Work Text:
i: Cycle Twelve
The first time Lucretia dies, it's because of her insatiable curiosity. The plane they're on has the most unique flora she had ever seen before and she just had to document it—of course she did!—so off she went, while the rest of the IPRE did their own thing. Merle was with Barry, off documenting some new sort of natural technology—something about wood that conducted electricity through its grain like a circuitboard. Lup was with Magnus, raising hell while hunting for food and making sure the perimeter was secure. Captain Davenport was on the ship and she was off to investigate and document the plants that covered this world.
The one that interested her most was a brilliant azure—a color that seemed just beyond comprehension of her own two eyes, multifaceted and etherial—and she sat down to sketch it. Summer was coming on this plane. While the seasons were short here, slipping from spring to summer to autumn to winter within a month or two, the natives here had shown her the beautiful way that the world around them reacted to the rapid cycles. The azure blossom was something that the natives didn't talk much about—when they did speak about it, it was in hushed voices and using a word in a language that wasn't from their own home planes. But that only pushed her farther to look into it. She had to know. Her friends and family back home had to know. She had to pretend that there was still hope.
She gently sketched the flower into her journals, both hands moving in mirror to one another, ink drying quickly in the arid air. As she finished sketching, she leaned in to get a closer look at the striping of the petals and the shape and veins of the leaves. The flower shuddered slightly and opened, releasing a small puff of pollen into her face.
She coughed, waving away the remainder of the yellow dust from her mouth. Soft pieces of yellow fluff dusted her silvery eyelashes, dappled her high cheekbones, and brought out the steel of her eyes. As she wiped away the pollen onboard the StarBlazter, she marveled at how she looked with a simple bit of makeup au naturale. Maybe she would ask Lup or Taako about it later. Probably Lup because Taako always looked like he slammed his face onto a glitter pad.
Taako cackled as Lup chased him down the hallway, covered head to toe in a vibrant pink pigment, swearing loudly at him.
Definitely Lup. More her speed anyway.
She let out a wheezing cough, chest compressing sharply as she fought for air. Pain spiked through her upper chest and, for a brief moment, she thought she was having a heart-attack. But she was thirty-three and hale as a horse, she reminded herself, and soon the feeling passed. She thought nothing of it and continued on doing her job, following one of the other IPRE members around and taking notes on the flora and the fauna and the people and them. Of their mission and this set of planes. Of the wonders and horrors that await them. But soon she saw spots and coughed blood.
Vines. Vines were growing inside of her. A seed, inside her lungs, had sprouted and grown. The azure flower. The one the natives called 'Röðå', Rot. Its pollen was paired with seeds that needed a living host to grow. They absorbed the mucous membrane along the alveoli inside the lungs and grew, taking root. Once the symptoms started, the plant was too far in.
She wasted away, slowly and horrifically, as the Rot took everything from her. It took her food, her ability to eat solids, her nutrients, her air, her heart, her chest, her movement. Soon she was bed-ridden and gasping for air, trying to discard life to be free of it all.
She died coughing as the main vine of the Rot pushed its way out her throat and mouth, forming a curled, azure blossom. It took almost three days. It took all Taako's willpower to not end her life with a Scorching Ray to the chest. That and Davenport holding him back.
Blood. Pain. Suffering. Death. The last was a release. The first ones were a nightmare.
When she reformed, spiraling back as she was spun from silver threads of light, she found herself in the center of a hug-pile and...oddly enough, okay with it.
"Don't you fucking dare," Lup had whispered as she tried to wriggle her way out of the cuddle pile.
"...alright..."
She was more cautious after that.
It had only been three months. She knew the pain they felt already.
ii: Cycle Thirty-One
The second time she died, it was foolishness. There, on the plane that was air thick enough to swim in and water that held no space, they had found a place to hole up while they waited for the Light to fall. Lup and Taako and Barry—who had gotten closer to the Hell Twins (as Merle affectionately nicknamed the two)—decided to go swimming in the air around them and, for a change, Lucretia decided to join them. Not just for research, but also for fun.
"Lookit Creesh, loosening that tie!" Lup crowed as she adjusted her two-piece. Lucretia blushed darkly but smiled. The gentle ribbing was the best part of having friends. They made fun of you because they cared, not because they're assholes.
"Careful, Lulu, your gay is showing!" Taako snickered and Lup elbowed him square in the chest. "Fuck! My tit!"
"That's whatcha get you wiener gargler." Lup stuck out her tongue petulantly and Lucretia found laughter, genuine and unbridled, spilling from her mouth. Silently, Barry watched them go at it, escalating for Lucretia's benefit. He smiled. It was nice seeing her open up.
Then she saw the tendril.
Yellow with blue rings, suckers on the underside, and a strange sort of elasticity to it. It reached forward and flared as if it was opening a hand it didn't have.
She moved before she thought. Pushing off a rock beneath her feet, she shot forward like a torpedo and shoved Barry out of the way. He hit his back on a rock and blood spilled forth but he was safe.
She, however, was not.
Venom was pain but being torn apart by a beak that was twice the size of her head was worse. Then darkness. Then silver threads spinning her back together. The StarBlazter. The IPRE. Her friends.
She didn't stick around long enough for the questions. She dashed down the hall and threw her door closed, burying herself under a metric ton of pillows. She tried to ignore everything.
It's a pity that Barry knew how to hack the room locks.
A heavy weight settled on her bed, dragging her down slightly, and she felt the rough, calloused palm of her human crewmate rest against her shoulder.
"Lucretia," he whispered. The silence was reverent. He respected it.
"I saw you and I...I saw her and...she needs you. They all do!" The words came unbidden, spilling from the floodgates behind her mouth. "More than me," she mumbled.
Barry shifted. "Lucretia. I'm not here to yell at you. We got over that real quick. When you have ten months to get over a death that isn't permanent, you can do it easily enough. But...you're worth far more than you think. You're important Lucretia."
"How? I'm not a pilot or a captain or a scientist or a chef or a demolitions expert or the muscle! I'm the nerd with the books, keeping note of what plant is where and so on!" She flailed her hands about as she spoke. She sounded so...broken.
"But you're you. You're Lucretia. You're the Journal Keeper. You're our nerd? Says the nerd." He chuckled, a slight huff of amusement, and Lucretia felt his hand clench up. "Whether you think we need you or not, we do. You're integral to both this mission and to basically keeping us from falling to absolute shit." His voice was sincere but his face was sad. "And...Lup and I really missed you."
Lucretia's vision blurred. It wasn't just tears but she was so tired. And grateful.
"Heyyyyyy Lucretia don't cry," his hand wiped away the tears on her cheek, the callouses on his palms and finger pads eliciting a quiet sigh from her. "You want me to call Lup? We can have a fantasy scroll night and just catch the latest in stupid romcoms from like thirty-two years ago?" He laughed as she nodded and, almost as if she totally wasn't spying, no sir, Lup came in the room with a handful of birds nests and a bottle of rum, three shot glasses floating behind her.
"Hey Creesh. You ready to get smashed and eat our feelings as we watch sappy losers bone for the first time?" She gave a crooked grin and Lucretia giggled. She could spot the worry in her voice so she took the rum from her and embraced the larger woman, nuzzling into her collar. "Heyyy...hey, hey, hey...it's okay..."
"'M sorry Lup. Didn't mean to scare you. Didn't mean to leave you and Barry and the crew...I just...you're all so important and I don't...I don't feel like I am..." Her voice was muffled but the warmth that Lup was exuding was so pleasant and safe. Comforting. Warm. "You need to live cause I would die without you."
Barry embraced them from behind and rested his chin on her head, kissing Lup in the process. "C'mon Fruity Loops, come on Lucy, let's go watch sappy movies and eat and be merry." Lucretia nodded and Barry swept her off her feet, grunting comedically. "Oop, there we go. Let's get to watching, huh?"
She was loved. She was wanted. She loved back.
iii: Cycle Fifty-Two
It wasn't her fault. That's what they kept telling her. "It wasn't your fault Lucretia."
But it was. It was wholly her fault.
The plant was so similar to another they had seen before. It was so similar to an edible herb that they had enjoyed about five cycles back but it...wasn't. It was poisonous. Deadly even. Lup had fallen. Barry had fallen. Taako had gotten sick but he had taken ipecac and vomited so it only made him weaker for a few weeks. But Lup. Barry. They—!
She tore herself up inside and, hands shaking, recorded events as best she could. The symptoms, the plant, the warning signs, how to cast Detect Poison, the deaths, and so on. It was pain with each stroke of the pen, doubled with the second mirroring the first. So many pages were ruined by fallen tears and fingers that dug into them and pulled them from the spine of her journals, throwing them about like so much confetti. She didn't eat. She didn't sleep. Magnus was busy hunting the Light. Davenport was staying with the ship to make sure they had an escape route. Taako though? Taako listlessly paced the kitchen, back and forth in a worried loop, and cooked until his hands blistered. Merle healed him every time but even he was growing thinner with time.
Food scared her. She didn't want to touch it. She had killed them. (It wasn't her fault.) They had died because of her. (It wasn't her fault.) They had suffered because of her ineptitude. (It wasn't her fault.)
In the end, starvation took hold and she ate a different plant, one that she didn't know, and her blood boiled from within. Rashes, blisters, pain and suffering. She documented every step of her death and when the silvery light stitched her back together, she vomited the contents of her stomach onto the StarBlazter's floor. Then she cried until her body screamed for fluids, Lup and Barry just holding her.
Merle handed her her journals later, covered in blood and sweat and bile and plant matter. She didn't clean them. She wanted to remember.
iv: Cycle Seventy
She didn't remember. She had forgotten how to cast Feather Fall. Whether it was a side-effect of the strange magic-suppression that the atmosphere exuded or just that the shock of the moment dragged all the spells she knew just out of mental reach, but she had forgotten. And her body, soulless and shattered, crumpled to a heap at the bottom of the ravine that had snuck up on her. The darkness devoured her.
When she was spun back together, threads of silver fate and golden time and rosy love and cobalt bonds, she saw the whole crew, tired and worried, all looking at her expectantly.
"I'm—"
"Don't." Taako held up a single finger and shut her up.
"Pretty impressive Creesh," Magnus forced a smile, the edges insincere and the tone pained, "you managed to beat out my record!"
"You...need to be more careful Lucretia. You are...you...," Davenport seemed to struggle with the words he wanted to say, torn between the professionalism that his position demanded and the familiarity that came from seventy years of being the only constants in one another's lives. In the end, he settled on sweeping her up in the best hug the gnome could offer. "Please be more careful Lucretia."
Magnus, ever the stoic hero, cried silently and joined the hug. Merle grinned cheekily as he copped a joking feel when he joined in. Davenport squeaked and slapped his hand. Lup wrapped her arms around the group and Barry joined in and they cried. It was joy and relief and pain and sorrow but they were there and they were okay. For now they were okay.
v: Cycle Ninety-Three
"Fuck! Luc! Fucking stay with us poindexter! Don't you—don't you fucking dare?" Gruff and cracking Dwarvish faded in and out as her world swam in a haze of darkness and white noise. The warmth of healing magic seeped at her skin and into bits of her bones but from the numbness in her everything, she knew it wasn't going to work. Not even the highest-level healing spell would have worked. She was too far gone.
Her fingers brushed the red cover of one of her millions of journals and she smiled as best she could. Her blood, glittering silver in the strange light of this world, streaked the spine and cover, obscuring the IPRE logo on the front. And the world became nothing. But they were safe. They were safe.
Silver threads and a light that blinded her soul. The warmth of living and loving and bonds. When her eyes cleared, Lucretia saw the whole crew standing in front of her once more.
"I was the only one this time, huh?" She weakly smiled, knowing how much this hurt them. Hurt her. Hurt everything.
No one said a word but each of them came up and offered her a single red-covered book. Some of them were covered in blood, others crammed so full that they didn't close properly. One of them, the one that Lup and Barry handed her as a unit, had a spine so cracked that they had taped it to keep the binding from falling to pieces. She took each one with mounting confusion.
"We...you would've liked this world," Magnus admitted, scuffing his shoe against the floor of the StarBlazter.
"Mine's got all th' good shit on the locals and plants n' shit!" Merle puffed out his chest in pride, pointing to the one with small bits of dried greenery sticking out from between the pages.
"The infrastructure of the society built there was unique. A hivemind of law but they still had free will and individuality. I...documented it as best I could but...my handwriting is lacking, of course." Davenport gestured to the book he handed her, a crimson dusting his cheeks, causing his ginger beard to stand out starkly in contrast with his reddening face.
"Got some good farm wisdom in mine. Turns out that shit can be used for more than fertilizer! Who'dve thunk?!" Taako sounded flippant but ninety-three years with that jackass had given her a keen sense of his sincere emotions. He wanted approval. They all did.
She looked down at the cracked book, recognizing the spattering of blood across the IPRE logo. Looking up, she met Barry and Lup's eyes and smiled gently. They mirrored her expression with more sorrow.
When she got a chance, she sat down to read the journals. Merle's was, as he said, pressed full of plant life and information about local cultures and folk-tales. His handwriting was surprisingly elegant but also not-so-surprisingly illegible. The man couldn't write neat for shit.
Magnus' was full of stories about the people he met and the adventures he had. His penmanship left something to be desired, his big, blocky script childlike and careful. There were ink-blots all over the pages and some even had doodles of some of the animals he saw—usually with excited comments about how fluffy/cute/small/big it was—and at the end was a small "SEE YOU SOON".
Davenport's was more legible than Merle's but less careful than Magnus'. His handwriting was a slanted cursive with incomplete 'n's and 'm's and 'r's that all blurred together. Some of the notes were in Gnommish and more of them were detailed diagrams of architecture and the system of law. It was sociopolitical and careful and it made her smile. It was so very him.
Taako's was as extravagant as he was. His handwriting was curly and over-the-top, the large lettering taking more space than he needed. In the margins were notes on how to improve/adapt recipes that were native to that set of planes. His notes on agriculture were uncharacteristically in-depth. He had sketched rough diagrams of their irrigation system, the floating orchards held aloft by burning heartwood cages filled with tamed clouds, the livestock, the food, the taste and use of every edible plant he could find. As the journal went on, she saw the odd teardrop stain on a page and gently traced it with her fingers. They cared so much.
They all did.
Barry and Lup had filled out her original journal, the pages she had written were crinkled and tearstained and the new ones were a mix of Lup's hasty scribbled writing and Barry's more precise, fine print. They documented everything they could, chronicling the events of that plane, their retrieval of the Light, their time learning the art of cultivating heartwood, their shared longing to hold her again. At the end, in a shaky pen, was a sketch of her and the words "date night when you get back. just us three".
She heard a knock at her door. She placed the journals aside and smiled with all of her.
Date night indeed.
vi: Cycle One Hundred
Every part of her ached. She slung a quick fireball at the monster and screeched in victory when its charred corpse fell down, dead. She turned to Cam and gave him a weary smile.
"Good job Luc!" He gave her a thumbs-up with his remaining hand. "Way t'stick it to em!"
"Well, well, well! Congratulations Lucretia and Cam! You've survived this round of Monster Factory! I'm actually impressed; are you impressed Edward?"
The second elven lich nodded, a hand placed daintily underneath his chin. "Oh very much so, Lydia. I was so sure that the flaming, titanic flumph was going to get them this time. Ah well," he shrugged and gave a wicked grin, "onwards and upwards. The Bell awaits!"
The two remaining adventurers stepped forward, deeper into Wonderland, and sighed as the Wheel came back into view. Six lights were above the wheel, blank and dark. "You know the rules! Have at it you two! Sacrifice so you may grow!" Lydia gestured to the Wheel and smiled. Lucretia met Cam's eyes and swallowed, resolve steeled.
She stepped forward and spun the wheel. Clicking softly, it landed on hand. Edward and Lydia giggled. "Ahh, another roll of hand! Well, Lucretia, darling, it wouldn't be very fair to take your hand when Cam had already done so, and your spellcasting would surely suffer so why don't we do this?"
"Mobility in your hand. Consider it early-onset arthritis?" Edward tittered, gesturing to Lucretia. "We'll even let you pick which hand!"
Without hesitation, she held up her left hand. The liches smirked and she felt her hand stiffen up, the joints becoming harder to move. One of the lights lit up and they smiled again. "Now another spin you two!"
Lucretia spun again. The liches loved it. "So self-sacrificial! I'm sure he'd be proud you at least learned that from him! Even if you abandoned him in his time of need. Even if you took everything from him in the end." The last sentence was hissed with gleeful malice. Lucretia remained as stoic as she could.
"Oh! You landed on mind!" Lydia clapped.
"You're a very bright woman, Lucretia. So why bother taking from you when we can simply give you more?!" Edward gestured to all of her, a sly smirk mirrored by his twin.
"And by give we mean sacrifice!" Lydia added.
"You see, dear," Edward leaned forward so that he was nose-to-nose with Lucretia, "you want so badly to forget. We'd rather you remember."
"So," Lydia continued where her brother left off, "if you would be so kind to, sacrifice your ability to forget. A...mixed blessing, if you will! You'll never be able to forget. You'll never be able to drink away the pain or pretend that isn't your fault. You'll always know."
There, close, painful. She didn't want to but Cam...
He was on his last legs. She had to take a hit for him. He couldn't take more. He couldn't give any more.
She nodded. The necrotic feeling of the liches' magic washed over her and she sighed. Then she spun again before the light had been lit. Cam cried out. She didn't care.
Body. Vitality. Her life slipped away.
Again.
Swords. A battle, long ago. A bar fight, to be specific. Magnus walked away with a black eye and Merle with a cut over his eye.
Again.
Eye. Vision. No, actually, the inability to see up close. She would need glasses if she ever got out.
Again.
The hourglass. Time. The twins smiled brightly, darkly, evilly, at this. They tittered and bantered back and forth about it for a few minutes, leaving Cam confused and concerned as they turned to her at last.
"You've been alive for easily your lifespan tenfold yet you still look as beautiful as you did one hundred years ago. So why don't you just give up twenty more years. I'm sure you'll look as stunning at one hundred and sixty as you did at sixty!" Edward shrugged. It was disingenuous. She hated it.
She nodded. Her time moved forward. Her body aged. Her skin wrinkled. It was cathartic. She wanted so much to die but she knew they wouldn't take it here. They wouldn't take her life here, at the Wheel. The Wheel was torment and death was relief.
Cam gasped but they moved on.
She pressed forsake.
And then the game changed. They offered them a way out. They offered them an Escape Game.
They jumped at the chance.
And, in the end, only Lucretia left Wonderland. Cam stayed behind, whether gratefully or not she wasn't sure, but he told her to go. He told her to leave. He told her to keep the Bureau alive.
So she did.
Even though she didn't want to, she lived.
And then the day came when she saw them again. Three of her best friends. Three people she betrayed. Three people she lied to. Three people she had died for so many years ago. Three people who had died for her as well.
And she smiled and greeted them and lied and lied and lied.
And she waited.
And she wanted to die but she couldn't. She had a job to do.
So she waited for the Hunger, eyes steely and locked forward.
And beneath her feet, in a small side room, were stacks of journals and a small voidfish. And she fed it. And she cried.
And she waited for sunrise.