This is an entry in the Gaylor rarepair contest, so, yeah.

Title from Let's Just Live, by Jeff Williams and Casey Lee Williams.


Tohu was glad that she had accepted the communications request from Queen Administrator, all those years ago.

Even if she hadn't seen Flechette skewering the Leviathan through and through, Sting completely destroying his core, seen Zion stilling Behemoth to nothing, seen the state that the Simurgh had been reduced to after Eidolon's passing, she would still have been grateful for the efforts that the wayward Shard (or was it trailblazing? She'd never been much of one to care about the dynamics of shard hierarchies and planning, being much more… direct in her thinking) had made for her.

The reason for her gratitude shifted, the arms that were wrapped around her tightening briefly, and that moment brought a smile to all three of her faces.

"Morning, sleepyhead," she said, reaching one of her hands up to run gently through her bedmate's hair. "Sleep well?"

"Well enough," said Taylor Hebert, still blinking sleep from her eyes. "Did I keep you from anything?"

"Not as such," Tohu replied, levering herself upwards and dragging Taylor with her, being careful to take it slowly out of consideration for Taylor's human physiology. "I am helping Bohu out with breakfast, I'm just also here." Mostly true- most of her focus was here and now, on Taylor, but there was enough processing power left over to run a duplicate through Kudzu's power.

"I thought we agreed that I would make breakfast on Tuesdays." Taylor's voice was petulant as she used Tohu to lever herself off the bed and upright, the spiderweb design on her pajamas shifting and pulling as she slid off the bed.

"No, you agreed with yourself that you would make breakfast on Tuesdays. Bohu and I agree that you're taking on entirely too much responsibility on yourself, especially in the wake of Teacher's attack. When's the last time you managed to sleep through the night without nightmares without one of us helping you out?" Both of them knew the answer to that was some variant of "not recently", and neither of them were satisfied with it- as evidenced by the mulish look on Taylor's face and the beseeching one on the two of Tohu's that were facing her partner.

"I'm fine," said Taylor, jaw firming as she made eye contact with Tohu.

"You're not, Taylor," said Tohu, bringing the head that Taylor was making eye contact with forwards ever-so-gently to bonk her forehead against her partner's. "You haven't been fine since before we ever met. Please, if you're not willing to help yourself, at least let us help you?"

Tohu wasn't sure what it was that Taylor saw in her eyes that made the woman who had been the one to bring the world together that night all those months ago, when the sun was eclipsed with golden fury, the woman who killed Zion, stop and think about what they wanted from her, but whatever it was, she was grateful for it, and would be grateful for it when, in fifty years, the three of them would be alive to look back on the moment that saved Taylor Hebert from the worst parts of herself.

(It was love- a different love from the one that Taylor held for her, and the one that Bohu held for Taylor, but love nonetheless, love that she'd learned from Taylor as much as Taylor had learned it from her)

"Fine," said Taylor, a pout still on her lips. "I suppose I can afford to take it easy for one day."

"That's all I ask," Tohu replied, all four hands splaying magnanimously as she finished the last steps of the path her perfect memory had allowed her to remember even after relinquishing Fortuna's visage, the path to getting Taylor to not self-destruct within the year.


Bohu didn't need to turn around when Tohu and Taylor entered the kitchen, strictly speaking.

Even aside from being able to hear them, she was intimately aware of anyone who was within her domain, as far as her power was concerned, and at the moment, her domain was this kitchen with its frustratingly unintuitive appliances. Thus, she knew more about Taylor's state than her partner knew about herself (whether that was the case for Tohu was up for debate, given the variety of Thinker powers Tohu had had the chance to point at herself over the years).

Still, she turned around to face them regardless, letting them see her broad smile (and the streak of flour on her cheek) as she took the duo in with her eyes.

Taylor, to all appearances, looked like shit. She was rumpled, grumpy, had circles under her eyes that would, if detached, make for serviceable frisbees, and was alternating between glaring and pouting at Tohu.

Tohu (at least, the Tohu that entered the kitchen with Taylor), in turn, had a smile on all three of her faces, slight as it may be, and on her that was the equivalent to an ear-to-ear grin on someone more expressive.

"I take it Taylor finally saw reason?" It was barely a question- Bohu couldn't think of any topic that would leave Taylor so disgruntled and Tohu so upbeat than the ongoing campaign to try to get Taylor to acquiesce to getting therapy.

"She did," said Tohu, three grins widening even as Taylor's grumpy pout deepened. "Now then, while we handle this… ah, perfect." The other Tohu walked over, two arms nudging Taylor and the first Tohu into chairs while the others folded their hands around two cups of tea. The copy crumbled into wisps of plant matter, which decayed into nothingness shortly after, once its task was done.

The face of Tohu's that was formerly Kudzu's shifted, first back to her own fine-boned, hooded visage, and then it changed again, the hood turning red as a pair of deerlike antlers pushed out of holes that cut themselves into the hood, while the bone structure of her face shifted as she cried out a fluid that solidified into a dark gray mask that covered from her nose upwards, faintly glowing white film in the eye sockets completing the change.

The head in question sniffed twice, then turned to Bohu. "The pancakes are burning."

Bohu hissed out a curse, then flicked one hand at the griddle, her power rippling through the room with none of the earth-quaking power that it had when used normally to send the slightly overcooked breakfast foods flipping over to the sheet pan that they normally used for pancakes that didn't go onto plates after they'd finished cooking.

While Bohu had been doing that, Tohu's hand had stretched out, and a moment later, a laptop, covered in the pinkish motes of Velvet's power, floated gently into it.

Bohu turned back to the cooking range, her focus now on the bacon that was sizzling in the frontmost pan, as well as the scrambled eggs behind the bacon. She gave the bacon another thirty seconds, watching it hiss and spit in its own fat, then removed it, her supernaturally durable fingers utterly ignoring the heat of the pan and meat as she transferred the crispy strips to the plates. Then, another ripple of her power sent the spatula that was Bohu's one concession to normal kitchen utensils spinning into her hands, and she used said spatula to plate the now-cooked eggs with no small amount of theatrics and legerdemain, which brought smiles to both Tohu's and Taylor's faces, even if they were fleeting on the latter.

With the bacon and eggs now served, Bohu could bring the plates to the table, conjuring a tiny duplicate of herself to take her own plate while she used her own hands to take Tohu's and Taylor's.

"Thank you, dear," said Taylor, prematurely lined face seeming to light up with the quiet intensity of her smile, and Bohu was struck with the urge to gather Taylor up in a hug and never let go.

Instead of doing that, Bohu just rested her now-empty hand on Taylor's head, smiling down fondly at the seated woman, as she served Tohu with her other hand.

"Thank you for breakfast," she said.

"Of course," replied Bohu, moving around the circular table to her seat.

She had just raised a forkful of eggs to her mouth when the doorbell rang.


"I'll get it," said Tohu," letting Velvet's power fall away. "Taylor, keep looking at the different therapists listed, see if something jumps out to you."

"No promises," said the brunette, who nevertheless slid the laptop over to her and continued to scroll through the listed therapists.

"Good girl." Ignoring the rising blush in Taylor's cheeks, Tohu headed off to the door, three smug grins on her face that Lisa would have been proud of.

All of that good feeling, those warm fuzzies the former Endbringer was feeling, vanished the moment she saw who was outside her door.

"You. What are you doing at my house."

"Why, sister, did you not miss me?" asked the Simurgh, pale flesh gleaming the same shade as her bared teeth.

"You don't deserve to call me your sister," Tohu spat, one head morphing into Mantellum's hooded visage as she glared at the winged Endbringer, naked fury on her face. "You never have, and given historical behavioral trends on your part, you never will."

Before the Simurgh could reply, a shout came from the kitchen. "Who's at the door, T?" asked Taylor, accompanied by the sound of her chair scraping against the kitchen floor."

Somehow, the Simurgh's smile only widened. "Ah, just who I was coming here to see."

A chill ran down Tohu's backs, and all four of her hands closed into fists as Mantellum's power swelled outwards from her flesh, her glare intensifying tenfold. "You will not touch her."

"Oh, but I don't need to," said the Simurgh, voice all saccharine-sweet as she turned her face just in time to see Taylor turn the corner into the entrance area of the house and freeze in her tracks. "I can do exactly what I need to from right here, sister mine."

"I told you not to call me sister," said Tohu, unshifted faces rippling as if something was trying to emerge from within but not drawing upon another power yet. "What do you want."

"Fine, fine, ruin my fun, sister," teased the Simurgh, porcelain face turning down into an exaggerated pout. "I'm not here for anything particularly onerous, perish the thought. I'm just here to… borrow Taylor for a moment, for the preservation of the Cycle, you understand. Worry not, I am fully confident I will be able to return her… mostly unharmed, and with only a minimum of mental damage."

A silver-edged black mask pushed its way out of Tohu's second face, and another all but snarled at the Simurgh. "Get out."

"Oh, by all means, sister," replied the Simurgh, just a hint of the harmonic overtones that always accompanied her scream making their way into her voice. "I can see when I'm not wanted, and I'll return when it's more… welcome. Some time to ruminate on your state would do you well- after all, you're just the same as me, eminently mortal no matter how much we wish we aren't."

Tohu tore the umbrella from the stand near the door and swiped at the Simurgh with Sting's imbuement, nicking one of her wings as she leapt back but not managing to do anything serious to her. "Maybe one day you'll find humanity," she spat, enjoying the first sliver of doubt as it made its way into the false angel's expression. "Until then, don't you dare say that we are the same."

Without another word, the Simurgh rose, and Tohu and Taylor both watched her pale figure as it shrank to nothing in the distance before they felt safe enough to close the door.

"You know," said Taylor, trembling, "I think therapy would be helpful."

Tohu laughed bitterly as she escorted Taylor back to the table. "At least something good came from seeing her again."


And that's that!

I might come back to this at some point and write a fic that leads up to this, I might not, as the muse wills.

Move went well-ish, standard bumps in the road aside. Hopefully I'll get a little more time to write this week.

If you want to support me as a writer, I got me a Ko (fi) (https (:/) (/) ko (-) fi (/) lucifra) and a Pa tre on (https (:/) pa tre on .com (/) Lucifra), and you can see chapters a week early if you become a patron. (remove spaces and parentheses)

Speaking of which, my thanks to NotableRonin and Ember for being patrons!

I also have a discord sir ver for author stuff now (as in as of like right now it's going live)- if you have questions or comments that you'd like a more direct, that's another option: https (:/) (/) dis co rd dot com (/) NHRUKz8jyy (remove spaces and parentheses, dot to period)

That's about it, so read, review, enjoy, and have a nice day!