Taako would hate to admit it, but Lucretia knows him very well. You can't go through a century of deaths together without getting to know each other at least a little. And Lucretia is an observer; her whole shtick is to watch others' behaviors and record them. Taako, being only second to Lup in terms of brash loudness and flamboyancy in their Starblaster days, caught Lucretia's attention almost immediately.
After her greatest mistake, Lucretia had a lot of time to reminisce. Nostalgia is an old friend.
She couldn't tell you how many times she's sat and thought about Taako's dinners, the way he shimmied his shoulders to the beat when they had music playing, how his eyebrow twitched when he was confused, that wrinkle he'd get across the bridge of his nose when he was angry. She's thought of all of them this way, all the little signs she didn't even know she knew that told her about how they were feeling.
Last night Taako got that wrinkle across the bridge of his nose sitting at her bedside and for the first time in maybe ever, Lucretia had been looking to put it there.
It was- it was too much. It was too much more than she deserves, to wake from her sleep to have someone- to have Taako, Taako, who she lost so long ago, who she flung away from herself knowingly and willingly- waiting for her. He'd had that pinched look at the corners of his eyes he got when Lup was hurt on the Starblaster, when Merle and Davenport weren't back from their expeditions on time, when Magnus charged into a fight without thinking, when Barry hadn't left his lab for days on end. Lucretia doesn't get to put that look on Taako's face anymore. She can't . Really and truly; she'd thought herself- and Taako- incapable of it.
And yet, he was there. He waited for her to wake. He asked why she hadn't gone for help and seemed appalled when Lucretia explained the fact that she didn't deserve to call on them for assistance.
She couldn't stand to look at Taako and see the past, when she'd get hurt on one mission or another and he'd show up with a pithy one liner and a load of comfort food. It's selfish and wrong but Lucretia just can't keep forcing herself to look back on all that she ruined. It's the punishment she deserves but after all those years alone, with only a deteriorating Davenport for company, all these times she hated herself and wanted to end it but knew she had penance to complete, Lucretia is tired. She felt it keenly when Taako asked her what was going on, the exhaustion settling deep in her bones.
Two weeks, she'd thought, and then, he has to be angry .
A concerned Taako was not status quo; it was unnatural and unbalanced in a world where Lucretia had undertaken the title of Madame Director to bring about balance. And so she had to push him back from where he was falling off-kilter, to restore him- and herself- to the natural order.
She had to piss him off. Thankfully, that is one thing Lucretia has always excelled at.
In the end, it was easy. Lucretia simply had to call Taako's attention to the things about her he had always hated; her arrogance, her deep, abiding need to be self-sufficient, and the kicker, her pride. It was her pride, after all, which helped force her hand with the voidfish, or so he believed.
Lucretia wonders if he'll ever realize it was her fear driving her hand in that moment. Maybe, maybe not. It will hardly matter after the next two weeks.
What will you do if no one comes for you?
Lucretia twists her head to and fro, trying to shake these thoughts free; they've been worming their way inside ever since Taako saved her from the elf. They would come. Maybe not the Starblaster crew, against all odds. But someone would come to make her pay- the elf had made that abundantly clear.
Security will be raised after this; there's no hiding it from the clerics now, not when Taako's almost certainly told them about the fight in your office. The Ragged Harmony won't get the chance to get to you.
"No, no," Lucretia murmurs into the darkness of the healing wing. There is no one around to hear her as her chest shakes. "No, there has to be a way."
You know what it will come down to, don't you? What it has always been coming to.
"I know." Unconsciously, her good hand goes to her other arm, the left one. She has to go above the sling, higher than she usually does, but the familiar feeling of her nails digging into her bicep is soothing. She drags downward, ignores the skin getting caught under her fingernails. It's too dark to see, but she knows without looking that there are angry red welts rising there. "I know."
You love responsibility so much. So take it.
Lucretia scratches harder, faster. Her nails catch on jagged skin, ripping it open. She doesn't stop when her shoulder becomes wet. "I- I'm scared," she admits softly. Her teeth are chattering.
Tough shit. Get it done, Lucy.
"Yeah, yeah. Get it done."
Two weeks, Lucretia reflects, were fast becoming an eternity.
She doesn't sleep the rest of the night, just sits and scratches and tries not to think. In the morning, just before the break of dawn, the clerics on morning shift come in. A buff orc woman checks her bandages.
At her arched eyebrow, Lucretia smiles weakly and gestures at her shoulder. "I'm a very restless sleeper. Apologies."
She doesn't really know what she's sorry for. Taking up more medical supplies, maybe. The terrible excuse, probably. Using up a healer's valuable time, most definitely.
She's so very tired. It feels as if Lucretia is a wind-up toy who is slowly ticking down to stopping. There's no one left to help turn the key in her back to keep her going. Even if someone offered, Lucretia wouldn't accept.
"It will be nice to rest," she whispers to herself on the way out of the healing wing. It's an admission that burns on the way up. She shouldn't get to rest after what she's done. But she is so, so tired. And the days are so long. The nights are even longer.
It's less than fourteen days now, but the finish line feels far away.
It feels even farther as Lucretia slides into her office after haggling with the clerics to get them to dismiss her case from the files (they refused and now Lucretia will definitely be looking forward to sharp words from both Killian and Carey when they get back from Raven's Roost). The room is still as disaster. There is at least three months worth of paperwork scattered about, and she has nowhere to sit with her desk in shambles.
There's dried blood splattered across the rug Carey got for her birthday. She'll have to clean it. It's actually funny; if she tilts her head just right, the morning light makes the blood just the color of their IPRE robes.
Suddenly, Lucretia's chest is too tight. Her lungs won't expand. It feels like her breath is caught just at the back of her throat, unable to push past and exit her body. Her heart is pounding and her eyes are locked on the blood she spilled less than twenty-four hours ago and when did she end up on her knees?
The world is going dark at the edges and her head is in her hands and Lucretia may just die here, what if she just asphyxiates for no reason, haha, wouldn't that be so funny, after everything her body just shuts down, well, she tells herself, not like you don't deserve it, it's a better end than you do deserve, you selfish, wretched creature, get up, get off your ass, there's work to be done you worthless-
A hand lands on Lucretia's shoulder. A sheaf of golden hair enters her vision as someone leans over her. Brown eyes meet blue and Lucretia gasps in a lungful of sweet, sweet air.
"Jesus, Luc," Taako says, and there's that unidentifiable something in his tone again, the same one she heard outside her door when she'd been fighting for her life, "what happened to you?"
There is no wrinkle across the bridge of his nose.