calling it a win. She's the Director, she can do that. "You took two weeks. Not to be impolite, or anything, but would you like me to get you a calendar? I'm not so hot at conjuration, but it just seems like you need it."
The elf looks a little confused- it seems to be a pattern with her and her assassins- and Lucretia attempts a wobbly approximation of a smile. "I nicknamed your friend Bella. You know- the orc woman? Lovely hair?"
That startles a laugh out of them. The Bulwark Staff had gone rolling when Lucretia's temple had connected with the desk and she can just spot the end of it poking out from beneath her curtains. The elf eyes it hungrily and Lucretia shifts, for the first time wary.
Can't let them get to it; it's your burden to bear, not theirs.
"She's committed but she lacks vision," the elf says conversationally. Their eyes have locked back on Lucretia and another type of hunger lingers there, like a skinny wolf spotting the first rabbit of spring. "I'll tell her you said hello. Once I'm finished with you, of course."
"Please do. You'll have to come back and visit together sometime," Lucretia says and then the elf lunges.
Lucretia has exactly one spellslot left and exactly zero will to live. Her Shield is weak, and easy to break. Her thoughts are swimming, slipping through her fingers like water. Her heartbeat is crashing in her ears.
The elf casts Magic Missile and Lucretia would laugh if she were capable of anything greater than a level three spell right now. Such a level one move. Her Shield stops it, but breaks.
"Hey, Madame Director!"
Oh shit . Taako.
She and the elf are stuck, stock still and listening to the rapping on her door.
"Now's not a good time, Taako," Lucretia calls, keeping her eyes carefully on the assassin. The elf smiles, arches an eyebrow. Their feet shift to the side and Lucretia mirrors them. They begin to slowly circle each other. "Could you maybe make an appointment?"
"Bullshit, Lucretia." Taako sounds annoyed and- and something else Lucretia doesn't have the brain power to name right now. "You're not answering Merle's letters either and now you've apparently been stuck in your office for three days? Come on, man, you're giving Avi a heart attack out here. I mean, not that I really care, 'cuz, y'know. Cha'boy's good out here and all that."
The elf tries out a fireball on her and, scrambling, panicked, Lucretia casts Antimagic Field, something she'd only try on her best days.
This is decidedly not her best day.
The level eight spell flickers around her, trying to form into something stronger but their fireball blasts right through it like it doesn't even exist. Lucretia's mind goes blank as the flames roar towards her face. This is it. This is how she ends.
You're not done yet. Two more weeks.
Lucretia dives to the side and the flames tear through the space her body occupied moments ago. The ball of flame sears a path of ash across her floor before slamming into her portrait. The frame crumbles beneath the magical onslaught, the pain peels and hisses and the entire thing starts to come crashing down. The elf yelps, trying to stumble back. In their haste, they trip over her Bulwark Staff, which has strangely rolled forward during the fight. They go down.
Thanks, Lucretia sends to the staff. The staff hums in the back of her mind.
Unsure of her feet, feeling not unlike a newborn colt, Lucretia tips back, trying to step away. Her feet meet air and she tumbles down her steps just like last week's fiasco.
Lucretia spends her time in midair thinking about how long it takes to fall. Then her back hits the ground. So does her head, skull rebounding twice. For what feels like a long time after that she stares up at the ceiling.
That might have been your most undignified fight ever.
There's movement from across the room- the elf is getting up. They've got their wand in hand. Lucretia really needs to move.
Her head does not like that plan.
It turns out that she doesn't have to make the next move at all, though, because all at once her door is blown off its hinges, tumbling end over end to land with an almighty racket three feet from Lucretia's outstretched hand. It gives her enough of a shock to the system that she sits up.
Lucretia's sight has barely stopped spinning before she makes out Taako's figure on her threshold. He is backlit by the hallway lights, his face cast in shadow. His shoulders are thrown back and tense. His wand glitters between nimble fingers. His blue eyes glint with unholy light.
"You know what, Taako's not good out here," Taako says, too casually. "What the absolute fuck is going on in here?"