alright dipsticks, hear me out
taz balance au where everything is the same except that lucretia and barry have each others’ farspeech frequencies
it all starts about a year after lucretia voidfishes the plane. she’s poking around goldcliff, hoping to find some way to con some rich shit into paying for her gigantic moon base, when she runs — literally runs headfirst — into some bespectacled nerd in denim
barry, for his part, doesn’t know why this complete stranger is offering to buy him lunch as an apology for spilling his Fantasy Starbucks all over his oldass shirt, but he sure as shit isn’t complaining. especially when something, something about this kid feels so... familiar
in a spur of the moment decision, lucretia gives him her farspeech number. barry doesn’t think anything of it at the time
...anything, that is, until he’s rising, spectral and flickering, over his battered corpse, and he begins laughing hysterically, tears glimmering in long-gone eye sockets. he may not have lup back, but he’s got his little sister.
so they start texting. is barry furious at lucretia for what she’s done? sure, a bit. but he understands her logic, and his temper is soothed when she point-blank tells him that she’s going to help him find lup. they may be working against each other as far as the relics are concerned, but if lucretia can locate at least one more shred of her former family, then by god is she going to. barry understands, he thinks, and so they help keep each other a little less lonely over a long ten years
lucretia keeps barry updated on how the other birds are doing, as best she can. they rejoice together as magnus and julia take back raven’s roost, and when glamour springs is shadowed by a mass poisoning barry has to do everything up to physically restraining lucretia from beating the ass of whichever motherfucker did that to taako. wait, he tells her. physical pain is temporary. a lich, on the other hand, is in a prime position to make some douche’s life a living hell. lucretia grins and offers to fund his plots in any way she can.
barry, for his part, keeps lucretia up-to-date on the search for lup. they have matching little cork boards in their respective offices, each filled with maps and theories and half-baked what-ifs. they aren’t any closer to finding out what happened to her, but they will. they have to.
speaking of things happening, barry is the first one to find lucretia after wonderland. he hadn’t been able to reach her for a month, and so when he feels the enormous surge of pure magical despair explode outwards from the felicity wilds, he transports himself there as quickly as he can. he finds his baby sister at the centre of a mile-wide crater, twenty years older and countless sacrifices poorer, and he holds her as gently as he can without physical hands, and makes her promise to never deal with wonderland again. fuck, he’ll get the animus bell for her, he doesn’t care. he just can’t see lucretia in that state ever again. (never again, that’s what they told themselves, in a group huddle late one night the dawn of cycle 66. he’d failed her once. he couldn’t do it again.)
as she builds up the bureau, lucretia starts getting questions about her best friend on the stone. lucas asks her point blank who it is one day early in their acquaintance, and she answers “b- uh, b-j” “that tells me basically nothing. what does that even stand for?” lucas demands. “uh,” lucretia says, “🅱️amazing jrace”
thus begins a fine tradition of bureau employees trying to get any info they can on the mysterious “bj”, including his actual name. so far some of the top answers they’ve gotten from madame director include “bitchin jackass” “burger joint” “beetlejuice” and “banjo jimboree”. once, robbie asks her if he’s her secret lover, and lucretia has to summon a bucket before retching in disgust, which puts paid to that particular theory fairly succinctly
barry, for his part, adores these rumours. he keeps asking if lucretia will lift the lich barrier, just for a day, so he can come and stir up even more shit. lucretia, while admittedly very tempted, denies.
when he finds out that lucretia has been telling bureau employees that the red robes are evil, barry is understandably insulted. the next group of regulators that touch the ground are covered in fantasy cheez whiz for the duration of their mission.
lucretia gets him back by replacing all the denim in the jeans at his base with silly string. barry moves bases, and the prank war escalates
(no one has the courage to tell madame director that her hair has been turned rainbow at the last candlenights party. privately, lucretia thinks she looks bitchin)
every now and again, lucretia will text barry in a panic. these texts tend to look like this:
“barry.” “barold aid me” “barry I fucked shit up real good this time” “barry” “barry” “barry I was at the fantasy Olive Garden and the waiter said ‘enjoy your meal’ and I said ‘you too’ barry kill me n o w “
barry can and will mock lucretia mercilessly for this. he also insists for weekly video updates on fisher and junior.
he also has biweekly fantasy skype sessions with davenport
booyah: I saw a woman so beautiful I started crying???
booyah: and then I hired her and her son (who’s a little bitch) to work on my secret moon base and I think I’ve made a terrible mistake???????
bear-old: oh my fucking god this is why I don’t trust you to stop the apocalypse
when the thb start working as reclaimers, barry demands weekly updates on them, as well. it goes about as well as you’d expect
booyah: magnus ate the philosopher’s stone
bear-old: he fucking w h a t ?
booyah: he used the glutton’s fork, and he ATE the philosopher’s stone. taako and merle used stone skin and stone shape to get the damn thing out. happy fucking candlenights.
when barry finds out that taako’s DATING the fool who’s been chasing after him wile e coyote style for over a decade, he loses his s h i t. he and lucretia have a girls’ night where they bitch about taako and eat shitty chocolate to cope
bear-old: you HIRED a BABY???
booyah: he’s ten! that’s plenty old. and he’s certainly competent, seeing as he found my organization when even you couldn’t.
bear-old: creesh please. please do not Irreparably Fuck Up A Small Child
booyah: hey, at least I’m not the one who threw him off a moving train!
bear-old: I never threw anyone off a
bear-old: who in your employ threw ANGUS MCDONALD, a LITERAL CHILD, off of a MOVING. VEHICLE?
bear-old: fucking fantasy CHRIST
(they have quite a few girls’ nights eating shitty chocolate and razzing on taako, actually)
team sweet flips goes to the director’s office one day to give a status report and find her red-eyed and coughing. she says she has allergies. the cute cat video barry just texted her on her stone, however, begs to differ
lucretia preps the boys for refuge, yes, but her mind is filled with texts and tomes and the letters “l u p” carved into a bureau wall. she passes countless sleepless nights with barry on the line, trying to decipher what it all means
but they emerge from the woven gulch unscathed, and that can only mean one thing: wonderland
she doesn’t tell barry where she’s sending them. she can’t let him interfere out of some misguided attempt to save her from the place. her texts grow few and far between
she doesn’t have to tell barry. he knows
the day they get sent out, as lucretia breaks down in her office, surrounded by a dizzying vastness that could envelop her very being if she would just let it, her stone buzzes.
four words: I’ll keep them safe
well, then it’s the end of the world
(but when lup emerges from her decade-long cage, phantasmal and resplendent, lucretia and barry share a look)
(and when the hunger is consuming the only home she knows and she’s flying out in one last attempt to face is, barry is on her stone)
(and when the dust settles and they’re finally, finally free, when the world hears a story and a song and former and current bureau employees alike learn just how important the mysterious “bj” really is, when lucretia looks at the wreckage of her life’s work and home and family — when all that happens, barry is the one to beckon to her with open arms.)
(they’ve been beside the other for a hundred and ten years, after all. that’s not gonna fucking change now.)
anyways yeah folks barry and lucretia texting au play with me in this space
@littlemisscritical @thatcoldfeeling and you know what? @herbgerblin what the hell
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