Archive of Our Own ^beta

They're lying on the floor of Lucretia's room together, legs propped up against and resting on Lucretia's bed, hands on their stomachs. Lucretia is watching the ceiling and thinking about death and about war and about all the people who have come into indirect contact with their relics and have perished, sometimes horribly. It's been hard to think about anything else as of late. She knows she isn't the only one tossing and turning at night but the helplessness has snuck on board the ship and spread, silent through the seven of them. They aren't talking or voicing their thoughts aloud, and nobody is brave enough to be the first.

She isn't sure what Lup is thinking about. Isn't sure she'd get a straight answer if she asked, either. Lately, Lup has felt distant, just out of her reach. She doesn't spend much time with them any more. She goes off alone, sometimes with Taako, sometimes with Barry, and Lucretia has no idea where she goes or what she's doing. This is the first time Lup has come to hang out with her in quite a while, and it had been as simple as coming into her room without asking, finding her lying on the floor lost in thought, and joining in without waiting for an invitation.

Lucretia is worrying her lower lip between her teeth. Lup is silent next to her. Lucretia might have thought she were meditating if she couldn't hear her shift every so often against the carpet, or squeeze her hands together tightly. She's been so quiet lately in every sense of the word. It's like watching a dying fire, the coals smouldering, dimming, slowly winking out. Of everything, this is the most unsettling thing of all to Lucretia: being made to watch Lup gradually lose heart. She is raw and exposed in a way that can't be named, and so unsure of what to do. It feels like they're all losing their way.

Lucretia wants to take this into her two hands, trustworthy above all, and fix it, but she has no idea where to start. How do you fix something like this?

"Did you know I was in love with you?" she says.

It's weird, how you can agonise over something for more than seventy years and then say it out loud all of a sudden like it means nothing at all. To be fair, this moment doesn't feel wholly real. It feels like Lucretia has cast a bubble for the two of them to lie in separate from the rest of time, as if the world is on pause outside of her bedroom door. Maybe when Lup leaves time will restart and the IPRE will find themselves on a different planet in a new cycle, and everything will go back to normal.

Lup isn't looking at her.

"Yeah. I knew."

"Oh."

Lup sighs, a short, sharp exhale. She turns onto her side and presses her face against the seam between Lucretia's arm and her chest, her legs curling up underneath of her. Lucretia drops a hand to her hair, cards her fingers through her limp curls.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

Lup's voice is muffled by her shirt. She nuzzles a little further in, as if she hadn't meant for the question to be heard at all.

"I don't know." It's not as if she didn't think about it for a long time. There used to be a time it was all she could think about: Lup, Lup, Lup, her smile, the heart-shaped curve of her face, her wild, frizzy hair, the constellation of her freckles, her strong arms, her thick thighs, her sure and sturdy feet. She spent so much time studying Lup, observing her in shy silence. Time spent looking, but never speaking, never asking. Never once putting herself out there. "I was too scared, I guess. And then... things changed."

"You changed." Lup extracts herself from the crook of Lucretia's arm and rests her cheek on her chest instead, watching the bottom of her chin with a steely gaze, arms folded tight across her front. "You left me behind."

"I left–"

"Yes!" Lup insists, and her voice breaks. Dread washes over Lucretia like a wave. "You came out of that cycle a different person Luce, and I was so proud of you- you fucking badass- but then you stopped coming to me! You're holed up in here all day working and not– not talking to me and it fucking kills me because I need you and you can't..." Lup pauses, and clears her throat. Her next words are murmur soft. "You can't do this to me. I can't take it any more."

She can't see Lup's face from this angle and Lup can't see hers and it's something Lucretia's suddenly glad for. Tears are welling up in her eyes, hot and uncomfortable. They spill down the sides of her face when she blinks, and she sniffs, soft and unhappy. She had no idea Lup felt like this. 

Lup sucks in a wobbling breath and lifts a fist to knuckle at her eye. She's so uncharacteristically quiet, so defeated. "Why won't you talk to me any more. Like we used to talk. Why don't you need me too?"

"I do need you," Lucretia whispers. It's suddenly hard to talk over the lump in her throat. How haven't they talked about this before? How did she let this get to a point where all Lup felt she could do was pin her to the ground and plead to be let in? "Lup, I've– there's never been a moment that I–"

She has to stop and center her thoughts, breathing slowly in through her nose. "I didn't want to keep leaning on you for everything."

"Bullshit," Lup fires back, suddenly passionate, anger leaping in her like a flame, "we're friends Luc, you're– the best friend I've ever had and–"

"Just because we're friends doesn't mean I have to burden you with literally everything that ever comes across my mind," Lucretia snaps, stiffening, "there wouldn't be enough hours in the–"

"Oh boo hoo," Lup says meanly, and Lucretia can hear her mouth scrunching at the corner in a familiar grimace, "you've had a rough time! I get it, we all have, but that's literally what I'm here for! To help you with–"

"My problems? You're here to listen to me talk? You've been too busy shutting me down whenever I do have something to contribute!"

"Are you still pissed off about that? Seriously?? That was years ago!"

"Yeah? And how's everything working out for you, Lup? Is this all you had envisioned for this world?"

This harsh accusation is met with silence, and Lucretia instantly regrets making it. Lup angles herself again so her shoulder is digging painfully into Lucretia's arm: a silent rebuke.

"... I'm sorry," Lucretia murmurs after a beat, and runs her hand through Lup's hair a few times, untangling it with her fingers as she goes. "I didn't mean it."

"Yes you did."

Lucretia closes her eyes tight and sighs, and wishes that she could always say exactly what she meant without fear. Too often she feels like she must hold her secrets close to her heart, wall them off with shields and wards, keep herself safe. It's so much easier that way. It would be easier now to defer and say that Lup is right, she is being distant, that she could do with talking more. Lucretia from fifty cycles ago would have done that. She would have done anything to agree with Lup.

Instead, she says: "If you want me to talk, you have to talk to me too."

Lup snorts, disbelieving.

"I'm serious! You're only here now because neither of the boys are in at the moment."

"No I'm not–"

"Yes you are! You wouldn't talk to me then and you won't talk to me now. You didn't even tell me you were thinking of becoming a lich!"

"Wh– it didn't concern you!"

"Oh, my god." Lucretia digs her fingernails into her palms, furious. Upset clogs up her throat and making her voice come out strangled, "we're best friends, you just said it, and you didn't think to talk to me about... about throwing your life away on a hunch?"

She knows it's obvious she's started to cry again but she doesn't care any more. She hasn't talked to anybody about this (not even Taako), and it's sat around with her like a stone in her stomach all this time: hurt, fury and concern boiled down into something hard, fraught and cold. "What if something happened to you? What if you didn't come back? What would any of us do if we lost you– what would I do if I lost you?"

She wants to roll onto her side, for Lup to have to pull away from her. She doesn't move. She plucks her glasses off and places them carelessly behind her, somewhere over the top of her head.

"I had to do it," Lup says simply, like it makes perfect sense. Perhaps to her it does. "It had to be me. Us. We did it to keep everybody safe, and if it helped save even one more world– well, what are two people worth compared to that?"

Lucretia lifts her hands and drags them down over her face, pressing her cool fingertips against the backs of her eyes. She couldn't have said anything to make Lup change her mind, that much is obvious. This isn't about that, though. "You aren't just two people to me. Doesn't that matter to you?"

Lup sighs. She reaches up blindly and brushes Lucretia's knuckles with her fingertips; Lucretia allows her hand to be held begrudgingly, and Lup slowly interlinks their fingers together, one at a time.

"Of course it matters," Lup says eventually, and she sounds guilty now. "But I knew this would happen. I knew you would tell me not to do it and you'd probably go and make me feel really fucking bad about it, or something."

"Yeah, well. You're right."

"I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be, it's– stupid to care this much. It was your decision to make."

"It's not stupid."

Lup sits up abruptly and turns to her, and Lucretia sits up too, pulling her legs back to cross underneath of her. Lup is watching her, her eyes wet and shiny. Lucretia probably looks awful but knows that Lup has seen worse. Knows that she used to share everything she ever had with Lup and that included the concealed mess behind her perfect, carefully controlled veneer. Lup has held her while she cries and Lup has rocked her in her arms and Lup has kissed her creased brow and Lup has made her laugh through floods of tears. She's seen every ugly facet of her. Not once has she run.

"You didn't lose me," Lup says carefully.

"I know."

She takes Lucretia's wrists gently and lowers them from her face so she can wipe underneath of her eyes with her thumbs. She used to run so hot as an elf. Her touch is closer to daylight now instead of fire and Lucretia turns toward it like a neglected sunflower.

"I'm still here."

"I know."

Lup takes her time wiping away her tears. She has a tilt to her mouth that suggests she's thinking very carefully of what to say next. Lucretia waits for her, patient as always.

"... Look. Maybe we've both been crappy at this."

Lup looks so solemn and serious that Lucretia can't help but start to laugh in the wake of this consolidation. Fresh tears well up in her eyes anyway. "'Maybe'?"

"I–" Lup says, looking briefly scandalised, "well, you've been way crappier than I have! Tragic too, the only pal you've had this whole time has been a stupid journal!"

"You've been such a shit friend," Lucretia manages, still laughing even as she wipes her eyes. Lup is cracking now too, her smile slowly widening, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she starts to chuckle. It's so refreshingly normal that it makes Lucretia want to cry even more. She had no idea how much this was fucking with her, how deeply and truly she missed laughing with Lup.

"I don't know how I've ever put up with you."

"You're telling me."

Lup kisses her. It happens so fast it takes a while for Lucretia's brain to catch up. All she registers is a smoulder of warmth and Lup's thumb brushing gently against her jaw before she pulls back. All Lucretia can do in return is stare. Lup leans toward her in one slow, deliberate movement to give her time to pull away before she kisses her again, gentle and meaningful, her hands cupping Lucretia's face as if she's something precious.

The bubble contracts around them, and time slows even more. Lup's mouth is so soft, the slide of her lips sure and steady and the warmth of her bleeds across Lucretia's chin, down her neck and into her chest and takes sturdy root. All the love she's ever felt, all the love she's always felt, all of the misery and the loneliness and the desire and the terror and the desperate, desperate longing wells in Lucretia's throat and bursts as a sob from her mouth and Lup holds her closer and kisses her like they're dying, like everything else is already dead and they're the only two people left, sitting here together on the carpet in each other's arms and waiting to be next.

When she pulls back, Lup is shivering like she's cold.

"I was in love with you too," she whispers, and the look she gives Lucretia is small and sad and unsure. "Always. How couldn't I be?"

"Oh," Lucretia says, and feels she may shatter into pieces the moment Lup lets her go. She tightens her arms around Lup's waist in an attempt to anchor herself. Lup is staring at her mouth, but her own is wobbling.

For a long time they sit there together, looking at each other, sharing every breath. 

"Why did you stop?" Lucretia says eventually. She thought she wouldn't want to know this answer except that she always wants to know the answer, and Lup knows this. Lup has always known, just as she has always known. Two people who knew all along, but did nothing. At least they're both complicit in this outcome, in the way that time stands still as if in a bubble and allows them a sunlit moment that won't ever exist outside of Lucretia's bedroom.

"I dunno," Lup says.

They let go of each other at the same time.

"Maybe I didn't. Maybe I still do."