19 with taako n dealer's choice
19. Offering a hand to help them up after they've fallen.
((101 ways to say I love you with actions prompts here - still accepting!))
Before this moment, Lucretia had only seen two actual, physical fights in her life.
The first had been at age thirteen, in the hallway to her last class of the day. She didn't know the exact circumstances for it, but it hadn't looked pretty. Until then, she had only read about fight scenes in books or, rarely, her parents took her to see plays that portrayed fights. In real life, it was bloody, sweaty, and loud. She had stood there, frozen, until a teacher came to break it up and get everyone back in motion toward their classes. She spent the whole period- after easily finishing her work- writing it down for prosperity.
Back then, she was planning on writing an honest-to-gods memoir, as if she had any interesting moments in her life to make into something worth reading. She had scrapped most of it later, because who wanted to read about a fight the narrator wasn't even involved in? She isn't a hundred percent sure if she regrets it or not.
The second had been during a summer visit home from college, at age seventeen. She and her brother had been on the boardwalk of Saltwood, a huge seaside city on the west coast. Their parents had paid for an extensive vacation, like they used to when Lucretia was a kid. Only they seemed content sitting by the seaside this time, watching the waves roll in as she and her brother walked around until the soles of their feet hurt.
The fight broke out further down the boardwalk, next to a candy store where Lucretia had stuffed her pockets full of sea salt taffy earlier. There was the sound of shattering glass as someone's drink went flying out of their hand, but Lucretia was more focused on her brother- her younger brother, the one she was supposed to be looking after, the one that had saved her ice cream from a seagull yesterday, the one that wrote her pages and pages of letters when she had to go away- rushing into the fray.
Later, she described it as reckless in her journal. Stupid, too. She wrote and wrote and wrote until her hands ached and then she joined her brother on the couch, sullenly icing her wrist as he pretended his leg cast was the neck of a giraffe.
"I coulda taken 'em," he had said, sounding so sure of himself that Lucretia couldn't help but groan.
If she counted the Hunger as a fight, she had seen much more than two. But she would describe the Hunger more as a battle. "Conflict" or even just "fight" was too small of a word to describe multiple worlds being destroyed in a matter of mere minutes. But war, however, felt too big, too personal. Too… endless. Battle was really the only other word she could think of. Everything else had too many strings attached.
Even then, she hadn't even stuck around to see the Hunger's destruction. Last year, she had been on the deck as they flew out of the world and even that had been much too close for comfort. Lucretia was lucky- as lucky as someone could be facing a yearly apocalypse. She had never had to participate in the fighting until now.
Davenport had sent her, Taako, and Magnus to retrieve the Light. It had landed in the middle of a thick forest. The burning heat from this world's three suns edged away as they trekked under the tree line. Out there, there never truly seemed to be nighttime. In here, Lucretia could barely tell this world had one sun, let alone three of them. Nothing got past the thick branches overhead.
The forest around them was silent, still. Recovering the Light had been easy with Taako's magic and Magnus's willingness to scale a tree even if he didn't need to. It had gotten lodged up in one of the higher branches. Taako used Levitate to lift Magnus into the air (Lucretia was so nervous she would have looked away, but writing it down accurately was more important) and Magnus cut the Light free, no problem.
The way back to the Starblaster was much more jovial, but the stillness and silence remained. As far as they could tell from before, this world was empty. But of course, that was then, and this was now.
Lucretia stumbled, falling back as a bright orange spell flung over her head. Her nose stung and she knew it must have broken- if the cracking sound wasn't enough to clue her in, then the various descriptions she had read in Merle's thick medical texts did. Her mouth started to fill with the bitter taste of blood. She was sure her hands were messed up, too- they must be, having fallen back like this. Possibly her legs as well, her lower back-
Lucretia had never been in a fight and she was positive she never wanted to be. Her brain didn't work for fights. She always tried to divide her thoughts into easy-to-work-through sections, so she could go back later and catalog the most important bits. But in an actual fight- here, right now, in this moment- that wouldn't help. One of the brigands that had snuck up on them had a weapon she didn't recognize pointed at her, his fist bloody. That was her blood.
"Hey, thug," Taako's voice said. Lucretia looked up- and oh, she needed to write this dow- … to remember this, that framing was brilliant- to see Taako standing over her, face illuminated from a slight gap in the treeline. "I think you've got some dust on your everywhere."
He cast a spell Lucretia didn't recognize (she needed to do more reading, she had to be accurate-) and the brigand stumbled back much like Lucretia had when he had punched her. There was a second where he caught himself, looking down at himself and back up at Taako in pure and utter confusion, before his body began to crumble. In the blink of an eye, all that was left was a pile of gray ash.
Taako held out a hand for her and she took it, a little dazed. He pulled her back up to her feet. A few feet away, Lucretia saw Magnus take a hard swing at one of the brigands, solidly hitting the side of their face.
"Duck real quick," Taako said, pushing on her shoulder slightly. Lucretia squatted, her legs aching and Taako shot off another spell. In the distance, she heard Magnus give a loud "nice!". Taako helped her back up and pressed the Light into her open hands. "You get this back to the ship and we'll take care of the rest."
"But-" Lucretia said.
"Luce," Taako said. "I would love fucking nothing more than to get outta here together but Beefy McPunchy over here isn't gonna back down until he's clobbered at least two of these idiots and, frankly, you're not gonna help any."
"I can-" Lucretia said, but both she and Taako knew she had no defense.
"You can get in my way, is what you can do," Taako said, turning her around so she was facing the direction the ship was in again. "Get Lup or maybe like, Merle, I guess, but just get the Light back. We'll be right behind you."
He patted Lucretia's shoulder- if she wasn't so- so- gods, she needed to find a word for this feeling- maybe she wouldn't have flinched. But she did, anyway.
"Don't do anything reckless," Lucretia said. She tightened her grip on the Light. "Or stupid."
"Stupid and reckless is Magnus's entire thing," Taako said. Lucretia felt like she wanted to cry, but she laughed instead. "But I'll make sure he doesn't get fucked up too bad. I can take 'em no problem, don't worry."
Oh, how familiar this situation felt. She blinked away tears and tried to ignore the throbbing in her nose, the sting of blood in her throat. She glanced over at Magnus, who had just taken a spell to the chest and winced.
"Go," Taako said, ushering her forward. "Now." Narratively, she should stay. But this was nothing like fight scenes in the plays she had to sit through as a child or the ones she read and reread over and over again in books. If they died- they wouldn't, they couldn't, they-
If they died, they'd be back. They had to be back.
Lucretia turned back towards the ship and ran.
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I just have anger issues
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