#Is Keyleth okay somewhere? She got to be. I need her to be. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

12pt-times-new-roman · 2 years

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c3e35

Xandis my absolute beloved, I love them so much

I WAS SO DISTRACTED I DIDN'T NOTICE THAT ASHLEY MOVED

that is certainly. A Choice.

"I can get you gold." "Fuck your gold." "Wait, but how much?" FCG is learning

Armand's relationship with Otohan was primarily because she was using him to pay people off, establish the Paragon's Call in Jrusar, and to make sure all the shipments went smoothly. He was expecting his name to be cleared and to rise in the ranks of his house in return. He was curious about Otohan's work, but knew that prying too far into it would be dangerous.

He had meetings with messengers and envoys in the Menagerie Coast, where he paid people to get certain cargo pieces onto House Treshi ships. This only happened a couple times over the years. From there, the shipments were distributed around Jrusar to obfuscate the movement of the shipments, and Jiana Hexum was one of Treshi's major contacts for this purpose.

Treshi is deeply afraid of Otohan and the people he's working with.

The Call seems to be "very death-obsessed." Which makes sense, I guess, given that their official deity seems to be the Duskmaven. But still. Weird wording on that.

"If I can be brought back, anybody can." Ashton??? what does that mean?

"Delilah Briarwood is dead... I didn't say she was gone."

This just in: Whäeeteystone

Sending to Keyleth: "Found the assassins. Found lead. But there are questions. One of ours... down. Strong ties to Whitestone. Please advise. Can you meet?"

Keyleth has business in Vasselheim, but "can meet shortly. Pick a tree."

....Chetney knows "plenty" of the Dawn Marshals of Vasselheim??

Sendings to Jiana Hexum: "Hey lady. FCG here. Ashton has a friend who died. We're proud that he has a friend. Can you help bring her back?" "Sweet little metal boy... what you ask is extremely difficult, and against the nature of fate. Maybe." "Creepy lady — what would it cost us, or what would you want in return? Ashton's very motivated, and I'm eager to please." "I certainly have a few ideas. Let's discuss, perhaps, over tea. What's the rush?"

We do not fucking leave people behind. Not you, not Laudna, not anybody. We're not fucking doing that, not anymore. "Ashton, are you going soft on us?" Yes, no, fuck— I need a drink. ashton.......bb.......

What the fuck is SHARED DREAM??? FCG??? This is 100% homebrew, it's not even a fucking reskin I don't think. Dream is a fifth level spell, so whatever this is has to be significantly less powerful than that (1st or 2nd level by the sounds of it).

"You hear a howl. A loud, arcing howl... and the howl is yours, beyond your control, an instinctual howl in that direction [of Ruidus]. You stop yourself mid-way and you see the fur pushing past the fingers, and then it's gone."

Airship combat! Airship combat!

Nope, nevermind, it's a sandstorm.

Airship skill challenge! Airship skill challenge!

Well.

FCG is..... somewhere.

And now Ashton is the only one left on the ship beside the crew.

Okay. That wasn't as bad as it could've been. The storm only lasts about 20 minutes, and they find each other easy enough.

Fuckin..... 28 AC? jesus christ.

oh Ashton is going to snap at Chetney soon. "Over here! They're dead, just leave them!" as Ashton is dangling from the bottom of a rope ladder attached to a speeding sky ship, reaching down to try and pull Fearne out of a collapsing sand dune. immediately after they gave a speech about not leaving anybody behind.

and to that point — something I felt like never really got touched on with the M9 was how sometimes jokes just are straight-up Not Okay To Make and I feel like the Hells are going to be a lot better about setting boundaries with each other

break time!

adksjdghflgf ANOTHER sand storm

okay, this one's behind them, they can outrun it this time using the cold front it's pushing forward

we're back in Jrusar!

Another skyship came in while they were docking— it was carrying passengers and cargo, and the name on it is the Herald's Breath.

I swear to god, if FCG's aversion to birds turns out to be because they were programmed to fight angels, I will be feral

"So many things are being learned, but I don't know by who" should be the Hells' tagline

"What you are asking for is an extremely rare and difficult ritual. The ability to bring someone back from the dead is a very lauded and sought-after technique, very few can perform this miracle, and those who do are very careful and meticulous with who they do it for. Otherwise, death would be merely an inconvenience."

Eshteross does have somebody who owes him a debt, and she would be able to transport the Hells somewhere faster than the Silver Sun could — Menaya Trei is someone who works with the people who oversee the infrastructure of Jrusar. If the Hells could find someone who would be able to bring Laudna back, he'd be able to call in the favor and get them there quickly.

With Treshi, the Hells could either take him to the city guard, which would deliver him anonymously, or directly to the Quorum, which would net them the bounty on Treshi's head but would also draw attention to them.

Sending to Keyleth: "We're still waiting. We still need your help. Is your business finished? I'm begging you. Orym is begging you." "I'm sorry. I believe I'm nearly finished here. I'll see what I can do. I don't fully understand what's being asked, but I'll try."

When Will and Derrig died, Keyleth tried to save them with revivify (or "pretty soon after"), but something went wrong and it didn't work. Something about the nature of what they did when they struck made it not work. Which is weird! Because Orym and Fearne were both also killed by Otohan but were revivified! so either this is a clever narrative explanation for the ritual failing, or it's an actual effect that the echoes have when they kill someone.

The first bit of fear they've seen from Eshteross is evoked when Orym mentions the Cerberus Assembly.

Otohan's title during the Apex War was "the Legend of the Peak."

Hexum's collection has been growing over the past few years, which is strange for someone "sitting on a stagnant fortune." This indicates that she's getting more than just the dunamis potions from the Assembly's shipments, or is keeping some of it for herself.

The Nightmare King was a "figure for hire" during the Apex War, playing both sides before aligning with the Stratos Throne and then going missing.

The "official position" of the Chandei Quorum is that the Cerberus Assembly is a "necessary evil in a world beset by all sorts of moral interests," but Sheshadri noted that the Quorum has no direct dealings with the Assembly, which is a claim that was not insight checked.

All said and done, with Treshi turned in, the Hells got 3.3k gold each (including Laudna and excluding FCG).

Ashton lore: Inside Ashton's head, Imogen fails a casting check and runs into a glass wall that looks like the speckled glass of their head wound. "Imogen. You stand before this glass, watching beyond, and as you watch this glass that divides the two of you, you watch as the speckled appearance begins to fill with this dull gray coloration, obscuring FCG on the opposite side. There, you glance into it, and you see stars. [Like, how far do they go? Does it look like I'm looking into space?] It looks like you're staring into the night sky, and as you focus, you push through the glass and feel like you're lost in an expanse of infinity. You see nebulas, you look down and you see Ashton just lying there, motionless. There's a shake and a shift of color and you see them standing, laughing. You see Ashton fully armored, clutching the bloodied body of someone as they crush it. You see Ashton destitute on the side of the street, hungry and starving, asking for help. Ashton on a ship in the distance pushing past a fog bank, Ashton wearing robes in a senate seat — you see so many different Ashtons, different, all held by a singular thread but none of them the one you know. You are lost in this chaotic moment, and it's beginning to shake more and more, and you feel a similar creeping fear of losing yourself like you did the first time you ran from the storm."

FCG is trapped in Ashton's mind.

Fearne can see Imogen and FCG inside the glass in Ashton's head because they're trapped inside their memories.

"I'm gonna just sort of... flex?" "It doesn't feel good. Everything hurts. Always." "There is strength, but there is pain. But to clarify — there is pain, but there is strength."

Okay they got out but holy fuck that was insane??? what is happening inside their head?? none of them the Ashton you know? like the first time you ran from the storm???

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Ashton." "Did you find anything? Please." "A lot. A lot of really weird fuckin' shit." "Thank you... thank you."

Of the Ashtons that Imogen saw, some had the fractures, some did not, and some had human skin. So whatever this did, it didn't just hijack his present and his future. It cascaded back through his past.

The shapes Fearne saw were "shapeless, yet familiar. It's strange."

So..... huh. Imogen getting pulled in to the expanse and seeing Ashton there (with an implied golden thread, since Matt described them as all connected by the same thread) is very similar to Caleb seeing the threads of fate in the beacon, but again, convoluted and twisted.

Sending to Delilah: "How do I bring her back? Tell me what to do. I'll do anything." The voice responds, fainter. Thin. Fading. "Whatever it takes. It won't be long now. I'm fading. And I'll take her with me."

Matt not calling it after that rest even though they were past 4 hours seems...... like he's trying to hit a particular story beat before the episode ends.

Orym succeeds his save against Kiki's scrying

Sending to Keyleth: "Are you in Vasselheim still? 'Cause you're about to have some company." "Uh, no, I'm — sorry, I'm trying to see where you are and was met with some interference. Where are you?" "We're in the Collective of Botan, in Jrusar, in Marquet. How much do you know?" "Okay, it's been a little while — got it."

SHE ARRIVES

"Well, come then. We need to speak with some... someone who can help you."

to..... Whitestone.

#critical role #note watches c3 #critical role spoilers #critical role campaign 3 #critical role c3 #critical role liveblog

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phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess · 2 years

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A messed up little headcanon for Vox Machina post Whitehall

- - -

Perhaps we say that the exact nature of what happened to the De rolo children wasn't shared with the group, so the reactions are put down to stress.

- - - -

Imagine Percy (or Cassandra) after whitehall, begin snapping awake from wherever they passed out with a shout of horror that startles whoever is close by, and immediately pull shaking hands towards their pale faces.

The rest of Vox Machina assume its a self-comfort thing, some weird trauma response... hell, they all have their own.

But then... perhaps it happens a second time, and the de rolo isn't awake enough yet to stop the words tumbling from their mouths... a frantic litany of 'they're still there, we're okay, they're still there, we're okay' as they reflexively clench and unclench their hands.

And perhaps someone moves close enough to ask, in a soft and curious tone, what the matter is? Finding no answer in the startled human, just watching as one hand rubs over the nails of the other.

Maybe they settle them back to sleep and ask the next morning, to a look of confusion that settles into a blank, closed-off impassiveness that no amount of well-intended queries can breach.

There are other nights, when a choked-off scream heralds a frantic nightmare or memory from their room(s), and always they find them clutching tight to their chests. Sleep no longer an option, so they haunt the halls of the keep like ghosts until falling into a semi-conscious doze in a bizarre place as the sun rises.

Knowing the Vox Machina crew, that would be a good enough reason for at least one of them to get curious enough to DO something about the tight-lipped de rolos.

Scanlan tries getting the pair drunk, for therapeutic reasons (he reassures Pike), as they can't help fix whatever's haunting the humans unless someone actually tells them what the problem is. That... got somewhere. Not as far as he wanted to, but somewhere. When drunk the siblings were less stiff, and more than once the bard caught someone unconsiously rubbing repeatedly at areas of their chest, their throat, their arm.

Pike tried a more practical method, claiming a desire to perform a health check for the team. No pesky little injuries or internal damage could be found from her gentle probing, and though she ould sense pain... it was not physical in nature.

Vax and Vex took a de rolo each, trying one on one conversation to check in. All direct and indirect queries were easily deflected or ignored, but Vex had a strange inkling that perhaps the humans did not actually know what was wrong.

Grog... well, his idea involved hugging. Pike just about needed to reinflate the two confused, breathless and I-don't-think-humans-are-meant-to-turn-that-shade-of-purple? de rolos after that one. He forgot to ask any questions, so Percival and Cassandra just assume that it was Grog being Grog.

Keyleth tried to use a metaphor. She asked for their help in the little garden they were cultivating in what was once a nice backyard before the undead wrecked the place. She tried to subtly hint that perhaps the seeds that were failing to flourish had something they wanted to tell her... like the soil was too thick and choking to let them grow past the first step into life?

Percy frowned and offhandedly suggested that perhaps the undead had left some sort of chemical compound in the area that was killing off the garden. Cassandra merely stared beyond Kiki, seeing the endless seedlings before them all, expression confusingly blank.

Scalan decided that perhaps he could try another method... and recalled that the gunslinger might just murder him if he attempted it with Cassandra. Well, there was mixed success there too. Percival seemed more confused than delighted that he'd have a chance to see Scalan's abilities in a one-on-one lesson; as if he wasn't quite sure why he was the target of such open... affections. Scanlan wasn't even able to sing the entirety of the delightful ditty he'd created for this exact situation, because Percival left the room first dragging him out of it. The bard assumed that it was because the other was burning with lust, and could not wait... "What do you need me to do to ensure I never hear you rhyme derolo with hole-o again? Is this some sort of prank? Did Grog put you up to this? Vax? Vex?" comes the tired response.

"What? no no no no no, of course not. You just seemed like you could use a little fun and well, I have eyes, handsome." Scanlan placates, taking Percy's hand in his own to press a kiss there. It's withdrawn at great speed and clutched to a well-clad chest, the human having gone pale, expression panicked and frantic.

"Don't." Was the only response, as he whirls about and strides away, hands drawn in tightly to his chest, one holding the other.

Scanlan watches him go with an intensity few would credit the gnome with. That wasn't a proposition gone wrong... that was the reaction of someone who expected pain, and not in the fun, safeword kind of way.

Ah well, he'd have to tell the others in the morning. But still... it did nag him that he'd left someone in such a state, so it was that his feet moved the bard to the mechanist's room, hand already nocking for entry before his brain had caught up.

"Hey, before you say anything I'm not here for a roll in the hay... although I think it could be a good time, if you wanted. But i was thinking that..." Scalan paused to take a breath and saw a gaunt Cassandra sitting in the gloom of the room beyond, as pale and exhausted as Percival. "...that perhaps both of you might like a bit of help to have some rest, and what is a bard but a mobile lullaby machine?"

The gnome had the distinct impression that the door would have been slammed in his face were it not for the quiet, "Percy, please... let him try." from Cassandra.

With a haggard sigh, he is admitted within. The place is a cluttered mess of partially made items and broken things; like someone desperately sought to distract themselves, and the frustration built up. Well, that's something concrete to share with Pike, his angel was very worried for the humans.

Speaking of, Cassandra was draped in a sheet and nothing more than a well-made but ultimately generic sleping shift underneath. The night was quite cool, so it registered as an odd choice.

Percival sat at his workbench, and turned to stare in general disinterest at the bard. "Well, Scanlan, if you can help my sister sleep... it would be appreciated."

The bard waggles a finger. "Uh-uh! Nope, you're also getting a nice Scalan sleeping sonnet, so get yourself comfortable and go sit on the bed."

"But-..." hands gestured to the half-completed project on the cluttered workbench.

"Now. Or I start playing now and you wake up with a crick in your neck so bad Grog will have to wring you out like a towel to fix it."

"...if you must be so dreadfully difficult around this." Percival sighed again, shucking his overcoat and stumbling to the bed.

Cassandra laid down very carefully, on her right side, leaving her left raised and her body quivering with some odd tension there didnt seem to be an explanation for.

"Excellent," Scanlan praised, strumming the lute and delighting at the little flair of magic that danced through his fingers. "And a one, two, three, four..."

It wasn't a traditional lullaby, but it was based on one, and incorporated into a sleep spell by the bard himself. He'd only really used it once or twice so... here's hoping it worked as intended.

Twining about the room, small tendrils of purple magic danced, spun and slowly circled around the humans. Cassandra's eyes fought to stay open as the spell-song formed a soft blanket over her mind and body. She did shudder as it pressed against her shoulder... but it soothed quickly enough as sleep literally descended.

Her brother was a tad more stubborn, and less willing to play along. Once he was sure Cassandra had fallen asleep, Percival attempted to rise and return to his work... leaving the bard wondering if he'd have to use his lute as a literal sleep aid for a moment, before the gunslinger stumbled and sat back down.

Scanlan repeated the refrain of the spellsong, and saw the tall human begin to slump sideways onto the bed. It took an additional verse to get the other to concede... but at last, both the exhausted party members were down for the count.

"Still got it." he whispered to himself, 'sheathing' his lute.

"Good job." responded Vax, fading in from the shadows and nearly scaring Scanlan into the afterlife. Damn rogues loved to pull stunts like that.

The half-elf moved to the bed to lift percy's legs atop it, and then cover both siblings with a blanket. The night was chill, and both wore thin attire for some reason, which made no sense to his mind.

His eyes danced over the bodies with interest, noting patchworks of healed flesh and scarring, untouched by magical healing. Vax plucked the gunslinger's glasses off and left them on the workbench, before turning to leave.

"As I said, good work Scanlan, I was starting to think we'd have to put something in their food to get them to rest... and because you've done such an excellent job, I will warn you that Vex wants to tan your hide and use it for a quiver after making her hear that... whatever it was about derolos and holeos. She mentioned being quite traumatised."

"Ah, I can win her over!"

"Sure you can..."

- - -

"...from what I could see, there are badly healed wounds on Cassandra's left side and shoulder, right where she was rubbing the other day. Perhaps the oncoming winter is aggrivating the injuries, but I would have no idea how she came by them, unless something happened at Whitehall." Vax reports to his sister, Keyleth and Pike.

"Badly healed means it was a lengthy and distressing incident, which might explain the difficulty sleeping and nightmares. Or whatever it is when they snap awake... the Everlight can't really detect much more than their emotional pain, nothing physical." Pike responds.

"Did they ever say how Percy ended up free from Whitehall, but Cassandra remained there?" Vex queried, pensive. "He does not seem the type to abandon a sibling in the clutches of people who murdered his entire family..."

"No, he didn't. But he doesn't speak about much of anything, does he?" Keyleth added, nervously toying with little saplings she had sprouted at the kitchen table. "I did ask about that scar on his neck once, and he just glared at me and walked away. So I think it's a sore point. Maybe literally, he was holding his hand there the other day as if it hurt but he didn't want me to help."

There came a half-cry that choked off into a sob, that echoed through the house in an eerie way. A bardic tone could be heard soothing, and then the chords of a lute filled the air as the spellsong attempted to take hold again.

When all fell silent again, the others looked to one another.

"We need to just ask, because this is too hard... on them, on us, on the team. I hate knowing that they are struggling like this and we're helpless!" Pike said, her tone heavy with frustration. "If I could just get them to tell me... perhaps the Everlight could grant some peace."

Grog tossed an empty cask of ale out the open window. "I don't like this. I don't like when I can't hit things that make you guys cry and hurt, so it can't do that no more."

Scanlan wandered down the stairs to pat the barbarian on his muscular thigh. "I know, big guy, I know."

- - -

When lunchtime rolled around and still the pair sleppt, Pike was sent in to make sure everyone was still alive. Assuring the others that if something was not great, she'd call them immediately for back-up.

Uncharacteristically, Cassandra was fretting in her sleep, tears rolling down pallid cheeks. "No, don't leave me... please..." slipped free, breath hitched.

In contrast, Percival was still as death, save his hands which shook sa if in great pain. "Cass... no, don't... hurt..."

Pike is nearly headbutted through the window when the human closest bolts upright with a frantic yell, and the other snaps awake at the sound. Both seem bleary-eyed and uncertain of where they are, trapped in some memory Pike can't tap into.

She holds her pendant and allows a gentle light to fill the room, the soft and comforting flow of the everlight reaching through time, memory and sleepfog to pull the pair to full awareness.

"Pike... what?" Percy mumbles, running the palm of a hand over his chest and panting as if he'd run for miles. Brow furrowed with remembered pain and guilt, crippled by a time already passed.

Cassandra slipped from the bed, shucking the blanket despite the chill air, right hand feverishy running over the scar tissue again and again. Reassuring herself her arm was there, perhaps?

"We are worried about you two, and we'd like you to come downstairs to talk about it. Ah, no more dodging. Since whitehall you haven't been quite right, and I'm sure this is not normal for you Cass... so please, trust us. We only want to help."

Silence descended a long moment, and for a moment the cleric worried that they would refuse, an remain shut up in their own heads for the foreseeable future.

"I... I think we should tell them, brother, but I am not certain if it will help us." Cassandra adds, a slight gleam of hope entering tired but somewhat rested eyes. "Maybe speaking of what happened will push the memories back to where they should live, and let us go on?"

"Hmm." Agrees the gunslinger, and they make their way downstairs to the rest of Vox Machina. All patiently pretending they weren't listening in and all animatedly eating lunch like they were actors in a play who had been told to ham it up.

"How are you feeling, darlings?" Vex broaches, her expression gentle and concerned. She rose to remove her thick cloak and slip it about Cassandra, who was wearing little. Vex took care to glide the smooth interior past the human's scars, so as not to cause distress or aggrevation. "There, you should be better attired for such weather, dear..."

"You too, Percy." Vax adds, dropping his robe over the gunslinger and ushering the pair to a seat at the table. Food was sitting ready, but they were already looking away, despite the obvious rumbling of empty stomachs.

When everyone was seated, attention focused on the humans like a laser pointer in a room full of cats.

"I was honest with you, about the Briarwoods and Whitehall... but there was something I did leave out." Percy says, into the silence. "How we came to be separated, how I came to think that Cassandra was dead. It... we were captured on the day our parents and elder brother were murdered, through betrayal by our tutor. But we were not able to escape straight away."

"They wanted the ziggurat, under whitehall, but we did not know f its existence. I doubt even Julian did, as it was a family secret to be inherited when of age... and none of us were." Cassandra added on. She fiddled with a fork and a cut of meat. "The fact we were children who likely did not understand what was being asked mattered little to the Briarwoods. They just enjoy causing pain..."

"You cannot give up a secret you don't have, but when someone enjoys tearing flesh, any excuse will do. Day and night, until we were barely alive anymore... when their sick little games blended into nothing more than another flare of pain in the sea of nothingness that was existence. Cut, burned, struck, choked, it didn't matter." Percy ground out bitterly through clenched teeth, a spoon bending in his grip as the memories came back. "Anything they cut off, tore out, could be remade with magic so they could try again..."

Keyleth was starting to look a little sick, Vex patted her absently.

"What did they take?" Vex asked, curiority overcoming her horror this once.

"Teeth, sometimes... but they preferred to pull out our fingernails, one by one. When they grew in again, they would be pulled out once more, over and over. Lady Briarwood seemed to enjoy that the most." Cassandra replied in a monotonous tone that sent a chill through the adventuring party. So... absent of self.

"It was sheer luck that there was a chance to escape one day, mid-winter when the snow was high. I don't know where we found the energy because they rarely fed us, and anything not bleeding was bruised or broken... but there was a chance to flee and we took it." Percy said, hand gripping his wrist tightly as the other shook. "They found us fast, probably gave us a head start just to laugh as they hunted us down. They shot arrows after us, and... several struck Cassandra. She hit the snow in a pool of blood and I thought her dead, so I continued to run on... but apparently, she lived."

"I was angry, but you could not have known, and the Briarwoods did something to hold me in my body while it healed. I cannot explain." came the dispassionate tone of the younger Derolo. "They did not heal me well, I think it was an extention of their games... and now whenever winter comes, the scars ache."

"The memories were there, and sometimes they came back in the night, but never this much... not since Vox Machina." Percy added, not looking up from where he was boring a hole in the table with his eyes. "After everything with the Briarwoods, though... sometimes I wake up and have to check my nails are still there, to remind me that I am no longer in that time and place. Preposterous, I know..."

"Not at all! So the memories are the things that stop you from sleeping?" Pike clarified.

"I... I think so?" Percy responds. He doesn't rightly know what keeps them frantically awake when their bodies scream for sleep.

"It's okay not to be sure. Thank you for telling us and trusting us with this information, I think sometimes it helps to share the things that are weighing us down." Pike says, radiating tranquility.

Scanlan rolls his eyes and mutters, "Spoken like a cleric."

"Well, sometimes talking helps... but we can all help in our own ways, if you would be open to say, temple-based counselling? Or more spellsongs for bedtime?" Pike offers.

"I can grow some plants that have a soothing scent that help with sleep?" Keyleth offers. "The leaves can be crushed to alleviate stress when you are having a memory, too!"

"We can take you out for the day and run you so ragged that your brain and body will shut down for nap time..." Vex offers, with a sharp grin.

"Or we could try sourcing a good calming potion you could use if things become too much, to make it easier to talk about it?" Vax says, elbowing his twin.

"Hug?" Grog adds, arms wide.

"Uh, sure, maybe later. Very helpful Grog." mutters Percy. The sheer amount of attention is making the nobles very uncomfortable.

"And maybe I could offer my..." Scanlan pauses to waggle his eyebrows, "special services?"

"...let's put a pin in that one for now."

"Alright, I can see it's something to negotiate later on, in private..." the gnome makes a bg show of winking. "But I think you two need to go back to bed 'cause you look like the dead... SCANLAN'S HAND!"

A giant purple hand can make quite an excellent lift for the tired adventurer who detests staircases when exhausted.

"I'LL BE UP TO SING YOU TO SLEEP IN A MINUTE, YOU SEXY THINGS!" Scanlan shouts up, and sees a brief response via hand gesture before the pair are dropped into the gunslinger's room.

"Hmmm, I guess I wasn't expecting that as the answer, but at least now we know what the problem is." Vex muses.

"And it can be helped, with time." Pike assures.

"Good to know... now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and seranade some stubborn humans back to dreamland." Scanlan winks and heads for the stairs.

"Oh, that reminds me..." Vex says, swishing the ale to hand. "Don't we have to report about whitehall to... someone?"

"We'll get to it," Vax shrugs, glancing up at the bedrooms. "Sometimes helping family is more important, and worth getting into trouble for."

#i wrote this at like 2am #and i tried not to fuck it up lmao #vox machina #hcs #percy derolo #cassandra erolo

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nochiquinn · 2 years

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lovm watch party: [shakes the internet until season 2 falls out]

doing a watch party liveblog while I wait for my video files to load in, I figure it'll get about halfway done by the time I'm through

(update from the future: it got done shortly before I did, and I paused several times)

did. did they get fucking isekai'd.

what in the vtuber hell

SCANLAN VOICE OF SAM

I too panic about letters

"what the fuck...why god why..." these are appropriate responses

"I'll read some of the comments people are making" please don't

you know what, this is VOD, I can skip this. I'm gonna.

"we are so about to get banned"

"we were....on....a speed skating....team"

the way mica is apparently going to have to cut drastically away from grey

"you are in for three episodes of screaming that really disturbed my neighbors over the last couple of years"

"speaking of penises freezing off - matthew mercer"

matt stop saying entity

dsfjsk you can see the outline of the mocap hood thing on travis' face

"I thought you were dead"

I have to three-two-one go bc I was down with the consumption when it was live

"what if tonight is the night"

"I was the arrow!"

"she's fine"

see matt is saying what I've wanted since pandemic started

"yeah but she sucks"

"could you speak into the barrel please"

"I am not making any points about trauma from ptsd"

"'I hate that Percy's so pro-gun'" "oh baby, have you not been paying attention"

"I tortured you because I needed MONEY. SORRY."

"stop tweeting." "yeah I'm not checking my twitter"

"does it smell like cum and teslas in here"

"you're wounded - but still breathing!"

"I know a squirrel could take me" context

"I could fight a banana slug to a draw" I feel this

"what about a very angry mountain goat" "you're dead"

"season one - everyone hates on keyleth for no reason"

"I love you so much" and he said it three times just to be sure

"did you say VAX'S kids" "...it's canon now."

changes my twitter name to Conservative Butt Quota

"they're like furbies!" ".....CAN WE MAKE MATT AND TALIESIN FURBIES"

"and then they screech in the middle of the night" "and make out" "probably"

"delilah is azula all grown up. and in her lower register."

Everybody Hates Ripley

"the enemy of her enemy is also her enemy"

Dark Pissing Contest

"drink some water!!"

"if you don't have enough trauma in your real life, let me put it in your fake life"

"please torture my whiny little one-percenter"

"I had a stupid idea for make my friends scared of acid"

"you wanna parent your kids, put them in acid"

"you guys remember group recording sessions"

"first session back: all kigirumis"

"they don't tell me anything because I have the biggest mouth in central and north america"

wait what

that is my least favorite tinkerbell movie, don't make me go digging for the ONE matt mercer line

"somewhere liam o'brien's left eye is twitching"

"I'M BACK, BITCHES"

"they are they popular kids at the swinger party"

"what year is it" "mars"

"that is a ripley design, it is overcooked and useless"

"ripley has like fifteen failed kickstarters"

"they're the gomez and morticia of the worst timeline"

"but his dick doesn't work" "ehhhhh"

"it's like antidepressants: you're gonna be happy, but your dick doesn't work"

"this whole ritual is just to get his dick to work"

"who put this group together. who approved this."

"this could be dirtier. marisha could be here."

matt grey and taliesin are down here on the chaos couch and sam and travis are trying to actually talk about the show

"when keyleth gets punched she gets punched into the next state"

I really want booth video of taliesin and all the screaming

"grog's making snow angels"

matt is me during this whole sequence

travis is physically incapable of not hyping pike up

the closeup on matt who is clearly crying

someone hug him

"is it okay if we ask you to yell really gut-wrenching" "am I a joke to you"

"I broke my amp for you"

that's the maximum amount of disney allowed on the stream

"you did that" "I'd do it again"

"the city lives as long as we live, taliesin" "that and a strong insurance policy"

"...and that's where we're gonna end tonight's session"

"doesn't feel good, does it MATT" "yeah it does"

awww the sun tree is pelor protecting ioun

"ahhh we need two more seconds of STUFF"

not the speaking in tongues

"I'm so glad to be away from my children for two hours" you know what I feel that

what do you mean "bugger fuck shit balls fuck" isn't tonally appropriate

"hopefully the cameras weren't on me" I have bad news for you sir

"what's a magic user supposed to do? punch?"

"in OUR series, because we're really anal about it..."

"we've lost him"

the POISON GARDEN

sam taking his jumpsuit off on camera

DAMN

"that traveled through time and hit me"

"google nothing"

"percy is one of the bitchiest character I've ever created"

"oh, travis is roleplaying"

taliesin's rapid blinking

"check a mirror why don't y - oh that's right you can't"

"I heard you're the life of the party but only at family gatherings" and taliesin leaves the sofa

"the last time you're ever gonna see me bc they're never gonna hire me again"

"I have to text my babysitter"

"I don't wanna go back to those people" "they're watching right now"

"can grey come over all the time"

"we dragged this out bc the animators insisted it's easier to animate someone who isn't breathing"

horses and breathing

I love that everyone's had the same reaction to the no intro

"fuck your bird"

sam said when they announced grey that they were gonna have to bleep so much shit, now I know what he meant

he makes that face EVERY TIME

"metaphor"

"I'm sorry, is your inability to move on from past trauma causing you to hurt those around you? is that what's happening? you basic-ass motherfucker?"

"just ate some peyote and got to the typewriter"

"is it bad that I wanna pet it like a puppy"

"no, trauma's easier"

the way they've all fallen absolutely silent just watching this

"I will never forgive you for this"

taliesin cringing into the sofa

"it's not like he got any healthier, now he just doesn't have a friend" "that was his therapist"

"I'm gonna stop taking my meds, I'm fine. I'm not gonna have a shame spiral." can we leave me alone

"he saw a buff man glistening and said 'I will fuck him'"

"this boy has no game"

"it's the best dumb cutaway ever"

"I made a barbarian named 'Grog', that's all I had"

"sun tree a-ok" that's all I wanted, ty matt

"emon. so beautiful. nothing can ever happen to it."

matt gushing over sunil

khary's brother helped grey with her preemie baby!!

"poorly concieved gender reveal party"

"that's a....motherfucker."

matt ur laugh

sam is so bad at not looking at chat

"will you tell us when you know?" "no"

"you didn't get to hurt me. I hurt myself."

smoke mask ref!!

"this is the playarts alternate figure"

"those innocent winged creatures on their normal migrational pattern"

travis calling liam and laura the twins

they don't know we're a necromancer and a vampire

YOU DID THIS

"go get them a glass of water" "water?!"

Hug Your Local Animator

they're never getting all of that out

"I've been mica burton, I won't be any longer"

I genuinely hope mica stays forever

#lovmtag #the legend of vox machina #critical role #spoilers #crititag #liveblog #reaction post

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loquaciousquark · 4 years

Text

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E111 (Redux! Oct. 13, 2020)

Gooooood evening good evening good evening, all! I started the VOD late for this recap and somehow the first four or so minutes of the show have a Twitch audio copyright claim, so I am reduced to only reading Brian's lips when he asks if we're on the internet. Hilariously, Marisha's background room is a comfy-looking blue/gold fabric wall with a ceramic colorful abstract lamp and a yellow silk scarf over the lampshade, and Taliesin's is an industrial looking games room in grey and black with multiple monitors, overhead speakers, and mysterious metal fixtures behind him. What a treasure this group is, honestly.

Tonight's guests: Marisha Ray & Taliesin Jaffe, discussing episodes 110 and 111 again. I wildly speculate once more about what might have caused their absence: jury duty? Sam appearing on The Masked Singer? Something to do with the animated show? One day, we’ll know, one day... (One day this “copyrighted audio” section will come back from the wars, too. Ugh!) Finally! The audio comes back to reveal Brian discussing the endless reality of digital meetings and Marisha talking about (I think) her glare-reducing glasses she’s wearing. Welcome to the New Age (welcome to the New Age, to the New Age).

Announcements: Marisha suggests checking out Dimension20, another live tabletop gaming group, which premieres live on Wednesdays at 4pm (CollegeHumor).

Brian immediately wants to know how they feel about the revelation that Molly is alive. Taliesin’s personal reaction: he “knows some things” he can’t talk about and is aware of several possibilities that might be going on, but had a sneaking suspicion that there would not be a body for them to find. He says it’s almost all there for anyone to see in past material. Marisha’s personal reaction: she just wants to know how she’s doing with her theories, & was trying to block Tal’s face out deliberately as she was going off on her theories in the last episode. Taliesin says he thought her ideas were pretty good!

Cad has no clue what to think - it’s like listening to your friends talk about Buffy. Marisha thought it was a 50/50 Molly would still be there, but Beau had no idea. Not that it mattered, because as soon as Matt went through with it the reveal still blew their minds. Tal laid out his plans for the character with Matt during Campaign One (towards the end) after they all got their VM tattoos.

It is a “horrifying and gross” thing to dig up a body, and Beau was pretty reluctant to do it. Tal, as Cad: “Sometimes dead’s better.” The moral quandary of trying to speak with a dead friend was very different here than the frequent occasions they used the spell in C1.

Taliesin says his poker face is very bad, so it’s easier for him to over-react and let it all play out. The only other player he can see very easily from his place in their current setup is Travis, and because he knows Travis doesn’t watch TM, tweet, or participate in social media, he admits he thoroughly enjoyed watching Travis freak out at his freaking out. He says he only knew about 20% of what Matt described at the end of that episode. He was picking things to mug to increase Travis’s surprise. I love this so much.

Taliesin provided the table left leg shake; Travis provided table right. Ha!

Beau is really accepting her role in the Cobalt Soul. It’s good when “as a person, you feel like you can settle into your calling. Sometimes you can do more from the inside than fighting from the outside.” It’s a mirrored but opposite path of Keyleth from C1; Beau felt like she was too good for her duty, while Keyleth thought she wasn’t good enough.

Caduceus is not a big believer in jumping to conclusions. He does have an idea/notion of the “city of the undead” and thinks all this necrotic energy must come from somewhere, and wonders if this is the “capital of anti-death.” He’s willing to believe whatever he sees. This is one of the few things that trigger a bit of loathing and disgust in him. It was terrifying that the Wildmother didn’t know anything.

Beau is pretty confident in her Charlie Day impression laying-out-the-research last episode. She enjoyed taking the things that were known & extrapolating around them; this is a huge facet of Marisha’s own personality and she really enjoys it, so she built a character this time that would allow that kind of puzzle-solving. It’s also why she repeatedly notes when Beau journals, so she can avoid metagaming. Trent’s mention of Vess Durogna’s tomb raiding was completely circumstantial, and the only reason she’d made the connection to the Tombtakers was because she’d recently reviewed those notes for a separate unannounced project. Sometimes she tries to make connections and Matt is like, “It was...just descriptive. Just flavor. The curtains were red...” and she has to discard a paragraph of notes. She feels like it’s still something they have to do because of “look at what he does! Look! It’s totally valid!”

Cosplay of the Week: @kitsunstudios with a gorgeous Caduceus with a very intricate silk vest.

Caduceus’s takedown of Trent! One of my favorite moments in the entirety of C2. Taliesin felt Trent was an asshole; Caduceus felt sorry for him because of how dumb he thought he was. Caduceus’s response was "this is the dumbest man I’ve ever met in my life. He’s so dumb! Is nobody going to tell this guy how dumb he is? Oh, they’re all freaked out. Somebody needs to tell this guy he’s an idiot before somebody gets hurt.” (Marisha: “Before?”) Tal says it was the product of several years of therapy and many drunk conversations with Whitney Moore. It was from a genuine place of concern from Caduceus. “How are you allowed to have this much power and be that dumb?”

Brian loved how funny it was to watch everyone tiptoe around Trent and then Caduceus bulldoze through the end of the meal.

Taliesin: “Damage doesn’t make you interesting or better. It’s not what makes you good. Character isn’t found in damage. Just recovery.”

Brian & Marisha commiserate going through the stage where believing surviving something automatically made you a stronger person, better for the pain; instead it just meant you had to pick up the pieces after. Marisha talks about how strength through survival may be true for some people, but it shouldn’t be considered a necessity. Taliesin talks about how he used to think he had to be miserable to write. Brian talks about how believing he liked reading and writing miserable things only limited him for years.

Marisha feels it’s a C2 theme that almost all the PCs have someone trying to handwave or take credit for their accomplishments or explain their pain as being for their own good (Trent, Beau’s dad, Obann). She thinks it’s interesting to see all the various ways people try to take credit for your work/delegitimize you as a person. She loves that RPGs allow you to explore these odd moralities in interesting ways. The only way to fight it is to have a sense of your own self-worth, which is a problem a lot of the M9 started with.

Caduceus likes everyone, and really likes people who appear to need role models (Eodwulf). “With the right friends and the right bar and the right attitude, I think he’d be okay. Come over here where it’s so much better. That seems like an exhausting friendship that you have there.”

Marisha loves the mix of personalities in the M9; Veth, Cad, & Jester were all “we kind of like them!” after the dinner, and she immediately made eye contact with Travis and they both shook their heads. She knows Beau has to go along with it for Caleb’s sake for now, but she & Fjord are pretty sus of Trent’s proteges.

Beau is less concerned about Artagan’s relationship to Jester because “he showed his ass--she’s less worried about Jester now because a little of the magic is gone.” It’s a little like becoming an adult and realizing your parents are also just adults & human. Caduceus wasn’t suspicious of the Traveler for a long time until they got to the island. Aside: Taliesin loves the pantheon in D&D. “The notion of attempting to apply common Western conceptions of religion to a world where you have a pantheon of interventionist gods as baseline makes no sense to me. Everyone admits that every other god is there and doing shit; it has more in common with ancient Rome than anything else.” Now that he knows it was a con, he feels the wind had been taken out of it. He does have a sense that Jester’s gotten back together with an ex: “I hope that I’m really happy for you.” They’re both interested to see how Jester navigates the new relationship.

My internet goes out, of course. I panic for a second, thinking I’ve lost everything above, but all is well! Thanks, Form History Control addon!

Marisha loved punching Artagan, but regretting rolling so poorly. “I miss violence.” Dani lets us know it’s been about four episodes since the last battle.

There’s no way the Cobalt Reserve doesn’t have a single document on the Eyes of Nine. Beau believes “there are no real secrets” because people are just bad at not writing things down. For there to be no information at all seems really suspicious for her.

Fanart of the Week: @oddalchemist on twitter with some awesome Beau conspiracy red-thread boards overlaid a distant shadowy Molly walking away.

Caduceus feels a little guilty for really enjoying his time right now with the M9 and not wanting to go home. He’s starting to suspect that he’s going to go home very different than when he left. “He has the softest problems. I don’t know if I want to move back in with Mom & Dad.”

Beau is trying to get comfortable with the idea of being happy. Jester is probably Beau’s first real best friend & one of the first healthy female friendships she’s ever had. As long as she still has Jester in her life, she doesn’t care. For Yasha... “At the end of the day, Beau is a lonely person and has always been a lonely person. And I think you kinda reach this point where once you’re not lonely anymore, you can kind of come out of the fog and realize that was horrible! And terrifying! And is even more terrifying now that I know what I could have, and I don’t want to go back to that. At the end of the day Beau doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. There’s always been that flirtation with Yasha, but everyone had to figure their own shit out. And now it feels like it’s coming out a little bit of that haze, maybe this actually could be...” There are a lot of ways they complement each other & are good-different from each other. Marisha believes people can be attracted to more than person at once.

Caduceus doesn’t think nature turned against him on Rumblecusp, it was just a reality of nature being dangerous and violent. “He has a complex relationship with nature.” He doesn’t expect special treatment.

Thoughts on the mansion: “Man, it’s nice to be seen.” Marisha: “I don’t know how I ended up becoming the Scanlan of this campaign, but I’m living for it.” It felt like an echo of “I’m better for having known you.” They compare Marisha taking specific notes on the campaign to Liam taking specific notes on people’s favorite tapestries, comics, etc.

They talk about missing theme parks and daydream a park version of the mansion in CritRoleLand. It’s lovely.

Taliesin never expected Divine Intervention to work; he just wanted to roll some dice. He’s still processing what he saw/heard. They all agree it was very useful in the Vokodo fight.

Vilya! Marisha: “Ah! Ah! Ah!” As a player, Marisha was so deep in Beau’s eyes she didn’t pick up it was Vilya at first (especially since Matt really emphasized they should not be looking for C1 NPCs). Marisha’s brain melted. She bawled her eyes out on the ride home after that episode. Right after it ended, Laura told Marisha “Keyleth finally gets her happy ending,” and it makes Marisha emotional again since Keyleth’s story ended so bittersweetly. She talks about the very real feelings of “just wanting them to be happy, though!” She went back and listened to all her old Keyleth playlists. Everyone was teary after the episode. “Everyone has these 100% real memories of being these characters and having these good times.”

And that’s that for that! Thanks for your patience, all, and is it Thursday yet?

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long post for ts

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mollymauk-teafleak · 5 years

Text

Black Coffee (part four)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

If you like this, please please please consider reblogging, leaving a comment on Ao3 or even donating to my Ko-Fi

~~~~~~~~~~

Every single time, Vax told himself he was an idiot.

Every time he caught himself staring at Percy’s smile. Every time he’d replay his laughter over and over again in his head as he fell asleep because the sound soothed him so much. Every time he’d sleep over and find himself wearing one of Percy’s shirts in the confusion of gathering up their widely scattered clothes, only to curl up into it tighter, pulling it over the lower half of his face and inhaling deeply, feeling something inside himself unwind at the smell of Percy.

Each and every time, he’d think to himself afterwards: Vax’ildan, you are an idiot.

He told himself it was pointless. He told himself it was a ridiculous infatuation that was only going to get worse the more he indulged it. He cursed himself for a moony eyed teenager, he cursed his blind, ridiculous heart, he cursed his piss poor judgement in growing a silly crush on someone who saw him as a friend at best, a way to indulge a kink at worst and most likely.

But those moments didn’t stop coming. So he remained an idiot.

Another week, another email.

Percy tapped his fingers against the keys, enough to make an irritating noise but not enough to actually make words appear on the screen, as if the right thing to say would just come passively if he made the night motions.

The first part of the email had been easy, congratulating Cassandra on getting through her finals, encouraging her with her upcoming dissertation and exhibition, promising he’d fly out and come to opening night.

The second part was where he got stuck, as soon as he was required to talk about himself. He knew Cassandra would have absolutely no interest in the company, how the profit margins were doing, any reshuffling of the board. Percy was supposed to be the figurehead of all that and even he barely managed to care. He knew she’d at least feign polite interest in the new rotary motors he’d designed but there was only so much he could say about those without attaching blueprints to his response.

And he still felt a panic attack coming on whenever he thought about even trying to tell her about Vax.

At least he had Keyleth to talk to about that. He was getting better at being more open with her, probably thanks to Vax himself. Yet another thing he owed him.

Just yesterday she’d come over for dinner (a dinner that consisted of food from their respective favourite takeaways, he’d never learned how to cook) and Percy had found himself talking for hours about things Vax had said, date ideas that had been his that Percy never would even have dreamed of doing but had enjoyed immensely. Even Vax’s sister had gotten a mention and he’d grinned to see Keyleth’s ears quite literally pick up and her eyes brighten. He quietly resolved to find out if Vex’ahlia was single.

But there were things he couldn’t even tell his best friend or his sister. Things he was still struggling to admit to himself or even give form to inside his own head.

The idea that maybe he was starting to feel differently about Vax. That as fun and exhilarating as the sex and honeymoon dates were, things were changing below the surface.

Percy shifted uncomfortably in his chair, fingers itching to take him back to the dog adoption websites he’d been obsessively browsing lately. But Cassandra had been waiting two days for a reply now and he’d be damned if she was going to beat him at correspondence.

He tapped out a brief reply, one sentence to say work was fine and he was building new stuff, as always then launched into more praise for her recent art pieces she’d put on Instagram. Much safer brotherly territory.

But then there was the last part of her email. The one his brain had desperately tried to slide right off of but had become embedded inside him like a bee sting.

So, I saw the anniversary is coming up next week. I hate calling it an anniversary but you know, there’s no good word for it. I know it’s hard so call me if you want to, okay? Or go to the charity gala, one of us probably should. Just don’t be alone. Promise, Percy.

Of course he’d forgotten, if there was such a thing as wilfully forgetting something. The gala was organised without any input from him, it was a company thing, the purview of their non-profit division. People at work had long ago learned not to bring anything even tangentially connected to the anniversary (Cassie was right, there really was no other word for it) to their boss’ attention.

No doubt the invitation would appear on his assistant’s desk in the next day or so, ready for its annual frosty ignoring before being consigned to the shredder the second the date inscribed on it had passed.

But if Percy was completely honest with himself, as rare as that occasion was, he really didn’t want to face that day alone. He didn’t want to bear it in his usual way. Not that he ever had wanted to get through it by finding a bar and drinking until he passed out but he’d always just sort of sunken into that.

And Cassandra knew it. Hell, she’d been the one who’d had to take a red eye flight to the city and sit by him in the hospital as he’d recovered from getting his stomach pumped last year.

The look on her face when he’d finally woken up and broken down into wracking sobs wasn’t something he ever wanted to see on his baby sister’s face ever again. He wasn’t going to be responsible for adding to her pain ever again.

He finished his email with a single sentence, no context, no other acknowledgement of the hot coals they were both trying to dance around.

I promise, Cassie.

“Holy fuck…I don’t think I have anything that fancy, Freddy,” Vax yelped but he was grinning, excitement already lighting up his face.

Percy smiles, reaching over and tucking Vax’s hair behind his ears, he remembered him saying it annoyed him when it was in his face, “I’ll take you shopping. But wait until you’ve actually been to one of these parties before you thank me for the invite, they’re painfully boring.”

“Probably to you!” Vax maintained his dreamy eyed excitement as he swept his shirt over his head, “I’m gonna drink fancy wine and admire fancy dresses and dance to fancy music. I’ll finally get to use the waltz moves I know.”

“I look forward to seeing them,” Percy let his jeans fall to the floor, “I’ll admit, it might actually be worth my time if you’re with me.”

Vax grins, wiggling out of his boxers, “Freddy, if you need someone to show you that getting drunk in the name of charity can be fun, I’m your man.”

“You are,” Percy’s demeanour became hungry, grinning crookedly as he pulled the now naked Vax against him, spinning him into the shower and under the warm spray of water. The half elf was giggling, legs anchoring around his hips, by the time Percy kissed him up against the tile wall.

It was so easy to smile and laugh and make jokes when he was kissing Vax. It was so easy to forget.

“The car will be here in half an hour,” Percy called out, walking into the living room as he fiddled with his cufflinks. He’d never gotten the hang of these things.

A memory rose up in the back of his mind, unasked for, unbidden. His own hands, awkward and spindly with youth, struggling with a set of cufflinks. Stronger hands, wearing the signet ring that Percy now saw on his own hand every morning, covering his own and guiding them.

Here, son, let me. It takes some getting used to.

Percy cursed as one slipped out of his fingers and hit the hardwood with a sharp crack that rang louder than it actually had been in his ears. The black stone in it fractured, a hairline break down the middle. It must have landed in just the wrong way.

“Whoops,” Vax was suddenly there, scooping up the little shining piece of silver, “Here we go.”

“It’s broken…” Percy frowned, half his brain still somewhere else.

“Not all that much,” Vax reassured him, taking his hand gently and fixing it into place, “It’s still good, see?”

Percy managed a thin smile. It was hard not to smile, seeing Vax all dressed up.

They hadn’t found anything that suited Vax at the place Percy went to get his suits, they’d both agreed everything there was a little too stuffy for his tastes. Instead, they’d turned to Mollymauk Tealeaf, who took the black dress Vax had worn to the ballet and an old suit of Percy’s and made something spectacular.

It was a little bit of both, a black, clinging suit of silken material that flowed down his body as a stunning waterfall of inky fabric, affixed at his wrists to make something not unlike wings. It rippled when he moved and caught the light in the most beautiful ways and made Percy’s mouth a little dry.

It was going to cause a stir, Percy knew with a satisfied smile. It was his name on the silverware, after all.

“You look beautiful,” Percy leaned in and kissed him, quickly so as not to pick up any of his black lipstick. There would be plenty of time to get it in all manner of scandalous places after the party.

“You’re a charmer,” Vax purred, straightening his jacket lapels, “Half an hour, you said?”

Percy could see where his mind was going and he dearly wanted to follow him down that train of thought but he knew letting Vax go into this blind would be a bad idea. So he sighed and gave a little shake of his head.

“Just so you know, love? This night…it’s for the charity that was set up in my parents’ name after they died. Like a memorial thing? So if people treat me weird tonight, that’s why.”

Vax blinked, understandably a little rattled by that, “Oh…right…”

“Sorry,” Percy winced, he couldn’t pretend to be surprised, “That’s a lot to take in at once…”

“Maybe a little,” Vax admitted, hands resting on Percy’s chest, “But…I get it’s a difficult thing to put into words. Thanks for letting me know though, I could see myself putting my foot right in it.”

Percy let himself relax a little into Vax’s contact, safe in the knowledge he’d keep him upright, “All I need from you tonight is to do the exact opposite of what everyone else is probably going to do and not treat me weird. Just…dance with me, let’s make a few people whisper and if you could remind me that I’ve got some pretty amazing sex waiting for me if I make it through tonight, I’d appreciate that.��

Vax smiled and kissed his cheek, “I can absolutely do that.”

“Oh,” Percy hesitates, another wince in his expression, “And don’t let me drink?”

Vax sensed a strong undercurrent of ‘do not ask’ under that so he just smiled and nodded, squeezing Percy’s arm.

“Hey, it’s going to be okay, Freddy. I’ll be with you.”

The party was held in a manor house a little ways out of the city, a place that seemed to have been built purely for ridiculously grand parties like this one. The whole exterior was illuminated by soft dancing lights, making the high stone walls, the flowers in the garden, the couples that filed in all look vaguely angelic and otherworldly.

Vax gawked and stared shamelessly as they moved into this other dimension of cream and silk and champagne. Flower garlands grew up the walls and spread curious fingers across the floor, actually growing if you looked for long enough, filling the room with a fresh, clean scent. Glasses were pressed on them as soon as they entered, full of a wine that actually changed as you sipped it, moving along a spectrum of fruit flavours.

Percy politely waved his on.

There was an upper mezzanine with tables, clearly where the food would be served, but the whole lower floor was kept free for dancing and mingling, what most of the guests were actually here to do. Already groups were forming and breaking up in smooth succession, like leaves borne on an unseen current, snagging and being swept on. The rhythm of it all was odd when seen from above, like a sort of dance.

“I do not belong here,” Vax laughed delightedly, leaning against the balcony.

“Count yourself lucky then,” Percy smirks, straightening his glasses, “Looks like I put on a pretty good party, huh?”

“And all without looking,” Vax chuckled, “Very well done, Mr de Rolo.”

Percy puts his hand on Vax’s, “Well, it’ll raise some money at least. Rich people get really generous when they drink.”

Vax took another drink, tasting tart plum this time. He let his eyes rove over the dance floor below, still finding interesting little finishes he hadn’t noticed yet. The way the candles hovered under some spell, somehow knowing where they were needed, following the larger knots of people. The troupe of musicians, sporting everything from sleek Marquetian guitars to elaborate stringed affairs from the Menagerie Coast, whose music could be turned up or down in any listener’s ears as they wished. There were bowls of iced fruit glistening on an array of tables, the perfect thing to snack on when you knew you had a banquet in an hour. No one was dancing yet, the party still being in its fledgling stages but Vax already had a mind of change that. The people here seemed older, the ones here to network rather than relax, but maybe even they could be convinced if they had a good enough example. Vax saw mostly humans though there were a few with the easy, self-confident air of the Aasimar and, of course, the only other race who could look even more self-possessed-

“Shit,” Vax choked out, suddenly drawing back as if he’d been sprayed with scalding water.

Percy turned, suddenly alert, “What? What’s wrong?”

Ashy with shock, eyes roving for the exits and well aware it was too late to pretend the answer was nothing, Vax mumbled, “I didn’t know Syldor Vessar would be here.”

Percy frowned, “I…yeah, he often comes to things like this…I think my father worked with him on a few projects in the past…Vax, what’s the problem?”

“Nothing,” Vax insisted weakly, “Well, no. I mean. He’s my father.”

Percy’s eyes widened behind his glasses. Vax knew he was suddenly seeing matching features, commonalities, making sense of the distinct point to his ears.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell you, how could you know?”

Vax was instinctively moving away, acting like a cornered animal, backing up in a secluded alcove. All of the delicately bouncing candles within a five meter radius fled in a heartbeat.

Percy followed, suddenly standing protectively, making himself a shield, “I can have a car here in five minutes, are you okay until then? Or we can just go, we’ll walk a little…”

“No, no…” Vax said quickly, biting his lip, “No, sorry. It was just a shock. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

Though it was clear some of the pieces were already in place, Percy asked haltingly, “Was it not…”

Vax pulled a face, “He doesn’t like that I’m trans. He doesn’t like a lot about me, really. And I hate a lot about him. So me and Vex left.”

Anger flashed across Percy’s face, brief but intense, “He what?”

Vax gave a short sigh, “Freddy, three quarters of the people here would probably think he was right. Please don’t go punch him. It won’t win you any friends.”

The anger collapsed under the weight of discomfort, “Oh. I wasn’t going to…”

“Sorry,” Vax shook his head like he was shaking sense into himself, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. Seriously, I’m fine. This is your night, I’m here for you.”

“Vax’ildan…”

Vax had his mind made up. It was clear since he’d admitted what this party was for that Percy had taken a long, long time to convince himself to go. He needed to be here, he needed to honour his parents in some small way, even if it was just for an hour. Vax wouldn’t be the reason he caved.

“Seriously, Freddy, it’s fine. The party’s big enough that we can avoid him and even if we do need to say a five second hello…well, fuck, it’s going to actually be fun for him to see me on the arm of someone whose twice as rich as he is. Just don’t tell him I’m technically on the job.”

Percy still looked like he would protest, for honour’s sake, but he let it go and gave a little smile, “You’re not on the job, Vax, not tonight. At least, it doesn’t feel like it. I’m glad you’re here just as my friend.”

Vax swallowed, a feeling he was irritatingly familiar with making its presence known.

Vax’ildan, you’re an idiot.

The party went smoothly for a while.

It was fun, Vax realised, like play acting. Like they’d all raided a parent’s closet for odds and ends, mismatched bits and pieces, makeup that they only had the vaguest idea of how to use but were all having enormous fun enacting scenes from an elaborately illustrated fairy story. They were all aware of the absurdity of it, underneath, but it paled in comparison to the entertainment value.

Vax was reminded of the times he and Molly had gleefully wasted hours in the costume storage rooms of the community theatre, trying on coats that didn’t fit them, hats that were ridiculously small, anything with an excessive amount of beads or sequins, laughing until it hurt.

Quickly and easily, Vax lost himself in the performance of it all. He perched happily on Percy’s arm, always making sure he had a glass at least half full in his hand with which to gesture, listening to the conversations they were pulled into like asteroids being snatched up in the orbits of various planets. They were like a foreign language, talking about places and people he’d never heard of and had to force himself not to laugh out loud at, they seemed so odd. Fortunately, though he hid it much better thanks to years of practise, Percy seemed just as bewildered as Vax did by most of it.

Every so often, he’d interject something, a sprightly little comment or joke, more often than not to save Percy when he’s clearly ran out of things to say. Each new group would look surprised the first time, like they’d assumed he couldn’t talk, like he’d been presumed to be Percy’s handbag or something. But then they’d laugh, either out of politeness or genuine amusement, Vax didn’t care. It was the relieved, grateful little glances from Percy that he cared about.

There were awkward moments, of course, whenever someone he recognised from his and Vex’s years of incarceration with Syldor appeared in that moment’s huddle of listeners. He could see the hesitation on their face every time, the shock, the clear attempt to guess whether the situation had changed, the rumours had been incorrect and he was back in his father’s good graces.

But if any of them had chanced to notice that, despite the undeniable pressure of natural social graces, Syldor and Vax’ildan never ended up in the same circles, they would have had their answer.

There was a moment, in the lull between songs where the chatter seemed to press in a little louder, where Vax had been admiring the flowers again, trying to see if their colours were magical or a feature of the plant itself. His eyes must have slid the wrong way at the wrong time because suddenly he was making direct eye contact with Syldor from across the room. And those eyes were filled with a stunned, scandalised anger.

The part of Vax that was and probably always would be the terrified young teenager who’d lived in fear of those eyes, that look, recoiled in panic. But there was more to him now, a stronger, surer part that simply smiled and squeezed Percy’s arm, prompting him to lean over and kiss his cheek softly. What Syldor’s face did after he saw that, Vax didn’t know.

He didn’t look back.

As if the night couldn’t be more full of surprises, Vax found that his shy, mechanically minded wallflower was a superb dancer.

“You’re a natural!” Vax laughed in delight as they moved in perfect time with the delicate waltz filling the space.

Percy blushed, as Vax knew he would, “I took lessons when I was younger, under threat of having my controllers taken away. All of my siblings did but I think they acquiesced much easier than I did.”

All of your siblings? Vax kept his face very deliberately unchanged.

“The world of dance doesn’t know what it’s lost,” he said confidently, moving through easy, rolling steps around the space. Not many other couples were dancing so they had practically the whole floor.

“Maybe I’m trying extra hard just to keep up with you,” Percy pointed out, tilting his head.

“Ballroom isn’t my thing,” Vax shook his head, “You’ve just got some serious natural talent.”

“Shut up,” Percy laughed coyly but at the very next turn he suddenly dipped Vax low, expertly, in perfect time with the music.

Vax would have kissed him fiercely if he hadn’t been worried any distraction would end with him in a heap on the floor.

Once righted, instead of moving back into hold, Percy paused, taking Vax’s hands in his own, “I...I didn’t think it was possible for me to actually enjoy this night. And I actually kind of have. Or at least, I’ve been able to distract myself enough to…” he flushed bright red, “Anyway. I’m rambling. Thank you, is what I’m trying to say.”

Vax smiled softly, “Don’t mention it, Percy. Seriously, don’t, it looks like you might pull a muscle if you keep trying to.”

Percy snorted at that, “See? This is why I love having you around.”

One of those odd moments followed, the ones where it really felt like someone should have been saying something. A cue had been missed, the progression had halted, empty space that wasn’t supposed to be empty suddenly hung between them.

Percy opened his mouth, looking like he was going to say something but part of him didn’t want to.

And that was when the music stopped, fading into silence in as classy a way as that could be done. Immediately, the people around them began moving back to the mezzanine, apparently all knowing that it was time for food and speeches. Vax felt like he’d missed a memo somewhere.

“Dare me to ask for tomato sauce with whatever fancy stuff they serve?” Vax turned back to Percy, grinning.

As soon as their eyes met, that grin died like a scrap of paper set alight, turned to nothing in half a heartbeat. Percy looked like he was about to throw up, paler even than he usually was, a rabbit suddenly caught in the headlights of a sixteen wheeler.

“Percy?” Vax was alarmed, squeezing his hand, “Percy, what’s wrong?”

There was a clear moment of hesitation, uncertainty, but something seemed to swerve to the left at the very last moment and he fixed a thin, unconvincing smile on his face, “Nothing. I’m hungry, let’s head up there.”

Vax frowned, not sure how he was being expected to believe that but then Percy was moving, taking his hand and leading him towards the stairs without another word. Hesitant to make a fuss, Vax sighed internally and didn’t resist. But he would definitely be bringing it up again on the ride home. Maybe Percy would be able to breathe a little better once it was just the two of them again.

They sat about as far back as they could physically manage without sitting on the floor. Vax was about to ask if they should move closer, surely if it was his company’s whole production, they’d want him visible? His surname was on the logo being projected up on the screen at the front, after all.

But he got the sense that hiding might be the whole point.

There was more fancy wine set out on the table, ones with names even longer than Percy’s. Vax eyed a glass thoughtfully but he had a pleasant, warm buzz going through his veins. Enough to make this party a damn sight more fun but not enough to risk him embarrassing himself. That was a comfortable place to be.

As he was looking, he saw Percy’s hand go out and draw a glass in, a quick, furtive gesture like he was hoping it wouldn’t be noticed.

Vax frowned. He was really getting his intelligence insulted tonight.

“Percy, you said you wouldn’t be drinking?”

Percy’s shoulders tensed, every inch the child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, “Just one with dinner. I’ll barely feel it.”

Vax paused, a bad feeling opening up inside him, “You asked me not to let you drink, Percy. There must have been a reason for that. I...I’d feel better if you didn’t.”

That brought Percy’s hand back to his side, if a little reluctantly, accompanied by a defeated sigh, “You’re right…”

Vax bit his lip, that bad feeling growing, “Percy, we don’t have to stay if something’s making you feel uncomfortable.”

He couldn’t read the expression that shifted across Percy’s face in that moment and before he could make any greater effort, the lighting in the room changed and everyone’s attention was politely turned to the front of the dining area, to the lectern before the screen.

An older human man settled there, bringing a neat set of cards from his inside pocket and clearing his throat in the manner of someone who was very comfortable with having about a hundred people listening to his every word.

“Well, firstly, an enormous thank you to all of you. Through your attendance and generosity, we have managed to raise an incredible amount of money to go towards the de Rolo Foundation, even more than in previous years. This money will undoubtedly be instrumental in ensuring those who lose their families to violence have support and care. I am certain the entire de Rolo family would be immensely proud.”

Beside Vax, Percy seemed to sink down lower in his seat as the eyes of everyone who actually knew who he was turned to him in that moment.

“What happened to the de Rolo family was nothing short of a tragedy,” the man continued, voice turning grave rather than celebratory, “Many of you who knew them still feel a strong sense of grief and outrage at how they were taken. Hopefully there is some comfort to be found in the fact that, through our actions here tonight, fewer will suffer as they and their remaining heirs did.”

A picture suddenly took up the screen behind him, replacing the Whitestone logo. Vax felt his chest tighten.

The first of the family in the picture that he recognised was of course Percy. He stood as stiff and aloof as the rest of the people around him who shared his facial features, though he was off to the side somewhat, certainly not the focus, part of the background dressing. There were nine of them, all dressed similarly in what had to be the colours of their family. An older woman and man who were of course the mother and father. The much younger Percy seemed to fall into the middle range of ages. More central was an older young man, placed right between the mother and father. Then a sister. Though they all looked incredibly similar, same angular faces, same hair, most of them wearing glasses, there were two who were identical enough that they had to be twins. That gave Vax a start. A couple of younger siblings too, barely into childhood.

It took him a long time to realise what was wrong, why something wasn’t quite right. And then it clicked, with another unpleasant lurch.

They all had brown hair. Brown as chestnuts, brown as chocolate, brown as mahogany.

And Vax had been picking white hairs off his dark clothing for as long as he and Percy had been an item.

“The loss of nearly the entire de Rolo family was a shock to us all,” the man continued, though his voice seemed further away to Vax, as lost as he was in the picture, “And even worse the years of turmoil that followed before their killers could be brought to justice. Of course we remember and acknowledge the bravery of Percival in his years of ensuring the truth came out and the company could return to his and his sister’s hands. Many thanks to young Percival.”

Vax couldn’t help it, he turned to Percy, confusion and shock on his face.

He wasn’t there. Both he and the bottle of wine from the centre of the table had disappeared.

Suddenly Vax realised everyone was looking at their table, expecting to see Percy as much as he had been, equally as surprised to be staring at an empty seat. There was a long, awkward silence where no one seemed quite sure of what to do.

After a moments carefully considered thought, Vax decided to get up and make a very swift exit.

Night had fallen when none of them had been looking, blissfully ignorant in the shrouds of both magically and mechanically generated lighting. But outside was fully within its arms; the air was chilly, too chilly for evening gowns, the sky was blacker than usual given they were a little outside the city and pierced through with starry pinpoints. The gardens that surrounded the manor had turned to silver and stone, what had been grown looking more like it had been carved or sculpted.

As anxious as he was to find Percy, Vax couldn’t help but feel some relief. He much preferred it out here to in there. In fact, it was only now that he realised he’d practically been holding his breath the entire evening.

He hitched up his skirts with one hand and hurried past flowerbeds and underneath overhead carpets of vine, listening for anything underneath the gentle but ever present trickle of water running somewhere unseen.

The water only seemed to grow louder as he went, naturally pulled into the epicentre of the garden. But underneath it, he managed to pick out a noise that could only be crying, acting as a perfect counterpoint to the rushing and babbling that already filled the space.

It made sense all in the same moment. An enormous fountain sat proudly in the little hidden courtyard that was revealed behind the shrubbery. It’s flow arched into the night sky where it came close to becoming pure moonlight before falling back down into the basin, ready to trace the path again like blood in an ornate, black iron body.

And slumped on the edge of it, sobbing softly with his tears hitting the gravel below like a tiny rainfall, was Percy.

As Vax watched, he groped for the bottle of wine that was resting haphazardly against his legs and drank deeply, an errant trickle running from the side of his lips though he didn’t seem to care. Only when the need for breath forced him to stop did the bottle return to it’s perfectly circular divot in the gravel, not half drained.

Vax lurched forward, forgetting that he’d wanted to make a more gentle entrance, “Percy, no…”

Percy jumped so badly it was a miracle he didn’t pitch backwards into the fountain. That probably would have soured things even more.

“Vax’ildan…”

Wanting desperately to hold him, touch him, fix this somehow but having no clue of how to go about it or if it would even be welcome, Vax just sat beside him on the cold, wet rim of the fountain, eyes wide and sad, “I’m here, Percy, it’s okay…”

“Vax, go back,” Percy croaked, turning his head as if it wasn’t too late to hide the tears, “You don’t have to...go back inside, enjoy yourself.”

“How could I enjoy myself without you?” Vax asked softly, reaching over and taking his hands.

Percy was quiet for a moment before the tears flooded back in with renewed strength, leaving him choking. Vax didn’t hesitate, taking him into his arms, letting him cling on as tight as he needed to. It was hard not to cry himself, listening to the agony that came pouring out like poison from a wound. It was so clear that years and years worth of pain had been locked inside him and were leaving him in one rush.

All he’d been missing had been someone to hold him, someone to tell him it was okay, someone who would say here, hold on to me, it will end.

How long had Percy been living without the reassurance that if he cried, someone would hear him?

It could have been a lifetime before the tears finally ran their course, Vax didn’t care. But eventually Percy was left choking on air rather than salt water, chest heaving as his body dragged in deep breaths to replace what he’d lost.

“Easy, nice and easy,” Vax encouraged, placing a hand on his back, “You’re okay.”

Percy seemed to be calming down for a few moments until his eyes bulged suddenly and he threw himself to the side, vomiting copiously into the fountain.

Vax winced, reaching over quickly to save his glasses that were about to slip off, “Yeah, we’re never getting invited back…”

“Good,” Percy panted weakly, managing to right himself, “This whole night was a mistake. I don’t know why I keep trying to make this day anything other than a fucking disaster.”

“Well...I think that might be reasonable,” Vax said placatingly, “Given what I’ve come to understand about this day…”

Percy hunched in on himself, guilt clear as day on his face, “I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry. It’s just...it’s so hard to say the words out loud…” This voice grew dangerously thick and fragile.

“Darling, I understand,” Vax murmured, hand making slow, comforting circles across his back, “I’ve been there.”

That caught his attention. Vax hesitated, ready to see the same pity and condolence he’d been seeing in everyone’s eyes for years, the kind that made him feel vaguely ill.

But it didn’t come. The two men looked at each other the way two people who had been blindly fighting their way through a storm would, when they suddenly reached the eye at the very centre and, in the silence, realised they hadn’t been as alone as they thought.

“Who?” Percy asked softly.

“Our mother.”

And just like that he could see her face again, he could hear her voice, feel her fingers combing through his hair. Vax’ildan had a strong, deep resentment of every single piece of his DNA that had come from Syldor bar one. Whichever piece had given him an elf’s exceedingly good memory. Otherwise, who knew how much of his mother he might have lost.

Percy’s hand took Vax’s, fingers threading together, holding on tight. Vax managed to smile, even if it was a little shaky.

Nothing else came of that but both knew it was okay.

“I...I just didn’t expect all that,” Percy finally admitted, sighing deeply, “I didn’t expect the speech about them, actually talking about what happened...but it was, um, the picture. I couldn’t take that.”

Vax nodded slowly, “Have you not…”

Percy shook his head quickly, “No. Even looking at my sister is hard. It must be the same for her, I guess that’s why she ran to the opposite end of the country.”

Vax gently leant his head against Percy’s shoulder, “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

There was a long pause before he could find the right words. Having to open up something you’d hidden away for years wasn’t a simple task, not when every nerve in your body is screaming at you to do the exact opposite.

“I don’t really know what exactly my family did to piss them off,” Percy eventually began, “I don’t want to know either. I don’t care how it started, I care that it’s finished.”

“Who’s them?”

Percy swallowed hard, “The Briarwoods.”

Then it all came out, disjointed and rambling and disconnected but Vax edited it in his own mind after the fact. How one night at dinner after the family had welcomed two guests, a married couple of wealthy socialites, into their home Percy had begun to hear screaming.

He couldn’t remember a lot of the details, which was understandable and probably merciful. What he did remember was the sound of gunfire, muffled barks of exploding muzzles echoing through the hallways of the family home. He remembered blood pooling on the hardwood floors. He remembered pleading. He remembered laughter.

The only thing he could then say for certain was that he ended up outside, running for as long as his body could physically manage before collapsing at Keyleth’s door, his friend from school the only person his fevered mind could think to turn to.

When the sun rose the next day, every paper and news anchor in the city was reporting that his entire family had been killed in a robbery gone wrong. Everyone save himself, who was missing, and his youngest sister Cassandra, who was saved by the intercession of those same guests, the Briarwoods. He recalled a tearful Delilah Briarwood on the news, saying she only wished they could have done more.

In the exact same voice Percy had heard laughing in the blood spattered hallway.

Percy wasn’t fit to leave Keyleth’s sofa for the next few months, nearly broken clean in two by grief. So everything just happened around him, the grateful Cassandra signing over the family’s entire holdings to the Briarwoods in the absence of her brother, the whole company being seized, the locks on every property the de Rolo’s had owned being changed, barring Percy from any kind of financial help.

When he was finally well enough to open his eyes, to face the world around him, he found that he was completely and utterly abandoned by it.

Vax tried to absorb all that, heart hammering in his chest, “So...what did you do?”

“Kiki was happy for me to stay with her but…” Percy pulled a face, “I wasn’t fit to be around anyone. I wasn’t well, I was...drinking a lot. She kept trying to get me to go to therapy but that would mean people knowing I was alive and, with the Briarwoods still out there, with all of the money and protection I’d lost, I didn’t that that was such a good idea…”

“How did no one know?” Vax felt anger in the back of his throat, “Didn’t they investigate? Work out that the people who were pretty much strangers that had come to the house might have had something to do with the murders that happened that very night?”

Percy shrugged, “They had magic and money on their side. Delilah was a powerful magic user but...well, I doubt it was ever really needed. You’d be surprised how much suspicion and supposed authority can be turned aside by putting coin in the right pockets.”

Vax scowled down at the stones, feeling the injustice but also the truth of that burn in his chest. He’d seen Syldor do it enough times.

“So...I got a job as a mechanic. My father had always told me my tinkering would be nothing but a distraction but it was what got me through those years. That and not caring that the cars I was fixing were obviously stolen and I was being paid off the books.”

“Seriously?” Vax couldn’t help being a little impressed by that.

Percy gave a wayn smile, “If any police officer had looked in my workshop, they’d have found enough to put me in jail for a very long time. But bribery is not just the purview of the rich, thank the gods…” he looked back at his hands, “So I spent a long time not being Percival de Rolo. I just made as much money as I could, tried desperately to keep myself alive and spent years thinking of how to rescue my sister and make the Briarwoods suffer.”

The tone of Percy’s voice in that moment worried Vax, his smile falling into a concerned frown, “Understandable…”

Percy didn’t seem to pick up on it, “I was going to do something stupid. Very stupid. But fortunately, despite my being a shitty friend and all round terrible person, Keyleth stuck by me. She convinced me to hire a lawyer instead, do it through the courts. Gods, it was a nightmare. It took years longer than I wanted it to, I was on the verge of tearing my hair out or just finally drinking enough that I’d never wake up again.”

Vax’s stomach dropped.

“But then I’d think of Cassie,” Percy’s voice quietened, “How she must have felt as alone as I did. How I couldn’t let her down. Gods only know what they put her through while they had her, she won’t talk to me about it. Every second I was wasting feeling sorry for myself and falling asleep in gutters was another second she was under their power. And if I died then...then her hope died too.”

“But you did it,” Vax said quietly, squeezing his hand, “I’m not a big news watcher but I remember it a little now, I just never connected it to you. How you got the Briarwoods convicted, got custody of your sister back, everyone saw them for what they were. I remember everyone talking about how you were a hero, Percy.”

Percy grunted, nudging the wine bottle over with his toe so it’s contents spilled across the stones, “Maybe. But there’s still days I wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier just building myself a gun and shooting them both in the heart.”

“You wouldn’t,” Vax said firmly, turning him a little so they were facing each other, “And you didn’t. And that makes you better than them, Percy. That’s what makes you a hero.”

Percy managed to meet his eyes, though he still looked so young and so scared, “Then why does it hurt so much?”

“Because what happened to you was awful,” Vax said without hesitation, touching his face with a gentle hand, “It was unimaginably awful, most people couldn’t have survived it. And you’re allowed to feel that hurt. You’re allowed to cry. But I promise, one day, this pain will be manageable. You’ll be able to carry it.”

“How?” Percy whispered brokenly, desperation in his eyes, “I...I just can’t see how. I’m not strong enough.”

“I’ll help you be,” he murmured, stroking his thumb back and forth across his cheekbone, “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Percy swallowed hard, resting his forehead against Vax’s for a long moment. Sometimes words just weren’t enough.

Eventually he mumbled, like a child tired after a long day, “I’d like to go home now.”

“That sounds good to me, darling,” Vax smiled, “Let’s go brush your teeth, huh? Cos your breath is really...interesting right now.”

Percy laughed weakly, letting the half elf pull him to his feet, “Wine and vomit. Sorry your sugar daddy turned out to be a huge mess.”

“Ah, I’m sure there’s way worse than you out there,” Vax put his arm around the taller man, glad then he was wearing heels or the effect would be a little ruined, “And you have better reason than most.”

It took a few moments for their car to be brought around to the front of the house. A few moments to sit in a stronger breeze and catch their breath, to let the tears dry on Percy’s cheeks and for them both to realise that they’d had nothing to eat all evening and would definitely be stopping for a McDonalds on the way home, if they could convince their chauffeur to go through the drive through.

Feeling more exhausted than he ever had in his life, feeling like he might be on the way towards some kind of healing, Percy murmured, “You know...sometimes I think Percy de Rolo died that day too. Like I haven’t been myself since.”

Vax looked over at him, through his rapidly unravelling hairdo, strands of black hair falling into his eyes. The party behind them, faint with distance, had become just a soft background to their soft little moment.

Vax’ildan you poor fucking fool.

“I like who you are now, Percy.”

#black coffee #percildan #percy de rolo #vax'ildan #critical role #modern au #cr: percy #cr: vax #pleeeeeeeease give this some love #I'm writing this while juggling teaching

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araminia16 · 5 years

Text

Slow Growth (C9-Explicit)

Chapter 8

It was the first weekend away from Zephrah when they entered through the tree and out the Sun Tree into the city of Whitestone. Hand in hand Vax and Keyleth made their way through the streets towards the construction site for Vex’s home as the Mistress of the Grey Hunt. When they left the foundation was just beginning it’s construction and it had been a couple of weeks so they were eager to see what it had become.

Keyleth leaned into Vax as they walked with her head on his shoulder and he grinned like an idiot while squeezing her hand. Five days since she agreed to try and he had yet to make any kind of proposition towards her. The first night she timidly entered their room to find the room empty until he entered with wet hair and slightly damp chest with a towel wrapped around his neck. His playful grin didn’t fade as he bent over the bed to kiss her while she lay upon it waiting for him, nor did he refuse her when she asked to brush his hair for him. Another ridiculous braiding job and they were both nestled in bed together to start another day all over again.

Familiar sights and sounds greeted them along the street and some even waved in their direction as they passed through. It was no time at all when they reached the castle grounds and found Vex and Trinket outdoors overseeing the construction of a now much larger home.

“Vex!” Keyleth called out and the woman in question turned around as did Trinket before she darted off toward them with a smile.

Vex wrapped her brother and Keyleth in a hug and though she wasn’t the strongest member of Vox Machina she took the wind out of Keyleth at least. “Brother, Kiki. I’m so happy to see you. It’s been a while. Did you see my house? Mine.” She released each of them with a peck while bright eyes took them both in. “It still needs the upper levels constructed fully, painted, and everything has to be ‘wired in’ as Percy says before we can start furnishing it but it’s mine. And Percy’s.” She added as almost an afterthought.

“We do see it, Stubby, and it looks like a house. Speaking of Freddie, where is he?”

“Yeah. He knew we were coming.” Keyleth pouted.

“Probably in his workshop. I swear the man wouldn’t eat, drink or sleep if not for me. Not to mention other things that are infinitely more fun.” A wry smile and glint in her eye clued Keyleth in on what she must have meant but Vax only sighed and pushed her away.

“We don’t need to hear about all that. Disgusting.” Vax teased then pulled her in to rub his knuckles in her hair for which she stomped on his foot.

“You ass.” She pulled from the grapple and stomped again for good measure. “Come on, Kiki. Let’s find Percy and see if we can tempt him away from his toys.” Vex held her arm out for Keyleth who took it with an excited smile.

They did find Percy, who was in fact in his workshop, and he gave Keyleth a warm hug. Half from the heat of the shop but mostly from affection while he wiped the sweat from his brow and looked down at the clothes he wore. “I’m rather a mess, aren’t I? Especially for company. Excuse me while I clean up. I’ll meet you in the library so we can get started.” Soot, oil, and gunpowder stained Percy made his way up around Keyleth, a pat on Vax’s shoulder then a kiss to Vex who leaned against the doorframe with arms crossed before he made his way out.

“See. He never has time for me anymore.” She called down the hall after him.

“I love you too, dear.”

“Ass.” Vex huffed but with a smile as the three of them made their way to the library. Already many books were strewn out onto the tables open to various entries with paper notes clustered around. “We’ve been reading and haven’t found much to be honest here. I think we need to go somewhere like Vasselhiem or Emon or the Cobalt Soul or somewhere with more books about Orcas.”

“Yeah. Well you find anything good here?”

“Ghost stories. Percy is very fond of them.”

Percy arrived a while later and with a joviality as they started to catch up on the weeks previous. Tary was busy rebuilding Doty and out collecting items and would be back sometime soon or so they thought.

The first night was much of reading books and talking but the next couple of days they spent in Whitestone consisted of Keyleth and Percy in his workshop talking about an idea to have an early warning system to help if there were something like Thordak again.

The twins read books upon books together and at one point Vax left for a while and returned with two full wine bottles. He set one down in front of Vex and one in front of himself as he plucked the cork from his and took a swig before he settled down in his chair.

Vex eyed the unopened bottle in front of her feet from where she reclined with a book in her lap, turned her gaze to her brother, then back at the bottle, “Something you want to talk about, brother?”

“Shut up and drink.” He took another swig as he turned another page in the book.

Vex, never one to say no to a bit of drink, opened her bottle and started up. When he wanted to start this heart to heart she better be plenty pliable for it.

Halfway through the bottles and a little buzzed Vax closed the book with an audible noise and sighed, “I don’t know what the fuck to do.”

“About Orcas? The Raven Queen? Tomorrow? You’ll have to be a little less vague, Vax.” Then laughed as she closed her book. “So, darling brother what is it?”

Vax sighed, “Oh, sister mine. What was your first time like?”

“First time shooting an arrow? First time drinking? You’ll have to be a touch more specific.” She teased.

“Fucking. First time fucking. Mine was alright but as far as I know there are very few ways to fuck it up on my end. Yours. Now. God I need more to drink.” He took another couple of swallows of the sweet wine and sighed. Already regretting his decision to talk to his sister.

“Oh. It was alright I guess. I got paid a couple of gold so not a total loss. I had no idea what I was doing. Not really and he didn’t either but it was easy money. I had something to give and he had money to pay for it. I was a tad too dry and it was uncomfortable. That’s what I remember. I don’t even think he knew my name. I certainly didn’t care to know his.” Vex shrugged as she took another swallow. “I got better at it.”

“Ah.” Vax sighed.

“Why?”

“Keyleth.”

“Did she have an awful first time as well? I can’t imagine she’s had much experience with all of it.” Vex took another drink.

“She hasn’t had any. At all.”

Vex stopped the bottle halfway to her mouth as she processed the information in her addled brain. “What do you mean?”

“She’s totally untouched.”

“Still? After all this time? I find that hard to believe.”

“Yeah. I’m not some asshole who only wants her for her body you know. And I don’t have the sex drive of a rabbit either like someone here does.”

“I like to fuck. It feels fantastic when you do it right and Percy likes to be fucked so everyone wins. The man has wonderful hands and a fantastic mouth.”

“I know. So does Keyleth.” Vax shivered in horror at the vague images his rampant imagination brought up about his sister and her lover.

“I won’t dissect what that means right now because I don’t want to. But our sex life is healthy and yours is quite clearly not. She can’t have no idea what it all is. She’s traveled with Scanlan of all people before and his sex drive outpaces mine by miles.” She took another drink. The bottle was starting to feel a little light.

“Right about that.” He nodded. “She’s afraid she’s going to set me on fire or something during the act.”

Vex snorted out a choked laugh, “What?”

“Yeah. I told her she was worried about nothing but she’s gotten me off twice now.”

“Bold then, is she? Good girl. But you are so chivalrous it must be under your skin by now. Has she never touched her own cunt before?” Vex’s filter disintegrated under the last of the wine on a mostly empty stomach.

“Apparently not.” He slurred out.

“You don’t need my advice. You do well enough on your own. You love her and you’ll treat her really well. Just don’t forget not to marry her while I’m not there. Okay? I don’t think I can read anymore so I’ll go find Tary or Percy. Percy. I’ll find Percy and drag him off to give him a good once over. You should do the same to Keyleth. Just do it. Doesn’t have to be romantic with candles and flowers and smells. It just has to come from the heart. Or your fingers...or tongue...or cock. Any of those. Yeah?” Vex stood with the empty bottle and began to saunter out of the library.

Vax watched her go as he downed the last of the wine. Vex just solidified things he already knew. Maybe that’s all he needed was some confirmation from his other half.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair to daydream about a bright smile, freckled cheeks and bright red hair on a summer’s day with a sigh.

Percy just happened to be rounding the corner from his workshop to check on the twins when he was suddenly and very unceremoniously thrown into the wall with a sharp cry. Cut short when a pair of soft lips pressed to his and unmistakable taste and scent of wine washed over him. Not one to deny a beautiful woman he kissed her back until she parted from him with glazed eyes filled with desire and looked around to press him into a door. She was of a mood and although it wasn’t the most ideal place or time it was best to indulge her and the press of his trousers agreed as she dropped to her knees to unbuckle and unfasten to pull him out and with two or three rolls of her wrist she replaced it with her mouth as she took him in sloppily. Percy muffled his groan as best he could with an arm while she worked him up until he pulled her from him and pressed her into the wall and with a little shuffling managed to give her exactly what she needed from him.

Keyleth had finished heating the metal to bend with her flames and placed the last one in the pile as she looked around. Percy had been gone a while. Maybe they had found something in the books. She exited the workshop and began to walk towards the library when she heard a rhythmic thud in one room aside and sounds similar to what she heard weeks ago in Whitestone before. Heat colored her cheeks while she fled to the library and found Vax in a mess of books with his boots crossed over one another on the table and an empty bottle of wine on it’s side. He was singing off key about something...her. About her in Elvish. Her hair, eyes, nose...breasts…, “Vax.”

He shifted to look over at her with a smile, “Hey. Kiki.” And sounded a little like the Sun Tree. “Come here. I was just singing about you.”

“You are very drunk.”

“I am. But I was still singing.”

“It was beautiful.”

“So are yooooooou.”

Keyleth walked over and inspected the bottle of wine. Ah. That explains it. “This is some heavy stuff. Did you drink the whole bottle?”

“I had one and so did my sister. Come sit on my lap.” He patted his thigh with a wiggle to his eyebrow.

Keyleth knew better but couldn’t see the harm in it, “I went looking for Percy.” She settled into his lap and his arms folded around her while he rested his cheek onto her back.

“Did you find him? My sister was looking for him.”

“She found him.” Keyleth laughed as he blew a raspberry on her back.

“Good. I love you.” He sang as he tickled her sides.

“I love you too. Did you happen to find anything before you drove yourself to drink?”

“Not a word. I think we have to go somewhere else. There won’t be alcohol there though.”

“A shame.” Keyleth replied somberly.

“Exactly. Oh. I should get you a bottle. I got it from the secret wine cellar.”

“No. I think one of us should be sober for the night.”

“That’s not fun.”

“Have you eaten?”

“What time is it?”

“Almost dinnertime.” Keyleth stroked the flesh over the back of his hands.

“Shit. Not since like really early this morning.”

“Fuck.” Keyleth muttered. “We have to get up. Get you some food. And water. You are going to have such a wine hangover tomorrow if you don’t.” Keyleth wiggled out of his grasp and he whined as he reached for her again. “Food. Now.” She ordered.

“You’re hot when you take charge, Kiki.” He winked at her as he stood and followed after her.

He did have a hangover the next day and so did Vex but they wouldn’t talk about that.

When they arrived back in Zephrah two days later and at least moderately fulfilled in their missions Keyleth addressed a few issues that arose during her time away while Vax followed behind as her shadow.

Vax sighed as he finished lighting the last candle and surveyed his work. The low light provided a somewhat relaxed atmosphere while the incense curled around the room as it burned while he awaited her return from the baths.

He couldn’t help the nervous tremble in his belly. Butterflies right before a battle surged to nearly choke him before he pushed them down especially when he heard her soft footfalls approach.

“Hey, Vax. The baths were a little--what’s all this?” She shut the door behind her with trepidation as she shifted from foot to foot.

“Hey.” He smiled and reached for her. “Just a little something to help us relax.”

“Oh.” She stared at his outstretched hand for about thirty seconds before she moved forward with her own palm outstretched. A bit of electric energy tingled where her fingers hovered above his hand and intensified as her palm connected with his. A firm hand wrapped around hers as he pulled her forward to press a kiss to the back of her hand.

Her lips parted as she breathed in while he pressed another kiss, then another to her hand, up to her wrist, then her lower arm until she stood in his space and his dark gaze threatened to swallow her whole as he looked up from her elbow. “Let's fix your hair first, yeah?”

Lips dry she licked them and nodded. Keyleth let him pull her down to sit on the bed in front of his crossed legs as he began a near nightly routine of brushing out her growing hair and braiding it for the morning. As usual the familiarity pulled her into a lull of relaxation and when he finished with her hair he pressed a calloused palm onto the open space just before her shirt began and stroked along the muscle down her arm.

“Will you be alright lying down on your belly for me?”

Keyleth nodded again and slowly shifted around Vax to lie at the top of the bed with her neck turned to the side.

“I won’t move any clothing up or down unless you ask and if there’s anything you don’t like you need to tell me right away, okay?”

Keyleth nodded.

“I need you to say it, Kiki.”

“Yes.” She nodded again and she couldn't help but tense a little as he settled next to her. The scent of lavender floated through the air while a wet sound echoed in the impossibly quiet room. She jumped when slick flesh touched her neck and he instantly pulled back.

“Kiki?”

“It’s fine. You just surprised me.” He replaced his hand after a few moments and the scent of lavender strengthened so close to her nose while he started on the apex of her neck in small circles. His other hand joined down the flesh of her neck while she closed her eyes and relaxed into the warmth of his touch. Down her shoulders and up her crossed arms he manipulated muscles and soothed nerves. When he shifted down to her legs she laughed when his fingers pressed into the bottom of her foot but enjoyed the way he pressed down into the sore ligaments and tendons where she walked too long in the day. As he massaged into her calves and up the back of her thighs she became conscious of the proximity of his hands to places they had never ventured before and the way her skin felt warm but in a pleasant sort of heavy way like she had a little too much alcohol but not enough to really mess her up.

Vax felt greedy but he continued his slow exploration of her smooth skin. He bent over and pressed his lips to her feet, ankle, calf, knee, thigh and then to the other and felt her body shift further into the sheets with a sigh. He kept going in the same vein until he was sure she was as relaxed as he could make her before he stretched out alongside her and pulled her over so her back pressed into his chest and leaned over to give her a full, deep kiss. They parted with an audible noise and further noise still when he continued down the side of her face and neck. Open mouthed suckling on her flesh left very little marks but he felt the change in her skin, the heat of it and the way her pulse fluttered under his mouth. “Remember.” He sighed. “Say the word and I’ll stop if you don’t like it.”

“I know.”

He shifted the two of them around until he sat back against the headboard and she right against his chest. His lips never left her neck except to peck along it absentmindedly while one hand shifted to trail fingers up her arm while she shivered and felt another flare of heat underneath where his fingers fell. The crook of her elbow and up the flesh of her upper arm to her neck where he could feel the pounding of her heart under his palm where he pressed it to her chest.

Warmth pulsed through her body with each beat of her heart hammering against her ribs like it wanted out. Wanted to lie in his palm and let him do what he wished with it. With her.

She felt at her back a firm press of his arousal and shifted against it just to hear the catch in his breath and she did. Rewarded with a nip at her shoulder he shifted his touch downward to cup her loose breast above her shirt. They felt heavy despite their smaller size. Full and sensitive, eager to be touched, and she whined into the air when his gentle grip shifted and his thumb brushed a nipple. Keyleth arched into his caress with a whine while the heat shifted to a hum under her skin. He did it again and again as heat rolled from his hand to her belly to settle and twist within her. She was already unbearably warm when his other hand took up a station on her opposite breast. With both sides being manipulated with such skill she threw her head back and felt another flare of heat while she rolled her hips unknowingly into nothing.

Vax pinched the hardened peaks lightly and was rewarded with a keen as she arched forward. She felt lightheaded, dizzy and free, hot and liquid and all the things she feared but she wanted more. Needed more but didn’t know how to ask. Her grip on her thoughts slipped through like fog while he crafted this needy creature into something new. Vax latched onto her left ear again and she bucked with another sharp cry and she felt so warm. So unbearably hot while she throbbed burning between her spread legs. Distracted he slid his hand down her body to tease above her belly where the sensation seemed so intense she let out a broken sob. “Kiki. Still okay?” His rough askance made her core throb unbearably again as she nodded but couldn’t breathe out an answer.

It was too much and not enough and she dug her hands into his thighs to try to keep herself steady but the room spun and she couldn’t breathe for the constant pulse of something she couldn’t name.

Vax had to breathe in and out almost dizzy with anticipation, with the way he had her, so strong writhing in his grasp, uncontrolled and beautiful with her wildness and he wanted her this way every single moment for him. Only for him. He groaned and mouthed hot, wet kisses into her neck while his hand moved and pressed with the lightest touch over her clothed core. He had to breathe through his nose when his fingers felt hot slickness even through the thin shorts and he pinched a little hard at the breast he held in his hand. Her hips rolled up and he followed them while she dug into his thigh with the sweetest pain. “Oh!” The throb came to a head between her thighs and her core clenched as he moved just two fingers along where it felt the hottest.

“Gods, Kiki. You’re so wet. So wet and warm for me.” He rumbled and she moaned in reply as another pulse coursed through her. The room had since blurred into shapes as sweat collected on too warm skin while Vax trailed his hand up to turn her head. Wet kisses in between panting gasps echoed around them while his hand kept the soft rhythm and she kept flaring brighter, hotter with each pass of them. She arched and moaned and couldn’t stop. Too hot. Too warm. It felt like a wave and she had to lift her hands to claw at his arm while she twisted and bucked while he had to loop his leg around her thigh to keep her open and still with his relentless touch. Firm and gentle while his fingers sopped wetter and wetter and he felt the nub at the apex and started to focus in on that. Her demeanor changed almost instantly to half-breaths, her heartbeat pounded through her skull and the room disappeared. She curled in a little bit and he felt the fine tremble begin in her thighs, belly, arms of her impending climax, “Vax.” She panted out. Fear. “Vax. What? What’s--happening. I’m--.” She bucked and spasmed while her free foot slid haphazard on the smooth sheets as the wave built and built and power flared white hot while she jerked in his arms. One hand lifted to grab onto his forearm pressed across her body at her throat to try to hold on.

“Shhhh. Shhh. I’ve got you. Let go. I promise you everything’s okay.”

He would remember the look of her for the rest of his days when she finally broke. Her eyes shut tight and she let the tremble course through her, arching and bowing in his arms. Her scream he caught in his mouth. The deep throated moans and cries while she continued to arch in and out of his grip, all the while he carried her through it.

Keyleth couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, as everything snapped and ecstasy barreled through her in a wave of molten fire and sensation that pulled her under.

When she finally came back to herself from the fog of her climax Vax held her tightly to his body while her skin tingled and her...cunt...throbbed with each beat of her heart. Another broken moan emerged when she tried to speak and she felt him laugh behind her. She could feel her heart beating and his right behind her. There was a dampness now everywhere between her legs and she colored briefly when she realized what it meant and that it might have gotten on the bed sheets.

“Are you okay?”

“Hmmmm.” She muttered out, exhausted and boneless. “Good.”

“I’ll say. We’ll need to do that again sometime, yeah? For science just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. I want to drive you there again and again just to watch you fall apart for me. You were breathtaking.”

Keyleth felt her body clench in a wave of fleeting arousal and she whined. “I didn’t hurt you?” Tired eyes turned up in such vulnerability his heart clenched and he ached to reassure her.

“No.” And she hadn’t. Not really. A bit of a flash burn on his arm in the shape of her hand he was careful to keep out of her eyesight. Something that would fix in the morning and they could talk about it then. She looked so peaceful and adorable he didn’t want to upset it.

She grinned up at him, “Thank you. Do you need--?”

“I’ll be fine I think.” In truth he had come in his pants like some green boy seeing his first pair of tits but that could be fixed with a change of pants. For now he would hold her to him as tender and soft as she was now and kiss her silly. “Thank you. For allowing me to witness that. It was magnificent.”

“Stop.” She blushed and looked away but he tipped her head back up to him as he shifted her pliant form around so they were lying face to face.

He kissed her forehead, cheeks, nose, chin, then her lips, “Never. I’ll never tire of this. Just sleeping next to you at night no matter if anything else happens between us or not. This is exactly where I want to be for the rest of my days. Right here. With you. As long as I can.” And he meant it. He knew there might be very little time until the Raven Queen called him for his charge and as long as he could remain here he was happy.

Keyleth felt her eyes well with tears after such an emotionally intense time between them, “So do I. I love you so much it hurts sometimes. I couldn’t bear to not have you here with me.”

“Shhhh. I’ll always be here with you even if I’m away. I promise.” He grinned and they spent a while just staring and touching one another until the damp and cold forced them to rise. Keyleth stumbled a little bit as her legs gave out on her and Vax felt the rush of male pride while he helped her steady herself before he sought his own change of clothes. They joined back in the bed and Vax drifted with light snores as Keyleth listened to his steady heartbeat while she floated off to sleep.

Chapter 10

#Keyleth #Vaxleth #Fanfiction #Rated M #vax'ildan #Slow Growth #Critical Role #Vox Machina #Campaign 1 #Drinking #Twin bonding

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ofsinnersandsaints · 5 years

Text

where do you run

rating: M word count: 11068 chapter: 4/?

ao3

Keyleth is restless after her fight with Raishan and her forced alliance with a dragon she can't begin to trust.

When she can't sleep, she seeks out companionship and despite a castle full of allies the only person she can think to go to is Grog, and she finds the kind of comfort and understanding she hasn't known for a very long time.

This chapter takes places during Episode 74, while the group is in Fort Daxio

Grog was sitting on the big couch in one of the living rooms eating when Keyleth came in, looking like she’d been put through the ringer. There was mud caked to nearly every inch of her, her hair was in a frazzled braid. She looked fucking exhausted.

“You okay?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time in the dirt,” she complained, grabbing one of the pillows and dropping it on his leg. He watched, amused, as she stretched out on the couch, resting her head on the pillow so she was essentially laying on his lap.

“Comfortable?” he teased, she was on her side already, eyes closed.

“Yes, actually.”

“You should probably eat.”

“Later,” she grumbled, shifting on his leg. “I’m taking a quick nap. Wake me up in a half hour.”

His brows lowered. “When?”

Grog watched Keyleth open a eye. “Do you see that clock over there?”

“Yeah.”

“When the long hand is on the three, wake me up.”

“The what?”

She rolled over so she was on her back, looked at him like she barely found him funny. “I know you know what a three is. Pike taught you.”

“Alright, alright. When the long hand is on the three.”

“Thanks,” she rolled back over to her side and closed her eyes.

A few minutes later she was breathing softly and Grog was done with his food, but he didn’t want to getup and get more and mess up her nap, so he moved carefully on the couch so he could get more comfortable and rested his head back.

“I’m just saying, your wings only last for an hour which makes my broom inherently better,” Vex’s voice was saying from somewhere down the hall. Grog looked at the clock, the long hand wasn’t quite at the three but Vex was coming.

But if he let Keyleth sleep on his lap it would wig out Vex and whoever else was coming down with her and her twin.

“Time does not make something better, it just means it lasts longer,” Vax was arguing, stopping dead in his tracks when he came into the room.

Thinking about it from their point of view, it was a pretty damn cozy image they made, resting together on the couch.

“Keep it down, dumbasses.”

Vex’s eyes narrowed. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You’re not interrupting nothing,” Grog corrected. “She’s just sleeping.”

“On your lap,” Vax said as if her position was somehow in question.

“I told you,” Vex hissed at Vax and then walked out and towards the kitchen.

Vax stared at them. “Vex said she saw Keyleth leave your room this morning.”

“Yeah.”

Grog enjoyed watching the half-elf squirm as he tried to come up with a word for whatever the fuck he was thinking about. “Was there a reason?”

“Yeah.”

Keyleth shifted on his lap, her eyes opening before sitting up. He kind of missed the weight of her but kept his eyes on Vax. “My ears are ringing,” she said as she pushed her hair back. “Hey Vax. How did recon go?”

“Good,” he answered, his eyes bouncing between them the same way his sister’s had that morning. “How did the tunnel digging go?”

“Good, I managed to finish before my spells gave out.” She pulled the leather strap from her hair and Grog was briefly distracted by her running her hands through the long strands. “So they’ll have a safe place to hide if the dragons come. How far did Percy get on his trebuchet?”

“No fucking idea,” Grog answered, shifting on the couch and resting his arm along the back of it behind Keyleth. “But I moved a shit ton of stuff for him today.”

She moved on the couch, scooting closer to him. She still looked exhausted, sighing a little as she leaned against his side and rested her head on his shoulder. “I need to get up and get something to eat.”

“Ain’t that what the fucking servants are for?” Grog asked and called for one of the ghostly servants and told them to bring them a bunch of food.

Vax stared at them both.

“I did what I could,” Pike was saying as she walked into the room with Scanlan walking alongside her. “But a lot of people were hurt. Hi guys.”

“Hey, Pike. Food’s on the way.”

“Oh, good.” She pulled herself up on one of the other couches and it surprised him that she wasn’t being as weird as Vex and Vax had been, with the druid plastered against him, half asleep. “I did see Percy and he said he was going to be a while still.”

“That answers the trebuchet question.”

“Are you guys fucking?”

Grog’s eyes swung to Scanlan who was in the middle of the room, hands on his hips as he stared at them. “Excuse me?”

“For the love of the everything, Scanlan,” Keyleth muttered with a roll of her eyes. But she didn’t move.

Pike scolded him by snapping his name.

“What?” Scanlan asked, all innocence. “Vex saw her leave his room this morning and now they’re all snuggled together. I think it’s a reasonable conclusion to come to.”

“It’s not your business,” Pike reminded him.

“I can’t believe you guys had time to gossip,” Keyleth cut in. “There was so much to get done today.”

“I didn’t gossip,” Grog added helpfully.

Keyleth laughed. “Me neither, but then again I was underground by myself for most of the day so there was no one to talk to but the roots.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

She laughed again, so did Pike and Scanlan.

The food came then, pounds of chicken, and they all ate together; Vex eventually finding her way back to join them. Keyleth stayed next to him but moved away from his body to sit up and eat.

They drank wine and talked about what to do the next day, not able to come up with a clear decision, but they needed to go to the fire plane and get the armor for his buddy, Pike. He didn’t know the math but he didn’t fucking care about it.

Daxion could take of its fucking self, they’d take care of Pike.

“Let’s figure it out in the morning,” Keyleth announced, putting her hand on his knee to leverage herself off the couch. “I have to take a bath or I’m going to start grossing myself out. Night everyone!”

They all sent their greetings as Keyleth left and he briefly wondered what would happen when everyone went to bed. It had been three nights in a row they'd shared a bed and he could recognize a pattern when he saw it.

It was his turn to go to her.

The fact he put it off for another hour before he headed up to his room wasn’t a sign of cowardice, it was just… anything else.

“I’m going to bed Scan-man,” Grog said, putting down his ale. “I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

“Have fun fucking,” Scanlan yelled at him, cackling at his own joke.

“Have fun sleeping in your bed alone,” Grog called back and headed up to his room to dump the Bag of Holding and clean up before heading to Keyleth’s. When he opened the door it smelled fresh and clean and Keyleth was sitting cross-legged on his bed in the dark green tunic from the previous night.

He almost stumbled.

“What’s with the notebook?” he asked as he shut the door behind him, trying to act like this was all normal when his heart was racing like someone was holding a knife to it.

“I’m just trying to write down everything we still need to do,” she answered without looking up, pushing her hair back like it was bugging her. “It’s a lot.”

“You’re going to work yourself into a tizzy, and then you’re going to keep me up because you can’t sleep.”

She looked up at him then, a wry smile on his face. “You’re not kicking me out?”

“You’re already here,” he shrugged. “No sense in you walking somewhere else when there’s a perfectly good bed here.”

“Thanks. Can you think of anything I need to add to my list?”

“I’m sure you got everything under control,” he sat down on the chair and started undoing his boots. “And even if we did make a plan, it’d all go to shit anyway.”

She sighed and closed the notebook then pushed her hair back again. “Fair enough.”

“What’s with your hair?”

“I need to comb and braid it so it doesn’t get tangled but my arms hurt.”

The words caught his attention, “Were you physically moving dirt?”

“Spells ran out,” she shrugged. “And I almost done anyway.”

He swore under his breath. “You should have called me Keyleth, that’s what we have the earrings for.”

She waved away his scold. “You were helping Percy.”

“Keyleth.”

“Fine,” she rolled her eyes dramatically and it almost made him smile. “Next time I have to dig an underground bunker I’ll call you.”

“That’s all I ask. Now, come over here.”

Keyleth hopped off the bed, the amount of leg he could see was almost indecent, but he wasn’t really a decent guy so it worked out for him. “Why am I coming over?”

“On your knees.”

The look she gave him, flushed skin and wide eyes, absolutely told him where her mind went and he got a kick out of it, even if that wasn’t what he’d intended. “I’ll braid your hair.”

Her face went instantly soft. “You know how to braid hair?”

“Who do think did it for Pike? Wilhand?” He scoffed, remembering how bad Pike's grandad had been at doing her hair. “I can’t do nothin’ fancy and if you don’t-“

“No,” she reached out and touched his hand, still in midair. “I appreciate it.”

“On you knees then.”

“You did that on purpose,” she accused as she turned around and knelt down between his knees, her back to him. “And you’re going to pay for it later.”

He didn’t deny it, because now that he'd said it, he was thinking about it. “Yeah? How’s that?”

“I’ve seen your and Vax’s pranks, I could think of something.”

He tugged on her hair once, and something sparked hot and quick at the way her body followed it back. “Just don’t touch the beard.”

She looked up and back at him, “Deal.”

Grog released the tension in her hair. “I don’t have a comb,” he apologized.

“I usually just run my fingers through it if I don't have one.”

With a nod she couldn’t see he put most of her hair over one shoulder and combed his fingers through her hair one section at the time. Methodically he worked through the strands, careful with the tangles, and he thought this might be a kind of mediation as the rest of world turned fuzzy and his focus was completely there.

With her.

By the time he finished the braid, starting at the crown of her head and ending at the tips of her hair, he was reluctant to stop but he made himself tie off the red, silky strands with a piece of leather. “You’re all set.”

But she didn’t move.

It took him a minute to realize what was happening, but as he slowly came back to the world he realized her breathing had slowed. He could see her tiny fist clenched in the fabric of her nightshirt, her knuckles nearly white.

She was affected.

It hit him in the gut; sex.

He stared at her bare shoulder, red just under the skin where he could see the blush in full bloom. Grog had been tempted by a lot of stupid shit, a few of which he’d been done in by, but no matter how risky or reckless he’d never been able to stop himself from touching.

So he touched her.

One finger to her shoulder and the quiet little gasp was enough to make him stop, to give her a chance to pull away. When she didn’t, he added more fingers to the smoothness of her skin, running them down her arm to her elbow and back up again.

Grog leaned forward so he was all but whispering in her ear. “Stand up.”

There was the smallest hesitation but she raised up to her feet, turning around when he told her to.

He was tall enough her head was only a few inches above his even sitting down, and he could see how big the blacks of her eyes were. He knew what it meant.

Grog kept his eyes on hers as he put the palms of his hands on the sides of her legs, and slid them up her thighs until the fabric was bunched up on his wrists. He half expected her to say stop or step away, but instead she brought her hands up to rest on his shoulders.

Her eyes broke away from his and he couldn’t tell what she was looking at but he would swear he could feel her gaze on him, on his shoulders, his chest, his arms.

And he could feel her skin beneath his palms, his fingers itching to go further, touch more.

Instead, he stood up and kissed her.

His big, rough hands on the sides of her face as he took what he wanted fully knowing she could knock him down to his knees if she wanted to. Being such a big man it was often difficult to kiss a woman while standing, but Keyleth was tall enough to fit in his arms, lithe enough to make him feel invincible.

She rocked up to her toes and he could feel her fingers pressing into the muscles of his neck, her nails too short to bite into the skin. His arms wrapped around her, one high on her back and the other just above the curve of her ass.

He wanted every bit of her pressed against him, and he had all kinds of dirty images of what he’d like to do with her but he’d settle on her mouth. He nipped at her lower lip, the instinctive gasp giving him access to her the rest of her. Grog thrust his tongue into her mouth, imitating what he’d like to do with his cock.

She clung to his shoulders, her tongue reaching to touch his and it took every bit of his hard earned control not to turn her around and bend her over the table to fuck her long and hard, to pull a dozen new sounds out of her mouth while he buried himself between her legs.

“I think it’s time to go to sleep, Kiki.”

“Sleep?” she asked and he took more than a little bit of pride at how she blinked like she couldn’t remember what was happening.

“I want to fuck you, Keyelth,” he told her, keeping his voice low. “I want you laid out on just about any flat service, wet and begging.”

She swallowed and his eyes couldn’t help but follow the movement in her throat. “Yeah. Cool. Okay, sure.”

He resisted the urge to laugh at the fumbling of words. “But when that happens, I want you to be able to use your arms, and not fall asleep half way through.”

Keyleth snorted out a laugh, her forehead resting on his chest. “You know what? That’s a fair point, though I hardly think I’d be able to fall asleep while doing... all that.”

Grog ran a hand down the length of her braid, then rested his hand on the back of her neck. “So sleep?"

“Sleep,” she agreed, but kept her gaze steady on his even as the blush on her cheeks deepened to a furious red. “But I’m going to hold you to the rest of what you said.”

He faked confusion. “Which part?”

She narrowed those bright green eyes at him. “You know which part.”

“I really don’t,” he deadpanned.

“You’re going to force me to say it?”

Her face was red as a tomato and he got a huge kick out of it. “I really am.”

She pushed her shoulders back, straightened her spine like she was going into battle, and looked him dead in the eye. “I’m going to hold you to fucking me on the first available flat surface when I can lift my arms and won't fall asleep.”

Grog held out his hand between them, “Deal.”

Keyleth shook her head, but she was smiling as she took his hand. “Deal.”

Having settled that, Grog put his hands on either side of her hips and picked her up so he could throw her on to the bed, her happy shriek a welcome sound after everything they’d been through the past few weeks.

“I could have gotten into bed myself,” she told him on a laugh.

“I thought you were tired?” he asked, using the pitcher of water and a rag to wipe the dirt off his skin. “I just saved you a bunch of steps.”

He wasn’t looking at her, but he thought she rolled her eyes. “You’re my hero.”

“I know, but it’s nice to hear.”

She laughed again and buried herself beneath the covers, rolling over to him when he got in bed himself a few minutes later. “We’re going to the fire plane, aren’t we?”

He wrapped his arm around her, “Looks like. You okay with that?”

“I know we need to, I know I want answers, but I’m worried about what those answers are going to be.”

“Those are worries for tomorrow, Keyelth. Close your eyes, go to sleep, enjoy the calm while we’ve got it.”

“Calm before the storm,” she murmured almost to herself, but he couldn’t argue with the logic. Whatever happened next, it was probably going to be bad.

So he’d enjoy this, he’d enjoy Keyleth pressed against him, her hair on his arm and her breath on his chest, while he could. Cause gods only knew what would happen next.

#keyleth #grog #grogleth #critical role #critical role fic

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romeoandjulietyouwish · 2 years

Note

help medieval au has got me googling princess dresses I think keyleth would wear, also tiaras, she's very pretty okay?

ANYHOO I keep thinking of this one scenario where maybe during the war, when Vax is at this point pretty far away, apparently there was an attack on the castle, like the whole thing was like this trap to get there strongest troops away to make the kingdom more vulnerable, and they hear about this but there's no word on casualties and Vax is Stressed, he feels so helpless not knowing If his sister and keyleth are alive or okay and hates that he couldn't protect them. maybe they had sending stones as an emergency type of thing? and that night he used it, called out to keyleth or vex but got no response, which only freaked him out more, he spent most of the night in the infirmary next to pike cause he just needed to be around family. maybe it took a day or two until he got a response back from the sending stone, they're all alright, some cuts and bruises but mostly just been busy trying to get things back in order, he's never been so relieved in his entire life.

Omg I love that

And he's half ready to just grab Simon a get back as fast as he fucking can, but Pike reminds him that it's at least three days back and he'll be exhausted. So while they wait, she puts him to work in the medic tent and teaches him some basic healing so that he can have something to do with his hands while they wait for word from the castle. Grog and Scanlan do the same, the four of them just sticking close to each other because they need that support while their friends are in danger.

And when they hear Vex's voice on the sending stone, she tells him that there were only a few causalities, mostly knights and that Korrin and Keyleth and Percy were locked in the bunker under the castle during attack so they were safe as could be. Vex doesn't tell them where she was, but when Vax presses her she just tells him that she's a little banged up but she's completely fine and she and Keyleth have spent the past day in the infirmary helping tend to wounds when the can.

But also the panic that Percy would feel being locked somewhere safe and out of harm when he knows that Vex isn't safe? That even their room in the stables isn't safe. Keyleth just spends most of her time in the shelter trying to calm him down, but to him it's so much like what happened to his family that he's just struggling.

And afterwards, when they get the all clear, Percy and Keyleth sprint to find Vex and the second they find her helping move the wounded inside, Percy is pulling her into a massive hug and kissing her through his tears.

#medieval au #critical role #vox machina #lis makes hcs #vaxleth #percahlia

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waltwhitmansbeard · 1 year

Text

my fair lady: chapter eleven

there's a whole tag of these things, read them maybe? inspiration is @romeoandjulietyouwish's medieval au

Every step is agony, but Keyleth keeps her back as straight as she can as Vax and Percy help her through the Emerald Citadel, each with an arm steady around her waist. The palace is crawling with Syngornian guards, who watch the group closely as Jarett leads the way toward where her father is being kept. They approach the hall that leads to the entrance to the ballroom, and Keyleth feels her mouth go dry and her heartbeat start to race. Echoing in her mind are the screams of those gathered for the peace celebration as the masked attacker descended upon the room. Her limping steps stutter, and she feels Vax's arm tighten around her.

"Keyleth?" he murmurs, too low for Jarett to hear.

"I...um..." She swallows a few times, trying desperately to clear her constricting throat. "I can't..."

"Got it." Vax calls out, "Jarett, take us there another way."

The guard stops and looks back, confused, but Vax's firm expression leaves no room for argument. Jarett quickly pivots, leading the group toward another hall. A few minutes later, he stops before a tall, polished oak door, which is surrounded by half a dozen guards. One of them, upon recognizing the approaching troupe, raps his knuckles on the door and calls, "Sovereign Korrin! Jarett has returned with the princess."

The door cracks open, and once Jarett's report has been verified, Keyleth hears her father's warm but distressed voice. "Keyleth? Keyleth!"

She can't wait for Vax and Percy to help her in. She slips her arms off of their shoulders and hobbles inside. "Papa?"

The room is clearly a guest chamber of some kind, though nothing nearly as nice as what her father had originally been appointed upon his arrival in Syngorn. Her father stands near the bed, his fine dress robes torn and askew, and a cadre of even more guards stands sentry all around. As soon as Keyleth comes into view, he charges past them, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight. "Keyleth, I was so worried."

She melts into him, no longer the crown princess of a nation, but a little girl clinging to her father in a storm. "Papa, I'm okay, I promise." She tilts her head back to look at him. "Were you hurt?"

He kisses the top of her head. "Only jostled. Grog was quick to get me out of harm's way." From the corner of her eye, Keyleth sees the goliath preen. "What of you, daughter?"

She's reminded once again of the throbbing in her leg. "Only something minor," she assures him, but a choked sound from behind betrays her.

Her father's eyes narrow. "Lord Percival?"

Keyleth rolls her eyes. "I'm fine, Father." She tries to take a step back, but a jolt of pain shoots up her leg, and she nearly crumbles.

Before she can hit the ground, there are hands on her waist to steady her. "Your Highness," Vax says quietly, bringing her arm back around his neck. To her father, he ducks his head and asks, "Your Majesty, is there somewhere for her to sit?"

Keyleth is quickly ushered over to a small sofa, where Vax sets her down gently. Her father hovers to the side. "What happened? Vax'ildan, is she injured? Was she taken to a healer?"

"Papa, please," Keyleth groans, reaching up to grab his hand. Vax stands off to the side, assuming his standard position of attention. "The wound is minor, and Vax helped stave off the worst of it."

He perches just beside her on the sofa. "Keyleth, this attack was targeted and extremely well-coordinated. I need to know exactly what happened to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice."

Keyleth sighs. "Fine, but...can we speak in private? Just us and Percy, and Vax, of course."

Her father nods, and his guards exit the room, forming a phalanx with those already outside the door. Percy leans against one of the posters of the bed, arms crossed. Keyleth takes a deep breath and begins to fill the three men in on what happened when the attack started. She describes being grabbed and carried away from the fray, fighting to get free before she could be spirited away, the mysterious flames on her hands and, of course, the bolts of lightning she called down from above. Things get hazy for her after that, but she is sure to inform her father of Vax and Percy's help in getting her safe and bringing her back to him.

As she speaks, she tries not to watch Vax's face in her peripheral. She sees him struggle to keep his face neutral, his skin becoming paler and paler as she details the terror she felt while being manhandled out of the palace. His fingers tighten and loosen repetitively on the hilt of the one dagger he still holds. His jaw is clenched impossibly tight, and Keyleth wants to take his hand and assure him of her safety.

When she's finished her account, her father is apoplectic. He stands and begins pacing a circle around the room. "This is...this is an outrage." He jabs a finger toward Vax, who doesn't flinch. "You were hired to protect her!"

Keyleth opens her mouth to defend him, but before she can say a word, Percy interjects, "Your Majesty, Princess Keyleth was left vulnerable because of me. I take complete responsibility for leaving her unattended when the chaos broke out. Vax took swift action to get her to safety, and he is the one who concocted the antidote that counteracted the poison in her veins. The princess is alive because of his skill and bravery."

Both Keyleth and Vax stare at him, wide-eyed. Keyleth has never heard Percy express any sort of opinion with regards to Vax, but his words of confidence ring sincere. Her father is still seething, but Percy's statement seems to take the edge off. He runs a tired hand over his face. "My apologies, Vax'ildan. I simply...my daughter's life is the most important thing, and to have come so close to losing her..."

Vax nods. "Of course, Your Majesty. Despite Lord Percival's kind attestation, I hold deep shame in not being by Princess Keyleth's side throughout this entire ordeal. I feel that I have failed you both."

Keyleth's entire body itches to take his face in her hands and kiss the guilt from his eyes. If she could accomplish but one goal in her life, it would be to make him understand how no one could have failed her less, how thoroughly and hopelessly she needs him, how foolish she feels for having nearly died with him still believing that she could one day learn to love someone else.

Her father strides over to the window and stares down at the courtyard below. "I do not know what these next hours hold for the future of the Ashari Nation. The treaty has not been signed, of course, and it will not be unless I have assurances that the Draconians were not behind this attack. Until then, we are still at war, and I will not allow you to be so far from the safety of our castle while this is the case."

Her jaw drops. "Father!"

"You will be seen to by a healer, and then you will be taken with a full contingent of guards back to Zephrah. Information is still being gathered, but all evidence suggests that the Ashari were the focus of this assault, and I will not have you within these palace walls any longer than is strictly necessary."

"Father, no." Keyleth shoves herself to her feet, wincing as she agitates her wound. Vax lurches forward, but she waves him off, pulling herself to her full height. "I will not be whisked away like a child, Father. If the future of the Ashari is at stake then I will be here to help guide that future. I serve no one from behind our castle walls. My people will see that I was not felled by this attack, and they will see that in spite of it I am prepared to bring justice for those we lost and to secure a peaceful destiny for our nation." Her heart beats hard and fast in her chest; she has never spoken so boldly to her father before, but neither has she spoken with such conviction. She is tired of being left behind, of being protected, of being excluded from the conversations that dictate her nation's fate. Her father looks back at her, expression inscrutable. She doesn't blink.

Finally, he sighs. "You are to go nowhere alone. The guard stationed outside your door will be doubled, and Vax'ildan is to be with you at all times." Her stomach flips, but she ignores it. "If there is any hint that this attack was orchestrated by the Draconians, you will be removed from the premises at once. Do you understand?"

She nods quickly. "Of course."

"Now sit down before you pass out."

That order she has no trouble obeying. She returns to the sofa as her father strides over to the doors of the chambers to update the guards. While he's occupied, Vax kneels down beside her and murmurs, "You wear your power well, Your Highness."

And because she is still, at her core, a silly girl in love with a silly boy, she allows herself to steal the briefest of touches, her fingertips gliding across his cheekbone for just a moment before falling back to her lap, where she knows they belong.

#critical role #critical role fic #cr fic #vaxleth #vaxleth fic #vaxleth au #tlovm #tlovm fic #my fic #my fair lady #vox machina #vox machina fic

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mnemememory · 5 years

Text

all the stars in the sky -

Chapter 1

Guardians of the Galaxy AU where Beau and Jester are simultaneously better and worse than Starlord, Yasha and Molly are Gamora, Nott is not a genetically modified raccoon (but she's just as good at blowing things up), Caleb is Groot, Fjord has less tattoos than Drax and Caduceus is confused.

INFREQUENT UPDATES

"Beau," Jester says, waving her hands through the holographic images of happy people. "I don't think this is such a good idea."

Beau keeps walking forward, footsteps echoing through the ruined cityscape. She tries not to look at the holograms too closely - she knows that Jester enjoys decorating her maps with whatever flavour text she can get her hands on, but Beau finds the whole thing just a little too lifelike to properly enjoy. Especially when that involves looking at the faces of dead people.

"Dairon is going to be mad," Jester says, hurrying to catch up. Her map flickers out for a second as they enter a new quadrant, and then springs to life. Children run across the cracked stone ground in a loop. Beau closes her eyes to steady herself.

"Dairon is always mad," Beau says. "And this is just a little side-job. There's nothing wrong with making a bit of extra money."

"Dairon is always mad at you," Jester corrects. She fidgets a little with her watch, and the hologram resets itself to contain only the architecture. Beau's tense muscles loosen a fraction. "She likes me. I'm her favourite."

That is blatantly untrue, and Beau refuses to acknowledge such lies. She turns her nose up in the air and keeps moving further into the ruined world.

The planet of Emon is eerie in its stillness. Towers stretch to skeletons, the twin suns red and dying. The light flickers ominously overhead. Beau has her night-vision goggles pushed back into her fringe in case things go dark. Jester doesn't need to worry - Tieflings never really had to worry about not being able to see - but Beau is Terran, is human, and she doesn't have any of those same natural advantages.

"Dairon doesn't have favourites," Beau says. "And if she did, it would most certainly be me."

Jester very maturely sticks her tongue out, hopping over a fissure in the ground. Her boot kicks against something that snarls, and Beau has her staff out and set to sear before she's even conscious of what she's doing.

Jester laughs. "Put that thing away," she says, kneeling down. There's a small, furred creature curled up in-between two rocks, fur dark and patchy. Jester soothes it out from its hiding place with careful words, smiling without showing her teeth. Beau can't even begin to understand how she does it. She had once had a messenger owl, and. Well. Things hadn't ended particularly well between them. She liked to think that he was still out there, somewhere, living his best life with the stars. But she doubted it.

"Hello there," Jester says, coaxing the thing into her hands. In the dim half-light it is revealed to be a startling red rather than the darker brown Beau had initially thought, long and slender. Jester pets it between the ears and it lets out a small croon.

Beau glances at her wrist. There's a timer in the corner of her screen, seconds ticking over and -

Beau's eyes narrow.

"Jester," she says.

"I'm going to name you Sprinkle," Jester tells the thing. Beau internally sighs. They're never going to get rid of it now.

"Jester," she says again. "Come on. We need to hurry up."

Jester sighs. "Okay, okay," she says, standing up. The creature squeaks, and Jester obligingly wraps it around her neck like furry scarf. Beau is almost jealous - it's fairly chilly in the dead light - but also that thing is probably infected with all kinds of diseases her Terran immune system couldn't hope to handle. She's learned the tough way that sometimes, just sometimes, being human in a galaxy of weirdo superheroes kind of sucks.

"This way," Jester says. The world around them glitches again, and the hologram resets itself a few frames away.

They go down.

The further into the ground they go, the less data that Jester has to work with. She umms and aahs about it, the little creature squeaking every so often into Jester's ear. Beau stays a few metres ahead, staff out. A mild current of electricity runs through the metal - not enough to burn, but definitely enough to stun.

"Just a little further," Jester says.

"You've said that for the past five minutes," Beau says.

"I got lost before," Jester says. "We shouldn't have gone own that last corner. But now I know where we are. Just a little further."

And then:

Beau hadn't quite imagined it properly. Emon was a dead thing, the centre of an empire that had long-since fallen to ruin. She's heard stories, of course, because the Cobalt Soul told stories. She's read books, of course, because they were the purveyors and providers of knowledge. She's heard of them all: Allura Vysoran, Kima of Vord, Vox Machina...

Stories.

The room in front of her is – everything she could have dreamed of, and everything she never wanted to see. The Council Chambers, adorned in cobweb lace and rotted tapestries. Beau catches her breath on the dust in the air and she feels like she's choking.

Jester keeps going forward. Jester has always been so good at putting one foot in front of the other, even in the presence of so much history. "This way," she says, and kneels in the middle of the chamber.

As she walks forward, the air transforms, the hologram stretching outward like magic. Beau's eyes widen as the rubble and rock are swept away underneath clear glass floors and glowing pillars of ice. The tapestries restitch themselves into intricate tableau's of life and death, characters waving sword-like instruments and riding upon enormous beasts. A table sits where Jester is kneeling, surrounded by people.

The Council.

Beau walks forward in a dream, eyes locked forward. The people around the room are still, unmoving – Beau can't quite reconcile their frozen faces with Jester's proclivity towards movement in her art. Her eyes are drawn to a tall, slender figure adorned in fire, eyes of burnished bronze glowing out of a pale half-moon face, cheeks littered with freckles. Tall antlers stretch towards the ceiling, holding back a wealth of red hair.

Keyleth of the Air Ashari.

"What do you think?" Jester asks, looking up from the floor with a wide smile on her face. "I didn't have time to animate them properly, but I got a whole lot of historical references -"

"They look real," Beau says, heart seizing in her chest.

Jester beams.

Beau kneels down next to her. Her skin prickles with the feeling of being watched, and she can't quite help but wish that Jester had made her holograms a little less realistic than she had.

"Here," Jester says, pressing her hand down on a floor tile. Her fingers glow blue for a second, and then bright pink sparks fly from her fingernails to dig into the cracks in the floor.

Beau watches as the ground splits apart, tiles jolting downwards to form a square opening. Slowly, the needle-point of a pyramid the size of Beau's thigh begins to pierce upwards, something round and metallic balanced on the very tip.

"Here it is," Jester says proudly, dusting the remaining sparks of pink light off of her hands and getting to her feet. "The orb!"

Beau grins, reaching out and -

Jester's holograms glitch out of existence, leaving the room in hollow darkness. Something hard and cold presses into the small of her back. Beau's fingers freeze millimetres from the orb.

"Good evening, ladies," a smooth voice says from behind her. "But I think we'll be taking that off your hands."

Jester looks up. "Oh, no," she says. "It's the...who are you?"

Beau retracts her hand and turns slowly around, making sure not to make any kind of obvious play towards the orb. The man is clearly drow, the purple skin highlighted through Beau's goggles. His cloak flares out dramatically around him. Beau would be impressed, if there hadn't been a blade stabbing painfully into the small of her back.

"Who I am is not important," the drow says. "Please step away."

Beau's fingers twitch towards her staff, but the blade digs a little deeper into the gaps in her armour. Beau lets out a short huff and steps to the side, making sure to telegraph her moves so she doesn't get turned into a human kebab.

Jester doesn't look too impressed. "I think that this is called cheating," she says. "You just followed us here, didn't you? That was very inconsiderate -"

"Please be quiet," the drow says. "Or I'm going to have to do some unpleasant things to this friend of yours."

"Beau's been stabbed before," Jester says, grinning.

"You're awfully confident for two scavengers going up against the might of Xhorhas."

Beau closes her eyes. The Dynasty. Great. Dairon was going to kill her.

"Well, Xhorhas isn't really here," Jester says, getting to her feet and brushing off her skirts. Pink sparks flew down the fabric to fizzle out at her feet. "I only see you."

"Yeah," Beau says, trying to casually lean away from the knife. "There's only one of you and two of us."

The knife follows Beau's unsubtle attempts to remain un-stabbed. With a sigh, the drow snaps his fingers.

"I see you're going to have to do this the hard way," he says, and Beau lunges away.

Jester is already there, gigantic lollipop-shaped weapon materialising within her hands to give the drow a good whack on the back of his head. Beau grabs onto the orb and stuffs it down her shirt. She grabs onto Jester's outstretched hand and they pop away in time to avoid a flurry of arrows.

They re-materialise back above ground, towards the upper crust of Emon. The ground roughens underneath their feet as they hurry forward, the stones giving way to badly cracked earth and loose dirt. In the distance behind them, something very large and very angry begins to yell.

"Dairon is not going to be happy with us," Jester says.

"Can you stop saying that?" Beau says miserably. She is not looking forward to the upcoming lecture.

Jester just sticks her tongue out at Beau. They parked The Mistake an unfortunate distance away, and there are some days that Beau really regrets letting Jester name basically everything. Still, the name always seems to end up feeling brutally appropriate. Like now.

"Just a little further," Beau says. She risks a quick glance behind them and lets out a low curse. The Mistake might be small and well-maintained, but she was built for an entirely different skillset to Xhorhsian tortoise-ships, which (in addition to being very large and hard to destroy) packed a mean bite when things got down to it. And, apparently, the drow and his fellow companions had thought to park their entourage fairly close to the ruin, because they were gaining on them.

"Where are you, where are you," Beau says. She recognises the area vaguely, but that doesn't mean they're going to be able to find their cloaked ship with any sort of urgency. The rock formations all blend together under the weight of adrenalin that's burning through her veins, and Beau has to take a few deep breaths to centre herself. Remember your training, she thinks, but Jester is beside her and they've got three tortoise-ships in the air behind them and –

She slams into something very hard and very invisible.

"Found it," Beau says woozily. She shakes her head and rams around the metal plating for the release door button, only for Jester to push past her and do it in half the time it would have taken Beau.

They both rush forward and slam the door behind them, Beau hopping up onto the second level and scrambling to the controls.

"Buckle up," she calls back. "This is going to take a miracle!"

...

"I can't believe we survived that."

Jester groans in agreement from where she's tumbled off to the side of the ship, face smooshed into the metal wall. She doesn't appear to have any inclination to get up, and Beau kind of feels that same. She's slumped over the controls, sweating badly. She can feel blood slowly dripping from the wound in her back, and she isn't looking forward to peeling off her shirt anytime soon. Maybe if she soaked it first...

Of course, getting any sort of water out here was basically impossible, so Beau is probably going to have to settle for antiseptic and stinging for the rest of her life. There are very few things that Beau misses about Earth, but regular baths in water is one of them.

"We should get this back to Pumat."

"Can we take a break first?" Jester says.

"The sooner we get this thing to Pumat, the sooner we get paid," Beau says. She reaches down her shirt and pulls out the orb to study it.

It doesn't look especially valuable. Beau has been living around smugglers – well, technically "anarchists", but smuggling was a very convenient and profitable front, so Dairon didn't mind the occasional odd-job so much – basically Beau's whole life, and she knows how to spot valuable things. The metalwork is in good shape for something that's been living under the ruins of Emon for probably over a thousand years, but considering the workmanship that was commonly associated with that planet, that was hardly a surprise. The only reason they had known it was there was because of some very specific instructions from Pumat, and even then it had taken a solid fortnight of research to figure out how to narrow down the search from "planet" to "building". There's nothing – well, especially interesting about it. It's more than a little disappointing.

"I want to go to a bathhouse," Jester says. "The last one we went to had a really cute girl who couldn't stop looking at you –"

Beau grimaces. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"It'll be fun!"

"How do you even get your eyes to sparkle like that?"

From the lower floor of The Mistake, something bangs against the roof.

"Oh shit," Beau says.

Jester sighs. "Please tell me you didn't –"

From across the control room, the floor hatch slams open and an enraged shriek fills the cockpit. Beau cringes into her seat as a female halfling pulls herself onto the upper deck. She's barely dressed, muscles for days, and Beau has so many regrets right now. So many.

"Oh," she says, trying and failing to laugh. It comes out as more of a pathetic squeak, which is more than a little bit embarrassing. "I'm sorry, I completely" – forgot you were there. Beau stops herself from actually saying it, but from the way the halfling's eyes narrow to furious slits, it doesn't really help her face.

"Where am I," she snarls.

"Uh..."

"Hi, I'm Jester!" Jester says, beaming.

The halfling ignores her, eyes boring into Beau’s skull.

“We’ll take you back to the Creek, er –”

“Keg,” the halfling helpfully supplies.

“Keg,” Beau repeats weakly. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you home ASAP.”

Jester is laughing at her. Beau unsubtly elbows her.

Keg looks extremely unimpressed, but she does go back into the hold, which Beau is counting as progress.

“I’ll log in the coordinates for Shadyrun Creek, then,” Jester says, scratching underneath Sprinkle’s chin with a sparkling air of nonchalance that Beau kind of wants to kick out into space.

“…yeah,” she says, folding her arms across her chest and trying not to blush. “That’s probably a good idea.”

…

#critical role #critical role campaign 2 #beauregard #jester lavorre #guardians of the galaxy au #fanfiction #my writing #i think i'm funny #who even knows what this is #not me

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mrandmrsvex · 6 years

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Rating: General Audiences Relationships: Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia Additional Tags: Valentine's fluff, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Secret Admirer gone wrong gone right Summary:

Vex doesn't care about Valentine's Day. She doesn't mind being alone, not at all. But a message from a secret admirer is far too interesting not to follow.

Percy doesn't care about Valentine's Day. He forgets about it, mostly. But a message from a secret admirer piques his interest.

Vex didn't care for Valentine's Day. It was overblown. Commercial. Fake. Why demand to excessively celebrate love on a particular day? What nonsense. She didn't care for it, not one bit.

This, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that she was single on this year's Valentine's. It was a matter of principle.

After all, there wasn't anyone she was interested in anyway. No one she could think of to even ask for a date, not even a non-committal one. And even if she did, he wouldn't be interested. He didn't care for Valentine's Day either. So she didn't care. She'd enjoy the day alone, and it would be perfectly fine. She didn't care for Valentine's day at all.

Vax could only sigh as he listened to her replay this particular rant for the umpteenth time in the last two days. Valentine's was tomorrow, and Vex was committed to pretending like it was no big deal.

„That's good to know.“ Vax said in the most monotone voice he could muster. „Then I won't have to feel bad being out all day with Kiki.“

„Not at all. Go have fun. I'll enjoy myself.“

Vex had two tubs of chocolate ice cream, a good movie, and a cuddly dog. She didn't need anything more. Valentine's Day was no big deal.

Percy genuinely didn't care for Valentine's Day. In fact, he'd mostly forgotten about it in the past few years, even as shops and television commercials covered everything with pink hearts. It wasn't really something that registered as important on his radar.

He remembered the few awkward attempts at secret admirer gifts in his early teens, sure. He also remembered everyone's confusion when he'd decided to not pursue any kind of date later on, even when they were offered by strangely interested girls (he never understood what they could see in him, what he would have to offer, except maybe the promise of paying for the fanciest restaurants with his parents' money), while his siblings were out and about celebrating each year.

Percy just didn't care for any of it. It worried Keyleth, to some extent.

„I'm not saying you have to have a date tomorrow. You're free to do whatever you want! I just wanna make sure you really don't mind being alone. I know you're alone a lot, but, you know. I can still tell Vax to postpone our date if you want!“

„Keyleth.“ He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. „Even if I did care, I wouldn't dare make an enemy out of Vax by keeping you to myself on Valentine's. For heaven's sake, go out and eat all the cake he can afford to buy you tomorrow. I'll be fine.“

„Okay. But you know you can call or text if you change your mind. Any time!“

Vex woke up the next day with an empty, aching feeling to her stomach. No, goddamnit. She wouldn't mind. She didn't care. She repeated her mantra while she got dressed, and on the way out to the mailbox. Why she'd check today, of all days, she didn't really know. All she could expect were some love letters to Vax, sent by secret admirers (Keyleth went the more personal route, she knew, handing over any letters personally), or maybe some unwanted bills as usual.

She didn't expect the small red box full of chocolates, a tiny white envelope with her name on it on top.

Time seemed to halt for a second as she stared at the letter inside.

Meet me outside the art history museum at noon

Vex's heart was racing even while she sat on the side of the large stone stairs leading up to the museum. This was ridiculous. Stupid. What was she doing? Waiting for someone she didn't even know. On Valentine's Day. In one of her nicest dresses. Make-up on, even.

She was an idiot. But somehow, she had been unable to resist. It was hard to admit, but something inside her had become excited, almost overexcited, as she was getting ready.

And here she was now, waiting to see her secret messenger.

The large clocktower of the museum rang. 12pm.

Ten past noon.

Quarter past.

Half past twelve.

No one was coming. People were strolling past her. Couples, holding hands.

Her rage was rising. Why was she still waiting? Half an hour. Even if the mysterious messenger showed up now, they shouldn't expect to see her anywhere. They should be ashamed.

Almost as ashamed as she felt right now.

Her eyes scanned the street once again and stopped at a familiar mess of white hair, peeking out from beside a column of the building's side. A glint of golden glasses.

It couldn't possibly be Percy. He'd never be late to anything, especially not to a date he set up himself, she thought to herself before hearing an equally familiar voice.

„Vex! Hi.“

It was Percy. In front of her now. It couldn't be – he wouldn't send – would he?

„Are you waiting for someone?“

It wasn't Percy. She wasn' sure whether she felt relieved about that or not.

„Yeah, just... waiting for a friend. But I think they forgot. No one could be that late. What are you doing here?“

„Oh, nothing, really.“ Percy's mind was racing. He had to come up with a convicing lie, quick. It was usually easy, but this was Vex. And he could barely lie to her when he was prepared for it.

„I wanted to find someplace to hide from all this cutesy loveydovey mess everywhere, and I figured the museum would still be safe.“

Good. A believable lie. It looked like she believed it, at least.

There really was no need to tell her the truth. He embarassed himself in front of her often enough. She didn't need to know about the ridiculous situation he'd put himself in now.

What had he been thinking, following the offer of that stupid letter he'd found in his workshop this morning? Of course there'd be no one wearing a red skirt anywhere. It was a prank, from Vax maybe, or Scanlan and Grog, hiding somewhere right now laughing their asses off at his idiocy. That he'd seriously believed it could be someone, maybe someone he knew, someone he wanted to spend the day with-

Vex's dress was cream-coloured, and it wasn't even a skirt. He'd noticed when he approached her, but still. He'd hoped. For a second.

„Would you mind some company on your quest for a sane refuge? Or is this a solitary mission?“ Vex winked at him, and Percy blushed.

„No, of course, by all means.“ He offered her a hand as she stood up.

He paid her entrance fee, of course. It was only the polite thing to do.

Vex had rarely ever had more fun at a museum. Percy knew surprisingly much about art – then again, he seemed to know a little bit about almost anything. She smiled softly as he began his impromptu guide tour in the way that Vax had titled „Professor de Rolo style“ long ago.

In the medieval section, though, she couldn't keep down a short giggle while nudging him in the side, pointing at several paintings.

„They all look like they're incredibly suspicious about each other. Just look at Mary giving the stink-eye to an angel.“

Percy tried to keep his serious face for barely a few seconds before snickering himself and pulling her over to the Renaissance room.

„That's nothing. I'm far more impressed by all the buff Jesus babies. Look at the six pack on this one.“

The security people in each room became more and more tired of their giggling as they snarked their way through almost the whole exhibition.

The Impressionist's wing was a different story. Vex fell silent almost as soon as they entered, and bee-lined to a particularly large painting full of soft blue and golden hues.

„This is incredible.“ She mumbled as Percy came up to her side.

„Do you want to sit and watch for a while?“ He gestured to the conveniently placed bench behind them.

„Yes!“ She was already sitting down. „If you don't mind, I mean-...?“ „Absolutely not.“ He sat down beside her.

She was far too entranced with the painting to notice that Percy wasn't giving it much more than a second look. He was far busier watching her, wide-eyed and smiling as her gaze trailed across the colours.

„I have to say.“ Vex smiled at him as they walked down the stairs, the sun already setting. „That was definitely a nicer way to spend Valentine's Day than I'd planned.“

„I'm glad I could make for good company.“ Percy returned her smile as they reached the street and stopped for a second. „I, uhm, I was wondering, actually, if maybe-“

„Yes?“ „Would you like to get some dinner?“

„Yes, absolutely!“ She wrapped her arm around his elbow. „Provided we can find a place that isn't completely booked today.“

They strolled down the street towards the city centre. Percy was glad he hadn't seen the mysterious red skirt anywhere. Vex had already forgotten the rage against her messenger's non-arrival.

In a cafe across the street, Keyleth nervously slurped down the last of her milkshake, peeking out the large windows and trying to hide her bright red hair as best as she could.

„Do you think we did the right thing? That was a kinda mean trick.“

„Aaaah, no, Kiki.“ Vax grinned at her as he watched his sister turn the corner. „We did good. We did real good.“

„We're not, uh, telling them, though, right?“

„Fuck no. Never.“

If you think I did a good job writing this, and you have some copper to spare, consider buying me a coffee?

#Critical Role #CR #Perc'ahlia #Vex'ahlia #Percy de Rolo #Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III #Vox Machina #my writing

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