this seems like a story worth telling

“We should print T-shirts. Make a club.”

Barry nods, smiling fondly. It was always a treat to see Davenport expressing himself, and he always did love an exchange of stories when he didn’t need to be that calculating captain. Even though what happened to him weakened that sharp mind so much that a Command could take to it like a knife through butter… Hang on, when has Barry ever cast an enchantment on Davenport?

“Lup loves you,” he says, then sighs. “And I– I dunno about the others, they’re gonna need time to sort their thoughts out. Me, I had months to do nothing but think.”

“I won’t pretend that whole situation didn’t suck. I mean, I could understand why, or at least make my guesses, but I couldn’t reach you, and… Man, Luce. I was almost less afraid of you succeeding than of you just being someone I wouldn’t recognize. We all know what the Light does, and there you were pushing your family out of the way to get at the damned thing.”

He looks back at her. “So it’s– it’s good to still know you. And know I can  trust you.”

The rest of her questions are bigger, harder to give a real answer to. And yet, at the same time, he feels certain of his answer.

“We built bonds of family out of saving whole worlds, and now… I guess we don’t got any more worlds to save. So we’re probably not gonna get back to exactly what we had, but bein’ honest, I think that’s mostly a good thing, given the circumstances. We can build something new instead.”

It’s going to feel strange, though. He knows he hasn’t yet come to terms with it, from the way the cogs of his brain keep instinctively turning. After so long, Barry doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he no longer has to be in motion.

“That’s, uh, that’s a good question. Guess I’ll have to find some new project to keep busy, after I nap for about a year.

“Actually, you know what? When we get outta here– let’s take a goddamn vacation.”

She listens in silence at first-- she’d said so many times that she was ready to accept whatever judgement Barry, or any of the others might give her for what she had done. (And if she had it to do over, she knows she would probably make the same choices, as much as she knows he doesn’t want to hear it). She wouldn’t change it, but that doesn’t mean that she liked doing it.

“That’s... what I was worried about too,” she nods slowly. “I felt myself becoming different over all that time. I know I’m different now than I used to be.” She rests her head on her hands, sighing. “We all grow up and change, but... we both changed so quickly, we had to. There were times I was worried the light was getting at me and I couldn’t see it. Times when I was all alone and thought I was losing my mind, and... times I almost broke down and called you.”  She’s never admitted that before. The times she’d come so dangerously close to going to see him, to find a way to call him, to send him a letter...

“I didn’t know what you would do if I came to see you. How far you’d have gone to stop me. And I couldn’t let you get in the way when I was so close, so I never reached out. I’m sorry.” Finally looking up to meet his eyes-- man this is a weird situation, but it’s nice to air all of this out. Despite... maybe being dead (or undead) in a mysterious train car.

“Build something new... I... I like that, Barry. I’d like that a lot. For a long time I worried about losing all that we had as a family, but I would be happy with something new. As long as we’re together, right? The love’s still there. That’s what counts.” A small smile graces her features, and she leans back against the train seat.

“Cheren? Are you in?” Lucretia knocks on the doorframe, leaning in the doorway. Almost immediately another Lucretia walks up behind her, perhaps a little older-looking (which is strange-- don’t most of the doubles look younger?)

“I wanted to let you know that I’ve heard from the higher-ups-- if students ask, we’re to excuse them for the duration of the...” she gestures to the other Lucretia, who shrugs.

During Subversion:

Lucretia was a teacher at the university-- already having several books published by the time she was 30.

She lived with her adopted brother, Barry, and her niece, Kay.

Knew very little about Barry’s work with the mob, but worried about him coming home exhausted and beat-up... she tried to support him as best she could despite not knowing what was going on.

Ambidextrous and could write in two books at once if she was really in the zone!

In-Between:

The events with her ‘double’ left her more sad than upset-- she worried so much about the person her double had become. How she’d betrayed her family. Was she really capable of something like that...?

She worried about that, but she still tried to stay close to Barry.

Her work ended up taking up a lot of her time, though...

Became pretty fiercely independent in the years in between, Had a few pretty rough years that she tried to tough out on her own.

Adopted a son, Angus! Having him in her life made her realize that she needed to spend less time working, and more time with her family.

Present Day:

Lucretia was put in charge of her department at the University-- some people even call her ‘Madam Director’.

No dogs allowed in her office.

Trying to reconnect more with her family since Barry’s less involved with the mob, and she’s finally learning to take a break from work.

Does her best to look after Kay while she’s going to college.

Realizes every time she looks in the mirror that she looks a bit more like her ‘other self’.

“No kiddin’.” Whatever this is, it has the rare property in a century’s travels of being new. Maybe it’s something the Stars conjured up, though if so, they’re not doing a good job making clear what side they’re on in this conflict. Not that they ever have.

Barry laughs. “Yeah, uhh, three heads enable thrice as much bullshit as one.” And Magnus manages to ‘nearly die’ with feats of heroism every other day, it seems like, but that’s a much scarier prospect when death is permanent. “I bet you Cap’nport had just as fun a time learning that one.”

“Yeah, I sure don’t envy that position,” he says, then smiles wryly. “Dunno how much I could’ve told ‘em, though. With so much off-limits, bein’ cryptic was pretty much all there was. Just had to hope somethin’ got through.”

They were almost working together in that sense, Lucretia and Barry– feeding the same narrative. Even if it wasn’t his intention to be the villain, he must’ve easy to slot into that role.

“I mean, I was plenty a mess myself by then. Uh, longest time I’ve ever spent as a lich, actually, by a long shot. But I couldn’t risk not knowing what was goin’ on at the wrong time– It just all felt so urgent for that whole last year-and-change, I’m sure you felt that too. You– hah– you were scared they’d trust me more, and I was scared they wouldn’t.”

He frowns, his brain finally catching up with his words. “…And I dunno how I remember all that now. Somethin’ about the void, maybe? But, uh. Man, am I glad there’s not sides anymore. That was a fuckin’ fiasco decade. We work better as a team, if you ask me.”

The bit about Davenport stings-- at least the last time she had seen him, both here and back home, he’d been his usual self, but... every day she feels bad about what she did to him that whole time.

“I hope when we see Davenport next, we’ll be able to tell him a lot of stories from that time.” Something flashes in her memory as well, and she frowns, as if deep in thought. The captain smiling-- and not in the forced way he had at the bureau. When had she seen him this happy recently...? She shakes it off again, she must be imagining things.“The truth is, Barry, I made my choices... I suppose we both did. And if Taako and Davenport are never able to forgive me, I can respect that,” she leans back against the seat, sighing. “I’d understand if none of you were able to forgive me. After all, I fucked up your memory as well, and made you out to be a villain. And Lup...” That one weighs heavy on her as well. They’d all wanted the same things, yet she took everything into her own hands.

“Are we really able to put the past behind us so easily? It... it was a shit decade,” she laughs softly, eyes cast down. “But all that time we spent at odds, after everything I’ve done to tear this family apart...” Her voice cracks, and she’s abandoned all attempts to look composed. She’s been more ‘Lucretia’ than ‘Madam Director’ for months now, but it’s more apparent now than ever.

“I guess what I’m asking, is... if we really did defeat the hunger, if we return to either home or Spirale after this...” A big if, given the current state of things. “Do you think we’ll ever be able to rebuild all that we lost? As a family?” Part of her wonders if she even deserves to want something like that.

Barry hums in thought, brow furrowed, and follows her to the window. “Well, no hole this time. One point in our favor.”

He squints out at the distant circles, but he can’t quite make them out, either. They seem familiar somehow, but he can’t quite place it…

“Wait, really? Bureau business?” he responds, amused. “Don’t tell me someone sent the Stone by train, or– No, I guess it must’ve been the, uh, Dav’s. Oculus?” He’s not sure how he’s sure what relic it was. His intel keeping up with them stopped when he came to the city, which was before she hired the boys. She… must have mentioned the train to him in the city, at some point? “I gotta get that story outta you sometime.”

“Me, I’m fine. I mean, I think right now I’m a zombie, which is fun. Here, look.” Seeming considerably more excited about inhabiting his own corpse than anyone ought to be, Barry holds out his arm so she can see the deathly pale discoloration.

He pulls back the curtain to squint out at the blank void again. “Yeah, weird aesthetic for any death god I know. And I don’t suppose those li’l guys out there are souls.”

He looks back at Lucretia. “So we’ve got a train that should be wrecked or in another dimension who knows where, and my body which the Stars usually sweep up who knows where, so we’re… who knows where?”

“Oh, wow. Gross.” Lucretia raises an eyebrow, but inspects the offered arm, putting her hand on his. Yeesh-- cold. “That’s new. I had a lot of ideas what might happen after the spell was cast, but this... uh, this wasn’t one of them.” She sits down, placing her staff beside her with a deep sigh. There’s nothing immediate they can do, right? It doesn’t seem like they’re in any imminent danger. For once, maybe it’s OK to take a breather as they figure out their next move...it’s not like they’re just going to be stuck here, right...?

“Yes, it was the Oculus,” she nods. How did he know that...? She must have told him at some point. But they really had made a point of not talking much about things like that, it all felt so awkward. She didn’t like being reminded of the time they spent apart, but... they have the time now, don’t they? If she can’t talk about difficult things with her brother in the dining car of a wrecked train traveling through an unknowable void, when can she talk to him?

“It’s a hell of a story, Barry. All they had to do was get a box off a train. I sent them down there thinking that it was the least possible danger i could put them in, and they lost the entire train after jumping off of it. Magnus nearly died.”

“I was worried sick,” she laughs. “Every time I sent them down there, I was anxious until they came home.” She leans her head on her hand, glancing at him. “You were there for most of their outings, you know. It was equal parts reassuring and terrifying. I knew you’d try to protect them, but... I was also scared of what you might tell them.”

...

“I love you so much,” he says, and he’s proud. He takes her hand, watching her cast the most powerful spell that anyone in their concept of reality would ever, could ever cast. The Hunger starts breaking out of his hold, rushing to close the distance between them, but then– she’s got them. She’s got everything.

The light overtakes his senses, and then…

Barry feels strangely stiff. He’s got the ghost of a headache, like knowledge creeping towards his mind: a familiar sensation. His eyes open to blurry vision, and he sees his hands resting on the table in front of him. They’re sort of blue at the fingertips, but the most notable feature is his skin. He reflexively pats himself down, finding all the usual clothes– bloodstained in a few places, most notably where the final blow was dealt.

He pulls his shirt up to check, but the injury is crusted, not bleeding. Pressing a thumb to his wrist confirms that no blood is being pumped through his body at all. This isn’t a fresh, living body from Spirale’s resurrection system, it’s… the exact one that died half an hour ago, and by now should’ve faded out of existence.

But it’s here, instead. In this… train? It looks the right amount of modern to be Faerûnian, but he’s got no idea which it is. He’s in a dining car, across from Lucretia, and he’s relieved to see that at least one of them is breathing.

“Lucretia? Hey! You alright?” He reaches out to pat one of her hands. “Is this– Did this happen last time? It looked like you got the shield up, but I don’t, uh, I’ll be honest, I don’t know where this is.”

When Lucretia wakes up, she’s got a strange sense of deja vu. Memories creeping into her head that... feel less normal. But she can’t focus on them, not yet, instead sitting up and glancing around as her vision comes into focus.

“I don’t know,” her voice is still dazed as she looks around, running a hand through her hair. “Last time I cast the spell, I woke up by the pit in Spirale, right...before I ran into you.” That’s right, isn’t it? Suddenly she’s not so sure. It’s all a bit hazy, like this space is somewhere she’s been before, but she can’t quite remember it.

“This train looks like the one I sent the boys on. The one...” she pinches the bridge of her nose, unable to suppress a sigh. “The one they destroyed. Or sent through a portal or... something. I don’t know. Blame Taako.”

She shakily rises to her feet, rubbing her temples-- other than a slight headache, it looks like she’s perfectly fine. She goes to the window, pulling aside a curtain to look out at... well. Nothing. Just pure white space as far as the eye can see, along with circles in the distance she can’t quite make out.

“Yeah, me too.” He’d been preparing to take everything on entirely alone, back on Faerûn. A decade in hiding, scheming to perpetrate their two flawed plans, gambits to slow the world’s destruction by letting it destroy itself instead.

He had only just begun to realize that he was going to need the crew’s help, and from the sound of things, so had Lucretia. But of all their teammates, to have each other– Out of so many things wrong here, it feels like something’s finally right.

The horde is getting thicker, more desperate, threatening to overrun them. The sky is covered with black to the horizon and beyond, but Barry can’t even see it anymore, even throwing nonstop attacks at them all. He’s has moved down closer to Lucretia, sacrificing his wider visibility to have a smaller area to protect.

“Good. Good, you got this.” At her warning, he turns his magic to his pseudo-Time Stop spell, freezing every being around them in a red glow. His own form distorts a little with the effort, as though he were being viewed from underwater. It’s much easier to hold this spell on a roomful of people having benign conversation than it is on countless, violent aggressors.

“Luce,” he says. “Out of anyone in this– this whole multiverse, and whatever’s beyond it, you are the one I’d want casting this. You can do this, all right? Make ‘em proud.”

“I’ve got this,” she repeats. “We’ve got this. Thank you, Barry. I love you.” The fact that their two separate paths led them both here, to this moment-- there was a long time where Barry was the last person she would have seen herself saving the world with. But right now, she feels like she’s exactly where she needs to be. As he’d said, there’s no one in existence she’d rather be standing here with.

“We’re going to make them all proud,” when she looks at him, she’s smiling-- fierce determination in her eyes. “When we see everyone again, we’re going to have a hell of a story to tell.”

The whole world seems to slow at once as she readies herself, preparing to cast the spell that-- in her experience, once brought her here. The enemies are frozen in place thanks to Barry’s magic, but he doesn’t need to hold them for long as her expression shifts-- her head cranes back and her gaze shifts to the storm above, the staff glowing with a bright white light.

She wants to tell him to leave, to get to safety, as she had told the other boys back then, but... in this moment? She’s fairly certain he’d choose exactly the same as Taako, Merle, and Magnus. So in those final moments, she simply reaches for his hand, closing her eyes tight as a beam of light shoots into the sky.

And then?

“You got it!” He flies up above her to get an eye on all sides, blasting most things that come into the radius and letting the rest be stopped by his barrier. Anything that comes from above is similarly dismantled.

There’s a lot to keep track of, and the more careful, precise shots are quickly exchanged for loose, wide shots with coverage. It’s been a while since he’s gotten into a real fight at full power, and despite the gravity of the situation, it feels good to stretch his legs (so to speak).

Lucretia’s hesitance is… less good, though understandable.

“Yes. This– This is it.” Or at least, this is the very best option– this time a planned option, rather than a last resort. If it doesn’t work, then nothing will. “I know we couldn’t see the first one come to fruition. But I’ve been thinkin’, right, Lup n’ I first got here when we were between planes, coming to Faerûn. And you and Taako touched down when you were miles up from there. So if there’s any common thread, it’s doin’ reality-messing magic in the god damn Abeir-Toril system.”

He speaks slowly, deliberately, making use of the little focus he has to spare.

“We’re not on Faerûn. And we’ve done the math. This plan– This isn’t just a solution, it’s the solution. This is what’s gonna do it. All you gotta do is cast the spell.”

His explanation makes sense-- and she’s grateful. Grateful that this time, there was no planning in secret, no explosive confrontation. She’s thankful that they can face this as a team... even if the whole family isn’t here.

She wishes they were all here.

“Thank you, Barry. I know this can work, it’s just...” She holds steady, hands clenched tight around the staff. “I’m glad we’re facing this together. Thank you for trusting me.”

It's worlds different from the last time she cast this spell-- something she doesn’t even want to think about right now. Taako pointing the umbrastaff at her, the betrayal in Davenport’s eyes...

But Barry’s right. They’ve done the math, run the equation hundreds of times. It should have worked last time, it has to work this time. All she has to do is cast the spell. They’ve all made such wonderful friends here, made a home here, just as they had on Faerun. They have to protect the people they love, right? It’s what they’ve been fighting for all this time.

SATURN

Honestly, Jester could’ve gone through the whole festival if she had the time- everything around here was so pretty or cozy!  Whatever kind of evening she wanted, she could have it- but once she got the idea to invite Lucretia along, this was the one attraction she knew they had to stop by.  Art was what had drawn the two of them together, after all!  All the way back to when they were trapped on those weird islands…

“I’ve done sculpting back home too!”  At least she assumed the woman meant back home, since she said it was a long time ago.  “My friends and I made a bunch of tiny figures for a celebration we were throwing for my god.”  Those had all been relatively in comparison to something like this, but no less enjoyable to create.  She keeps her attention off her own work to watch her friend get started, smiling a bit bigger before getting back to it.

“Oh, this tall figure here-” she gestures to the humanoid shape she’d worked the most on- “this is my mom!  And down here by her feet is going to be a little me, dancing with her like we used to when I was that age!”

Lucretia turns the ice block in front of her while she listens to Jester, thinking about the best way to go about what she was planning.

“Celebrations are always fun,” she nods. “I can’t tell you how many we had for Pan over the years,” it’s said with a light chuckle. Merle had always been relaxed in his faith, but it was nice to have festivals and holidays to look forward to.

“I like what you’ve done with the pose so far,” She makes sure to stay out of chainsaw range as she observes Jester’s work. “It’s very dynamic... you can really see the movement in the dance,” she smiles.