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The flu is, Lucretia decides, an absolute motherfucker.
Yes, she was hired for her way with words, and that’s maybe a bit too crass for official mission documents or elegant ghostwritten autobiographies. But sue her, she has the space flu. Pretty words can wait until her fever decides to calm the fuck down.
And as if being sick isn’t bad enough on its own, quarantine sure takes the whole thing up quite a few notches.
Of course the Starblaster has a quarantine protocol. Going to different planar systems means the potential of encountering all kinds of unknown nastiness; hell, if anything, Space Flu™ was almost an expected outcome of the mission. They had a detailed plan for illness during the mission, all sorts of medical supplies and airlocks and sterilization procedures.
It’s just that, now at eighteen years in, they’d never actually used it.
To start with, they honestly didn’t get sick that much. They were cautious, first and foremost - they were almost all scientists, some with medical proficiencies, and they thoroughly scanned new planes upon entry for any unpleasant surprises. Vaccines and antibiotics were easy enough to transmute with their tech and skills. And that’s even if they could catch any disease from the worlds they visited - turns out, it can be pretty hard for illnesses to be transmitted across species lines. They were pretty good, all things considered.
Of course, that’s not to say they never got sick. Of course they did. It’s just… usually it was something simple like a cold or a mild stomach bug, something not worth worrying about. If the rest of the crew caught it, fine, they’ll be better in a few days. Only twice had they ever caught something actually dangerous, and the less said about those the better. But the two unlucky victims in those situations had been Merle and Davenport, and as the only representatives of their species on the Starblaster, they couldn’t actually pass on their illnesses to anyone else.
But Lucretia’s human, and so are Magnus and Barry. And like, she doesn’t think this is going to kill her, nothing that dramatic. But this may well knock her out for the rest of the cycle. And if she gives this to Barry or Magnus… well, the crew needs them. It’s been a rough enough cycle already, with more aggressive local inhabitants than usual and a little higher stakes, and with three weeks to go they still hadn’t found the Light. And without Barry, the unofficial expert on the Light, and Magnus, their main line of defense, in full working order things could get very, very desperate.
So all that leads to Lucretia leaving a note on the kitchen table and then locking herself in her quarters, where she now lies shivering and sweating under a pile of blankets. It’s been maybe three hours now since the rest of the crew set out on yet another intel-gathering mission, which Lucretia had ducked out of, citing a headache. And that wasn’t even a lie - it just was the barest tip of the iceberg.
She’s not looking forward to their return, all things considered, because she knows they aren’t going to take this well. And sure, it’s maybe not her smartest move - whatever, blame her 102 degree fever. But she’s not stupid. The thing is… she’d tried to heal herself. She’s not a cleric but she knows the basics. And it turns out the only thing worse than space flu is magic-resistant space flu.
So no, she won’t be going to Merle with this. She has Create Food and Water, she has her books and paper and pen, she has everything she really needs to last out until either her fever breaks… or the cycle ends. She’ll be fine.
Lucretia drifts, curled on her bed, for an indeterminate amount of time. But eventually she’s jolted back to consciousness with the sounds of slamming doors, chattering voices, and pounding footsteps. She braces herself, waiting for someone to find the note, for the inevitable backlash. And sure enough, she hears a voice call out, then a hush, then an absolute hammering of footsteps coming toward her door, and then a quiet knock.
“Hey, Lucretia?” Merle calls, gently. “Mind if I come in?”
“Yeah, uh-“ she hacks out a cough, “ack-actually, I do.”
“Right. Okay. I respect that, but also, as your medic, I really must insist,” he says, light tone not quite masking his clear concern.
“How about no,” Lucretia grinds out, and then stops, because he voice is so rough and hoarse that every word she says is just going to intensify their worry.
“Uh, how about yes, Creesh, you’re kinda freaking us out here,” Taako says, and there’s a loud, sharp rap on the door as he casts Knock.
The door swings open, giving Lucretia a glimpse of her obviously quite worried family as she peeks out from her blanket nest. But Taako’s spell doesn’t quite have the full effect he intended, because they’re still masked by a shimmering, translucent wall of light.
She halfheartedly shoots finger guns at them. “Eyyy, abjuration, remember?”
“Lucretia, really,” Barry pleads. “Can we come in? We just-“
“No!” she snaps, which sets off another coughing fit. “No, absolutely not. Especially not you, actually you and Magnus please go wash your hands,” she says, her tone slipping from anxious-angry to pleading.
Barry’s hurt expression shifts to understanding and concerned, and he shares a glance with Merle as he tugs Magnus’s hand. “Alright, you heard her, let’s go.”
“But I- she- why?” Magus asks plaintively, looking at Lucretia with eyes that would put a puppy-dog to shame.
“I’ll explain on the way, c’mon,” and Barry gently but forcefully drags Magnus off down the hall.
Lup peers anxiously through the barrier. “Okay, you’re not coming out, I get that. I won’t push. Your note was-“
“Self-sacrificing, stupid, bullshit-“ Taako’s cut off with a glare from his sister.
“-Very adamant that you were doing this and we couldn’t change your mind. And I’m not going to fight you-“
“Yet,” Taako mutters.
“- because you’re sick and need to rest, and we need to stop stressing you out.” Lucretia’s never really appreciated the power of Lup’s glare before, and is just hazily relieved it’s pointed at Taako, not her. “But like, can we get you anything? Do anything?”
“Not really,” Lucretia croaks out. “I have spell slots, and besides, you can’t give me anything unless I drop the barrier, which I’m not doing.”
“Okay, okay,” Lup says soothingly. “We’ll leave you to rest for a bit, then? We need to discuss some things.” And she drags Taako off in the direction of Barry and Magnus.
Now just Merle and Davenport are left standing awkwardly outside the door.
“…Get some sleep,” Davenport says softly. “We’ll hold down the fort.”
And Lucretia drifts back into her half-awake haze.
She dozes for a few hours before she’s woken by a quick knock at her door. “Hey, kiddo,” Merle says, smiling. “Drink some water, okay? And transmute yourself some soup or something if you’re up for it.”
She does, and it helps, just the tiniest bit. For the rest of the day - she thinks - she doesn’t see any of the others but Merle, who stops by every couple hours with the same reminder, until the day grows dark and Lucretia sinks into proper sleep.
She wakes up wheezing and coughing, chest heaving. Turning on her side, she frantically tries to catch her breath, sharpness spiking through her chest. She knows it’ll stop, that she’ll be okay, she just has to ride it out.
She does not expect to hear a sleepy voice say “Huh…what? Oh, shit! Shit, okay, just breathe, okay Lucretia? Just deep breaths, it’s okay, shhh, you’ll be okay…”
The quiet reassurances continue until Lucretia finally stops feeling like she’s about to hack up a lung. When she turns to her door, she’s met with an unexpected sight: Magnus Burnsides, hair in a dozen cowlicks and wearing pajama pants with ducks on them, watching her with relief from a pile of blankets and bedding.
“Did you… have you been sleeping outside my bedroom door? The fuck, Magnus?” Lucretia croaks out in bafflement.
“Uh, yeah,” Magnus says, half embarrassed and half proud. “What, you think we were gonna just leave you?”
“I mean…” she trails off, and Magnus’s eyes go serious.
“Nope, nopenopenope, nope. Not how this team rolls.”
“Huh.” Lucretia’s still a bit too feverish to process this. “Okay.”
She drifts off again, and ends up spending the next few days drifting in and out of consciousness. And every time she wakes, there’s someone at her door. Barry reads to her, some of her favorite books that she’d brought from back home. Taako rambles, telling stories that jump from place to place on a train of thought with no real conductor. She’s pretty sure he reads her some terrible recipe blogs in the mix of things, too. Merle keeps checking up on her, as does Lup, gently and frequently reminding her to hydrate, to eat. Davenport even stops by a few times too, singing opera as quietly as he can manage.
She knows they’re looking for a cure for her, have been investigating the plane and analyzing a sample of blood she left with her note (and boy, did Taako chew her out for the inherent creepiness of that move). But days go by, and reassurances of progress slowly fade as Merle and Barry start looking grimmer and grimmer.
She asks Lup, because she knows Lup won’t lie to her. “They haven’t found a cure, have they.”
“No,” Lup admits, after a pause. “We had to split our efforts between that and the Light, and thankfully we found it a few days ago so we’ve been able to put more manpower on this, but… no. A vaccine, maybe, for the future. But not a cure.”
Lucretia sighs, chest aching. “How many days left? In the cycle?”
“It’s been five days since you got sick,” she says as gently as she can. “So… seventeen to go.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry,” Lup says, looking so heartbroken that Lucretia can hardly bear to look at her. “We’ll keep trying.”
“I know.” But Lucretia doesn’t really have much hope. At least now she feels a tiny bit justified, though - getting Barry and Magnus sick too would’ve been awful for everyone.
That doesn’t really negate the pain of the idea of seventeen days to go.
She doesn’t get worse, exactly. She just gets more tired. The days pass the same as they had, with music and reading and sleep and soup. The rest of her crew look so guilty, more so every time they see her slowly shrink into her blankets. And she keeps trying, keeps fighting, but gods, there’s something so lonely about this, despite never really being alone. Being isolated, being split from her family for the first time in years, is taking as much of a toll as the illness.
She wants a fucking hug. That’s all.
Things come to a head with ten days left, after Lucretia hasn’t spoken a word to anyone in two. Half-awake and half-caring, she hears a ruckus in the corridor, a muffled argument approaching her door. She hears voices lower to hissing, clearly trying not to wake her, and then clear as a bell Taako says, “Fuck that, here we go.”
There’s a sharp snapping sound, some footsteps, and then Lucretia starts as she feels a hand gently brush her hair. “Hey, Creesh.”
Lucretia looks up in shock to see Taako crouching at her bedside, a mug of hot and spicy-smelling tea in his hands. It takes her a moment to process this turn in events, and then her eyes wide in horror.
“What?! No! Taako, you can’t- you just- fuck!” she rasps. “Why!?”
“Okay shh, hold your horses there,” he says, readjusting her blankets. “Elf, remember? Don’t worry, I won’t get sick.”
“But now you’re stuck in here!” she almost wails, trying to sit up. “Why-“
“Because, and we’ve tried to drill this in to your impressively thick skull for quite a while now,” he says, his gentle tone taking the sting out of the harsh words, “we care about you. Now scoot.”
Taako climbs into bed next to her, and Lucretia is too tired to be ashamed of how quickly she latches onto him like a limpet. He hugs back.
“Yeah, this is why. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine, and now you’ll be fine, and when this cycle ends you are going to get so many hugs, kid. It’s okay. You’ll be okay.”
And for the first time in quite a few days, Lucretia believes it.