inkedinserendipity:

There’s a crystal hanging from a pendant around his neck.

Like so many other things — the focus engraved with a name he can’t read, the hat patched with a square of denim, the pen with engravings carved in a language he doesn’t understand — he doesn’t remember where he got it. His mind’s always been a bit addled. Part of being an idiot wizard, he supposes.

The pendant is roughly the size of his fingernail, and dormant most of the time. But sometimes, when he’s sleeping or when he’s gearing up to defend himself it wisps a faint red, heated against his skin. Most of the time, he doesn’t notice. Sometimes he does.

Unlike the other useless trinkets he had, Taako doesn’t pawn this one off for gold. Whenever he tries there’s a deep sense of wrongness, of unease, like he needs to keep it, though he can’t remember why.

So he keeps the pendant with him, tucked beneath his shirts, and on the cool winter nights before Sizzle it Up, it keeps him warm.

---

Then: Sizzle it Up, and Glamour Springs. Taako finds himself alone, again. He’s fleeing through the woods, utterly alone, outcast from a town that was once happy to see him, running from the law and Sazed and his own condemnation. If he can just run fast enough, he won’t have to reflect, won’t have to look back and wonder what he did wrong, where his magic failed him —

Steady, warrior, a voice whispers.

“I’m not a fucking fighter,” Taako snaps, breathless and panting, eyes stinging. He pretends that’s due to the cold. “I’m a wizard.”

A fighter’s name springs to his lips, one he doesn’t know the shape of. Taako’s long since learned against trying to speak these names that come to him, unbidden. So he shakes it away angrily, still running, still fleeing, the trees towering dark and spearlike over his head, jabbing toward the gray winter sky. 

---

That night, alone again and huddled beneath a blanket beside a smokeless fire, the pendant keeps him warm.

---

When Hurley throws herself into Sloane’s arms for the last time, when Sloane closes her eyes and kisses her forehead and makes them promise through reddened eyes that this will never happen again, when the Sash immortalizes their love in the center of Goldcliff, proud and beaming and beautiful, a sorrow that isn’t his own lodges in his chest.

He doesn’t notice the feeling until much later, when his own grief subsides. But left behind is a steady ache of remorse and sympathy, an empathy that Taako himself could never conjure. “What the hell,” he mutters. He tugs off the pendant and stares at it, and as always it looks back, its surface a smooth and marbled red stone. The oddly-arranged grain tells Taako that this rock was the product of transmutation, but whoever created it was a master of their art.

He wonders vaguely who he’s met, a master that skilled, and then forgotten.

Taako tucks the stone back beneath his shirt, resting by his Stone of Farspeech, and tries for sleep. He doesn’t expect to find it; not with the memory of Hurley’s fond smile as she sacrificed herself, Sloane’s unwavering demands, the joy on their faces as they died. But something curls up that doubt and regret and soothes it, smooths it.

And when he falls asleep, he does not dream.

---

In Refuge, as Taako watches his empire fall by another’s hand, the pendant against his chest beats like a heart as his stops in his throat. Steady, it murmurs, comforting, ceaseless. Steady, warrior. There is much that is not this to regret.

When he rejects the Chalice’s offer — when they all do — Taako feels a wash of pride that is not his own.

---

Then, Wonderland. For much of it the pendant is silent. When his spine is rent by a piece of foul luck, it’s silent. When he chooses Forsake, it’s silent.

Taako watches Magnus approach the wheel and hisses, “Fucked off, then? You finally decided it’s time to leave, too?”

For a long while — long enough to forget a lifetime, long enough to forget a self — there is no reply. Then, before Taako can give up, the voice comes; weak, as though far away, but there.

Steady, warrior, it says. Draw your staff and wait for sunrise.

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youhearstatic:

25 “Karma is a bitch.” 94  “What did you just say?”

Barry and Taako are sitting on the back deck of Barry and Lup’s house, where they’ve been for a while now. About two bottles of wine worth, anyway. Barry glances at the ground between their chairs. Three bottles. Huh. They’d come out to watch the sunset while waiting for Lup and Kravitz but the sun has been down for a while now.

“So, Barold, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask,” Taako says.

Barry looks at his brother in law, eyebrows pulled together in worry. “Oooohkay?” he eventually answers.

“How did Barry-No-Magic get hired by Gundrun Rockseeker as a body man?”

Barry laughs. “A whole lot of bullshit, mostly.”

“Clearly. But really? How did anyone think…” Taako lets his sentence drift as he pauses for another drink. When he lowers his glass he doesn’t continue the thought and Barry isn’t sure if that’s out of kindness or lime go-gurt inebriation.

“I guess Lucretia didn’t erase all that training Magnus did with us,” he answers with a shrug. “Enough of it stuck that I could get by.”

Taako turns to face him, leaning over in his chair. “You didn’t seem to be getting by too well when we caught up to you, homie,” Taako points out loudly. 

God, his breath smells like alcohol and artificial lime flavoring. How does that even work? Barry realizes he’s probably starting to smell a bit boozy himself. Oh well, Lup and Kravitz should have gotten here when they said they would if they don’t like how much their husbands have had to drink.

“Maybe we should order some food,” Barry suggests.

“What did you just say?” Taako asks. “Barold J. Bluejeans. What the fuck? Did you? Just say? To me?”

“That we should order some food?” Barry repeats slowly.

“Gods, Barold. Do you not realize you have Faerun’s Greatest Wizard and Chef sitting here?”

“And do you want to cook right now?”

“Fuck no,” Taako answers, leaning back in his chair with an exhausted thud.

“Me either. But we’ve killed three bottles of wine on empty stomachs.”

Taako picks up his glass and drains the remaining liquid. “Guess we missed our fuckin’ reservations.” He sighs and adds, “Again.”

“It’s been a busy month,” Barry agrees. In the last few weeks they’ve missed a lot of reservations. Each of them have been to blame, but they keep trying to make double dates work. It’s worth it when they manage to get the four of them in the same place.

Barry and Taako are both quiet for a while. The crickets are loud, their song cycling noisier they way they do sometimes – pulses of noise that remind you that there’s a constant world of activity even when you don’t notice. Barry can’t remember if they were this loud on their home world. It’s been a long time.

“We didn’t want to leave you,” Taako says.

Barry looks over. “Hmm?”

“In Phandolin. We didn’t want to leave you.”

Barry goes still. For a moment the tranquil back yard and peaceful cricket serenade is replaced with the face of a dwarf lost to the power of a relic, crackling flames, and anguished screams. Then his thoughts are filled with the emotions that came after the flames, the terrible rage and despair that threatened to destroy him completely. Barry takes a shaky breath, focuses on the thought that the friends who hadn’t recognized him still hadn’t wanted to abandon him. His rough voice is a whisper as he answers, “Thanks, Taako.” 

There are moments in the last ten years that are difficult to consider, raw even after the years and reconciliations. He’s lucky, he reminds himself. His family is together again. He has Lup and Taako back and sees them constantly. The rest of the crew are safe and they won. After all those years, they won. It just doesn’t always feel that way.

“I wanted to go back with you guys,” Barry tells him. “Go after The Black Spider with you? The coin – well, me, I guess – I’d warned myself not to get close to people. Dying and coming back tended to cause problems I couldn’t explain so it was one of the rules I had.”

Taako nods, looking up at constellations that are becoming familiar. It’s a strange luxury to recognize the placement of stars. The false moon glows above as it makes its slow path across the sky.

“He was one of Lucretia’s employees, you know,” Taako says quietly. “The Black Spider? And we killed him. Because he… Fuck. Because he was susceptible to the thrall he…“ Taako gestures a hand to fill in the rest of the sentence. “And then we went to the Bureau and met people who’d known him and worked with him for years.”

“I didn’t know that,” Barry says. “I’m… Taako, I’m sorry.”

“Fuck,” the elf says, standing up. “I want some fucking garlic bread.” He opens the back door and Barry follows him into the kitchen. Garlic bread sounds fantastic.

Taako starts rummaging in the fridge so Barry goes to the pantry. He’s pretty sure there’s some bread that will work. He and Lup had cooked a couple nights ago. Taako might not think he should be allowed in a kitchen but Lup likes for him to help, provided he follows her directions explicitly. Barry is more than used to that after decades with her. Their dynamic shifts frequently in the other areas but in the kitchen no one supersedes the twins.

Barry brings the loaf over and sits it on the counter next to Taako as the elf rummages through the spice rack.

Taako glances down at the bread. “That’ll work. You know how to cut it?”

Barry is surprised but nods. Handing him the bread is the maximum level of participation than Taako has ever allowed him, even if it is his kitchen.

The two of them work companionably for several minutes. Taako scoffs at the way he’s cut the bread but Barry suspects it’s more habit than actual irritation.

Lup and Kravitz still haven’t arrived by the time the garlic bread is ready. Or by the time the two of them have eaten all of it.

“Should we have saved some for them?” Barry asks. He gathers the dishes and deposits them in the sink. Then he sets mage hand to cleaning them while he wipes up the crumbs from the counter.

“Karma’s a bitch,” Taako says with a shrug. “They missed dinner. Fuck ‘em.” He settles on a stool at the counter to watch Barry clean. “I’d be worried except you’d have gotten a call if something happened.”

“True,” Barry answers, but in truth he’s still worried. He knows Lup – and Kravitz as well – can handle their job. But after that decade apart the worry appears any time Lup is gone. Spending the evening with Taako has been nice, though.

“I missed this,” Barry tells Taako as he turns off the water in the sink and begins to put the dishes in the drain rack.

He looks over to see the elf is leaning on one propped arm, completely asleep. Barry thinks of Taako standing outside the town of Refuge, he and Magnus and Merle yelling about the ridiculous idea they’d ever trust him. In a decade of lows, that was one of the worst. His friends – his family – had hated him.

But they got through all of it and here’s Taako: relaxed enough – and maybe full of enough wine and bread – to fall asleep. Barry has missed this, too.