#featuring robot julia rather than no3113

[words-writ-in-starlight]

congratulations on reaching 1000 followers! for the ask meme.... Lucretia or Magnus from TAZ?

For the Thousand Meme!

1. Something before canon

The traveling show comes through Raven’s Roost a little before the revolution kicks into high gear.  It’s a weird, arrogant elf and his assistant, and the elf dresses like a catastrophic accident in clothes but pulls it off.  Magnus guesses that confidence really can make anything work.  He tries a sample macaron and it’s--

“Hey, hot stuff, are you all right?” Julia asks.  Just Julia then, still his teacher’s daughter.  “Is the cookie okay?”

Magnus blinks and scrubs at his blurry eyes and he’s surprised to find tears there.  “Yeah,” he says with a rickety laugh, popping the rest of his sample in his mouth and savoring the sweetness as he wonders if he’s sleeping enough.  The rush of--of something is fading, he can barely remember what made his chest hurt and his eyes water.  “It’s really good,” he says.  “Tastes like home.”

2. Something during canon

Magnus has always really liked red--or, well, not really always, but close enough.  He kind of vaguely recalls a time when his favorite color was green, and his inner sappy romantic says that his favorite color is brandy-brown like Julia’s eyes, but.  It’s red, it’s been red a long time.  It’s just a favorite color, though, it doesn’t really have a lot of bearing on his life.  He’s barely thought about it until he joins the Bureau, where everyone dresses in blues and silvers and whites.

Except for Magnus, in his red shirts and red neckerchiefs.  And except for Merle, in his stupid floral prints with hibiscus.  And except for Taako, with his beloved red umbrella--and of course he has to dress to coordinate with the thing, Taako might dress like a multi-battle-wagon pileup but he’s a classy pileup.

Magnus isn’t sure why their resistance to the dress code makes the Director so amused.

3. Something after canon

In the cottage on the astral plane, Magnus lies on the bed that Julia built for them with his head in her lap and tells her everything.  Some of it she already knows, some of it she saw, but he tells her every single thing from his long, strange life, and she buries her hands in his hair and kisses his dumb face every time he says “and, God, you would have loved it, Jules.”

It takes him several weeks to get through everything.

4. Something happy

Magnus gets something of a reputation, after the Day of Story and Song.  Not the reputation you’d think, although he gets that too.  The reputation he gets is as the best dog rehabilitator anyone’s ever seen.  Bring him a violent or traumatized dog and he’ll adopt it and have a new best friend within the year.

It’s all about waiting, is what he says.  He’s good at waiting, he’s been doing it a long time.  He has seven dogs and it’s amazing.

5. Something sad

Magnus picks up a new nightmare to add to his collection after Refuge.

It’s a simple dream, and it goes something like this.

“Why didn’t you save me?” asks Julia, holding the Chalice, and she stands there watching him as blood stains her dress.  He doesn’t have a single thing to say.

6. Something shippy

Julia started calling him ‘hot stuff’ because she thought it was funny to watch her father’s new assistant and protege turn scarlet.  Magnus made it such a business to be game for anything and totally unflappable that the second she realized she had a way to crack his composure, she abused it terribly.

This backfired on her a little bit when she realized she’d gone and fallen in love with the big friendly lug.

Also this

7. Something smutty

Magnus, for reasons he can’t really remember, goes down like a god.  The first time he eats Julia out, she’s just absolutely hazy with it once he comes up, grinning smugly at her--she jokes that she decided to marry him on the spot because obviously.

It’s only like...eighty percent a joke.

“Breath control,” is Magnus’ only comment on the matter.

8. Something domestic

Magnus and Taako and Merle (and others, although the three of them don’t know it at the time) all have nightmares, off and on.  Not about the same things, not even always about things they remember when they wake up, but they have a lot of Three AM Kitchen Meetings, wherein Magnus whittles things to the comforting sounds of Taako clattering around in the kitchen and Merle pointedly not doing the dishes.

Taako makes good hot chocolate.  It’s about all he can bear to cook for people he gives a damn about, since Glamour Springs, and only from scratch, no magic whatsoever.  Some days he can’t even manage that, and pours the whole saucepan out into the sink.  But sometimes he shoves a mug in front of Magnus and says, “That’s the real shit, homie, don’t let it sit there and get cold.”

It’s strange--Julia liked coffee when she couldn’t sleep, not chocolate--but Taako’s post-nightmare hot cocoa tastes like home.

9. Something dramatic

Magnus, during the century on the Starblaster, has a near-pathological talent for getting killed covering someone’s back.  If he doesn’t manage to outright die, he loses a limb, or goes blind, or gets splashed with acid and fails to get back to Merle in time to be healed.

The twelfth time it happens, he blinks his eyes open at the start of the next cycle and barely has time to say “Hey, guys” when Lucretia hauls off and slaps him as hard as she fucking can.

Lucretia is not, in fact, the frail bookworm she usually lets herself be.  She knocks out one of his teeth.

“Get him, Luce,” Lup observes in the tone of the scientifically interested.  It is possible that they have discussed this in his absence.

“You stupid fuck,” Lucretia says, pristine and disappointed as she looks down at him where she’s managed to knock him onto the floor.  “Stop getting fucking murdered for us, please.”

“Nah,” Magnus says, grinning up at her with blood on his mouth.  

“This is not a request,” Lucretia says, completely unamused.  Magnus stops grinning.  “And don’t you forget it.”

He doesn’t.

10. Something AU

Magnus smiles a little at the helpful robot they meet in Lucas’ lab.  She has a number noted down on her chassis, but she introduces herself cheerily enough as Julia, instead.  Only reasonable to assume she’s got a name, rather than a serial number, Magnus guesses.

“I used to know a Julia,” he muses, making sure to keep the smile on his face.  “It’s a nice name.”

“Thanks so much, random stranger,” she says dryly.  It’s a little difficult to make out tone in her mechanical voice, but he knows she’s laughing at him.

It’s not until everything is over and he’s flagging down Kravitz to carry a message that it comes together.

“Julia,” Kravitz repeats, eyebrows raised.  “You want me to take a message to Julia Burnsides.”

“That’s my wife,” Magnus confirms, and if he had eyes for anything else right now he might notice the way their more-scrumbled-than-ever robotic companion freezes in place.

“Oh...kay,” Kravitz says, drawing the word out, and pivots on one heel with the grace of a dancer and the expression of the last sane man in a madhouse.  “Julia,” he says formally to the other corner of the room, where a robot is having a revelation, “your husband would like me to tell you that he loves you.  Seeing as he’s just negotiated your indefinite parole, I can’t really imagine why he wanted a messenger for that.  You kids have a good time sorting this one out, I have work to do.”

And he bails before he can get too involved in the fallout, while Magnus has a small heart attack.