Tonight in chat while I was streaming art/Crystal Kingdom we were discussing who gave the IPRE patches to Tres Horny Boys (gotta be Barry) and how he could have done it.
Presumably, he didn’t have them on him when he got yeeted off the Starblaster, so he probably got them from Lucretia’s office while he was doing recon as Pringles, right? Smuggling out the patches is a little bit iffy but doable. But how did he get them under the Candlenights bush wrapped and addressed for the boys to find?
This was a couple months or so after Pringles is jailed so the anti-lich wards are already installed and they must be on high alert for folks getting possessed. He wouldn’t have been able to get back in to place the patches. Except.
You guys: Santa exists canonically in the TAZ Balance universe.
Barry visited Santa Claus in his lich form and asked him to deliver presents to his dear friends for Candlenights on the moon and That’s Canon Baby.
This is a great rebuttal to this theory, God bless
Making the delivery is Santa’s gift to Barry, the only lich to ever achieve Nice List status
sometimes I think people in the taz fandom don’t realize just how long a century is
like, there’s a reason people celebrate 50 year marriages, that’s a long time to spend with another person. the ipre crew did double that and still liked each other at the end of it. they all know each other to a degree that’s probably terrifying.
Oh this is something I think about A LOT
Like ive read some fics that are like, ‘and this secret came out in cycle 12’ or ‘they finally felt comfortable enough to do whatever thing in cycle 23’ but like…..that’s more than a decade, more than 2 decades. That shit woulda happened within the first 5 years or so, if not the first damn year???
Like by the time they’ve got to 2 decades…think about people celebrating 20 year marriages–it’s A LONG ASS TIME. The degree of comfort they must be at by a century? I can’t even imagine!
I think it’s because we think of the cycles in numbers: 1-100, and ex. 23 or whatever is like, early in that. 23/100. But like……that’s YEARS. Holy FUCK.
I really want to see this explored, at some point, in fic.
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.
everything Lucretia says sounds like the kind of stuff the dm says sarcastically and then is like “no she doesn’t say that” except the second part doesn’t happen
Something’s wrong and Taako doesn’t know what it is. Everyone is at the big house — Taako and Lup, of course, and Merle and Barry and Kravitz, but also Davenport and Lucretia and Angus. But Magnus isn’t there, and he hasn’t been for several days.
Everyone talks in whispers around them, including Angus, which makes Taako a little mad because Angus is as small as they are, why does he get to know what’s going on? But Angus doesn’t say anything when they ask him, only shakes his head distractedly and looks very worried.
One morning, everyone piles into one of the shiny new cars with an M on the front that Magnus likes to pretend stands for his name. Maybe a couple months ago Taako and Lup would be worried everyone was leaving them behind, but today they’re just angry. Everyone’s going off on important family business and not taking them!
So they sneak in, of course.
It’s easy to wriggle into the trunk before Barry starts driving. Taako transmutes the lock into a hole and Lup pops it open and they both climb in and stay very, very still. It’s easy for the two of them. They’ve had lots of practice. It’s nice to be sneaky when their lives don’t depend on it, though. It’s almost fun!
By the time the car stops, he and Lup are so engrossed making faces at each other and challenging each other not to laugh that they almost don’t register the halt. They county fifty breaths, in and out, in and out, before Lup kicks the trunk open.
They’re in front of a huge house. Not as big as the big house, but large nonetheless. It’s fancy, but old; towering white columns, gates with sharp spikes, elaborate gardens with sparkling fountains whose droplets tinkle like diamonds. Taako pulls a face. This is the kind of house he and Lup would take food from, because most of the time the people who lived in them were bad people.
They only see Merle up ahead of them, trekking down that winding path, but that’s okay, because Barry knows Invisibility and he’s strong enough to cast it on many people. Taako can’t just yet, but he holds Lup’s hand and keeps quiet and that’s good enough.
Merle rings the doorbell.
It takes a long time for anyone to respond. Then the door creaks open and there’s a pale-faced young halfling who asks Merle what his name is. It takes Merle four minutes to negotiate his way inside, which is weird because normally he gets his way a lot faster — Merle is good with words when he’s not being a dummy.
Just before the door slides shut, Lup and Taako slip inside.
The foyer brims with huge statues, marble busts of people that are probably dead. Still holding each other tight, they sneak around to the back, careful to keep out of view.
A man descends from a spiral staircase in the middle of the foyer, white-haired and icy blue eyes, and even though Taako only sees him for a second before Lup yanks him out of sight, Taako gets chills. He doesn’t like this man with the pale eyes and the scar on his cheek. He doesn’t like him at all.
The white-haired man strides down the hallway, Lup and Taako inching along the statue to keep out of sight, and greets Merle by name. There’s something weird about Merle’s voice, now. Something old and cold.
It takes him a second to realize: Merle’s angry.
Suddenly, sneaking around doesn’t seem like a game any more. Taako’s never seen Merle angry before. Not at anyone, and never at them.
Ren wasn’t sure what to expect when Magnus asked her to come over for a couple days. He’d been oddly reluctant to give details over the Stone, so all she could glean was that he and Merle were taking a vacation and there was someone in the house that needed watching.
Also, she could hear children in the background. Not-Angus children, too.
Whatever she’d expected, two twin pairs of large eyes blinking up at her was just about the last on the list.
“Taako? Lup?” she guesses. “Is that you?”
“We, ah, told her about you before she came!” Magnus says hastily. “That’s how she knows your names!”
Ah. So they don’t know her. Which means they probably don’t know anything about their adventures with the Bureau, and going from Magnus’s confidence over the Stone, nothing about their adult lives either.
Which means Ren is now in charge of two very young, very impressionable elven children who will one day grow up to be not only her boss but some of her closest friends.
Admittedly, in this moment Ren has several questions. But none are so important as “Who’s up for a little bakin’, hmm?”
“Oh gods,” Barry says, in the same tone of voice he uses upon discovering remnants of horrific rituals, multiple-murder crime scenes, or Angus getting his hands on thousand-page books.
“What is it?”
Barry points up, above the spice cabinet, where they’d stowed the confectioner’s sugar and the bags of chocolate treats. That space is now emptied, the counter space below it littered with the corpses of dozens of mint and raspberry truffles.
“Queen help us,” Kravitz breathes.
The two of them follow a trail of powdered sugar like breadcrumbs down the hallway, through the foyer, beneath the ornate crystal chandelier, and right out the front door. Barry looks at Kravitz, Kravitz looks at Barry, and they share a long moment of sheer anxiety before Barry reaches bravely for the door handle.
Tiny snow angels litter the yard in the shape of little elves. Three snowmen guard their mailbox, one’s stick arms crossed, one flexing, and one bent down to receive a misshapen lump of snow identified as a dog only by its leaf-ears and tongue.
Neither of them spot the twins crouched behind the bushes and giggling early enough to dodge a snowball to the face.
After they spend the day with Carey and Killian, Magnus introduces them to Avi. He’s a tall man with tousled brown hair and green eyes, which Taako stares at for a long time because he’s never seen green eyes before. They’re pretty. He says as much, and Avi laughs, long and loud. “Thanks, kid,” he says, and toasts Taako with a flask.
He’d said it’s full of a “mystery substance,” Avi but Taako knows it’s got alcohol in it. At first that made him a little nervous, because adults with alcohol in them are not adults that he and Lup typically like, but either Avi is psychic or really intuitive because he notices Taako and Lup looking askance at it and tosses it to Magnus. “For safekeeping,” he winks.
Avi winks a lot. Taako tries winking back, and Lup laughs at him ‘cause he can’t get his eye to close right, but she can’t do it either so Taako laughs right back.
Avi takes them a good ways away from the house, which makes Taako kinda nervous, to something called a museum. They’re clearly sneaking in, and Taako doesn’t like that because he thought they didn’t have to do that anymore, but they have an adult with them so they won’t get in trouble, right?
But it’s daytime but inside the museum is poorly-lit, with flickering lights and the blanketing silence that comes with after-hours. Taako know this sort of silence from the times he and Lup had to hide beneath stalls in the markets so they could eat scraps after everyone else had gone home. Those were bad days, normally. They much preferred fresh food when they could get it.
For now, though, Taako pushes those thoughts away. He doesn’t need to think about those days anymore. He has the big house and the nice people in it and more spices than he has fingers and toes.
He does press closer to Lup, though. She’s warm and reassuring at his side and she makes the flickering lights seem not-so-scary.
Avi takes them to a large cylindrical machine, crouches down in front of it. “This,” he says, grinning broadly, “is a cannon! Did you kids know I lived on the moon once?”
Lup shakes her head.
“Well, ‘s a true story.”
“Can’t be,” Lup says. She’s so brave. Taako holds her hand tightly. He doesn’t like dark places. He’s always not liked dark places and it’s brighter in the cannon room but still dark and Taako doesn’t like it. But Lup is there and Lup is his light so it’s not so bad. “Nobody lives on the moon. There’s no air up there. Barry said so.”
“Barry’s right. It wasn’t the real moon, but a fake moon up in the sky. Have you kids met Lucretia?”
They shake their heads. “Well, she’s the one that made it. Her and Lucas, you met — guess you have then, huh,” Avi chuckles at the twin disgusted faces he and Lup pull. “Yeah, he’s a nasty boy. We don’t like him much,” he says, voice dropping to a whisper, “but don’t tell him that because he’ll throw a hissy-fit and then he starts doing bad science.”
“What’s the cannon do?” Taako pipes up.
“This baby?” The metal clinks as Avi slaps a companionable palm on the cool steel. “Fires people, kiddos! We load ‘em in the sphere, I hit this red button, and we send ‘em far away!” His grin turns sharp. “Some of them get lost and don’t ever come back! Not too many, though. We find most of them eventually.”
Taako holds Lup’s hand tighter, and without glancing over her shoulder — she’s shifted in front of him, a little bit — she squeezes back.
There’s been…a clerical error?? So this is the surprise part one of the fic I posted yesterday. I forgot I wrote this, to be honest, it was supposed to precede yesterday’s drabble. It sets up more of Taako and Lup’s mental states, shows them getting more accustomed to living with their family, passes time.
One week passes, then two, and nobody kicks them out.
They get their own room. It’s huge, and Merle tells them it was the guest bedroom, but there are stars plastered along the ceiling and detective novels on the shelves, so Taako guesses that Angus probably lived here a lot.
It’s weird. He’s mean to Magnus and Magnus laughs it off because he seems to know when Taako’s rudeness is really just him not knowing what to say. Lup sets Merle’s beard on fire and Merle pats it out, smiling kindly all the way. Taako stole from Kravitz and got caught and set up a deal and then Kravitz called in Merle to tell him that this isn’t a cook-for-lodging kind of deal, they just want the twins to be safe and happy. Really.
Taako and Lup have stayed in weird places before for longer than this. Once, they lived three months with an old lady and her weird two-headed goat, which Taako doesn’t think about much because he remembers the sky being purple but the sky is definitely not purple, but the point is he never felt comfortable here.
Something about this place makes him feel safe.
it creeps him out, so he talks to Lup about it.
To his surprise, Lup feels it too.
“I like it,” she says. “I like Merle ‘n Barry ‘n Magnus. They’re really nice.”
“Yeah,” Taako says. “And Kravitz. They haven’t tried to kick us out yet.”
“Maybe they really do want us to stay.”
Part of Taako scoffs instinctively at the optimism, because no one ever wants them to stay, but he can’t quite force himself to dismiss the thought. Maybe they’re not fakey-fake pretending. Maybe he and Lup can stay here for a real long time.
That thought makes him very happy. For some reason, instead of pushing it away, he holds it really close.
Slowly, he and Lup meet more people. They haven’t met Lucretia yet but they are introduced to Davenport, who jumps stiffly when he sees them and speaks far more formally than anyone else they’ve known.
They meet Carey and Killian and Lup spends most of their meeting making grossed-out faces behind their back because they hold hands the entire time. They’re so in love it’s disgusting. Taako muffles a laugh behind his hand when Lup stretches out her lips and sticks out her tongue, then blinks innocently when Carey whips around.
Taako and Lup wake up first in the house except for Magnus, scrambling around the kitchen in pursuit of bigger and better things to make. This kitchen has everything – eggs and bacon and flour and milk and sugar and those spices that seem to multiply every time Taako cracks the pantry open. He and Lup tear into the house’s supply with glee, whipping up huge breakfasts before everyone gets up.
His French toast made Magnus cry once because it was so good. Magnus had to excuse himself from the table, because he was crying like a little baby. And that first day, when Taako made blueberry cobbler, he even got Kravitz to tear up. “Tastes like home,” he’d said, which Taako had thought was weird because they were at home right then.
It’s a comfortable routine – wake up and cook, be showered with praise, scamper off to explore the yard until lunchtime. Some days when they’re too tired they make Magnus make sandwiches, which he does on the condition that they sit on his shoulders, so Lup takes the right shoulder and Taako takes the left shoulder and they giggle when he spreads the peanut butter unevenly.
Then Merle takes them for walks around the garden, which Taako pretends to hate but secretly enjoys. It smells so good out there, like lavender and fresh rain, even on days where it hadn’t rained before. When he asked Merle about that Merle had said, with a kind twinkle in his eye that Taako has started to love, that his garden was touched by the gods.
Taako doesn’t believe him, but this house is so nice and big and full and warm that it’s easy to believe some part of it, at least, is blessed.
For dinner, he and Lup go all out. They switch between themselves, who makes the entree and who makes the sides and who makes the dessert. Originally they fought over who would make the main dish, because that’s the centerpoint of glory, but then Merle showed them how to pull up fresh vegetables like potatoes and beans from his garden and after that they competed for the sides, eventually agreeing to get the food together.
It was hard work, but it was fun to roll around in the dirt with Lup and tromp on back to the house covered in muck. Bathing was less fun, but it was with Lup, and Barry was very gentle and awkward and they made lots of fun of him, so it was at least okay. Besides, Taako loves smelling fresh and clean and good. He steals four of the best-smelling oils before remembering he doesn’t have to do that any more and putting them back.
The man in front of him chuckles. “You’re small,” he says, and kneels. “How are you doing, Taako?”
“Good,” Taako says, because you never tell adults if you’re not doing good. He frowns. “You smell bad.”
The man in front of him blinks. Behind him, the man in blue jeans that Taako thinks was called Barry stuffs a snicker into his fist as he walks out of the living room, hand-in-hand with Lup. Taako finds himself not too worried about Lup. He likes the man with the blue jeans. “I do?”
“Yeah. You smell like chemicals.”
“Oh,” the man says, and he sounds inexplicably disappointed. “I always thought
—
well. I suppose there is something to be said for complete honesty, isn’t there, Taako?”
“No,” he says. “You’re dumb.”
“I
—
okay,” he says. “That’s…you know what? That’s fair. I have done some pretty dumb things.”
Taako, for some reason, feels kinda bad. “It’s okay, we all do dumb things,” he says.
Then he gets an idea. Taako pats the man’s shoulder and nods sympathetically in that way that makes adults feel bad for him and Lup, and twists a gold bead out of his hair. The man is too busy smiling at him to notice.
“I suppose we do.”
He puts a hand on the man’s shoulder and says, “Stay there.”
“Okay,” he says, and obliges. Taako runs a quick eye up and down his clothes
—
all nicely cut, well-fitted, and stinking of ozone, and also something sweeter, maybe blueberries.
More importantly, though, there’s gold practically everywhere on him: in his hair, around his wrists, in his ears. “Your earrings look like skulls,” he comments from behind the man’s back, and reaches out to touch them. There’s some pretty stuff on him: a gemstone-embedded bracelet, a ring flecked with pink crystals.
He freezes. “They are,” he says carefully. Taako knows that tone of voice. He’s about to be lied to. “It’s, ah…a fascination of mine. Death and dying and, um, all that.”
Taako hums noncommittally. With careful fingers he undoes the clasp, and in a quick whisk tugs it out of his ears.
It occurs to him that he should perhaps not be doing this.
It occurs to him that when he and Lup are kicked out of the house they’ll need money, so Taako shrugs and pockets the gold pieces. “I like your hair,” he says, threading his fingers through the man’s tiny braids. “’s long.”
thisacelovesheadcanons 