Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Taako was twenty-three years old when he was born.

Or, that’s what they thought, looking back. Not like he had any fucking idea. Any birth certificate their body ever had was long since burnt, and would’ve had the wrong name, besides. For all Taako knew he could’ve been like, 89 or something, rather than the over-100 he decided he was at. 112? 120? Maybe he’d jump to 140. He was certainly getting up there.

<You’re getting sidetracked, Ko.>

Which, yeah? So what? It was called reminiscing, and Taako was great at it, actually. All those lovely memories from his first probably-century. Okay, first seventy-five years or so. And even then it was pretty spotty. Quite frankly he doubted even Istus knew what the fuck happened to them.

Not that he really cared, though.

His first memory went a little something like this.

He was staring up at someone much, much bigger than him. They were an elf. Recovering an hour later he’d learn they were like, a cousin, or something. Related to the body if nothing else. But in the moment all he knew was a fear flooding the back of his mouth, so thick he could hardly swallow, and this terrified voice in his head. He thought she might be crying, and his first thought was, she shouldn’t ever be so scared. He wasn’t entirely sure how he knew she was a she.

She said something. Her words were all blurred together, less words and more flashes, of feelings, images, all these things pressing against his skull, which very much felt like it was about to burst. She said, <it was supposed to be safe.> Over and over again. <It was supposed to be safe. Nowhere is safe. It’s supposed to be safe why isn’t it safe I’m supposed to make it safe why isn’t it safe I want to be safe—>

Which, <oh,> he realized, maybe in response to her, and the other voice froze. The fear was still there, but—shifting. Something closer to awe. Maybe hope. He wasn’t so sure he knew the feelings, but he did know the words. And he knew this, too: <this motherfucker wants us dead.>

And he knew, before he learned his name, before he learned Lup’s name, before he learned a single thing about the place they were in, the body they shared, all the terrible people he was about to meet, before literally any of that, when it was just him, half-formed, and her, new and brilliant and still-scared:

<I’m never going to let the world hurt you.>

So they crushed childhood, natch. <Oh, for sure.> Like, yeah, okay, so there was a lot of bullshit in there—<you’re vastly underestimating that number, Ko>—but Taako always had Lup to fireball them out of terrible situations, and Taako was always there to keep them from getting into said tricky situations—<okay, you fuck up danger estimation ONCE>—and between the two of them the whole sharing-a-body thing wasn’t a huge deal. Mostly they just talked to each other, and were well aware it made everybody think them some crazy, antisocial freak, always lost in their own mind. But like, so what? They had each other, and they didn’t need anybody else, and having a twin sister who was literally always attached to your brain was a great deal 99% of the time. Taako reserved one percent for how annoying she was sometimes, and how the only way to slap Lup was to also slap himself, which was a bit of a bummer.

But through cousins and caves and caravans they survived, abandoning whatever family the body was born with pretty quick once they lost their aunt and the only person who ever even learned there were actually two of them. Taako was sure she wasn’t actually related to them. Lup thought that made her all the better of an aunt, and like, yeah. Okay. Fair point.

“Hey, Taako, can you look at this for a sec?”

And okay, sure, it did sort of suck spending like, half their childhood years sleeping in literal caves and dirt-dens, which, seeing as they were an elf, was like, a lot of years, okay. So many years. Too many years, even if the pair of them could only really account for like, three-fourths of it. Three-fourths too many. Taako did not need to remember nearly starving to death at age thirty-eight, okay? He did not.

“Taako? You good in there, babe?”

But, y’know. They survived, obviously. His kick-ass protector skills helped with that. Someone liked to give people the benefit of doubt. Though by fifty they realized it was way easier to just let Taako front for those sorts of things. And Taako realized that he could take a step back whenever they had to play nice to like, not get kicked out, or whatever. He trusted Lup. No matter where she brought them, they’d be together.

“Are you—do not tell me you are getting lost in memories again. Taako. Taako! Dearest darlingest brother, do not make me come into headspace and smack you—"

And—

<Wait, Lup?>

“Finally!” Lup’s voice was the first thing Taako heard as he blinked back into awareness, comfortably tucked up alongside their shared brain, in their shitty one-bedroom apartment their landlord was probably renting to them illegally, but if they never pressed then Taako was pretty sure they wouldn’t get arrested when it all fell apart. “Where were you, Ko? Headspace can’t be that fun without me.”

<Nah, it isn’t, you know it.> Taako looked around. Co-fronting with Lup was a familiar thing, more familiar than fronting without Lup, so she knew the whole song-and-dance. He was fine to sit back and let her handle most of the motor controls. She had them sat at their kitchen table, an old rickety thing that was more trouble than it was worth, because the splinters were really starting to be a problem. On the table was the thickest stack of paper Taako had ever seen.

<Woah,> he said, as Lup snorted, snatching up a pen she must’ve set down. <Was I just not fronting when you got this? What kinda business is this?>

Lup waggled her hand. “Eh. You were around. I don’t think you were paying attention, though.”

<Prolly not.> This many papers meant one of Lup’s nerd things, and he did not need to be aware if she was getting into it. Just aware enough to keep them safe if something came up. <So, you needed me?>

“It’s—okay, so you remember all that stuff with the IPRE?”

<Kinda hard not to.> He’d almost been run over by one of their…employees? Professors? Science people? Hell if he knew their title. Lup giggled and he counted it as a success, kicking up his feet and leaning back. Or, y’know. Mentally doing that. Lup just kept sitting in the chair backwards like she’d been doing, because she never learned how to sit in a chair like a normal person. Like, Taako didn’t either, but still. <Imagine if we’d found that Light of Creation thingy. I wonder how much we coulda sold it to them for.>

She snorted. “With your luck, it would’ve hit us right in the head, and boom, no more Lup and Taako.” She paused for a moment, looking down at the stack of papers, tapping her pen to one line. “That’s, uh, kinda what I wanted to talk about. They’re—really pushing all this recruitment stuff, all these new—like, you’ve been reading the news, right, all this stuff about the planar system? And I mean, we’re an adult now, right?”

<That is what we’ve decided.> It was probably even correct, too. <What’s your point?>

“Right. So—we should probably figure out something a little better than, uh.” She gestured out to the room around them. “All of this garbage.” <Are you calling our beautiful apartment—> “Oh, shut up, Ko, you know it sucks. But—this could be an opportunity. We apply, we’re accepted, and they’ll like, teach us science or whatever. And we’ll be right—right where all the new shit is going down.”

<Cool,> Taako said, <I’m down to watch you learn nerd shit.> Lup rolled her eyes. <What! If you think I’m taking exams for you, Lulu, I’m sorry. I’ll front to turn someone bothering you into a toad but exams are entirely on you. Taako’s so good out here.>

She stretched out her legs, kicking the base of their table. Taako just went along for the ride. “And if I’m being bothered by the person giving the exam?”

<Fucking twisting my arm, Lulu. Okay, FINE, I’ll turn them into a toad. But you still have to take the exam.>

She giggled. Taako said, <aww yeah. Still got it.>

“You’ve got nothing, Taako,” Lup said, though they shared a body, and also a brain and heart and like, literally emotions sometimes when things were real fuzzy, so he felt her warmth and affection same as she did. He did his best to push a bit back at her. Like trying to smother her with a pillow, except the pillow was affection and he was the half-projected idea of a person. Lup would understand.

<So was this all? Can I go back to having some Taako time?>

“I don’t think zoning out in headspace counts as anything time, actually,” Lup said, a smile crooking up on her face. “But nah. I wanted to ask what we’re supposed to say our name is on this application.” She tapped her pen to the very first line of the massive paper stack, where, sure enough, it read ‘first name, last name, middle name (optional).’

Taako blinked. Like, literally. Apparently he was so shocked by such a dumbass question it shoved him into front. Lup rolled her intangible eyes and nudged him sideways, picking her pen back up. Taako blinked again. At least she didn’t take eyes. <Lulu.>

<Koko.>

<You can literally just write your name. Here, if you forgot how to spell it, I’ll help. L-u-p—>

He took control of their hand to begin scratching out her name, but only managed to get the L down before his hand froze up. So they were doing this. Battle-of-wills style. He said, “Lup, it’s okay if you forgot how to spell your three-letter name you literally picked out yourself.”

“Taako, you know that isn’t what this is about.” Their voices were mostly the same voice, though a little bit to the left—Taako could tell the difference, but he knew nobody else could. Which was fine. Easier to pass under the radar and all that. His impression of Lup was literally spot-on. “It’s…they won’t hire both of us.”

<Okay, that’s even dumber,> Taako said, dropping back to thought-voice because he wasn’t in the mood to wrestle Lup for body control. Also, she’d started pacing, and if she was pacing it was best to just let her get it out. <Lup, we share a body. I want to see them try to just hire you. What, they’re gonna, fucking, uh, cut us in half? Because that’s totally how this works.>

“I mean—they won’t know,” Lup stressed. The situation was really weighing on her, apparently, because she was taking the biggest pacing loop they had, circling around their apartment like some caged animal. Taako’s ears pinned back, twitching with discomfort. Lup wasn’t controlling those. Or maybe the discomfort was both of theirs. “I…I don’t want to just put one name. We should—come up with something. You’ll be a part of this just as much as me.”

Taako rolled his eyes in headspace, and even though Lup couldn’t see it, she knew it was happening. Headspace was cool like that. <That’s some dumb shit, Lulu. Just put it down as Lup. This was your big idea.>

She stopped, hesitating back at the table. “But that’s not fair to you.”

<Oh, so being mistaken for the world’s best twin sister is rude now?> Lup snorted, some sort of cut-off laugh. Taako nudged her sideways just enough to sit them back down, pick up the pen. <If it’s really bothering you that much, we gotta put a last name down, too. Here, look,> and he scrawled out Lup Taako in the two sections. <Boom. There. Both our names. Now it’s like they’re talking to us both.>

She didn’t immediately steal control of their hands to scratch it out, but she also didn’t say anything for a long while, just staring at the dark ink staining the page. Taako might’ve pressed down a little too hard. Hopefully not every page was equally important. But finally Lup said, tracing the lines of their names, “are you sure you’re okay with this?”

Taako laughed, relinquishing his remaining control on the body to drift back in headspace, mostly letting sensation filter through to him via Lup. <Like I said, your idea. And you know the second I learned we might have to take exams I decided to check out. You could not pay me to front for those. Besides, you deserve all the credit.>

“You’re just as much a person as I am, Taako.”

Taako raised an eyebrow. Pressed at that force that was Lup, like he was leaning all his weight on her. <Says the women who refuses to let me be the older twin.>

“I existed before you!” she said, as Taako laughed. “Shut up! I literally am the older twin! Who has memories that go back further?”

<Yeah, those extra few months must mean a lot to you,> Taako said, through laughter. Lup swatted their arm, which, her loss, Taako wasn’t fronting right now! Just chilling. <I’m stealing that title from you one day, Lup. Mark my words.>

“Sure, sure.” She rubbed at her eyes, still giggling a bit. “I’ll just be one of those people who refuses to be called anything but my first and last name.”

<That won’t get annoying,> Taako commented, and then, <oh! Oh, wait, new amazing idea incoming. We need a middle name too, don’t we? So get this. Lup Taako Tacco.> He didn’t need to spell it out—benefit of sharing a brain. She knew all his awful ideas. She moved the pen over the page.

“…you’re really, really sure?”

<Lup,> Taako said, poking his perfect stupid sister in the brain. <Lulu. Lup de Lup.>

“That’s a new one.”

<I have handed you the perfect name on a platter. And you dare to question it?> He poked her harder. <Shit, why stop there? We can misspell our names in even more creative ways. Put us down as Lup Taako Loop Tacco. Lup Taako Loop Tacco Loup Taco—>

“Okay! Okay.” She poked him right back, which meant she both thought very hard about poking him, and actually poked their arm so hard Taako felt it without even fronting. “I get it. Lup Taako it is.” She was quiet for a moment. “What if we went by LT?”

<Lup,> Taako said, fond, as she resumed filling out the forms, <I think that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.>

Taako learned very, very quickly that maybe he should’ve been paying a little bit more attention when Lup started talking about the IPRE. And like, maybe when they were accepted, he should’ve asked her just a few more questions. Like how the hell he missed the fact that apparently, Lup wasn’t just applying for them to go to science-magic school and become even more bomb-ass of a wizard than they already were, but that there was a literal mission to go beyond the planar system, and okay, sure, yes, Lup, he probably should’ve like, listened. But in his defense she did that for them, and this system worked because they talked to each other, so really it was entirely on her.

Three weeks in and Lup was still laughing at him. Taako was so turning her into a toad for this.

<I’d love to see you try,> she said, as they wandered through the quad. The IPRE had a huge campus, all shiny buildings that reflected the two suns in such a way that was a nightmare on elf eyes, and Lup always forgot sunglasses which meant Taako had to be responsible, or else give them permanent eye damage. Even with the sunglasses he had to squint. <I don’t know why you’re so hung up on the planar system thing.>

<Because jumping into other planes is something we just, do, for fun, whenever we want. Why do you think I’m hung up on it?> He snatched control of their arm just to smack her. Not as satisfying when he felt it too, but it made Lup laugh.

It was pretty cool overall, though. The classes were fascinating, which, yeah, they’d better be. They were still paying for their shitty apartment but got in on scholarship so that was nice, and the jobs on campus were slightly better than those off-campus, if only by paying an extra silver piece or so. Really the worst thing about it was the people. The level of competition was crazy. Just yesterday Taako had watched two guys nearly kill each other because they both wanted the same position. Someone had stolen $15 from Lup and still refused to give it back. He kept literally crashing into this fucking dwarf that was doing something real weird with the plants, literally every single time he fronted—

<Oh, not this again,> Lup said, grinning a bit. Through her he could feel the sun warm on their skin, hear the general hubbub of campus. He rolled a bit more into the body both to appreciate the warmth and better smack his sister if he had to. <Someone seems a little obsessed!>

<I think I’m cursed,> Taako told her, <I think I’m cursed and I’m never going to escape this weirdass dwarf for as long as I live.>

<He’s always on your mind!> Lup sing-songed, dropping down to sit in the shade of a tree, where the light dappled them. <Taako, is there something you want to tell me?> Her tone of voice was teasing.

<NO!> Taako wailed, and she broke down into laughter, hugging her knees and practically screaming into them. <Stop this. Stop this!>

<I’m just saying!> she said, and the worst thing about talking internally was that she wouldn’t even choke on her own stupid laughter. <Why are you so fixated on him, Taako?>

<You’re the worst sister,> he said, deadpan. It was hard to grasp his anger when it was against Lup, and also when her joy flooded him like the sun. <Do you want me to date plant fetish guy?>

<You said it!> She rubbed at her eyes.

<Anyone I date you’d be at least half-dating too!> Taako crossed his arms. <I hate you. See if I help you cheat on exams anymore.>

<Aww, Taako,> she cooed, and Taako thought very hard about biting her. Full strength and everything. She didn’t even flinch. <How about you front for a bit? Chill for like, three seconds.>

<You chill,> he muttered, but took her up on that.

He stumbled across dwarf guy again.

It took Lup fifteen minutes to stop cry-laughing so hard that they couldn’t breathe.

So, you know. Overall, things were going pretty well for them. Mostly Lup fronted, Taako chill to hang out alongside her in the co-con chair, but sometimes he took control, mostly when she was tired or he was bored enough that he had to do something. Responding to Lup’s name was second nature, and he knew her perfectly, so pretending at being Lup was second nature, too. He learned that planar physics was actually kind of interesting, but he was not a nerd, Lup, and she laughed and he pretended he didn’t hear that.

The selection process continued on. Somehow they kept making it through the rounds. Aced all their tests, natch. Lup set something on fire during one of the practicals. Taako transmuted her fire into a series of fire-animals, and then let it burn the professor’s stupid fancy pen, because fuck that guy, he tried to accuse Lup of cheating because their ears flicked when they took tests. You know, because of the room full of people and their scratchy pencils. What the hell.

<You admit you helped me with tests!> Lup said.

<Shut up, Lulu,> was Taako’s curt response, and it just made her grin.

The longer they stayed the more they started to recognize people, especially as the date for final selections crept closer and thus more and more people were ruled out. This human kid who for some reason always waved at them whenever he jogged past them. That one woman Taako was pretty sure he totally caught sketching a picture of them, but Lup wasn’t out when it happened and she still wouldn’t believe him, even though the lady shared a few of their classes and he’d pointed her out so. Many. Times. An older human who Taako had never once seen wearing a pair of pants that wasn’t jeans.

<You mean Barry Bluejeans?> Lup asked, and Taako groaned, leaning back on his chair in the IPRE cafeteria, because neither of them were in the mood to cook and the IPRE food was like, acceptable, and also he’d survived on way worse before. Today he was fronting, because Lup liked to have some sort of schedule, and he liked eating bad food sometimes.

<I do not understand why you are so fixated on this guy,> Taako said. Maybe if he leaned back far enough, he’d fall, crack open their skull, and never have to listen to Lup again. She rolled her eyes in headspace and huffed.

<How can you not understand? I have to talk to this guy. His name is Barry Bluejeans, Taako. Bluejeans!>

<No you don’t, and no it isn’t,> Taako said. <He introduced himself as Sildar Hallwinter, and then you said, before I could stop you, mind, wow, dressed like that you look more like a Barry Bluejeans, and for some godsforsaken reason he keeps responding to it.>

<And that doesn’t make you more obsessed with him?> Lup was beaming.

<He looks like a nerd!> Taako complained. <I don’t want to talk to people!>

<That’s your problem,> Lup said, huffing. <Besides, you’re also at IPRE’s fancy science school! You can’t beat the nerd allegations.>

<Nuh-uh!> Taako let the chair legs slam back to the ground, because he needed everything to refute Lup’s terrible slander. The sound was loud enough he had to pin his ears back to muffle it, and it also got him some strange looks from the few people sitting nearby, but he could take all the nerds here so it didn’t matter. <No! Your idea, you’re the nerd!>

<Self-taught wizardy is pre-tty nerdy!> He could hear the mocking tone to Lup’s voice, so he closed his eyes and tried to slip into meditation, or at least something approaching it—it was the easiest way for him to get to headspace in any real way when he was fronting. Something about the body itself mostly zoning out? Whatever the reason was, it left him aware enough to react outside while being able to see his sister inside.

He opened his eyes to their headspace, a messy rendition of the best place they’d ever lived, their aunt’s old house. Probably mostly accurate, except for the fact that outside the windows was literally entirely dark void, though seeing as the doors and windows only lead to front, that like, probably made sense.

Lup was sitting on the couch, grinning, sharp canines poking out over her lip. Her ears pricked and angled looking-for-a-fight. Taako wasted no time at all throwing himself across her body, knocking her flat against the couch. In headspace they mostly looked similar—identical twins with the same face and all—but their clothes differed, and so did the exact pattern of their freckles, which Lup swore was also true outside but he was almost certain she was just lying to herself about that one. Either way, despite the intangibility of the space it felt plenty real, Lup’s angles jabbing into him. And her warmth, which was a bit nicer.

<Aww,> Lup said, kicking at him, <you’re still not beating the nerd allegations.>

Taako nipped at the long tip of her ear. <Would a nerd do this?>

<Yes,> Lup said, <yes he would.>

Taako allowed Lup to shove him off of her, though she was kind enough to not push him onto the floor. Instead he draped across the half of the couch she wasn’t on, rolling onto his back to look at his sister’s face.

<You should stop this slander,> he said, unable to keep the grin off his face, but it was Lup, so like, she’d always know anyways. <I’m your favorite brother!>

<And my only one, so that isn’t a high bar to cross.> But her voice was mostly warmth. And a little bit teasing. <Had to fight me so much you had to come to headspace for it, hmm?>

<I just have to stop you from making the wrong choices,> Taako told her, reaching out to grab her hand. <Like befriending dudes because they have stupid names. His initials are BBJ, Lulu. Bee-Jay. That man would not survive me.>

Lup’s eyes lit up. <You know that makes me want to befriend him even more, right?>

<Ah, shit,> Taako said, as Lup flung herself back into front and he followed before she could make life-ruining choices like ‘talking to dudes with dumb names.’ <You’re the worst!>

They ended up befriending Barry Bluejeans. They actually ended up befriending a whole motley crew of IPRE planar-system mission hopefuls. He was finally able to prove to Lup that yeah, this woman totally was drawing us!! Though Lup just told her the art was good which, look, lame as hell. But somehow that was all Lup needed to strike up a friendship, and Taako was forced to remember her name was Lucretia, lest he front and make Lup sad. Through her they ended up meeting buff human kid who runs, Magnus, and through what Taako had to assume was some sort of terrible curse, he learned that plant guy was actually named Merle.

Or, correction: Lup befriended them. Taako mostly tolerated them for her, though if Lup pressed he’d admit they were like, pretty okay, for people to talk to. Except for plant fetish guy. Look, the guy was somehow a party master, but Taako really could not get over the plant fetish thing. That was weird even for him, okay? And if Lup would stop laughing at him—

But yeah. Things were mostly steady. They went out to bars and hustled people in pool, even if none of Lup’s new friends understood why they stole all the shoes instead of money. Continued to absolutely crush every test the IPRE put in their way, to the point where they were accepted as the arcane specialist on the IPRE’s inaugural mission across the planar system, a two-month voyage on a ship called—literally—the Starblaster.

Okay, Lup got accepted. But as Taako’d told her: they literally shared a body. Kinda impossible for him not to get hired too. Lup made him promise to front for at least half the time, and Taako agreed. It would probably be fun. And it turned out that most of the other people that would be coming with were somehow his kinda-friends, so. It’d be fine.

And then the day of the mission came.

And then the world ended.

What Taako remembered about the end of the world:

The way it crept, that thirteen plane of darkness, faint color snuffed out until the entire world was monochrome. He was pressed up to a porthole, and the view was empty destruction. He was alone. He couldn’t hear Lup.

It was the sort of danger that couldn’t be fought, just fled. It devoured their plane—the place they had spent their entire life—as if it was nothing. Left nothing at all behind. Countless lives ended, just like that. He was still alone. He still couldn’t hear Lup.

He could hear the crew. Frantic cries and broken questions. When someone brushed past him he jolted at the contact, these five other people now the only survivors. Static squealed over the communications, and no matter how flat he pressed his ears it kept slipping through.

Lup, he thought, but did not say. The world had ended. The ship was pulling away, going somewhere else—dimly, he could hear Captain Davenport giving orders, but if anything was directed to him, he didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Lup.

He knew fear. The fear flooding him was entirely for Lup and only a little bit for himself, as he finally yanked himself away from the porthole and stumbled, shaking, to the main room of the Starblaster. Someone said Lup’s name. Taako didn’t react. Just staggered to the nearest chair, closed his eyes, tried to approach something like meditation. Every hair on his arm was on-edge. His ears didn’t even twitch.

With his eyes closed he saw nothing at all, just darkness, like the darkness that ate their world. No warm home on the horizon, that he could tumble into, their headspace to share together. Lup was never not around. Her breaks were co-piloting with Taako. But now she was nowhere at all.

He shook. Forced his eyes back open, where someone was asking if he was okay, and he couldn’t place their face. One of Lup’s friends. Another crewmember. Without her his grasp on their names slipped. The world had ended.

It would hurt Lup so, so much. To know she wasn’t there to do anything. The world was not kind to them. But, Taako thought, she would not want to see it dead.

Taako reached for those feelings. The care Lup could dip into so easily. He found some dried-up puddle. Nothing he could manifest on his own.

Okay. He took a breath. Tried again to meditate, but could hardly even get his heart to stop racing. I’ll just. She doesn’t know. It’ll hurt her if she knows.

I can…deal with it. Until we’re safe again. Until we’ve run from the danger.

I’ll keep us safe.

Taako didn’t know how long it was, him alone in their head.

Eventually, he managed to pick up on the names of the rest of his crewmates, shaken from his memory or otherwise gathered from conversation. Six people survived the end of the world. Maybe seven, based on how he and Lup were counted, but it’s not like the other five knew about him and Lup, so. Six people.

None of them knew what ended the world. Just that when that dark force retreated, and they set back down in the prime material plane, they were somewhere entirely different. A world of lush greenery and countless animals, but no people. Not their original plane. Taako’s first, half-choked thought when he was capable of having those again was, thank all the gods I don’t believe in, that Lup brought a year’s supply of hormones just-in-case. He could transmute them in a pinch but magic was rarely as stable as the real thing.

The Light of Creation fell after a few days. And a few days after that, the sky filled with eyes, and they all knew that dark force had found them again.

But there weren’t any answers. Davenport and Merle went off in search of the Light. Taako stood at the ship’s railing, where it had been landed in a grassy clearing, and stared out at the forests and fields beyond, sometimes trying to find Lup, always coming back empty-handed. He drifted, a lot, those first few months. Hardly spoke to anyone else. They didn’t matter, compared to Lup. If she wasn’t back it meant they were still running, but other than the eyes the new plane was still around.

The longer he did nothing the more something itched inside him. He watched the animals, a lot. Thought Lup might like them. Opposite species getting along and grunting at each other, almost like they were talking.

He said, <want to go learn an animal language, Lup?>

He got no response. Headspace was still entirely inaccessible to him, no matter how much he tried to meditate. Nothing but empty void. His heart was his own heart, and it beat alone.

<Yeah,> he said, pushing off the railing and retreating into the ship, <good idea.>

He ended up dragging Barry off with him, leaving Magnus and Lucretia to defend the ship. Barry was nervous and awkward and didn’t know anything about surviving in the wilderness. Without Lup Taako struggled with basic evocation spells, had to resort to making fires the old-fashioned way, before they discovered magic. He and Barry didn’t really talk, much. Taako had nothing to say and Barry never initiated. Mostly Taako just talked to himself. All internally. There was little point in speaking aloud when he knew Lup couldn’t answer him.

She wasn’t dead. That was what he grasped onto, in those days. Lup was with him when the ship launched, and she couldn’t die without him, so she was somewhere. Just—hard to find. Taako always woke up tensed, ready-to-run. They weren’t safe. They’d probably never be safe again.

Sometimes Barry watched him like he wanted to say something, but he never seemed to build up the courage to do so. Fine by Taako. He threw himself into trying to talk to animals, did it, obviously. Befriended a whole family of mongeese, and found himself a shadow, in the youngest mongoose that liked to follow him around and squeak at him, when he was still trying to puzzle together the words. Followed him even more when he finally was able to talk back.

“You smell like you’re lonely,” was the first thing she said, “are you lonely?”

“And that’s a wrap on mongoose friendship!” Taako decided, shoving himself up. “If you need me, I will be in the cave! And nobody better need me!”

He stormed into the cave he and Barry had taken over for animal language reasons, and stalked all the way to the back, where they’d set up their sleeping bags. Lonely? Lonely? How could a baby figure that out? Certainly Barold hadn’t, even though they’d literally spent the past month together, and he was a whole middle-aged human man!

He. Taako huffed. He wasn’t lonely.

Time passed strangely in the cave. It was like he was a kid again, curled up in the cold with only Lup’s fire to keep him warm, but back then Lup wouldn’t ever shut up, an endless stream of thoughts and conversation and half-formed images passed between them. Now he was curled up underneath a sleeping bag that was just on the edge of too small for him, his feet pressed up against the ends, and the air tasted stale, but a staleness so different from the staleness of the caves and dens of his youth. Everything in this new world was too-much. Like without the smoke and smog of the cities it was just pure, unfiltered nature, and Taako’s eyes watered.

His ears pricked when he heard footsteps coming towards him, and he hunkered down, eyes narrowed against the dim light and the flickering shadow of whoever it was approaching, blocking out what little light made it through the tree-cover and to them in the caves. When he heard the voice his shoulders relaxed ever-so-slightly. But he still had is hand on his magical focus, one of the few things he and Lup had splurged on once being accepted into the IPRE because their old wand was just a stick they’d whittled down into something decent. This one hummed against him but he couldn’t taste any easy flames in the back of his throat.

“Hey, uh.” Barry’s voice bounced around the cave walls until he finally came into view, rubbing his hands together and not looking at Taako straight-on. “Lup, are you…okay?”

Taako’s ears pinned back. “What makes you think I’m not.”

Barry shrugged, crossing over to sit criss-cross on his own bedroll. Taako followed his movements, though Barry still wasn’t really looking at him. Just sort of ahead. “I mean, that baby mongoose was hinting at some stuff.” Which, great. Barry had been paying attention. Taako bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. “I told them that we were…probably gonna take a break for a bit? I mean, you don’t have to tell me anything, but like…our world did get eaten. That’s…I know it’s not easy for me, at least.”

“Okay, well you don’t fucking know me, Bluejeans,” Taako bit out, and turned away so his back was facing Barry. Literally, he added, just to himself, you literally do not know I exist.

“I know, Lup.” Barry didn’t sound that mad. And he said Lup’s name and somehow that was what got to Taako. Like there was someone else out there missing her, even though in Barry’s perspective Lup was literally in the cave with him. But still. Taako tugged at one of his own ears until he felt the sharp stinging pain of it pulled just too-far. Dug his nails into the base. Lup wasn’t around to tell him to stop.

“I don’t even care about that world,” Taako added. His voiced sounded choked but Barry didn’t fucking know him so Barry couldn’t tell. “We did it and crushed it and it’s not like anybody there cared about us.”

Barry tilted his head. “You do that a lot,” he said. “Speak about yourself in the, er, plural?” Taako froze. “I…again, you can tell me to fuck off, that’s okay. But like, it seems like we’re only going to have each other for the foreseeable future and all, so…I guess I’m just saying that I’ve lost people too.”

“Haven’t lost anybody,” Taako mumbled, though into the empty of his mind he whispered <Lup,> and heard nothing at all. He curled his fingers together. It wasn’t hard to pretend he was holding Lup’s hand, since they had the same ones. But he knew it was a lie. She’d never been so empty before.

“Okay,” Barry said. “Hey, um, if you want to get some rest, I can take first watch. I know my hearing and such isn’t as good as yours, but, y’know, I think I’m alright enough to keep us both alive and shit.”

“Yeah,” Taako said. When he glanced sideways at Barry the man was smiling at him, and Taako twisted away again. <I don’t know what to do, Lulu.> “Okay.”

Somehow the cave felt emptier when Barry left. Like Taako had gotten used to the sound of him breathing and moving and existing. He curled more into himself. The cave was not cold, but it was somehow worse, now, and even under the blanket he was shivering. Like he’d tried countless times before, he thought back to all of Lup’s days spent practicing her magic, their body that had conjured magical fires thousands of times before. But without Lup it was like all the knowledge had been carved out of his head. He’d seen Lup do it countless times, co-fronted as she did it countless times, but without her…

He dropped his wand and tucked it underneath him, and the magic buzzed, trapped, in the back of his head.

Did Lup even know the world had ended?

Taako didn’t know how he was supposed to protect them, like this. The dangers they’d faced were always easy to predict—people, who had tells and followed the same rules, and he could pick up on them, and know when to flee. Lup was better at fighting, but they couldn’t fight this. Honestly, Taako wasn’t even sure they could run. It hadn’t come back, sure, but.

It certainly had found them.

<Lup?> he tried. Hadn’t worked for the past few months, but. <If this is some sort of goof, it’s still a really bad one.>

He wasn’t expecting much. Still, he was a bit mad as he rolled onto his back, staring up at the empty cave ceiling. Thud, thud, thud, went his heart. All dull noise. How the hell did other people do this. Without Lup’s voice in his head he could hardly think properly. His thoughts had nothing to bounce off of.

He closed his eyes. Imagined, as best his could, headspace: their aunt’s old house, the peeling paint, the cracked walls, windows overgrown with brush. The closest place they’d ever had to feeling safe. He saw nothing but the darkness behind his eyelids.

He said, <I don’t think keeping us safe alone is working.>

And he was standing in front of a door. Old and beat-up and wooden. A sort of faded blue, with a wreath made of shed antlers and various dead or dying flowers Taako remembered him and Lup picking back when they lived with their aunt. Everything else was empty void, but that was par for the course. He couldn’t actually see the house’s walls. Or the front porch. Or hear anybody. It was literally just empty black and the door to his aunt’s house.

He put his hand on the doorknob and turned.

<Fucking finally!> Lup shouted, leaping to her feet where she’d been lying on the floor, launching herself directly at Taako. Her weight crashed into him and sent them both to the ground, Lup draped across him, as she tugged at his cheeks. <You stupid idiot! What the hell’s been going on out there? The last thing I remember is the ship taking off, and then boom, I’m stuck in here and the door and all the windows are gone? The hell, Taako? The last time you did this to me we were like, forty-four!>

Taako blinked, grasping Lup with every scrap of strength he had. She didn’t push him away and also didn’t get up, but it wasn’t like he really needed to breathe in headspace or anything. <This has happened before?!>

<Oh, I forgot you don’t remember the other times.> She sat back, still crushing his legs, and was scowling at him, though her ears were pricked and happy. <Still. The fuck, Taako. You locked me out of front.>

<I…I didn’t mean to.> He thought it was even true. <I didn’t want to, Lup, I just—> He hesitated. Traced nonsense lines down Lup’s arm. She rolled off his legs and onto the floor next to him, and Taako flipped over to press his face to her side. <So you don’t know what happened after the ship launched.>

<Taako, you could tell me it’s been thirty minutes or thirty years and I’d accept it.> Lup ran her hands through his hair, hummed, low in her throat. <Please tell me it hasn’t been longer than two months. I’m gonna be so fucking mad if I missed the entire mission.>

<Well.> Taako laughed. It caught halfway in his throat. <It’s, uh, for sure been more than two months.> Lup started, opened her mouth as if to speak, but Taako continued before she could. <Good news, though! This mission is lasting a lot longer than two months! You haven’t missed anything, not really.>

<Taako,> she said, <what the fuck happened out there.>

<Right. The bad news.> He looked sideways, studied the room, rather than answer his sister. A lot darker than usual. Lup hadn’t been kidding about the lack of windows. At least the door was sticking around. <…the world sort of ended.>

He told her everything. The dark plane. Their own plane, consumed. Static over the comms. A new world, a new place.

<And…yeah,> he finished. <That was all…like, four months ago now? Um, we’ve been on the animal world ever since. I…I don’t know if that black plane is coming for us or not. But. I…I dunno. Kinda sucks when you aren’t around.>

<No shit, Taako.> Lup was quiet for a long second. Taako grabbed her hand and fit his fingers between hers. <Our world is just—gone? Entirely?>

<Seems, uh, seems that way.> He squeezed her hand. <Just the seven of us now. Well, six. The rest of the crew doesn’t know about us, obviously.>

<Obviously,> she echoed, but the was a distance to her voice. <Taako…>

He twisted his gaze away from her. <I didn’t want you to go away,> he says.

<I know,> Lup said, <I know. I’m…> she sighed. <You came back. So that’s good. You are locked into keeping us safe. We can do that together now.>

He said, <uh-huh.> Squeezed her a bit tighter. Surely this wasn’t his doing. Locking Lup in a tiny box of headspace. <I don’t know how to run from that thing. Not in a way to keep us safe.>

<Well, I’m sure fighting it will be hard, too,> Lup said, lightly. She squeezed his hand back, stood up and pulled Taako along with her. If he staggered against her she didn’t mention it. <…let’s figure this all out. But then…Taako,> and she cupped his face in her hands, and his ears twitched flat, under the strength of her gaze, <I think we should tell the rest of the crew about us.>

It took another three years before they actually told anybody. Or, another three cycles, technically, because that’s what they were: they got a year in some new plane, before the black force—Lucretia named it The Hunger—descended, and attacked or devoured the plane. They all learned pretty quick that death meant absolutely nothing: when Magnus died as they fled The Hunger on that animal plane, he was right back on the ship when they made it out, everyone iterated over themselves, before they were re-knit right as they were when the ship first fled, back on their original plane. They also learned that they couldn’t bring people with them, as Magnus’s attempt cycle two to save some people just led to those people being gone once the Starblaster left the plane. Items seemed to come along fine, though. And apparently rats, because Magnus did find one in the kitchen, and did get emotionally attached before Taako could blast it.

It wasn’t all doom-and-gloom though. Restarting in a new cycle meant they all got fresh copies of whatever they were wearing the day they took off, which meant Lucretia got a few free journals, Barry was well on his way to starting an infinite jeans collection, and Lup and Taako got a half-full vial of estrogen she’d shoved in their pocket the day they left. Which was always nice, since Taako’s transmuted attempts were nowhere near as effective as the real thing, and it was really looking like their abilities to stock up were going to be few and far between, what with the whole fleeing from a plane-eating monster thing.

On the downside it meant they were very quickly getting overrun with extra red robes, though Davenport had already drawn up plans to start turning spares into blankets—Taako hadn’t even known their captain could sew—and that whatever they were wearing out of a plane was lost forever to the ether. Taako made sure not to touch his wizard hat on the last week of a cycle. He was not risking it, no matter how many times Lup teased him.

Every cycle the Light of Creation fell, and every cycle The Hunger came for it. Ate the plane if they failed to get it. Otherwise, just attacked it. Kept chasing them either way.

<But Lup, consider,> Taako said, the morning she told him she was going to declare a crew meeting, nobody was weaseling out of it, and Taako knew she’d been talking about him. <If it’s a cycle we’re basically just reliving the same year. So do we really need to tell these guys? If you think about it we’ve only known them for a year.>

“If we’re going to be stuck with five people for eternity, I want them to know I have a brother,” Lup said, digging through their closet. She was still trying to find an outfit that was a mix of them both. Taako was being very helpful by not helping at all. “I’m tired of just being Lup to them. It’s not fair they know about me but not you.”

<Eh.> Taako was fine to kick back in headspace and co-con, which Lup knew. <You’ve never cared about telling people before.>

“Did the eternity part somehow not kick in for you yet?” she asked. Taako shrugged. Like, maybe? But also they had no proof this would last forever. Maybe cycle seven they’d all beef it and that’d be that. Lup rolled her eyes, said, “and yes I have, you just pretend I don’t. We aren’t going to beef it, Taako. This is…we’re going to be stuck with these five for the long run. I want it to be real.” For a moment she was still, before shaking herself. “Now, are you going to be literally any help whatsoever, or…?”

<I’m good.> He was basically watching over Lup’s shoulder for all of this, which was a good distance to be. He bore down a bit harder on her and added, <Lup, I’m just trying to keep us safe. This—we—aren’t exactly…supposed to happen.>

“Fuck that,” Lup said, “we’re perfect, so jot that down. What are they going to do to us, Taako? Worst comes to worst they pick a favorite twin. Which’ll be me.”

<You wish,> he said, and then, <…they could kick us out, Lulu. Write us off as crazy, figure out some way to override the bond engine or whatever the hell brings us back. Not saying anything is safer. I’m good at pretending to be you, and it’s not like being called Lup or she bothers me. Why rock the boat when we don’t have to?>

Lup paused, glancing to him. Metaphorically. It was more like the weight of her attention shifted to him, which was a lot more uncomfortable, despite Taako literally just being projected thought with no real body, since he only had a more-tangible body if they were interacting in headspace. Otherwise his actions were basically just complicated thoughts. “You think they’re all going to, what, hate us?”

<Well.> Taako shrunk in on himself. <It’s happened before.>

“With shitty family members. Random strangers we were stuck traveling with. These five are way better than that.” She finally dug Taako’s best clothing piece ever out of their closet, which Lup refused to wear if she was fronting at all, because she had no taste. Big wizard hat made of mismatched fabric because it had to be patched back together so many times, mostly from Lup being very bad at targeting when they were a kid, was peak fashion, actually. She stared at it and sighed. “Well, this screams Taako if nothing else. You better not flake on me. I refuse to wear this alone.”

<Literally couldn’t go anywhere if I wanted to,> Taako said, which was, actually, true. Not like he remembered what the hell he did when he wasn’t co-fronting or co-con with Lup. Probably vibing in headspace, but like, he certainly couldn’t pull up those memories. Lup was still frowning. <Lup, come on. Who cares?>

“Taako,” Lup said, her voice dipping into serious as she stared at his hat, which was sort of like staring at him. Taako watched her focusing on a few of the charms that hung off his hat. “If I was in your place? If we only ever introduced ourself as Taako? I think I would’ve lost it by now.”

<I mean, no shit.> Taako shrugged. <That’s why I’m the one who takes backseat, Lulu, we’ve had this argument before. Pretending to be me would hurt you a hell of a lot more than pretending to be you hurts me. Which literally doesn’t hurt at all.>

“Sure,” she said, turning his hat over, “but…still. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to me either, Taako! I don’t…I don’t want this life for you.”

She was fast approaching sad territory, if the downwards tilt to her ears and the heaviness Taako could feel in their shared chest meant anything. He sighed. <Nothing I say is going to convince you, is it.>

“Nope!” she said, “so you should stop arguing it.” <You are impossible, Lulu.> She tugged his hat down over her ears, glancing towards their tiny sliver of a mirror. “Wow, this thing is uglier than I remember.” <Hey!> “Oh, yeah, just awful,” she continued, twisting this-way and that. <I hate you.> “I think the fact that you’ve gone out and worn this is proof enough that there’s two people living in here.” She trotted over to their bed, shrugging on their IPRE jacket that had been tossed haphazardly onto their blankets. “Now let’s go out and tell our friends, okay?”

<Everyone loves my wizard hat,> Taako grumbled, as Lup pushed open their door and began heading up to the main gathering-slash-living room. It was becoming more living room, especially since this cycle actually had cities and Magnus had convinced Davenport to go furniture shopping. That was fun. Taako’d stolen a couch! <And they aren’t my friends, they don’t know I exist and I don’t care about them. They’re your stupid—> He cut himself off as Lup made it to the top of the stairs, where he could see Lucretia sitting on their new couch, flipping through one of her journals.

“Hey!” Taako yelled, shoving Lup sideways out of front. She yelped and flailed back at him, but Taako had a plan, okay. “Hey! Luce!” Lucretia looked over at him and Taako threw himself over the back of the couch and right next to her. He landed on his back and mostly upside-down but he could probably bribe Lucretia into not writing down that he looked stupid, so he was fine. “This is a bomb-ass wizard hat, right? Like, the coolest thing you’ve seen me wear, uh, let’s see, ever?”

<Your friends,> Lup said, and he could practically see the stupid smug look on her stupid smug face.

Taako stuck out his tongue.

“Um,” Lucretia said, and Taako belatedly flipped around so he was at least somewhat sitting on the couch. One of his ears was folded back and kinda muffling sound. His foot was already starting to fall asleep. <See, this is why I don’t front,> he said. Lup snorted.

Lucretia continued, “it’s…a cool hat?”

“Thank you!” Taako sing-songed. He was choosing to ignore the confusion in her voice. Clearly Lup’s fault, nothing to do with his cool-ass hat. <Sure, Koko. Keep lying to yourself.> “Now, uh, why the fuck did we come up here again?”

“Why would I know?” Lucretia asked, squinting at him, but Taako only half-heard her, because—

<Crew meeting!> Lup said, just as Taako said, right before Lup practically dropkicked him aside, “ah, shit.”

“Lucy!” Lup said, pointing to her. Lucretia blinked. “Is everyone else on board?”

“Um…maybe?” Lucretia shrugged. “What are you…doing, exactly?”

“I’ll get to that,” Lup said, and then yelled, “HEY!!! EVERYONE!!! CREW MEETING! You’d better show up or we aren’t making you breakfast tomorrow!”

<Wow, cruel punishment,> Taako said, as their crew started to slowly trickle in. Six adult bodies in the living room was a bit overcrowded, but Magnus’s furniture trip and subsequent redecoration meant at least everybody could sit down, even if due to space Lup was practically sitting in Barry’s lap when the poor guy came in last and had to cram onto the couch with them. <I know this is going to fail, but could I convince you to instead announce anything else?>

<Nope!> Lup said, beaming.

<Well.> Taako hunkered down against her warmth. <At least I tried. When we get kicked out, I’m never letting you live this down.>

<Aww, it’s really cute you think you can do that,> Lup said, twisting around to look at everyone. Her ears pricked up and one whapped Barry in the face. Maybe they needed to buy another chair. Taako wasn’t sure if Lup even noticed. “We all here? Great. I have a really important announcement to make.”

<Just a thought,> Taako said, <maybe stand up instead of inelegantly getting us kicked out while sitting in the lap of the guy who literally wears jeans to sleep.>

“Oh my gods, shut up,” Lup said. Barry behind her made some sort of confused noise in his throat.

“I didn’t say anything?” He mostly sounded baffled.

“Not you, Barold, I’m getting to that.” But Lup did stand up, striding to the center of the room and hopping up onto their pathetic little coffee table. Davenport sighed, muttering please don’t stand on tables, we put food there, but Lup was not at all paying attention.

“So!” She clapped her hands together. “I have a twin brother.”

The room went silent. Like, it had been silent before, okay, though there were still sounds of fabric against fabric, people trying to get comfortable, Magnus loudly whispering to ask Lucretia what this meeting was about. But now? Nothing. Zip, nada, zilch. Taako said, <great. Awesome! Taako’s right again. You’d better be ready to fireball these guys in the face, because—>

Lup was already shushing him as he spoke, but before she could retort Magnus broke the silence, with a loud gasp, and he rushed forwards and…enveloped Lup in a hug?

“Uh.” Lup shifted a bit in Magnus’s arms. “Not that affection isn’t like, cool, or whatever, but—”

“I am so sorry,” Magnus said, which, uh, yeah, what? Lup blinked, glanced over Magnus to the couch with Barry and Lucretia. Her ears twitched. Since Davenport and Merle were behind them, she couldn’t see them, but maybe they’d be able to figure out what was going on by the confused tilt of her ears. But from what she could see, that didn’t really help.

“If you, uh,” Barry said, and Lup’s ears flicked towards him, “like, need to talk to someone…well, I guess you are to us now, but.” He stumbled over his words and went quiet. Lup blinked even harder. Taako said, <well, we had a nice go of it. Let’s get out of here now.>

“I’m like, real confused right now,” Lup said, patting Magnus’s bicep as she attempted to free herself from his hug. The guy did not let go. “What did I say? I literally said like, four words. I have a twin brother. Oh, five words.”

“Lup,” and that was Captain Davenport, “if you had told me…you can take time off for this cycle, alright? The rest of us can find the Light.”

“Time off for—” Lup started, and then, Taako, cutting her off, because, <oh my god, Lup, they think I’m dead.>

“What? No they don’t.” Lup finally managed to twist herself out of Magnus’s hug, shaking and turning to look at everyone. “You don’t—guys, he’s fine. I’m not like, here to tell you I have a dead twin brother. That would suck.”

Somehow the next round of silence dragged on longer than the last. Taako nearly ditched Lup and her poorly-planned idea entirely. Just vanished into headspace for the rest of the day. But she gripped him a bit tighter.

“Guys,” Lup continued, waving her arms, “you’ve literally met him.”

“…we have?” Barry asked.

“I don’t remember ever seeing two of you,” Magnus added. Lucretia was scribbling something down in her notebook.

Lup smacked a hand to her face. “Magnus, you literally went out furniture shopping last week.” She turned to face Merle and Davenport. “You were there too! I know you have to remember that. You yelled at us for stealing that couch for hours.”

“But Lup, you did that,” Magnus said. Merle just looked confused, but Davenport had furrowed his brow, like he was trying to puzzle Lup’s words together.

Lup ignored them all. Taako was very quickly coming to the realization that his sister was possibly the dumbest person on this ship. “And like, Barry,” Lup continued, “uh, remember like three days ago when you tried to help with dinner and burnt pasta? That was with Taako.”

Lucretia was somehow writing even faster. Barry said, “I—okay, I think I have to be missing something. I’m…very confused.”

“Yeah, wow.” Lup frowned. “You guys really aren’t catching on. Well!” She hopped off the table, flicked one of the charms on Taako’s wizard hat. “I’ll let him introduce himself! Please give him a huge round of applause and tell him this was a great idea I had.”

She sidestepped out of front. Taako stood there, the outside world fuzzy.

<Koko.> Lup nudged him. <Now’s your big moment.> And she shoved him directly into front.

For a long moment Taako said nothing at all. Mostly he was somewhat dizzy from the sudden shift of mostly-inside to entirely-outside, struggling to refocus under the bright lights and to the five pairs of eyes on him. But then—

“That was your plan!?” Taako practically shouted, jabbing a finger in the air, because Lup was an idiot, the stupidest person he’d ever met, and she was laughing at him, delighted and warm in their shared brain, which, “no! No! Shut up! You—I cannot believe you! You don’t get to make me happy right now! Shut your dumb stupid mouth!”

<This is going better than I could’ve ever expected!> Lup said, through laughter.

“Er—” someone who wasn’t Lup started to say, which meant who fucking cared, so Taako ignored it.

“You didn’t explain shit, Lup!” Taako threw his arms up. “I mean, I thought oh, this is an awful idea, but surely she’ll like, use the language, right, but NO, all—oh, you’ve met him—like they KNOW that? The whole point of me is they don’t!”

<Koko,> Lup managed to get out through her laughter. It had translated to Taako’s eyes watering up with the force of it, and he scrubbed a hand across them because he was not letting Lup get any satisfaction out of this. <Koko, your face—!>

Taako took a breath. Five pairs of eyes still on him. Or—four. Lucretia’s head was in her notebook, but Taako knew she was listening just as intently as the others. He sighed.

“I have to do everything for this fucking system,” he said.

Lup giggled.

“Yeah. Whatever. Thank you, Lulu, endlessly, for all your help.” He readjusted his hat so it wasn’t about to cover his entire face, and then said, “I’m Taako. This cool wizard hat is mine.”

He was halfway to turning tail and bolting off the Starblaster because someone had to keep them safe, when Magnus said, “um, I don’t want to—is anybody else still, um.” His voiced ticked up a notch. “Like, really confused? You’re—talking to yourself?”

“Everything,” Taako stressed, to Lup. She just kept grinning. But he said, “I’m Lup’s secret twin brother who lives in her brain.”

<Our brain!>

“Right. Our brain. But clearly I got the smarter half.” He was getting a bit tired of standing in the center of everyone, so he stalked over to the couch and shoved both Barry and Lucretia sideways so he could cram into the space leftover without sitting on either of them. “We share a body. Have since we can remember. We trade off who’s fronting—uh, like, hanging out in the body and doing all the people stuff—and who’s just sort of watching and adding commentary. Or, in Lup’s case, being very annoying.”

<You say, as if you aren’t an annoying asshole too.>

<I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,> Taako said. “But yeah. Usually we’re both around even if only one of us is like, doing the interacting and stuff. You’ve all talked to both of us a ton of times. I’m just super good at what I do, so you couldn’t tell.”

“…huh,” Barry said. “Wow. Okay. That explains why you talk to yourself so much.”

“Called it,” Lucretia mumbled, so low Taako wasn’t entirely sure he’d caught the words right.

“Which one of you is the one who threw three of my potted plants overboard last cycle?” Merle asked. “Because I still have a bone to pick with you.”

“I’ve been friends with both of you this entire time? Awesome!” Magnus said.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Taako,” Davenport even offered him a hand to shake, which like, cool. Cool. Taako’d done that before but he was happy to do it again. “Is there some way for us to know which of you is which, if you don’t mind me asking? I assume you’d want to be addressed as yourselves, if you’re telling us?”

“Uh.” Taako rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, yeah, I guess that was like, Lup’s goal here. Uh. Well, I’m the hotter twin.” <We have the same face!> “But…maybe, um, well, if you see this hat,” Taako nodded upwards, “then it’s for sure me because Lup has terrible taste. But other than that, uh, maybe I wear blue and she wears red?”

“Wait, but our uniform is red!” Magnus said. “That’d just get real confusing.”

“I meant—” Lup was laughing again. Taako spluttered out his own words through it. “Well, obviously, we’d wear additional red, to—actually, no, fuck you all, you don’t get nametags. Figure it out for your goddamned selves.”

It was…weird. That they all knew now. That nobody was—calling them liars. Crazy. Any other countless accusations that had swam through Taako’s nightmares when they were a lonely little kid. Taako laughed, half-Lup’s delight, half his own sort of delirious bewilderment. He said, “there’s a lot less kicking us out than I was expecting.”

<See, Koko?> Lup said, as everyone else practically fell over themselves reassuring Taako that of course they weren’t being kicked out over this, why would they think that? Which Taako didn’t like, need, or anything. Not like he gave a shit. Lup just smiled, and said, <told you they’d be cool.>

The worst part was, the rest of the crew actually did start to be able to tell who was fronting.

Like, sometimes it was very obvious. Of course Taako had his hat, and if someone was blasting fire, well, that could only be Lup. But somehow as the cycles turned on Taako didn’t even have to be talking for everyone to just…know it was him, or vice-versa for Lup. Turned out when you lived with the same five people for eight years they started to get really good at learning your tells. Taako didn’t even know they had tells like that. Apparently their voices sounded different. Which, yeah, they did in headspace, but not by much and he he’d never thought someone else would be able to tell.

“It’s really stupid,” he told as such to Lup one day on cycle 8, nearly halfway through the year and still trying to track down the light. Of course, now it would be easy for someone to tell who was who. Taako was the one interested in building a fake Light out of a bunch of bioluminescent mushrooms, and Lup was much more into going out and searching for it, armed with lots of fire to get through the land choked with suffocating spores. But somehow yesterday Magnus had known it was actually Taako out there for all of an hour, and two days before that Lucretia had come across Lup smushing more mushroom into Taako’s fake Light and known it was her, too. “I’m so good at being you, Lulu!”

Lup laughed, more at the whine in his voice than anything else, and Taako pouted, sprawling across the couch and rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling while Lup was the fuzzy warmth in his limbs. <They’re our friends, Ko, of course they know,> she said. <Isn’t it nice to not have to pretend that we’re the same person?>

“No. It sucks.” Lup’s gaze cut into his chest despite the fact that she literally wasn’t fronting and since Taako wasn’t in headspace she didn’t even have a physical body. “Lulu,” he whined.

<Koko,> she echoed, mock-whining. <Half the time you’re wearing that dumb wizard hat. I think if you’re really so sad that people know you’re you, you should let me set it on fire.>

Taako gripped the lip of his hat. “You’ll have to kill me first.” Lup laughed, and he continued, sighing, “but fine, I guess that one’s sort of on me. Still think it’s dumb that they know even without the hat.” Lup was basically just projecting smugness towards him. Jokes on her, Taako didn’t have to respond to that! <You already are.> No he wasn’t. Not at all. Lup didn’t know what she was talking about. <Sure, sure. See, this is another Taako Tell, tee-em: gets so defensive about things that don’t matter.>

“I’m not talking to you anymore,” Taako said, and poked at his fake Light with a little more violence than was necessary. He wasn’t going to pick up the pieces that fell to the floor.

He was able to mostly work in peace for about fifteen minutes or so, Lup only sometimes chiming in with her own unhelpful remarks—and once she told him he should start trying to cast his own magic on the fake Light to make it brighter, which, okay, that was a sort of decent idea—when the door from abovedeck opened and someone tromped down the stairs. Magnus, Taako guessed, based on the pattern, and he was proven right a moment later.

“Hey Taako!” Magnus called, removing his gas mask and tossing it onto the coffee table.

Taako’s head jerked up. “No!” he said. Magnus was beaming at him. “You don’t know that! How can you tell I’m Taako?”

Magnus pointed to Taako’s head. “Hat.”

Taako grabbed his hat and threw it halfway across the room. “Oh? How about now?”

“Gonna go out on a limb and guess…” Magnus squinted his eyes and stroked his chin, as if thinking hard, but unfortunately Taako had lived with the guy for eight years now and knew he was absolutely not being serious. “Still Taako.”

Taako crossed his arms. “I could be Lup,” he muttered, “you don’t know.”

Magnus laughed. Inside Taako’s head, Lup did the same thing. “Sure, Taako,” he said, crossing the room and dropping down next to Taako on the couch. “You know, if you want us to have a harder time guessing, Lup actually likes the fact that we can usually figure out who’s who. Just a tip.”

“Lup is stupid and I won’t do that.” But he uncrossed his arms and cast a lazy mage hand to bring his hat back over to him, dropping it onto his head. It slid down to block most of his vision, but Taako was used to it, and Lup could stuff her complaints. <I didn’t even say anything!> “We never should’ve told you.”

“I’m glad you did! I like having another friend.” Magnus peered at the fake Light still in Taako’s lap and poked it. “How’s this coming along?”

“Eh.” Taako shrugged, shuffling backwards to he was sitting up rather than slumped down, and he held the fake out in front of him. “It’s basically just a ball of glowing mushrooms. Jury’s out on if it’ll kill us in our sleep or not, but so far the box strategy seems to be going well. Besides, if the mushroom-bits we brought in were the spore-producing parts, I think we all would be dead by now. Once we actually find the Light and I can study it I think it’ll be a lot closer.”

“Cool, cool,” Magnus said, poking the fake again. “Is it supposed to be so squishy?”

“You have to remember that my only tools are glowy mushroom bits and a tiny bit of paper mâché we made with Barry last week. And we had to bribe Lucretia for the paper.” Which was not cheap. Girl loved her journals, though Taako was pretty sure writing down a bunch of information about worlds that were destined to be eaten by The Hunger was a waste of time. Lup wouldn’t let him be mean to Lucretia about it, though, so he had to promise like, so many transmuted journals in return, because look, real paper was better than the transmuted stuff for paper mâché, okay? He needed real paper. He only wasn’t stealing it because it would make Lup sad.

Magnus patted him on the back, and Taako nearly flinched at the weight of it. Lup getting affection from her <our!> friends was normal. Taako was…less used to it. “I’m sure you’ll get there soon!” he said, which. Didn’t make Taako feel any sort of way. “Oh! Also, I totally was supposed to tell you something. Cap’n’port says that we’re going to have to leave the Starblaster tomorrow to keep searching for the Light. The mushrooms are so dense he can’t safely land the Starblaster or anything, so we’re going to have to camp!”

Taako sighed. “Of course we are.” He knew how to camp, had spent like, half their childhood doing so, but still. He liked traveling by magical flying ship. It had AC and heating and also a real actual bed he could sleep on. “Does that mean we’re getting closer, then?”

“Dunno! But Barry thought the same thing.” Magnus was quiet for a moment. “…do you think you could make food with the mushrooms?”

“Food safe for us to eat? No, absolutely not, shit’s toxic as hell,” Taako said, already standing up, “but food that looks cool?” He considered his fake light, tossed it onto the couch. “I’d be willing to give it a try.”

Cooking with deadly-spore producing mushrooms went…actually a lot better than Taako was expecting. Magnus was a mostly competent helper, and sure, some of Taako’s transmuted cookware sort of melted, but he wasn’t risking his good stuff on food they weren’t going to eat, because who knew when they’d make it to a cycle that sold cookware. They did nearly kill Barry when he wandered into the kitchen and, like a maniac, tried to steal of bite of their deadly glowing-mushroom pancakes, but Magnus tackled him, and Lucretia, who’d come in about twenty minutes into things and had been helping by naming food items to recreate, threw her journal at his head. So Barry lived, and Taako even got to smack him over the head with a wooden spoon.

Later that night when Taako was curled up in bed relishing their last night on the Starblaster before they had to tough it outside for the foreseeable future, he asked, half-whispered into the silence of their room, “where were you?”

Lup’s presence stirred at his words, from something distant to something much closer.

“You’re usually way more talkative and distracting,” Taako added.

Lup smiled, a bit. <Just watching you,> she said. <I like watching you have fun.>

“Kinda creepy, Lulu. Imagine how that would sound in literally any other circumstance?” But he couldn’t stop the smiling crawling up onto this face. “…you still could’ve joined in, though.”

<I know,> she said, and when Taako closed his eyes he slipped into headspace, somewhere halfway between meditation and sleep. Lup was sitting on the couch and opened her arms, and Taako wasted no time burrowing against her warmth. <But I’ve done a lot of bonding with everyone. I want you to get that for yourself, too. Like, different relationships and all.>

<You’re the one who keeps calling them our friends,> Taako pointed out. With nothing to do with his hands he turned to his sister to start braiding her hair. Her hair in headspace was a tad longer than it was outside, and also since they had separate bodies it was way easier for Taako to braid. She hummed.

<They are our friends,> she said, <but…I dunno. I guess I want you to have them as your friends because you like them, not because I like them so you just go along with that.> She crinkled her nose. <Though making bad mushroom food was a dumb way to do that.>

<Not my idea!> Taako said, tugging her hair a bit too hard. Lup rolled her eyes. <…I guess I sorta get what you mean, though. And the whole—maybe it’s not so bad. That they can like. Tell, or whatever. I mean Merle’s still really bad at it.>

Lup laughed. <Merle sometimes confuses Magnus and Barry. Still not sure if he’s doing that one on purpose or not.>

<Gonna guess on purpose. Seems like a Merle thing to do. Wonder how that church of his is doing?> Taako let the words hang as he continued working on his sister’s hair. <…hey, Lulu, want to know the thing I like the best about everyone knowing we’re two people?>

<Oh?> Lup perked up.

<Now,> Taako said, grinning, <whenever you stare at Barry’s ass, people know it isn’t me.>

<TAAKO!> she shrieked, already shoving him off the couch, and Taako was cackling. Her face was flushed to the tip of her ears. <I don’t—I never—you don’t know what you’re talking about!>

<Lup-de-Lup, we share a brain,> Taako said, through laughter, even as Lup had grabbed a pillow and was pummeling him with it. <Yes I do.>

<I’m going to kill you,> she informed him, and Taako grinned, and things were pretty okay.

So yeah. Maybe Taako could admit that Lup’s idea to tell the crew about them was like, fine, or whatever. Sure they were on the run from a universe-devouring force and left behind entire planar systems to be eaten, but there were these five other people who were just, like, cool with them. And maybe it wasn’t so bad that they knew it was Taako, even if he wasn’t wearing his hat, or Lup, even if she was. Their relationships grew in parallel, but weren’t identical. Which was…new. Different. It’d always just been the same before. Lup hated Greg Grimaldis for stealing her fifteen dollars, so Taako hated him the exact same way. Taako thought the tiefling traveling on the same caravan as them was hot, Lup shrugged, and did, too.

But on the Starblaster, in their weird, neverending cycles…

They were all friends, for sure. That wasn’t going to change. But when Davenport started to teach them all how to fly the Starblaster, in case anything happened to him, Taako checked out about three minutes in, but Lup stuck it out, and by the time Taako had memories again somehow he’d missed Davenport teaching her, like, seven gnome sailing songs. Or the day Taako spent in the medical bay with Merle because he maybe got sick with some weird otherplane form of the flu, and while Lup mostly slept the sickness off, Taako ended up in a four-hour debate with Merle over the décor of the med bay that somehow ended with Merle absolutely destroying him at poker, which, literally what the hell.

It became a thing they could do on command—step back a bit, become fuzzier, and blink back into a time where they only knew time had passed because their twin shared the memories with them. It was weird. Taako wasn’t really used to living without Lup in the back of his brain 24/7, or, more commonly, him being that for her. But it wasn’t a forever thing. He could feel her, still, that ever-present warmth up against his heart, that kept it beating. Tug at the sense of her to drag her back into front, when he wanted to experience this with her, actually. And she did the same to him.

But it was kind of nice to like…have those slightly different relationships. Friends who were friends with Taako, and with Lup, not just with the single entity that was the body they shared. Which wasn’t to say they did it all the time, or even most of the time—life was, actually, a lot better when he could add unneeded running commentary to Lup’s hangout sesh with Lucretia, but it was more like—that would then become a hangout sesh with the three of them. Him, Lup, Lucretia. There was some difference there, like he and Lup were closer to two people than the one-to-one-and-a-half they used to pretend at being.

<It’s weird,> Taako decided. <Weird is the best word to sum it all up.> He was half-dozing on the living room couch while Barry and Davenport were attempting to set up a TV. They had been helping, but Lup bowed out when it became apparent that adding fire to electronics from a world that had no magic and thus didn’t insulate their electronics from magical interference was maybe the reason they kept breaking the TVs. Taako’s transmutation wasn’t much better. <Like, they’re friends with us, but, um, twins-us. Not just system-us.> He scrunched up his nose. <Does that make any sense? Maybe this is nonsense and doesn’t matter.>

<No, Koko, I think it’s good to talk about it.> Lup tilted their head. <It’s kind of messy and different, but all of this is messy and different. I mean, most people don’t have to deal with, you know, the world ending, what is this, fourteen times now?> Lup fell quiet for a moment as they both watched the TV flare to life for one glorious second, before the cables burst into sparks and left both Barry and Davenport cursing. Lup laughed and added, <this is probably very strange to say, but…we’re safe here. I mean, The Hunger nonwithstanding, of course, but…we can want different things. Have different things. Be different things. It won’t put us in danger.>

<I guess,> Taako said. On the other side of the room Barry was holding up the fifth broken TV cable to a frowning Davenport. <…wow, they are really bad at this.>

<Right?> Lup snorted. <At least I just melted things.>

<Which smelled very bad, and you then left me to handle, which wasn’t very nice.> But Taako didn’t have much bite in his words. <You don’t think—I mean, I know you’ll always come back. Even if I’m like, having a day with Magnus and Merle or something. So it’s not like I’m worried or anything. But—I mean. This, us, doesn’t…happen. What if things get good, and our body realizes—> He cut himself off. Flipped over so he was staring at the back of the couch, wrapped his arms around his body, and it was half him doing it, and half Lup. So he shrunk a bit into her hold. <What if there was only one of us. And—and the other couldn’t pull them back.>

<That happens when things are bad, too,> Lup said lightly. <But we always come back from it. I promise you, Taako. Nothing in the world could tear us apart. Literally! Even if we die we come back to life. Me and you together.>

<Yeah, yeah.> Taako rubbed at his eyes. His hand came back a bit wet. <I wasn’t worried or anything.>

<Of course not.>

He pushed himself up on the couch. <Don’t doubt it.> And then called, “hey, are you two like, good, or…?”

Barry groaned. Davenport said, “we might not be getting a TV this year.” Taako tried to offer some non-magical assistance while Lup stared at the mess of cables and tried to figure out just where Barry and Davenport had gone so wrong. Eventually it ended with them all—him and Lup and even Davenport got in on it—cheering on Barry to try to necromancy the many dead TV cables back to life, which didn’t work at all, but the fear like, died, a little bit, there. Still kind of curdled in Taako’s gut. He was sure Lup felt it, too. But she didn’t mention it.

They always came back to each other. He’d debrief about the day with Lup before falling asleep. It was the one thing elf meditation was good for. Easiest way to slip into headspace. It wasn’t like some barrier drawn up between them. Just—a question. Hey, give me a second? Oh, yeah, sure, talk in an hour, okay? They’d get used to it. Figure out these new things.

And then cycle 17 happened.

It actually started out pretty good. There had been civilization, but it was long gone, leaving mostly-abandoned cities behind. Mostly, because there were, like, robots that hung around doing normal-people things. But that really wasn’t any of Taako’s business so he left it for Lucretia who actually cared about things like the stories of planes they visited. Taako was having way more fun scrapping. Like, consider: day twelve he and Lup found two loaded guns Lup wasted no time firing off into the air, countless random metal bits Davenport had told them to keep an eye out for, and a mostly-broken Fantasy iPod! Which truly was the best thing they could’ve found, because Taako was getting real tired of listening to nothing but Merle’s weird Pan music.

It was a nice break. Well, not entirely a break, since they did still have to search for the Light of Creation, which was going pretty poorly. But Lup was way better at triangulation anyways, so Taako could kick back while she and Barry worked on that, and put more of himself into his hangouts with Magnus and occasionally Merle, which amounted to the three of them wandering around trying to find pieces for the ‘cool mechanical arm’ Magnus wanted to add onto the Starblaster, with Lup sometimes chiming in when she felt like Taako had long enough.

<Get this,> she said, one such night, when Taako was attempting to worm his way into a collapsed building because he was for sure the most flexible of them all, even if he was really regretting his choice right about then because wow this was getting painful. <We should ask Magnus to add lasers too. So the Starblaster can actually blast stars.>

<Great, great,> Taako responded, struggling to breathe with how tight things were. <Can you like, help me, or?>

<No, this was your terrible idea,> said Lup, but she did blast the hole a bit bigger, and Taako was finally able to pull his way into the building. For his efforts, he was rewarded with…

He narrowed his eyes. “Lulu,” he said, “please tell me this room isn’t entirely and only filled with novelty giant sticky hands.”

Lup laughed so loudly it kicked Taako right out of front. But at least she was the one who had to crawl back out, soot-smeared from her own spells.

In return Taako would butt in for her hang-out sessions with Barry, just to be annoying when the two of them gave up on the Light and went out to explore the city. Today they’d ended up maybe an hour or so out from the Starblaster when Taako poked his head in, stretching out in co-con and watching Barry through Lup’s eyes.

<He is so comically terrible at this,> Taako commented, as Barry was shocked, yet again, by the tiny robot he was trying to fix, who was almost certainly fucking with him at this point. Barry’s hair was all frizzed up and on edge—impressive, seeing as they were early enough into the cycle that he hadn’t grown his mullet back out—and he was arguing with a robot maybe the size of his fist that was beeping right back at him. “You should kill it, Barry!” Taako called.

“Or keep trying!” Lup retorted. “It’s cute.” Barry glanced back and shot them a thumbs-up and a grin, before getting shocked, again. Taako snorted, and even Lup giggled a bit that that, hiding her smile behind a hand.

<I think it’s sweet!> she told him, resting her head on her arms. The metal table they were sitting at was cool against their skin, and Taako hummed at his sister, both of them still watching Barry. <Say what you want, Koko, but he’s determined.>

<Determined to get shocked,> Taako said, laughing. <I’ll bet you ten gold the robot doesn’t even have anything wrong with it.>

<Oh, for sure,> Lup said, half-distracted. Taako could feel her attention waning—like she was drawn closer to outside than he could get, or a blanket between the two of them. He could still feel her—nothing would prevent that—but her mind and thus their mind was mostly elsewhere.

<Hey, Lulu. Favorite brother is talking to you.> He tried to get her attention by waving something in front of her face, flashy thought-images of himself, but she didn’t even blink. Was Barry really that distracting?

Their ears were flushed. There was a very stupid smile on Lup’s face.

<Oh-ho-ho,> Taako said. <I know what this is, Lulu.>

She was well past responding to him. Taako didn’t really mind, though. What was it she’d said all those cycles ago? I like watching you be happy. And…yeah, okay. He got it. There was absolutely no universe where this was the end of this conversation—hell, Taako now had to figure out if he had a crush on Barry, too—but in the moment, well.

Barry was nice, if somewhat stiff and awkward, though he’d loosened up a lot in their years on the Starblaster, and get him into his element and the man was a riot. There were still scorch marks in the kitchen from when Magnus asked Barry what would happen if they microwaved the Light of Creation and Barry chucked the Light in without a second of hesitation, and when Taako and Lup were halfway through dinner, too. The fact that nobody died and the Starblaster was able to be repaired after that was honestly a miracle. Almost made Taako believe that all of Merle’s praying to Pan had some weight to it.

So, if Lup had decided to go from staring at his ass to thinking soppy thoughts about him…

<We’ll figure it out, Lulu,> he mused, more to himself than her, in this moment. Outside, Barry cheered, having finally made some process, and it brought a grin to Taako’s half of things, too. They’d never really tried dating. There wasn’t exactly space for it when they were just trying to survive, and it was made all the more complicated by there being two of them, and everyone knowing, now, too. But…

<Yeah,> Taako said, <we’ll figure it out.>

So with all those good memories rattling around that cycle, of course things had to go to shit in the worst way possible.

They didn’t find the Light, for one, which like, okay, bummer and all, but that wasn’t the worst of it. No. In their attempts to find the Light they found a powerful magical source submerged under the city, took a group dive down there—save for Barry, who couldn’t swim—and found, just, you know. A magical crystal containing within it the few hundred souls of the last remaining people on the entire plane, who used the crystal to hop into their robot-bodies up above.

Davenport said, “we can’t let The Hunger absorb this, guys. If we give The Hunger this sort of power—to use souls like this, put things into machines—we cannot let that happens.”

“Oh,” Taako said, “got it, Cap.” And he raised his wand to blast the crystal apart, and then—

And then—

He was sitting up in the crow’s nest of the Starblaster. The sky above was dark with night, pinprick stars swirled across it in constellations he didn’t know. The city they’d spent their cycle in was distant, hazy with a low-lying fog.

He said, <what the fuck.>

“Hey, Taako.” Lup’s voice was quiet. They were sitting on the railing, Lup balancing them precariously up on the edge. When Taako tensed she said, “don’t worry, I asked Lucretia and Merle to spot me if I fall. But I won’t.”

When Taako looked down with her eyes he could see both Merle and Lucretia down on the deck of the ship, playing some sort of card game. Not the greatest picks. Lucretia was not strong enough to catch them if they fell, and Merle claimed he was a cleric but half the time just had them walk off their injuries. Lup laughed, said, “Lucretia can cast featherfall. We’ll be fine, Koko.”

<Right,> he said. He jerked their gaze back up to the sky. So many unfamiliar stars. <What the hell happened. Last thing I remember was that big crystal, and I was gonna blast it, and then…>

“And then,” Lup echoed, with a sigh. “Taako, I…you know I couldn’t let us do that, right?”

Taako squinted. Didn’t affect their view any so clearly Lup had most of motor controls, but still. He squinted harder internally to make up for it. <Do what? Cap’n was saying we couldn’t let The Hunger get stronger. That seems pretty cut-and-dry to me. Blast a crystal, keep running. Not like we’re gonna save this plane. It’s a goner.>

She was quiet. It was a sort of quiet he’d never heard from Lup before. A—drawing back. Further away from him. She was harder to grab onto, and her warmth was muffled.

<Lup,> he said. <I…I don’t remember anything between then and now. I…I couldn’t hear you. I couldn’t hear…> He tried, to grasp for some sort of memories. Flashes of events. Even when he wasn’t fronting or co-con he was aware, sort of, in some half-there way, like he could see through Lup’s memories and thus gain them for himself. But here there was just—nothing. Darkness. Empty gaps between two events. <I…couldn’t hear anything.>

“Now you know how I felt for the first few months of cycle one,” she said, lightly. Taako’s head hurt. “For three months when we were forty-four. Half a year at forty. So on, so on. I’m sorry. I know it sucks. But I couldn’t do anything else. You weren’t listening to me.”

<Lulu, what…> Cycle one, forty-four, forty…again, Taako tried to grab for—something. Some sort of handhold. Lup was still staring at the sky so that was all he saw, overtaking his vision, his senses. A whole huge scrawl of stars that weren’t his own. <I don’t…>

She said, “I wasn’t going to blow up this world, Taako.”

<But.> He hesitated. Listened to Lup’s breathing, for a long, long moment. The way her legs swung in the air. The curl of her hands around the railing, keeping them steady. The chill of the wind, tugging at their hair. Lup always wanted it longer. All the way down their back. But its length right now was their compromise. As long as Taako could handle before cutting it off in a fit of anger after trying to detangle it for a little too long in the shower. <I get that. You’re good like that. But I don’t understand why one second I was there, and the next second I was here.>

“You…” Lup took a breath. “We don’t know what happens to the worlds, there, inside The Hunger. If they’re destroyed or could be saved or what.”

<I mean, it’s called The Hunger, not The Place Where Things Are Chill.>

She continued. “Everyone was siding against me,” she said. “Taako, they all—Cap’n-port, Magnus, Merle, even Lucretia, for a minute, and…and you. I’m not—blaming you. I know you just want to keep us safe, and keeping our enemy from getting stronger is the safer choice. But—Taako, I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t let us stoop to that level. We…I have to believe there’s some way to stop this. To save all the worlds we’ve doomed.”

<Lulu…> She was fisting their hands into their pajama pants. Taako never even noticed she’d changed. Though it made sense.

“If you were there,” she said, “if you were—arguing with me, or just doing stuff, and I never got the chance to do anything back. I…I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, Taako, I…” Her hands curled into their palms, and Taako felt the pain as an echo, from Lup to him, half-faded. Her breaths came shaky, though she didn’t teeter on the railing. “You—you can do it. When things are really, really bad. And I don’t…I don’t know. I don’t think you know how you do it. But you lock all the doors. Keep some part of us safe.” She was staring at her hands. “I don’t know. Nobody else suspected. I can pretend to be you just as well as you can be me. I think it was your idea.”

<What was my idea?> Taako asked. <Lup, what are you talking about? I don’t remember fuck all! None of this you’re saying, it’s not…>

“I know. I’m sorry.” She sighed. “I just…I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know what I’d do, if you were…there. Still. And your idea was the louder one. And I figured, well, if you can lock me out of front…”

<Lup, you’re starting to, uh, scare me, a bit.>

“It’s okay, Taako,” she said. “We figured it out. In a day you’re going to go shrink down the crystal. Transmute it. And we can bring that with us, and any souls who want to tag along. Sort of…keeping them safe, until we beat this thing.”

<That doesn’t really answer anything.>

“I know.” She turned and leapt off the railing, thudding onto the floor of the crow’s nest. Stood there in the center of it. “Taako, what do you remember from cycle one? That first year?”

<I…> He thought. Like, really thought. Tried to pull everything together. There were…animals. Lush greenery. He was…

That little baby mongoose, who told him that he was…

YOU WERE ALONE, some part of him screamed, a desperate cry that sounded too much like Lup for comfort, you were alone you were alone YOU WERE ALONE—

He shut that down fast. Slammed the door on those thoughts and wrapped his intangible arms around himself, and outside Lup did the same, hugging herself and hugging him. Her warmth fluttered beside their heartbeat. Taako wasn’t sure what he was, there. Not the warmth. But he doubted their heart would beat without Lup, either.

<Dunno,> he said. <I remember Magnus died. The Hunger came back. I think I talked to Barry.> All vague, foggy things. He’d never really thought back to that first year. <Barry was nice.>

“Yeah,” Lup said, “Barry was nice.”

She climbed out of the crow’s nest, waved off Lucretia’s and Merle’s questions, descended into the ship and down to their room. Hesitated there, in the mirror. Taako watched her watching herself, him reflected in her eyes.

“Do you trust me?” she asked their reflection.

<Duh,> Taako said, and he didn’t hesitate for a second. Even with the empty spaces. Here-to-there, when there should’ve been some in-between. He never wanted Lup to be unhappy. Even if her happiness came at his expense. <Always.>

She rubbed at her eyes, turned away, collapsed into their bed and hugged a pillow to her chest. “I love you,” she said, “so much, Taako. Okay? I just…had to. I had to do it. I didn’t even know I could, I. I just. I had to do it. I had to.”

<I love you too, Lup,> Taako said, and reached out for her, as though they were split across two bodies, and he really could comfort her physically. She leaned into his touch, closed her eyes.

Taako found himself in headspace, them both on that old, ratty couch. Throughout the years headspace had changed, somewhat. Still their Auntie’s old house, that one main room. Few windows, old, beat-up door. But the furniture was starting to morph, slowly. Their table from the Starblaster. New pictures up on the wall. Some hazy scenery outside, mostly still empty black, but in the distance Taako could see galaxies, maybe. The blurred shapes they passed in the space between planar-systems, before their forms snapped back into shape.

He asked, <what did you do?>

Lup reached across the gap to grab his hand, tug him into a hug, and Taako went willingly. His ear folded against his sister’s chest, listening to the steady rhythm of their shared heart. Wrapped his arms around her just as tightly as she gripped him.

She said, <I’m sorry.>

And then, tucking her face in his hair, <I locked the door.>

Alone in headspace, Taako considered the door.

Lup was out in front, blowing shit up. She’d decided to hang back, help the remaining robots fight off The Hunger for as long as possible. It was a losing battle, of course. Once the Starblaster broke free from the planar system they’d be snapped back into place, and this world would be consumed. Taako wasn’t about that. Thus, headspace.

Nothing in headspace was real, really. Not in the way outside was real. It was all…projected thought. Metaphor made manifest. It was easier to believe they had a house in which they could interact with each other physically, and so they had that, in the space between sleep and wakefulness, piecing together some sort of narrative within the inbetween spaces of their lives. Taako could, probably, if he wanted, open the door, and be right up there with Lup again, her magic burning at their fingertips.

He did none of that. Instead he stood in front of the door, and kept one hand on the worn metal doorknob.

He probably wouldn’t remember this, in a week. Headspace memories were blurry at best, and especially so if Lup wasn’t with him—like dreams that slipped right out of his grasp, and his separate memory, here, would become Lup fighting The Hunger until the Starblaster’s bond engine unspooled her and knit them back, together.

But still. He remembered it now, in the moment. The way the metal was cold against his hand. The wooden floor rough against his feet. The emptiness of the room, without Lup there to brighten it.

If he turned the handle, would the door open? Would he be able to step through and out into front, tucked up alongside Lup? Or would the knob catch against something? Would he blink and find himself somewhere twenty, thirty minutes later, an hour, two, three, and nothing at all to connect the two points?

He wasn’t the biggest fan of gaps in his memories.

His hand tightened around the doorknob, and he let it go. Stepped back without bothering to turn it, draped himself across the couch, closed his eyes and saw only darkness.

<Hey, Lup,> he said, <how long ‘til we die?>

<Uh,> came Lup’s response, <well, I’ll be real, I’m pretty overwhelmed right now, but I also just saw the Starblaster escape. So maybe we’ll wake up before death! Won’t that be fun.>

<Less painful.> Taako was quiet for a moment. He saw nothing—not inside, not out. He was talking to Lup. That meant he was probably closer to front than not. Co-con, or whatever. If he really tried he’d probably even be able to drag his awareness to their body’s.

He didn’t bother. Why be aware for a possibly painful death, at the hands of The Hunger? He trusted Lup with his life, his soul, whatever half-thing he had. He opened his eyes, rolled over on the couch, and waited.

There was no reason to be scared. Lup would always pull him back out.