"Oh my God."

It was Barry. She thought she was getting used to hearing him pop in and out of her brother's adventures, but she wasn't. It still shot through her like lightning. She mustered her remaining energy and focused her senses outside of the staff—it was harder when she was exhausted—and looked for him.

He was there, and she realized that he had been there for a while, and he was working as hard as any of them to get everybody out of there okay.

She listened as they headed away from what used to be Wonderland, straining for another hint of Barry's voice, but it was a while before he spoke again. And he explained that something was about to go down. But he was so cryptic about it, and it took her a second to realize that he meant the Hunger. The Hunger was on its way. Whatever Lucretia had been doing, it wasn't working, and Barry didn't trust her any more or he wouldn't have cut them off from her and the rest of the Bureau. Lup wasn't surprised. She didn't have half the information he did, and she'd long since stopped trusting Lucretia.

"…once I'm in my body, I'm gonna forget all of the truths that I know now in my lich form," he explained. Another piece to the puzzle that she still didn't quite understand. He could only remember when he was dead. She watched intently, peering through the folds of her brother's cloak at the tank in which floated an indistinct form which, even as indistinct as it was, she knew and loved as much as her own self. Barry.

She waited desperately, closing off her other senses, watching with all her might, as Barry descended into his own body and then—there he was. Glorious in his imperfection. Much as she loved him as a lich, there was something about that body that just… well. She wanted to cry, or laugh, but without a body of her own she could do neither. And so she watched, hungrily, as he stepped out and started talking with the boys. And then his coin started to talk.

"Your name is Barry Bluejeans. You are afraid of the dark." Lup smirked. Not when she was around. Which, of course, she wasn't. The smirk faded. "Your very favorite thing in the world is swimming in very cold water on a very hot day. You get ill when you drink milk or anything with milk in it. Your father Greggor died when you were too young to know him. Your mother, Marleana, had soft gray hair when you were born, and was the most wonderful woman who ever lived. You remember them but you have forgotten so much. And right now, in this moment, you feel a dull weight in your chest. It's the weight of a love that defined and redeemed you but you've forgotten who that weight belongs to."

She didn't hear the rest. Just that much gutted her. "Barry…" she whispered. "Oh gods, Barry, I'm so sorry, Babe."

It was a minute before she gathered herself enough to tune back in, and the boys were talking amongst themselves. "I don't know what this means but it-it means… something, and-and I've been... remembering things. I - I can remember knowing Barry before now. I can remember being somewhere that had two suns," Magnus said. "I remember things... but I have no idea why or how? And…" He sighed. "All I know is that there's...there's so much more going on."

Taako shifted the umbra staff, and Lup could see the three of them more clearly now. "Okay, so here's my theory. I think there's another voidfish. It's not a big cognitive leap, when you were describing whatever it was you were just describing, I heard the Voidfish crinkle-tinkles. My ASMR was going buck wild."

So he couldn't hear when Magnus described their home. And their life before arriving here. And Barry could, but only when he was dead. Which Magnus was too, technically.

"Yeah. It makes complete sense because I… I swam with the Voidfish, and it sang to me. It sang two words. Egg, and babe. I think it means that the voidfish has a baby."

Oh. That made even more sense.

But why the hell was Lucretia forcing them to forget everything by feeding it to Fisher and its baby? What the hell did she think she was doing? It didn't make sense! A hundred years of traveling the universes and she just up and betrays them all? Joins the Hunger? Sure, they'd all changed during their journey together, but you'd think they would have noticed something that drastic.

The boys were still talking about how best to get back to the bureau when Taako abruptly stepped back. "Listen, I have an update from Taako Central. I've updated my list of people I trust and things I believe to No one and Nothing. Not a joke, I don't trust you, half-pint, I don't trust Jeff from Today's Special, I don't trust Barold - whatever his name - nobody, I trust nobody, nothing. And I'm - I have - you've convinced me to add the Director and her crew - her coterie - to that list, but it does not extend - it is no one. There is nothing and no one."

Magnus sounded as worried as Lup felt. "Is it at least a sliding scale, Taako? Do you trust us like, a little less or a little more than The Director, where are we at as far as placement on the-"

"It's a big ol' void! All orbiting planet Taako, of non-trust!"

She could hear the fear in his voice, the betrayal, and it wounded her, but she understood.