Dear anyone writing an Amnesty/Stolen Century fic:
First: I love you.
Second: Please please please have Taako tease Lup about her power match with Lady Flame and use the words, “Lup, you have a twin.”
Cue sibling bickering for comedic effect.
…that is all.
Holy shit I just realised
In order for Tres Horny Boys to pull off the thing in the new episode… it REWRITES the Stolen Century AND gives us a good firkin reason why things happened the way they did.
They weren’t living year after year in all these different realities.
They were living the SAME YEAR in all these different realities.
That’s why it reset. That’s why they were essentially immortal during that time. And that’s why Greg Fucking Grimaldis is now a prosperous dude. At least until Lup turns up.
It also means that the IPRE crew were travelling through Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.
TAZ:BA thoughts
The mind-wipe changed Taako the worst because he forgot Lup.
During the stolen century, they were always the closest of the crew, and Lucretia can remember the exact moment that the twins accepted her because that was the year that Taako started stealing her clothes and mangling her name on purpose.
The few times that Taako died in those years, it was after that. Hand in hand with Lup, and making sure the ship got away because he knew he’d just pop back to that reset point.
He was always at his bravest when he had Lup’s hand to hold.
He was the last one Lucretia dropped off after the mind wipe. The one she was most concerned about. He was the one she watched carefully after setting him up with everything he needed for the travelling show. Watched him prepare a meal for a dozen people that she would never taste.
She’d wait a decade or more to taste those elderflower macaroons he made as a dessert.
Lucretia had thought he would be all right. She hadn’t counted on the drastic changes she’d made having a long-lasting impact.
Now there was no longer the twin with the reckless philosophy against her enemies, Taako was aloof and craven. His kleptomaniac side, always the chief source of his asshole moments, came to the fore. Because the only person Taako could rely on was Taako.
After the wipe, he NEVER used anyone’s name. He’d mangle their name if he trusted them enough (but there was no real trust there. Taako without Lup at his side never had anyone he could trust), but otherwise, it’s a constant stream of synonyms for ally or lover that mean nothing when they come spilling out of his lips.
So when Lucretia sees him again after a decade, there’s a heart-wrenching change from the Taako she knew. She lost track of him after the forty deaths at Glamour Springs. Nobody could find him after that. Authorities wanted to talk to him, but he just couldn’t be found. He never stayed in the same place for more than a day. Sometimes more than an hour. Sightings were brief and contradictory. He went off the grid so hard that he might as well have cast Blink and maintained it for four terrifying years. And yet, there he was.
The twins had had a hard youth and it left its mark. They’re short, for elves, and during the stolen century, it didn’t much matter. But here and now, Taako perpetually wears four-inch heels and a two-foot hat. But instead of the slight ‘puppy fat’ that marked the twins’ love of food and quality merchandise (they never had nice things when they were on the run), he’s now gaunt. Four years of thin rations and staying out of notice have stripped every ounce of fat off of him and the results horrify Lucretia.
But not more than the drastic change in his personality. When he enters her chambers, he’s the last through the door. His personal bubble is wider than anyone else’s and she can almost see it. His eyes are cold. HE is cold. Aloof and deliberately distant. His humour is cruel and tainted with acid.
Her fault. She removed Lup from his memories. And now there’s walls around his heart that would take supreme effort to get through.
And he steals a paperweight off her desk, right under her nose. Not for its monetary value, because it’s just an interesting rock she found one day (on a world none of the THB remember any more), but because stealing has become an essential survival habit. A reflex action. Of course she notices in a cold second and makes him put it back.
And when he says the words, “simple idiot wizard” it breaks her heart. Something happened to him, very likely in Glamour Springs, that took away all the faith he had in himself.
When she took Lup from his memories, she replaced him with a changeling. Taako isn’t Taako any more. And the only thing that broke him worse was when he remembered, and he didn’t have one atom of himself to care with.
All that self-sabotage. All that self-depreciation. Even the literal flirting with Death. It all made sense because Lup wasn’t there.