#apologies for any wonkyness with the formatting im posting from my phone dnfnsjnd

[holdmecloser-gandydancer]

It's happening again. 

The one thing she'd hoped to prevent with her sacrifice, hoping to scrounge up enough time. The relics had all gone silent in past decade. Just as she had intended. She had been certain that she'd have enough time to find the relics, return the Light to its full power, enact her plan, and reunite with her family. 

How foolish. 

Her quest to obtain the Animus Bell was foolhardy at best. Taking a page out of Magnus's book. She knew it was a trap. The envelope appearing out of nowhere, dangling the relic over her head. It was a mistake going in. Now her joints hurt even more than they did when she was regularly running from the apocalypse and she has new nightmares to add to the rotation. Those technicolor freaks taunting her, telling her that someone in her memories, "That pudgy fellow in the blue jeans," personally handed them the relic, so doesn't this feel like he's the one punishing her and not them? 

She'd done her best to wave those thoughts away. Buckle down, redouble her search efforts. Get help creating a floating base she can actually bring people to without frying their brains or broadcasting all her sins. But even that wasn't enough. She needed help, real help. 

And she's getting it. But, even as the anticipation for their arrival makes it feel like she's got bees in her gut, she's haunted by the fact that the surface of the world is marred by another shiny, black pockmark. 

It's happening again. 

All the planning and merriment of the Midsummer Solstice, paired with the knowledge that now, thanks to the boys, she had three of the relics in her possession had put her at ease. Perhaps that was her biggest mistake, believing that somehow, someway, they'd be able to get the jump on the Hunger. But now they officially have a deadline.

Finding the Light in a year with all seven of them was hard enough most cycles. But after severing it in seven different ways, Lup gone, Davenport as good as gone, and Barry at odds with Lucretia, she has little confidence that they can  do it. Half capacity and the boys don't even know what they're looking for. They don't know why. 

Every single day she has to keep herself from fully inoculating them. It would make the process go so much faster. 

It would stop the process because they would hate her. 

It's happening again.

In the months before the redaction, everyone knew something was bothering her. She had reverted to her pre-mission self, holing up in her room for days on end, hardly talking to anyone. She took all her meals in her room,  let dishes pile up. Everyone figured that, like all of them, she was taking the destruction of this plane, their new plane, hard. And she was. And by the time Lup went missing, it was already too late for anyone to try to stop her even if they had figured it out. 

And she's isolating again. She can't hide it from anyone, but she does her best. If everyone is in training five and eight and ten hours a day, no one can notice she's hiding behind stacks and stacks of books in her office. Books that nobody on base could read anyway; the words would go swimming and she'd have to explain that. 

Just one more. 

They can do it. She can save everyone this time.

It's happening again.

She's not too proud to admit just how angry she was when she was out voted. Just because she wasn't dripping with PhDs somehow meant that her knowledge on science wasn't as valuable. The whole ship was at each other's throats for a while after that. 

That's the thing with scientists, they always think they know best. That's what got them all in this mess. Made Lup vanish. Turned Barry against her. Got Maureen Miller killed. Turned Lucas Miller into a death fugitive. If, perhaps, any one of them had listened to her, they could all be fine. But no, nobody wanted to listen to Lucretia so now the apocalypse is on their doorstep once more. 

It finally happened.

If Lucretia is being honest, she never dreamed they'd actually be able to stop the Hunger for good. By the time next Midsummer rolls around, everyone is fairly scattered. But, by some divine act, they all reconvene. 

Perhaps calling Merle personally inviting everyone to his new home is hardly a divine act. It's tenuous. Taako can barely be in the same room as her. Barry doesn't look at her. Lup looks scared of her, but graciously tries to hide it. Davenport radiates disappointment still. Magnus and Merle do their best to lighten the atmosphere. Everyone is tense as the eclipse passes overhead. They all wait for a horrible cacophony and billions of crawling eyes.

None come. The eclipse passes and each one of them exhale a century long breath. 

There's a first time for everything. Lucretia hopes that extends to forgiveness.

#reese writes #taz balance #Lucretia #the adventure zone balance #balance #apologies for any wonkyness with the formatting im posting from my phone dnfnsjnd #this is something just to clear out some covwebs because im in a relisten and i was just thinking about that midsummer solstice for luce