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When the Starblaster finally come to rest on a planet that is startlingly, almost eerily similar to their lost homeworld, Lucretia is hopeful. There’s still a sting lingering deep inside, a hot flush of rejection, the voice she’d spent two lifetimes suppressing whispering in her razor-sharp ‘they don’t want you, you’re too stupid to help, the last and least of your own family, who would ever choose your meager solution when they’re so brilliant and beautiful and wanted’. But she locks that away, heavy and final as a closed door, and tries very, very hard to believe in the tenuous peace of seven terrible secrets scattered across the world.
She goes on walks with her lovers (dead now, of course; undead, Barry corrects with a small smile, but Lucretia’s never really been able to splice that difference); she plays chess with Davenport and takes afternoon tea with Taako and remembers what it’s like to be still, to be present, to keep the wind at her back and the sun on her face. For several long, autumn-hot months she even starts to wonder if maybe she was wrong, if maybe the plan had worked and they had escaped and everything would be finally be okay again.
There are some distant rumblings of wars fought over incredible objects, skirmishes that ended with both sides decimated and broken, but her family reassures each other over full and beautiful dinner tables filled with strange alien food that things are fine. This was expected, after all; better a few casualties than the destruction of the planet, right? And Lucretia compromises by biting her tongue until it bleeds and holding Lup and Barry tight against her in the middle of the night.
Difficult, but doable. Hard, but not impossible to bear, not after everything they’d seen, and Lucretia begins to settle into something close to a normal life.
Then Lup disappears.
It’s sudden; one day she’s there, the next she’s not. A kiss, wild and smudged and not remotely enough to satisfy, scrawled across a scrap of paper along with her flair for the dramatically cryptic, and then nothing. A hole where she used to be, and Lucretia stands for a long, terrible moment in the room with Barry and Taako, staring blankly at the note, before all three of them spring into action and try to trace Lup’s footsteps back to wherever she’d gone.
Lucretia tears through every map and book she finds, borrowing what she can and stealing what she can’t, hoarding information for any tiny scrap of knowledge that might trigger something, some revelation of where Lup possibly could have run to. Taako works himself to the bone and then picks a fight with whoever’s nearest, words acidic and sharp enough to burn holes in the walls, spitting venom and leaving a caustic smell in his wake. Barry goes quiet and desperate and frantic, barely even speaking, lost in a haze so opaque and private even she can’t follow. Days turn into weeks turn into months, and every false lead and disappointing end to a search feels like the edge of knife wedging itself into the life she fought so hard for, prying her apart at the joints as if she were made of wax.
Lup’s disappearance should have brought all six of them closer together, should’ve bound them so tight to each other that they’d never let one another of their sight. Instead it scatters them, sends them pulling away from one another, hurtling out the door or far away or deeper inside their own tangled thoughts. Lucretia hadn’t even realized how essential Lup was to their bond, to their family balance, and without her the world feels tilted, wobbly, balanced precariously on a fragile spindle.
Sometimes, in the thick atmosphere that hovers over all of them like a hangover, Lucretia wishes it had been her that had gone missing. Lup would be able to stop this spiral, or at least help Barry and Taako stay grounded in the real world. Lucretia has none of Lup’s talent for levity, none of her brilliant, incisive charm, and she can feel how badly her and Barry are hurting each other with their helpless, hopeless silences but she can’t figure out how to fix it, damnit. So Lucretia wills herself into a pillar of ice and steel instead, lets everything roll over her like fog against a cool, clean sheet of glass, all to keep from bursting into tears at the slightest provocation.
(She’s also very, very angry, though she can’t admit it to herself at the time — furious at Barry and Lup for tying themselves to lichdom and giving themselves over to a power none of them understood, for making themselves targets of the holy and the profane. Because Lup’s disappearance must be something related to her undead state; Lucretia’s sure of it. If Lup had died she would’ve reverted back to her lich form at the very least — still a tragedy, still an earth-shattering loss, but she can’t actually be killed anymore, right? She must still be alive, Lucretia would think, captured or bound or imprisoned by someone hunting necromancers or liches or both. Lucretia’s so furious at all of them that she could murder Barry, and Lup, and herself, for allowing this to happen.)
Davenport, Merle, and Magnus search for Lup too, of course, but slowly they drift apart from her and Barry and Taako, the high sing of anguish in the air shredding any comfort they might offer. The three of them are selfish in their grief, even amongst each other, and years later Lucretia wonders if it was because all seven of them were, despite their lifetimes of experience, so very naive when it came to loss. They had been conditioned to think of death as merely an inconvenience, had been ludicrously sheltered against the inevitability of grief, the impassable stone wall of mourning. They’d wound themselves so tightly around each other than one missing piece caused the whole mechanism to stutter to a screeching, grinding halt, every good thing they’d built for each other disintegrating into dust in their hands.
And still, in the background of their own personal tragedy, the Relic Wars rage on. The six of them studiously ignoring the death and destruction, pretending not to notice the apocalyptic roar of their hubris, the terrible consequences of their doomed, explosive mistakes. People die by the thousands, unable to resist the siren’s call of Light, of Creation, of Power, and they do nothing, say nothing, simply watch as the world around them falls into chaos, the bloody legacy of their feeble good intentions.
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Even now, Lucretia isn’t really sure how the idea came to her.
It had percolated slow in her mind, hibernating for months, buried deep in the cold, dark earth of her subconscious. A year ago it wouldn’t have even occurred to her, it shouldn’t have occurred to her. What kind of person sees her family and Fischer and the Hunger and puts it all together like a logic puzzle that hinges on the single, pressurized point of her betrayal? What kind of person decides that the only way forward is to erase everything and start over, to wipe away the memories and lives and spirits of millions of people who came before, to take the entire universe in her own two hands and twist until it reforms into something that resembles a home again?
Lucretia does. Of course she does.
Now that Lup is gone and the world is crumbling, now that she’s had a century to trust her own instincts, now that she loves six people exponentially more than she loves herself, Lucretia is able to analyze the pieces on the board so dispassionately that the solution flares bright and sharp and fully formed in her mind, as clear as if someone else dropped it straight into her brain already researched, written and annotated.
Sunrise on a Tuesday, walking along a rocky shore, but Lucretia’s barely aware of her surroundings, the metallic drift of the air and the bone-break cold of the water. She’d slipped out of bed, unable to sleep, and fled from the warmth and comfort of Barry’s arms. No one else in sight, the chill chasing most people away, but she’d spent the last hour out here anyway. Sometimes being outside helped with the insomnia — open air, no walls, no pressure to be a sensible person who can fall asleep easily and quickly. There’s room to breathe out here, room for her to untangle the knotted mass of thoughts twisting her up inside. Room enough for an impossible, dangerous, perfect idea.
Fisher. I could use Fisher. I could…I could keep them safe, I could undo what we’ve done for the whole world. I’d have to be…gods, I’d have to be very, very careful, but with the journals…
And that’s it. The journals, like it was goddamn destiny. She’s got everything — everything — recorded and documented and preserved over hundreds of thousands of pages. She’d need to be perfectly, surgically precise, but it was possible. There was something she could do, she wasn’t necessarily relegated to the sidelines this time. She could bear the burden. She could save them. She could destroy everything, including their mistakes.
Lucretia is alone, when she realizes the depths of what she might be capable of.
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It takes time, of course — editing her journals is a massive undertaking, and she spends months just preparing for the redactions themselves, nevermind the quadruple-checking that goes into actually blacking everything out. She’s energized in a way she hasn’t been since their lost century, focused on a tangible goal with a To Do List as long as her leg, but it’s light years better than waiting for an answer that’s clearly never going to arrive. Eventually she locks herself away in her room, telling Taako and Barry that she’s working on an alternative solution, and they barely question her. Too exhausted, too weighed down by their own burdens, and she’s equal parts relieved and stung by their lack of interest.
But Lucretia has bigger things to worry about, now.
First, she creates a timeline of everything they’d encountered, starting with the very first IPRE announcement, followed by the biographies of her family that she’d taken down individually on those long, boring planets of total darkness or sheer rock. Then a blossoming diagram with the IPRE at the center, lines branching out to every other connected piece of that world, of that lifetime — all the leylines of that reality that she’ll need to destroy, or preserve. A second diagram for the Hunger, a third for the Relics, a fourth for the Light of Creation.
She drafts and redrafts her redactions, eventually giving into the inevitable and copying every journal she has into a ‘practice’ version, to better test each theory before committing to a redaction. The stakes have never been higher, and she needs to be perfect.
Then, of course, she needs to take care of the ‘after’.
After she feeds Fisher the journals, she’ll need to have somewhere for her family to go. Not together, of course — too risky, too likely that she’s made some tiny mistake and the five of them will be the only ones who remember what a pineapple upside-down cake is, or something equally absurd and humiliating — but tailored just for them. The lives they could’ve had, maybe would’ve had, if the IPRE mission had been two months long and the sky hadn’t ripped open and they hadn’t all been thrust into an interplanar struggle against a living embodiment of entropy.
For Taako, she decides on a TV show — a bright life, a showy existence, something that would give him an outlet for his creativity and his brilliance. Knowing him, she’d be seeing his face plastered across T-shirts and ship sails and all sorts of ridiculous things. For Magnus, she thinks a pretty little town would be best. Somewhere he can be valued and loved, and something he can protect and love in return. Merle, an endless beach day. Davenport, the nearest military academy, forging papers and flight records to make sense in the new reality she’s creating. Barry — and this one hurts, of course it does, because she can’t be selfish and hold on to him if she’s letting go of everyone else — Barry she’ll put at a university, a tenured position with a cozy off-campus apartment.
But. But, but but.
Lup.
Lucretia’s still looking for her, still wading through a marsh at the slightest hint of a rumor about necromancer hunters, still sitting silently next to Taako as they ride a train halfway across the country, still pouring over maps looking for any trace of where she might have gone. What will happen when she puts her plan into motion?
There’s no good answer. Lucretia decides, as she scraps her previous redaction plan and starts over for what feels like the hundredth time, that she’ll have to have a plan in place in case they find her. One path for Lup is Found, one path for Lup is Lost.
It’s the best she can do.
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There’s a certain amount of stalling, once she's finally ready. Extra checks, late-night confirmations of minute details, making sure Fisher is healthy and active, and it’s not like being careful is a bad thing, right? In a way, it’s like the Judge Year all over again, when there was no one else but her — no extra pair of eyes on her notes, no brilliant cagey friends to bounce ideas off of, no one to catch any of her mistakes. Just her, a million versions of her, trying to compensate for her every possible failure.
Eventually, though, even Lucretia has to admit that it’s time. Lup’s still missing, but everything else is as ready as it’s going to be (and every day, her friends lose a little bit more of their light, their hope). If she’s going to do this, she needs to do it. She needs to not falter and shy away, she needs to be brave, and bold, and strong.
All that’s left is to say goodbye.
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Taako doesn’t answer when she knocks on the half-ajar door to his quarters. She gives him a few seconds — sometimes he gets so focused on a task he’s barely aware of what’s around him — and then lets herself in, figuring he won’t mind. None of them are big on closed doors these days, anyway.
Well. Except for her.
He’s curled up on his bright teal couch, spellbook open in his lap and silver scribing instrument dangling loose between his fingers. Glances wordlessly up at her when she walks in, and for a moment Lucretia feels oddly...nervous. A sense-memory of when she first met him, and was so awed by his confidence and charisma that she barely spoke to him for weeks, and even then only to record his thoughts in her journals.
“Hey, I — I wanted to see how Bywater Crossing went,” she says, fighting past her own hesitation and cursing the small quaver in her voice.
“You think I’d be sitting here with you if I’d found her?” Taako says, his gaze back on the pages in his lap.
Great. One of these moods. Lucretia grits her teeth and forges on.
“Well yes, I figured there wasn’t anything solid, but you never know what minor detail might —”
“Hey listen,” Taako interrupts, snapping his book shut so fast and hard Lucretia nearly jumps out of her skin. “I know you need to speechify Sunshine-and-Roses at all of us to make yourself feel better or whatever, but I don’t have time for that right now, mmkay? Let’s just skip to the end where you leave me alone — your whole vibe is really killing my scry prep.”
“Another scry? I can help,” Lucretia says quickly, reaching into the pockets of her dress for her journal. Privately she thinks it’s a fool’s errand — they’d all tried scrying spells over and over again — but at this point she’s just trying to pull him out of the briar patch of his own frustration.
“No, you can’t,” Taako says, turning away and tossing his spellbook to the side. “Not with this one — I’m using a new focus. Something from before this IPRE hellscape. I don’t want you channeling the wrong energies and making it fizzle.”
“But —”
“What part of ‘no’ doesn’t she understand?” Taako says, casting his gaze heavenward as if begging for divine intervention, and Lucretia flushes with an old hurt.
“It’s Taako’s world, we just live in it, huh?” she says, fast and hard before she can stop herself, and Taako’s eyes glint with satisfaction at needling her into a fight.
“When it comes to Lup? Abso-fuckin-lutely,” he says with a luxurious roll of his shoulders.
“You’re not the only one who loves her,” Lucretia says quietly, willing herself to calm down, to stop rising to the bait.
“Yeah but who gives a shit about you two, right?” he says with a flip of his hand.
Mean, with a lazy, malicious grin, but Lucretia raises an eyebrow and her lip twitches involuntarily, because Taako’s just funny, is the thing. The funniest person she’s ever met, even when he’s not trying to be.
“Hey, quit it. Don’t start laughing,” he warns, his expression melting into a grumpy glare.
“I’m not, I’m pissed and you’re being an asshole,” she shoots back, but without any of the heat from before.
Covers her unwilling smile with a cough, but the tension in the room is already dissolving, and before he can say anything else she rolls her eyes and sits down next to him with a fhwump. He squawks in protest, but doesn’t move or eject her from the room.
“Sorry,” she says, looking down at her hands.
“Me too,” he sighs quietly.
They sit together for a long moment, the sound of morning songbirds and the rush of the wind filtering in through the open window.
“We’ll never stop looking for her,” she promises him. “We don’t give up, okay. We don’t. We’ll find her.”
“Whatever you say, nerd,” he says, and Lucretia closes her eyes against what’s to come.
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The sun is high and bright overhead, when her and Magnus decide to swim out to the little island in the middle of his favorite lake. It starts out as an idle, ‘I wonder what’s out there?’ daydream, the two of them perched on the driest patch of shore they can find. They’d already polished off their picnic lunch, and had been just about to leave before Magnus had pointed out the island.
It’s tiny, barely more than a few trees, but as soon as Lucretia mentions in passing that it might be an abandoned shrine, Magnus’s expression perks up with unmistakable interest.
“Really? A shrine to who?” he asks, squinting to try and catch a glimpse of something more than trees.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lucretia shrugs. “The Wildmother, maybe? Someone Druidic, probably — they tend to go for these isolated places, away from settlements and towns.”
“Very cool,” Magnus says appreciatively. “C’mon, let’s go check it out!”
She tries to demure — she doesn’t actually know if there’s anything worth the swim out there — but starts to crumble almost immediately. His enthusiasm is, as always, completely irresistible. Starts spinning the possibilities of treasure, of something rare and fascinating hidden in plain sight, of a world that grows more beautiful the more you uncover, and Lucretia swallows hard against the sudden tightness in her chest.
Because Magnus doesn’t know it, but he’ll probably never see this lake again. She’s not bringing any of them back here, to this mountain town where they stash the Starblaster under Davenport’s very best illusion charms.
This is his last chance.
So before Lucretia can talk herself out of it, she sighs theatrically and transfigures them both into swimsuits. Takes off at a run with Magnus yelping in surprise and delight as he tears after her.
The water is cold enough to make her yelp, the drop-off so steep she’s already on her tip-toes. Magnus is right behind her, taking a flying leap off the highest bank he can find, arms windmilling madly for a half second before he hits the water. Splashes hugely, shaking his soaking hair off his face and grinning over at her.
“Race ya!” he says, already kicking into a confident, easy stroke.
“What?” she sputters, and launches herself after him.
She pushes her body a little harder than necessary, enjoying the steady drum of her heart, the rhythmic push-pull of her own breathing. It’s not as far out as she’d originally thought, and the glide of the water is oddly soothing. I should remember to swim more, after. It’s a good workout for me, and I won’t have Magnus to remind me to get enough exercise.
Magnus beats her handily to the island, of course. He waves as she approaches, one hand resting on the white bark of a tree, half his face in shadow.
“Silver medalist!” he says, sounding a little out of breath. “Not bad!”
“I don’t think our impartial panel of judges will accept the results of a rigged race, Mr. Burnsides,” Lucretia says, rolling her eyes and flicking water playfully at him from the tips of her fingers.
Magnus laughs, still slightly winded and clutching a stitch in his side.
“We all have to accept things we don’t like, Lucy,” he says, his voice warm with affection. “Even you.”
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She finds Davenport coming back from a hike, dressed in his new Merle-approved casual wear, the late afternoon sun streaking his vibrant hair with golden highlights. He waves as he approaches, a small smile tugging at his lips as she jogs toward him.
“Did you want to come with me?” he says as she comes to a stop in front of him. “I would’ve waited for you, if I’d known.”
“No, no,” Lucretia says, waving a hand and smiling back at him. “I just thought I’d try to get up there for the sunset, bring my watercolors.”
It’s a lie — she’d been watching for him at the window for the past hour — but it’s not like she doesn’t want to go paint one of the last sunsets that shines on her family. It won’t matter soon anyway.
“You should,” he says easily, glancing back over his shoulder at the trail. “Some great views up there.”
“Prettier than the ones on Sel’Nahara?” she asks, raising an eyebrow playfully.
That had been Davenport’s favorite planets, filled with the most breathtaking natural beauty Lucretia had ever seen — snow-capped mountains, huge still lakes, a wide-open sky that curved all around them like a multi-colored glass dome. She used to have a sketchbook dedicated entirely to its landscapes (redacted now, of course, her sketches set aside now for Fisher alone).
Mostly, though, she remembers Sel’Nahara being…peaceful. It was early in their trip across the multiverse, before they’d really known what was happening, before the Judges and lichdom and parlays with John. When it was still exciting, to be unendingly youthful and immune from death and in love with a new family.
Lucretia blinks, and realizes Davenport’s not answering. His eyes are unfocused, staring out at the horizon.
“I — Captain?” she asks uncertainly.
“What? Oh, yes,” he says, turning back to her with a hard blink. “I mean, no. No, not as pretty as those ones, unfortunately.”
Fuck.
“I — I’m sorry,” she says quickly, trying to salvage the mood. “I shouldn’t have — I shouldn’t have brought it up —”
“No, don’t be silly,” Davenport says with a spare shake of his head. “It’s just — it’s just a shame. That place, devoured by…well, you know.”
“Yeah,” Lucretia says softly. She does know. “I wish…”
“Wishing’s no good,” he says firmly, rubbing his hands together briskly as if trying to dry himself off, to warm himself up. “We made our choice, and now we have to live with it.”
“Do we?” Lucretia says recklessly. “We can — we can try to fix it, can’t we?"
Terrified, the closest she’s come to admitting that she has a plan, that if no one’s willing to put in the work than she will, damnit. A beat of silence, and Lucretia silently begs him to hear what she’s trying to say.
“It’s done, Lucretia,” he says, and turns to leave.
She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Davenport is angry; not in an obvious way, and not at her, but his presence leaves heat streaks in the air. A sharp glint in his blue eyes as he turns and walks away without speaking. Lucretia stands, wordless, and watches him go.
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Merle is harder to pin down. He’s constantly on the move these days; headed out to the nearest town, solo treks through the forest, some absurdly dangerous thing with Magnus called ‘cliff diving’. It’s not that out of character, really — Merle’s always been a wanderer, has always been drawn to hidden places and distant horizons — but even when he’s physically with them he seems oddly distracted.
Then one night, as she sits on the deck of the Starblaster with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, he appears at her shoulder as if they’d arranged it days ago.
“How’re they lookin’, Lucy?” Merle asks, his mellow voice blending with the gentle breeze from the nearby sea.
“Oh!” she says happily. “The stars? They look great — nice clear night.”
They used to stargaze together on the Starblaster — everyone did, really, but especially the two of them. Lucretia’s always been fascinated by the differences in the celestial bodies as they hop-skipped through the multiverse, in looking for any connections between the planets. And Merle used to come up with some good off-the-cuff myths to go along with their newly-created constellations, helping her come up with a list of names for any star that she deemed worthy of notation.
“Good, good,” he says, pulling a chair towards her and settling down with a creak. “I thought I saw that red one a few nights ago. Wondered if it was still there.”
“It is,” she says, pointing up to the brightest star in the sky. “Moved a bit, but it’s still there.”
“I like that one,” he says, with an unbothered serenity that Lucretia still can’t quite wrap her head around. How can he be so calm, with everything that’s happened?
“I guess that’s a silver lining with all of this,” she says, glancing over at him. “Hiding from the Hunger means the stars stay put now.”
“Speaking of hunger, you wanna sneak into the kitchen and see if we can lift some of those macaroons?” Merle says, a little louder than is strictly necessary. “Taako made a million of ‘em, he won’t notice if we grab a few!”
Ah. There is it, she thinks with a hard burst of irritation. When Merle doesn’t want to talk about something, he can pull conversational maneuvers as deft and skillful as Davenport can with the ship. Lucretia finds it beyond frustrating, how easily he can deflect what he doesn’t want to deal with. A cheerful wall of chatter — intangible as smoke and solid as stone — that Merle can wield as expertly as any weapon.
“Sure,” she says instead, taking a deep breath. “Let me finish my notes and we can pull a heist.”
“All right!” Merle says, punching a fist quietly in the air, and Lucretia can’t help smiling back at him, the quicksilver anger that had flared momentarily in her chest draining away like water.
We’re all doing the best we can, she reminds herself. That’s all any of us can do anymore.
Merle waits for her, humming an absent, gruff song, and Lucretia makes sure to jot down the tune on the margins of her page before closing her journal.
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Barry is the hardest. With Barry, it feels the most like a lie.
The only time she ever wavers is with him.
It’s late, late enough that it might have switched over to very early, but the two of them are still awake. She’s never been a great sleeper, but these days Barry’s been joining her more and more frequently in the Insomnia Club. Before her plan she would have been worried, but now she knows it’s only temporary — another few days and he’ll be sleeping like a baby.
They’re in the room that used to be hers, before she moved in to Lup and Barry’s quarters. It has the slightly musty feel of all abandoned places, but sometimes it’s been easier for them both to be in here. To not be surrounded by Lup’s absence quite as keenly, to have sheets that are slightly scratchy or a window in the wrong place. The relief of a world that doesn’t fit quite right.
“Are you going to bed?” Barry asks, scrubbing tiredly at one side of his face with an open palm. She smiles, just a little, at the familiar gesture, and at his slouched-over posture.
“Not yet,” she says gently, twisting around in her desk chair to face him. “But you should. You’re exhausted.”
“Who isn’t, these days?” he says, with a small smile to take the sting out of his words.
“All the more reason for you to get some sleep, then,” she says firmly. “Someone here needs to.”
“But —” he protests, and she interrupts him before they can go down this path again. He doesn’t like leaving her awake and restless, doesn’t like abandoning her to the tangle of her own anxious mind.
She loves him for it.
She's been so lucky, for so long, to have him in her life; Lucretia understands that now. Most people don’t find even a tenth of the happiness she’s had with Barry and Lup. It’s beyond improbable, that they found each other (and maybe a part of her has been waiting for the end all along).
“I’ll be right behind you, love,” she lies. “Let me get this conversation with the head of the Lyceum down while it’s still in my head, but it’s straight to bed after.”
He lets out a breath, his eyes drooping, but after a long moment finally stands, stretching his arms over his head with a jaw-cracking yawn. And suddenly she’s desperate to kiss him, to curl into his arms and breath him in for the last time.
After this, everyone who's ever loved her will be gone.
But she can’t think about that, can’t think about the ‘after’. It will be worth it to save them. She’d rather have them alive and hating her than the architects of a destroyed universe, wouldn’t she? They’d all sacrificed so much to save each other. Now it’s her turn.
Barry walks over to her, places his hand on her shoulder with a gentle squeeze. She tilts her head to brush her lips over his knuckles in a light, barely-there kiss. He’s warm, he’s real — she tries to speak, to tell him everything. But the words are locked away somewhere deep inside her, and she can only breathe through their absence.
“Goodnight,” he says softly, and she doesn’t say anything at all.
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They have dinner together, one last time.
Everything’s set up on the deck of the Starblaster, an echo of a century’s worth of meals. Taako had been bribed into cooking for them again, trying not to look too pleased when Merle and Magnus complimented every bite. Not as raucous as some of their past nights out, not with a Lup-shaped hole in their hearts, but sweet and comfortable and lovely all the same. Even Davenport laughs along with the jokes and memories, at one point singing out a verse from his favorite song in his clear, beautiful tenor. Barry pushes the last slice of cake toward Lucretia, holding her hand under the table, and Lucretia gives it a final, lingering squeeze before standing up and turning away.
She’s heading back to the kitchen for more wine, she’s not leaving them quite yet, but she knows it’s time. Tomorrow, probably, she’ll gather her journals and feed a lifetime of memories, of the only home she’s ever known, to an alien entity who doesn’t know any better.
Watching them from the doorway and wrapping her arms around herself, she lets herself feel it one more time. Belonging, family, their love closing around her heart like an unbreakable diamond shield. She swallows hard against the sudden knot in her throat, against the grief rising in her like the tides of the sea. Tries instead to store the warmth inside herself, to soak in enough of this feeling to last her to the end of her long, lonely life.
Lucretia looks at them, and loves them, and knows they’ll never forgive her.