blue-mood-blue:

Her brother isn’t ugly.

Lup has heard his jokes. Heard them, told him exactly what she thought of the barbed humor he pointed at himself, and refused to let him continue. It hasn’t stopped him yet, but she’s trying. Lup heard the terms of the sacrifice, too. She was listening when the liches explained – she didn’t stop listening after they dropped a huge, metal box on her brother because was going to know what the fuck was happening to him. She knows what they took, and it isn’t what Taako calls it.

Taako’s not ugly. Taako’s not average. No one would ever accuse Taako of being anything but extraordinary, no matter what his face looks like. No one would think anything is missing. That’s not what this is.

Lup knows the difference the moment she sees his face, when he finally lets the spell down in front of her. She would – she knows his face maybe better than he does. It’s the freckles she catches first; it’s the wrong number, in the wrong places. The feeling is a little like looking up and seeing that the stars are all wrong – she remembers doing that with Taako, sitting on the roof of the Starblaster. They spent hours looking for just one familiar constellation. For years, it was the closest they came to talking about what they’d lost.

Next are the eyes; the shape is less severe, and the color isn’t quite right. The changed details find her faster after that. There’s something different about his nose, his hair has more hints of red than gold, his expressions are… off. It’s her brother’s face but it isn’t, he looks familiar but not entirely. Her brother is right there in front of her and she misses him.

Lup smiles. She tells him that he’ll never look as good as her, but he’s a pretty close second. Taako looks relieved. He tries to hide it, and even on a face that is as unfamiliar as it is familiar she can see right through him. The changes aren’t that much. He still looks so much like her.

But he’s not like her.

Taako and Lup are elves. They have long ears, sharp eyes, and wicked smiles. For one hundred years, they are two of a kind; no matter where they go, no one looks quite like them. The “elves” of other worlds are not as sharp, not as strange. Like always, they take pride in the way people stare. They’ve never minded being a matching set.

Now it’s only Lup. For the first time in one hundred years, Taako looks like he belongs. He might have been born on Faerun; he might have lived his whole life here, without her, like he did in another set of memories.

And when even Taako starts to forget what he looked like, when his freckles and eyes and hair and face are always wrong with or without magic, Lup wonders if the sacrifice was only meant for her brother.