Work Text:
It surprises her how easy it is to get silverpoint.
It’s common in gardening, apparently. It kills weeds as well as it kills people. She talks about the rogue mint plant overrunning her chamomile and smiles at the man behind the counter. This is the one time she is glad for her reputation as Madame Director, as one of the seven birds, as savior of the world. She just asks for something and the world falls over itself to give it to her.
He warns her not to touch it, that there’s no cure, to be incredibly careful around the thorns. She reassures him that she is fully aware of the dangers and isn’t too worried about them, that she knows all the safety precautions that are recommended, that she owns very thick gloves and that she is a master of abjuration magic. She is very careful not to lie. She’s done enough lying.
It’s a small plant, unassuming, coiled black vines dotted with white thorns. It looks like it is curling in on itself.
She stares at it for a while, not sure if she is ready.
She knows she has to be ready. She has a window, a plan: nobody will come looking for her, not for days now. She is supposedly on a mission for the Bureau of Benevolence, headed somewhere where there's magical interference with the stones of farspeech. After this night, radio silence from her isn't worrying--it's expected. Nobody will think to investigate a disappearance if the disappearance is planned months in advance. She has planned it all perfectly. While she is dying she will cast Produce Flame on the silverpoint, let it burn up so nobody will know, hurl it far away from her. She doesn’t want to burn to death, but it’d be nice for everyone to believe she did. To believe it was an accident, a spell that caught on a bit too well. She never was very good at conjuration. She can already hear them at her funeral, Merle making off-color jokes about practicing your cantrips; when one of them died, back in the century, Merle was never one for grieving. Even when the world was falling apart, even when him or his friends were hurt or dying, he could always muster up a smile and a joke. Just thinking about him, a fond smile lingers on her face.
She closes her eyes, remembers what she had done to him. He had forgiven her for it, sure. That didn’t mean that she deserved it. The plant in front of her, that was what she deserved. Here is her justice. She reaches for the silverpoint--and stops, hand hovering in midair, shaking, and then, moving her hand a little bit to the left, she picks up her stone of farspeech.
She dials a familiar number. He picks up after a few rings.
“Hail and well met, who is this?” Taako sounds bored. There’s commotion in the background, the muffled sounds of the Reaper Squad.
She takes a deep breath and picks up the silverpoint, feeling the thorns cut through the callused skin of her hands. “Taako. It’s me.”
“What the fuck are you doing calling me? Wait, don’t tell me, I already know. Another apology, right? Sorry it’s not that easy, kemosabe, you can’t guilt trip me into forgiving the person who ruined my life. Save the sob story for someone who gives a damn.”
“And hello to you too.”
“Oh, fuck you. This had better be important.”
She swallows. When she opens her mouth again, her voice is quieter. “I wasn’t calling to apologize. It’s true, but you’ve heard it all already. You’re under no obligation to forgive me.”
“Just get to the point.” Taako’s voice is hollow.
“I…” Lucretia looks down. Her hands are the color of ink. It’s creeping up her arms. It hurts, hurts like there are needles in her muscles slowly stabbing their way through her wrists, through her forearms. Her veins are black up to where her clothes hide her arms, brown with black streaks covered by light blue and white.
“Spit it out, Madame Director.” He says her title with a sarcastic drawl, venom coming back into his voice with impatience. “I was having a good day today and I’d like to keep this to a minimum, thankyouverymuch.”
“I didn’t really…” She’s so dizzy. Her head is spinning and she can’t think straight. She’s starting to regret this. “Didn’t exactly think this one through. That’s on me.” Her tongue feels too big for her mouth, the words coming out weakly. Everything aches.
“Yeah, well, you never were good at that, now were you.” He pauses. “Are you drunk?”
“Something like that.”
“Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic.” If she closes her eyes, she can practically see him shaking his head in disgust.
Lucretia can hear, somewhere far away, Lup’s voice. “What’s up, Taako?”
“Your dear Lucy decided to drunk-dial me.” Taako’s voice is slightly muffled but not enough to make his words less clear.
It gets quieter. She hears them bicker, as though they’ve forgotten she’s there (“Not now, Taako--” “--she started it! just because you’re a fucking saint doesn’t mean we can all--” “--but..”). Suddenly, she remembers to cast produce flame, keeps the flame going until the silverpoint plant is steadily burning.
She hears herself say “It’s okay, Taako. I’m going to make this right,” before chucking the silverpoint plant across the room.
After the sound of the crash, she hears a voice ask “What was that?” as she slips into unconsciousness, the stone of farspeech still in front of her. Her body collapses limply in its chair.
And then Kravitz is there, in the ashy ruins of the burnt up room. He looks immeasurably sad.
“Huh, Eternal Stockade? I thought saving the world might make up for that,” she says, deadpan.
Kravitz is visibly taken aback. “What? No! I--”
“Then why are you here? I know your job description.”
“You seven are… special cases.” He pauses. “Also, I wanted to be here.”
“Why?”
“You’re part of the family, too.”
She looks up at him, wonder on her face. “But Taako…”
“Will understand. He’ll be upset, you know.” Kravitz has the clinical detachment of someone who works as death on a daily basis.
“He hates me.”
“Well, that’s dramatic.”
“It’s true.”
“Is it?”
Lucretia looks down at her body. It had gotten far away while she wasn’t paying attention. She looks small and old, her entire body blackened, an obsidian sculpture collapsed in front of her desk. “I don’t know.”
Kravitz drops the accent as his voice gets low and fierce. “Either way, don’t claim you did this for him. For any of them. This is going to wreck them all. You have an idea of justice, of who should live and who should die? I can understand that. But this… it’s the same thing you did before. You think you’re doing something selfless, helping your friends. You’re not. At least admit that. This was your guilt. And this isn’t going to make Taako feel any better and I think that, somewhere in there, you know that.”
“I…” If Lucretia still had the capacity to cry, she would be sobbing. “I’m sorry.”
Kravitz shrugs. He doesn’t look angry, just sad. When he talks again, it is in bad Cockney. “Nothing to do about it now. I don’t have any skin in this game. I mean, literally, I don’t actually have any skin. But… I’m not going to lie to you, Lucretia. I heard what you said to Taako before I got the call. And if you think this is going to make things right, you are badly mistaken.”
Lucretia looks down. She’s almost in the astral plane, now. “I don’t--I’m sorry.”
“It’s too late for that now, Lucretia. But for what it’s worth? I’m sorry, too.”
They reached the threshold. “This is goodbye, then, I guess,” she said, almost laughing. “Don’t tell them.”
“Goodbye, Lucretia.” And she is gone.
Kravitz stares for a moment as she becomes part of the soul soup, just one pinprick of light in an ocean of a thousand shining stars, and then he leaves without looking back.
Years later, Taako stops by her grave. He has a bouquet: chrysanthemums, gladiolus, rosemary. He knows that her favorite flower used to be chrysanthemums, back when they met all hundred-and-some years ago. The others he had picked at random while pretending he wasn’t crying. “Fuck you, Luce,” he murmurs as he places them gently, so gently, on the ground six feet above her ashes.