#and percy does not understand the briarwood years the way cassandra does. and just. god what if there was a gulf

[potatoesandsunshine]

the fucked up de rolo sibling relationship is something that can actually be so personal....

[enkelimagnus]

A Castle in the Forest

Percy x Vex’ahlia, Chapter 5, 2641 words,

A Modern AU, in which Vex is a park ranger taking over the Alabaster Sierras post, and finds much more than she bargained for

Read on AO3

In this chapter, we move a little away from Vex and meet Vax, Keyleth and... Percy?

--------------------

Vax’ildan awakes to the ringing of the great clock in the corridor that leads to the bedroom. It clangs a little, old and cranky. Vax buries his face into the pillow. A scent of patchouli and spices linger onto the fabric of the pillowcase. He smiles lazily.

He refuses to open his eyes for a while, to let himself feel really awake. He has to leave Westrunn today, drive the last leg of his journey to Whitestone to see Vex. He’s missed her terribly, but right in this moment, in this bed, he really doesn’t want to leave.

He feels himself being gently pulled away from his pillow and back towards the man whose bed he’s currently lounging in, and lets it happen with lazy happiness. The only thing he really does is turn over to face the other, cuddling into his warmth.

“I shall soon contact the rulers of Whitestone to set up a teleportation circle…” Gilmore grumbles sleepily into Vax’s hair. “Having you leave me like this is much too cruel.”

Vax chuckles lightly and looks up at his boyfriend with a smile. Gods, he’s beautiful. He always is but this… sleep-mussed and heavy-lidded and warm version of Shaun Gilmore is one Vax especially cherishes.

“You would go through that costly and lengthy process for a few hours more of me?” Vax hums, kissing Gilmore’s lips lightly.

“In a heartbeat, Vax’ildan.”

Gods, he’s the only person allowed to call Vax by his full name. He’s the only person that doesn’t make it sound contemptuous. It’s beautiful on his lips, with his light Marquesian accent. Vax melts, reaching to slowly caress Gilmore’s chest.

He’s been in Westrunn for a week now. A lot of that week has been spent in this bed, though he did walk around and explore when Gilmore was working. That man will never stop working for anything, and Vax accepted that a long time ago. Watching the enchanter at work is entertaining enough.

Vax pulls up the deep purple sheets as he shifts to rest a little more comfortably by Gilmore.

“I still have a few hours,” he hums. “Whitestone isn’t that far from here…”

Gilmore rolls his eyes a little. “I’d rather you not be driving through the Parchwood Timberlands in the dark, darling,” he points out. “There are many stories about the creatures populating that area. I would hate for you to find your fate.”

Vax huffs a little, but doesn’t say anything back. He loves Vex, wants to see her, but he has no desire to leave Gilmore. He doesn’t see him often enough as it is, both busy and living on very different sides of the continent. It’s a bit of a struggle sometimes, despite video calls and other nifty technological ways of seeing each other.

“Maybe you could just… call your sister and let her know you won’t be there for a couple of more days…” Gilmore points out, starting to pepper kisses over Vax’s face, anywhere but his mouth. “I’m sure she’ll understand…”

The kisses get a little more insisting and Vax can’t help the happy sigh that escapes his lips. Gilmore smirks at his success. That smirk does things to Vax’s heart and body that he can’t actively describe, especially right now as his mind is very focused on the direction and pattern of the kisses, on the light scratching of Gilmore’s facial hair.

They roll over a little and Gilmore’s hand gently comes to tuck a strand of long black hair behind Vax’s ear. Their eyes meet and Vax starts drowning in brown so dark it’s almost black. He can’t refuse this man anything, can he?

“Come on,” Gilmore hums. “Just a couple of days…”

Vax leans up to capture his lips but Gilmore moves away at the last moment.

“You’re playing, Shaun,” Vax points out, raising an eyebrow. He hooks one of his legs over his boyfriend’s hip.

Gilmore raises an eyebrow. “And what are you doing?” He asks with his signature smirk.

“I’ll call her,” Vax sighs after a moment. “If she doesn’t need me, I will stay. If I hear one thing that makes me think she needs me there? I’ll go.”

Gilmore nods. “Of course, beautiful Vax’ildan. I will never keep you from her if she needs you, or if you need her.”

Vax leans up again, and this time, Gilmore lets him kiss him. They make out like this for a moment, a bare hint of heat between them, waiting to be kindled to a burning fire.

“Thank you,” Vax smiles. “But I will do this once we’re out of bed. Right now, I have something much better to do.” He smirks and shoves Gilmore back gently, pivoting his weight to roll them over and straddle him.

The next hour or so melts away in between the two of them.

----------

Keyleth darts through the tangled weeds of the Parchwood Timberlands, avoiding bigger and harsher foes and finding her way back to where she’ll be safe for the rest of the night. Her rations are too short this time, she wasn’t carefully monitoring them, and she doesn’t want to go hungry.

Her backpack is heavy with clockwork machines that she needs to sell soon, and she’ll need muscles to carry it back into Whitestone. Her monthly task is complete, and she’ll soon be able to go back to her own work.

She left more food and resources than usual, and warned him that she wouldn’t be there for a while. She needs two months or so to get to Terrah and complete the first trial of her Aramente. She can’t wait any longer.

It’s been years already, and her people are waiting for her at home. They have no idea of the situation she’s gotten herself into here. They have no idea where she stands. Or where she is.

If she takes too long, they’ll think her dead, and she can’t imagine doing that to her father, not when the loss of her mother hangs over her like a shadow. Following in her footsteps was necessary but worrying for everyone. Including her. She doesn’t want to either die or cause her father more grief.

She rushes through the low bushes until she finds the now much clearer path. From there, her instincts guide her to the entrance of the tunnel and she passes through the smaller hole without issue. Being able to turn into small beasts is a blessing in these kinds of situations.

The tunnel is damp and dark and Keyleth hates it. Even when she’s in her wolf form it’s uncomfortable. And yet she finds herself there every month or so, stuck in this routine that doesn’t seem to promise to end any time soon.

She turns herself back into her regular form, stretches her arms out. Her belly is full now. She can try and sleep.

Drops of water crash into the stone below her feet, resounding in the empty tunnel. She decides to light a fire and does quick work of it. She’s done this what feels like a million different times.

Hopefully no one will notice the smoke coming out of the secret tunnel. That would be just Keyleth’s luck. Maybe that ranger will see the smoke and find the entrance and everything will be lost because Keyleth was cold and wasn’t careful this time.

She huffs, staring into the flame. Things have gotten so much worse now that the new ranger is there. The one before was either oblivious or just let them do things as long as they didn’t leave a blood trail.

This one, Vex’ahlia, seems very different. She sensed the fiend, which the previous one might have also done, but hadn’t asked Keyleth or anyone else about it. And she’s investigating it, and going around asking for help in defeating it.

The situation just got much more dangerous for everyone involved.

She closes her eyes and tries to calm down. Her pulse is quick, her mind working overtime. She needs to calm down. She doesn’t want to bring creatures that would sense her anxiety to her. And she doesn’t want to break. Not while her best friend might be in earshot, and might hear her pain and fear.

She’ll do the screaming and the crying and the possible breaking of furniture once she’s in an inn or in another cave on her way to Terrah. Then she’ll be able to let it all out and punch the walls and heal herself afterwards. Right now, it’s too close. She needs to hold on.

Keyleth decides to turn back into her wolf form to sleep. It’s easier to keep warm that way.

---------------

The gun is warm. It beats against his hand like a heartbeat, maybe to the beat of his quickened heart, his adrenalin and revenge-fueled heart. They’re gone, they’re dead, they all have wounds, perfectly round holes that turned their bodies cold when he shot them.

It gets warmer against his skin. His fingers are splattered with red dots, blood splatters. Everything feels blurry. His vision has long ago tunneled. The only thing he can see right now, really see, is her.

She stands across from him, arms raised, a rapier in her right hand. It’s useless, so useless. A contemptuous, hungry laugh comes out of his mouth, taunting her. A rapier is nothing against a gun. It will never be anything.

Percival…

The voice licks at the back of his skull. He knows what he has to do. His hand rises, the gun aimed at her, the bullet in the chamber, her name on the metal. Cassandra de Rolo.

“Brother…” She says softly. She’s distressed, he can taste it on his lips, it’s sugar sweet and delectable.

She’s all yours for the taking… the last of the ones who have betrayed you…

She has betrayed him. She shoved him away and called herself another name. Why isn’t Cassandra Briarwood the name on the barrel? It should be, if she renounces the De Rolo name.

But this is Cassandra. She was never supposed to die. He was always going to forgive her. She stands there in front of him and he loves her. He forgives her. He always will, over and over. He understands she didn’t have a choice.

Why is his gun pointed at her head, why is his hand so steady?

“I’m sorry,” she cries. Tears fall on her cheeks. He wants to taste her anguish. He wants to devour her soul.

What? No. It’s his baby sister. She’s everything, and he thought he had lost her forever. She’s everything to him.

She made the rebellions fail, she made Whitestone crumble. She’s the one who kept your people subjugated. It’s her fault….

Smoke fills every corner of his being, his body, his soul, his eyes. All he can see is the spot he’s chosen to fire at, right in between her eyebrows. Her hair is still brown, while his turned white months ago. She needs to die.

His little sister who saved him, whose body he still saw in his nightmares, shot through with more arrows than he could count. The one he still thought was dead when he killed the first name on his list, the first guilty one. His little sister that loved books as much as him, but liked sneaking out much more.

Cassandra and her bear plushie that he’s pretty sure he saw in her room when he investigated the castle. Cassandra who is wearing their mother’s armor right now. Cassandra who told him she saw the Briarwoods kill their parents, from the balcony she’d snuck onto in the middle of the night and yet who STILL, after EVERYTHING, wanted to become one of them.

The monster in his heart screens and shoves and claws into him and settles there. Cassandra is still staring at him, waiting.

“Why?” She asks. “Percy, why?”

“Because you betrayed us,” he replies. “Because you betrayed me.”

“I had no choice,” Cassandra shouts this time. Her tears are rivers on her face, there’s blood splattered on there too. He is vaguely aware of a singing burning pain where he was hit by the sharp end of a sword. “They took me in, they forced me to work for them, and then…”

“And then you TURNED,” he roars out with venom and hatred and the pain, the greatest pain in the world. He loves her, and the voice in his head keeps saying he should kill her. Because he loves her. Because he trusted her. Because she was supposed to be gone. Wait…

He freezes a moment.

“Did you know she was alive?” He asks out loud. He can see that Cassandra is confused. His grip falters a second.

Of course I knew, Percival…

The hand holding the gun starts shaking. He doesn’t know why. But it does. Betrayal erupts again in his chest, and it hurts almost as much as Cassandra’s did. It floods through him like a cleansing fire.

Cassandra had no choice. Orthax however…

“Was her name supposed to be on the gun?”

Get your revenge, Percival. She deserves it.

The hand gets steadier again. The tunnel vision comes back and smoke billows from his eyes again. But this time, the knowledge is enough. Percy shoves back.

“Answer me!” He shouts. Cassandra takes a step back.

Yes. I knew of her betrayal, and I knew that you wouldn’t accept it. So I hid it until you were ready… Now KILL HER!

No. No, no, no.  Percy shoves himself back, forces himself to take a step back. The gun is shaking now, greatly, and he knows he doesn’t have enough control. Orthax can still pull the trigger.

“Run!” He shouts at his sister. “Cass, run!”

She looks at him, stares in confusion. “What-”

“For the love of Pelor, PLEASE, RUN, NOW!” He screams, and forces another step back.

Orthax pulls the trigger and the shot goes wide, but Cassandra’s eyes widen.

“Percy… I’m sorry…” She still isn’t running. What will get her to run?

Orthax’s claws sink into Percy’s soul and the pain is greater than anything he has experienced before. His eyes water, but the liquid is not clear. It’s red. He’s crying blood. He’s breaking.

Another shot fires. It hits closer to Cassandra this time. She’s frozen in place.

“Cass… Cass please…” He begs, voice twisted from the agony of resisting Orthax. “Please go. If you don’t, I’ll kill you.”

Cassandra’s hand goes down, her rapier hits the ground and she starts running. Percy doesn’t manage to take a step back. Orthax laughs in his ear, triomphant, and another shot fires.

Cassandra screams in pain. Orthax laughs. Percy screams.

Her body stumbles to the ground and the name disappears from the barrel of the gun. The gun is warm in his hand, his eyes are still crying blood and he feels something breaking, over and over again as she seizes. There’s blood everywhere, a sea of crimson, that’s all he can see.

She stops moving. Percy’s heart stops beating for a moment. He dies with her there, until Orthax brings him back to life. Until he’s forced to watch her body be turned over by his own foot, prisoner of his own skull. She’s gone. Her eyes are open but the light is gone, they’re glassy and hideous.

The hand brings the gun up. In the place of the names he spent years thinking of killing, new ones have appeared. Keyleth. Father Reynal. Keeper Yennen. Simon Whisk.

His eyes open in the darkness of the room he inhabits in the castle. His hands are red with blood, and so is most of his clothing. He doesn’t know where the red is from. He doesn’t care to go look for what he’s done when he wasn’t in control.

Orthax laughs in his mind.

[pfvmkdr-blog]

the  land  &  king  are  one.

i  live  as  long  as  whitestone  lives.  nearly  two  hundred  years  ago,  the  de  rolo  family  helmed  an  expedition  from  wildemount  to  tal’dorei  only  for  their  vessel  to  crash  ‘pon  the  stones  of  the  shearing  channel.  the  de  rolos  &  their  remaining  crew  survived  ‘gainst  tempestuous  weather  &  beasts  that  populated  the  alabaster  sierras.  after  weeks  of  this,  dawn  broke  out  across  the  land  as  they  stumbled  across  a  glowing  tree.  the  sun  tree          pelor’s  blessing  upon  this  land  &  the  sealing  of  a  great  hurt.  (  *  the  land  that  was  so  wounded.  whitestone  was  always  destined  for  tragedy.  within  the  very  dirt  &  stone  carried  the  scars  of  that  climatic  battle  of  the  calamity.  the  dawnfather’s  forces  versus  the  chained  oblivion           this  land  was  alive  with  residual  arcane  energy.  dramatic  &  explosive,  wounded  &  full  of  blight.  )  in  the  way  that  gods  do,  perhaps  it  was  more  than  coincidence  that  the  de  rolos�� crashed  upon  those  stones  so  long  ago.

this  land,  this  sun  tree  needed  guardians  &  guardians  the  de  rolos  became.  they  were  always  a  family  focused  on  progress.  they  were  an  industrious  sort,  stalwart  &  revered  duty.  they  were  the  ideal  family  to  start  a  line  of  guardians  that  would  sometimes  become  champions  of  pelor  (  *  they  immortalize  each  champion  with  a  star  on  the  crest  of  whitestone  ).

but  it  goes  deeper  than  just  being  a  family  of  guardians  of  this  land,  serving  under  the  god  of  the  harvest  &  the  sun.  this  land  is  so  alive,  so  full  of  magic.  whitestone  stis  upon  the  very  intersection  of  these  arcane  laylines  that  fill  the  land  with  the  essence  of  magic  that  thrives  in  every  aspect  of  life.  years  of  living  in  the  land  with  pelor’s  hand  ‘pon  the  shoulders  of  his  family  is  bound  to  twine  blood  &  earth.

as  the  land  thrives,  so  do  the  de  rolos.  they  do  not  need  to  be  called  kings  or  emperors           they  are  champions  of  a  god.  the  land  rises  up  with  their  footsteps  &  the  sun  shines  down  upon  them.  it’s  not  uncommon  for  the  eldest  child  to  be  groomed  to  be  more  than  the  future  ruler,  but  also  the  next  champion  of  the  dawnfather.  not  all  of  them  become  one,  but  julius  fredrickstein  von  musel  klossowski  de  rolo  the  first  always  showed  promise.  (  *  the  de  rolos  are  not  a  family  of  idle  lords.  they  are  a  family  of  warriors  who  have  never  been  known  to  bend  the  knee.  no  child  of  the  crest  goes  without  learning  how  to  protect.  they  are  more  than  fighters,  they  are  guardians  )

when  the  briarwoods  usurp  the  seat  of  power  &  lay  themselves  as  the  new  rules  of  this  place,  the  land  begins  to  rot  underneath  their  feet.  the  sun  tree  withers  with  every  year  &  the  de  rolos  ?  the  de  rolos  are  gone.  the  remanants  of  this  family  suffer  in  different  strokes.  percy,  detached  from  the  land  of   his  birth,  becomes  lost.  it’s  as  if  the  ground  beneath  his  feet  had  been  ripped  from  him  &  he  floats  in  a  disassociative  haze  for  two  years,  wading  among  various  fishing  ships.  it  becomes  easier  as  the  years  away  pass  on,  but  there’s  always  going  to  be  that  line  linking  his  soul  to  whitestone.  (  *  it  never  goes  away.  he  never  stops  thinking  about  his  home.  about  the  land  he  grew  up  with  &  loves  ).  cassandra  spends  six  years  dealing  with  the  grief  of  losing  everyone  she  ever  knew,  of  being  left  behind,  of  being  underneath  the  briarwoods’  thumb  &  throughout  it  all,  she  is  drowning  in  the  corruption  of  the  entire  land.

when  the  evil  is  cleansed  from  whitestone,  when  the  briarwoods  &  their  ilk  are  gone,  percival  &  cassandra  are  both  left.  neither  of  them  themselves  as  worthy  of  keeping  up  the  tradition  of  the  family.  they  were  both  bred  to  be  fighters,  but  they  were  no  paladins  of  the  sun.  not  like  julius           was.  percy  leaves.  it’s  easier  for  him  to  as  the  line  is  thinner  &  longer.  cassandra  cannot.  not  yet.  though  she  wants  to.  this  was  her  home  &  with  her  hands  she  had  helped  ruined  it  (  *  was  their  redemption  for  one  such  as  her  ?  )  but  she  stays.  she  stays  &  she  makes  strides  towards  healing,  both  for  the  land  &  for  herself.  she  was  never  going  to  rule  as  the  youngest  child  of  the  family.  but  she  had  always  been  a  de  rolo.  &  slowly,  very  slowly,  she  begins  to  learn  to  love  this  land  again.  she  reaches  out  &  touches  the  bark  of  the  sun  tree  &  allows  herself  to  feel  how  the  grass  breathed  &  the  wind  sung.  she  learned  to  live  delibrerately,  facing  only  the  essential  facts  of  life.  she  knew  where  every  ingredient  of  her  meal  came  from.  how  it  turned  in  the  cycle  of  life  to  end  up  at  her  plate.  she  savoured  every  moment  of  every  day,  head  turning  towards  the  future  that  she  had  control  over.  &  slowly,  the  sun  tree  began  to  recover,  began  to  flourish  &  bud.  vex’ahlia  may  be  the  sixth  star,  but  this  land  will  always  belong  to  the  de  rolos  as  the  de  rolos  belong  to  it.

also:  the  de  rolos  all  have  a  strong  connection  with  simply  life.  specifically  flora.  it  doesn’t  matter  if  it’s  in  whitestone  or  in  the  feywild,  there’s  always  that  underlying  favour  from  pelor  that  threads  through  their  veins  &  keeps  them  connected  with  the  land  that  they  walk  upon.  it’s  what  allows  percy  to  communicate  with  the  grass  of  the  feywild  &  why  yes,  percy  does  flirt  with  grass  infinitely  better  than  he  does  with  anything  else.  it’s  why  when  he  tried  to  explain  why  the  cancerous  tree  in  the  shademirk  bog  survived  as  everything  around  it  died,  percy  would  only  fumble  out  life  needs  things  to  live.  because  to  him,  it’s  all  so  innate  that  understanding  of  the  relationship  between  the  land  &  ruler.  it’s  hard  to  put  it  into  words.

[dancerwrites]

could you imagine Celestial!Percy's horror at running into Vecna - who would be Very Interested in Percy bc he wants to be a god and having a celestial serving him would very much help towards godhood. Celestial!Percy who does not want to bind himself to *any* god is very, VERY freaked out by Vecna and when they manage to get out and ppl are talking about asking for gods help to take down vecna celestial!Percy is. Just. Screaming. Because Do Not Want. But also Vecna is a POS and needs to go down

oHhhhh….

you know, anon, I really didn’t know a ton about the different celestials in D&D, but after looking them up I can imagine the de Rolos having descended from Planetars or Solars, somewhere way back before The Divergence, when mortals and gods had a bit more interaction. 

Percy, for reasons unbeknownst to him (or, really, anyone), has a bit more celestial in him than the rest of his immediate family. Perhaps it was simply fate, or perhaps it was Pelor’s blessing, but it gives Percy a knack for Celestial that his other siblings didn’t have, and he learns to appreciate history more than all of them combined. 

He still liked to tinker, liked to explore with various properties of minerals that he found, and, when he first had the idea of a more efficient distance weapon, than used smaller, more compact ammunition fired at higher speeds, it was as a defensive mechanism for the city.

When the Briarwoods came, Percy assumed he’d been spared purely for Ripley’s benefit - she relished torture from the end of the persecutor and latched onto each idea or snippet of information he gave up with relish. And then Cassandra came, helping him escape, and he didn’t look back, not until he had a strange dream, where a shadow came to him and promised him vengeance for his family. 

Fast-forward past Whitestone’s revival, past the beginning of the Chroma Conclave, to when Percy goes to the Raven Queen’s temple in Vasselheim. Here, he’s always felt strangely comfortable in the city of the gods, though he’s chalked it up to the climate being reminiscent of home, because while Percy knows the gods are there, he can’t understand why or how they care for the mortals in their sight. 

So he goes to the Raven Queen, and he asks if he can fix things. She tells him that there are many things, that he needs to ask the right questions, and when he asks if he is broken… she laughs, and tells him “You were not always broken, but you were preyed upon, just as it preys upon others…” And when he asks if he can be fixed, she responds in that vexing way - “Perhaps. Your deeds will guide your path, to salvation or damnation. And do not underestimate the power of your blood - while your path has not yet been chosen, you walk a fine line. The choice is up to you.”

They talk then, about choices, and about wars, about those who represent the gods. She tells him that it is his choice to take one path or the other, but in his heart he knows which path he favors. 

He disagrees, and she pauses, looking at him curiously.

“You really don’t know.”

“Know what?” he asks.

“Your heritage.”

And for a moment, or maybe an hour or more, pain courses through him, through his legs and chest and arms and back and there is a tearing, a stretching, a freeing of limbs-

When his mind comes back to itself, he is taller and there is an unfamiliar weight on his back, and when he shifts, wings automatically move to steady him. 

She tells him, in not as many words, about the celestial guardians who fought the first war, in the Divergence, and who they fought for. She alludes to his familial connection, and, while Percy feels a sense of Right, he feels even more conflicted about his choices, about his sins and his failures. 

He asks her for healing, and she tells him what she has learned over centuries of watching. 

“All life is inherently broken from the start, Percival, take solace in that…”

She tells him of the power of mortals, implies her own origin, and bids him farewell, even as he shouts for her to wait-

When he comes up out of the pool, the wings are gone. He is back to himself.

He spends the next weeks leading up to their final battle against the Conclave pouring through books in his free time. Percy researches winged species, humanoid and nonhumanoid. He sets things aside for the Conclave, he keeps his suspicions secret until Thordak is defeated, and then after Raishan.

While Vex meditates, waiting for Pelor to give her guidance on her hunt, Percy tries to calm his mind and also takes some time to think, to dwell on his blood, his lineage. 

A lineage in a city, in a name… in a purpose. 

He doesn’t get any sort of vision or words in his ear, but he feels a strange sense of certainty, almost a drive that he hadn’t felt before. 

Percy spends the next year trying to sort things out, trying to understand. By the time Pike’s family visits, he feels more comfortable in his own skin, and he knows where he stands. 

He will stand with the gods, but not with one in particular. To give his allegiance to one or another, like Pike or Vax has… it’s a terrifying prospect.

Percy has survived thus far on his own wit and will, and that’s not going to change if he has any say in it. 

And then Delilah Briarwood shows her face once more, and his world - so secure, so strong, is thrown into chaos like one of Keyleth’s whirlwinds. Suddenly they know what the orb under the castle is and they know what it does and where it goes, and he tells Cassandra, but can’t wait around to provide her that comfort because the need to protect is strong. He needs to save them - from Delilah, from Vecna…

Unfortunately, they underestimated the Whispered One’s power, as they find out within seconds of making their way to the top of that tower. Percy reminds himself that this “Undying King” is no god, not yet, but his power in particular feels paltry in comparison to the creature before them, and a deep, secret and scared and animalistic part of him wants to run to Whitestone, wants to hide away. 

How can a lineage continue if those made to carry it fall short? He’s not his ancestors, how could he be? And he’s already distanced himself too far from the gods to be of use in this. 

The others - they all have connections, they have godly-given magic, or ties through their Vestiges. Even Grog felt Kord’s strength within him through the Titanstone Knuckles, though none who met Grog would ever peg him as “religious”. 

Power that is larger than him, that is too powerful for him to handle, has always been a fear of Percy’s. 

But when Vax falls and then returns? Percy finds himself praying. 

He’s not praying to any deity in particular - not directly to the Raven Queen, nor to Sarenrae, not even to Pelor as he did in his youth. What he is doing is asking for strength for his friends, for the rest of Exandria, to fight this new foe. 

Pike communes with her goddess at the temple in Vasselheim, and though Percy is uncomfortable (as he always has been - people like him don’t belong in temples) he appreciates the joy on Pike’s face for what it’s worth. At least, until she tells him that Sarenrae more or less invited them to visit her. In person. 

Percy has survived thus far on his own wit and will, but he does sometimes worry that it’s not enough. 

As they land, then, on a beach made of pearls, where the cathedral ahead of them sparkles like crystal under a sun that lights up the water, clearer than any he’s ever seen, Percy tamps down any worries that he might have, and follows his friends toward what awaits them, toward the “big guns”, so to speak, and swallows his pride as best he can.

[dancer4813]

chaos is calling

the living and the dead (are one in the same)

In the aftermath of their battle at the ziggurat, Percy feels the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Spoilers for Episode 100

[ao3] [Cassandra]

He sees her disappear and his heart feels like it’s ripped from his chest with the intensity of his fury. He fires with the pistol in his hand and the hammer seizes before the bullet fires, sending hot lines of pain up his arm directly to his brain.

Through the haze he whips out Bad News, but the rifle clicks, and tendrils of smoke unfurl from the gun, the black wisps bringing back memories of a silky voice in his head, of a beak-like face and the feeling of vengeance-

Percy pulls out Retort and a bullet flies true, hitting the sphere…

And disappears. Without a sound, without an impact, without fanfare.

As his hands start shaking, his knees give way beneath him.

Percy’s lungs feel as though he hasn’t breathed in hours, the way they are trying to suck in and push out the musky air around the ziggurat. His mind is working faster than it ever has, but is comprehending slower than usual, and even though he tries to make sense of things, tries to fix his guns (he picks up Animus and taps sharply on the bottom, the side, pulls the trigger, the actions routine, but it sticks and he knows he needs tools, needs a workshop, to fix Bad News espe-), tries to sort out the feelings in his head, he finds everything coalescing to a dull roar of sound that builds and builds and builds and-

There’s a hand on his shoulder.

Through the haze of Deliliah and Fix it and Vengeance and You were DEAD echoing through his mind, Vex’s face comes, breaking apart his thoughts with the concern in her eyes. Her other hand comes up to cup his cheek and he knows it’s her because of the fingers, calloused from the string of a bow and so familiar (more than he would ever dare to imagine).

“You need to breathe, Percy darling,” she says, and he wants to say that he is breathing, that he’s perfectly fine, but the hand on his face moves to his chest, pushing gently, and he realizes just how fast everything is moving and he tries to slow down, the air catching in his lungs.

“That’s it, that’s it,” she encourages, and with another couple shuddering breaths the fog starts to clear from his mind and he hears the dull roar of the others discussing what to do next behind him.

“She’s back,” he gasps as soon as he has enough breath to, and Delilah’s broken body, stabbed and held against the wall by his sister, flashes through his mind – blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, her arm missing.

“I know,” Vex says, and it’s then that he remembers her near death at the ziggurat beneath Whitestone and he finds himself grabbing at her wrist, needing to feel her pulse despite her sitting right in front of him.

(Luckily she lets him more-or-less pull her onto his lap, so he can bury his face in her braid.

He remembers her lifeless body carried gingerly by Grog out of the anti-magic field, the desperation when the potions and healing spells didn’t take hold…

But she’s here and alive and dear gods they’ve got a lot of work to do now.)

Percy counts to ten, telling himself to relax as he feels his breathing finally start to slow down, and when he reaches the end of his count he forces his arms to let go, pulling back as he does so.

“Better?” Vex asks, and he nods (even though it isn’t exactly true), knowing that he can’t just sit around and let the others figure things out. This is his past coming back into play yet again. First the Briarwoods, then Ripley after he’d let her escape, and now Delilah, after he’d watched her body dissolve in a pool of acid.

Percy really hated magic sometimes. And would-be gods.

They spoke with her henchman about the portal, learning of the stones they needed to pass through safely, unless they wanted to run the risk of the harm it could do them.

(Percy wasn’t sure about the rest of Vox Machina, but he found himself much more worried about what they would need to deal with on the other side of that gate than he was about getting through it.)

He also has Vex’s promise to the Raven Queen running through his head non-stop, and if that wasn’t enough, they take a vote and decide they’re tapped out enough that Scanlan should re-cast the mansion, saving their plans for the next morning and leaving Percy with nowhere to spend his excess energy.

So he goes to bed with Vex after an unsatisfactory dinner and lays in bed until she falls asleep, then slips away. There’s no need to worry her more, not when she has her own demons to worry about, and he creeps out of the room, glad that Trinket is in the Raven’s Slumber so he doesn’t need to avoid waking the bear.

He wanders through the mansion, reacquainting himself with the eerily-familiar halls and taking note of the new changes – generally a subtler décor, a more fully equipped music room, and fewer mirrors scattered throughout.

The silence in the mansion isn’t malevolent, but it is unnerving, especially since the arcane nature of the mansion’s walls mean that while the enchanted windows show perfectly normal night skies, none of the house creaks in the wind or at someone’s footsteps. There are no places where the walls are too thin unless Scanlan plans them that way, and while some of the walls seem to be wooden, and others stone, there’s no difference to the sound they make when you tap your knuckles against them.

It’s like the perfect version of anyone’s house. No defects, no shoddy construction, and certainly none of the quirks that come with a home built from scratch.

At least, Percy thinks, finally deciding that he might as well get some work done instead of simply walking the halls, despite its faults, it has some very nice bathrooms.

Percy retrieves his black powder carefully, glad to see that Vex still seems to be sleeping camly, and goes to the workshop that Scanlan has always created for him, but his mind is so busy that he doesn’t realize the door is already partly ajar until he pushes it open to see Tary at the work bench, head in his hands. Doty was at the side of the worktable, but he was leaning against the wall, eyes dark, the plates on his chest caved in from the force of the spells that had struck him down.

Percy felt himself freeze as Tary looked up, eyes wide. Neither of them had expected company, and while they had spent the better part of the last year sharing workshop space…

“Oh- hello, Percival,” Tary says, straightening up and trying to appear as though he hasn’t been worried.

“Hello, Tary,” Percy replies, trying to muster a smile, though it feels like more of a grimace. “Are you working on something?”

Tary pulls back from the table, revealing a pristine work surface. “Not exactly,” he murmurs, running his fingers through long flaxen hair. “I didn’t realize I would be able to tinker on the go – I left nearly all of my supplies in Vex’s mansion, packed in my bags. I would fix Doty, but…”

His voice trails off, and Percy understands the pained look on his face before he drops his gaze to the floor.

“Well, I was just going to make some bullets,” he offers, “if you’re interested in helping?”

He would be a hypocrite if he criticized Tary’s lack of sleep, and as he had learned it was always good to have an extra pair of hands. Those hands used to be Keyleth’s, but since she’d been spending so much time in Zephra with her people, Percy had shown Tary what needed to be done one lazy afternoon in the workshop, and Tary, intelligent as he was, caught on quickly.

“If you need my help.”

“I always appreciate your help,” Percy says in lieu of an answer, and in an unfamiliar workshop after a harrowing battle, approaching what might be the biggest fight of their lives, it’s enough.

In silence they get out the black powder and the molds, and Tary starts the forge going. The heat suffuses the room, and Tary seems to relax as they get into a rhythm of melt, pour, release, melt, pour, release.

They refill the melting pot twice and cast a little over 30 bullets in all. Then they get to trim the excess casing from them, smoothing the edges so the bullets don’t get stuck in the chambers of his guns and fly true to strike their adversaries.

After meticulously examining five of the bullets they’ve made together, his mind starting to calm, his rational self having taken over in the presence of labor, Percy wipes a trickle of sweat out of his eye and looks over at Tary. The blond, who is staring at one of the bullets as if it has the answers to the universe, doesn’t look over when he clears his throat, and doesn’t even react until Percy sets a gentle hand on his shoulder, making him jump.

“Copper for your thoughts?”

Tary bites his lip, his gaze locking with Percy’s, then it falls back down to the bullet in his hands as he shrugs Percy’s hand off and sets the bullet aside.

“Who was she, the dark-haired woman?”

Percy blinks, and his hand, still outstretched toward Tary, sinks. They had given Tary the basic details of Whitestone’s takeover, but never the full story.

“Delilah Briarwood,” Percy replies evenly, torn between wanting to keep watching Tary and wanting to go back to the bullets to keep his hands busy. “She and her husband killed my family.”

“They took over Whitestone?”

“They did.”

“And now they’re back?”

“Delilah seems to be,” Percy says, and nope, fuck it, he needs something to do.

The scritch-scratch of metal against metal fills the room again.

“Not her husband?” Tary asks after a moment, taking another bullet.

“We killed him. Well, both of them,” Percy murmurs, brushing away the metal shavings left on the bullet and examining its curves. “I honestly didn’t expect either to come back, but I suppose I should stop having such low expectations of the universe’s desire to fuck with my life.”

It comes out more biting than he wanted it to, but Tary just nods and drops his first bullet into the pot of newly-finished ones.

“And she’s back to kill you?” Tary asks.

“Kill the world, more likely,” Percy replies, and his stomach turns as he feels a strong urge to throw the bowl of bullets to the ground and send them scattering, like ants underfoot. “You know Vex has been studying Vecna, yes?”

“She mentioned the name once or twice – was he her husband?”

Percy actually laughs at that, though it feels wrenched out of him like an arrow from a wound.

“No,” he gasps, getting his breath back. “Not quite. Her husband, Sylas, was a vampire whom Vecna brought back to life. Vecna, on the other hand….”

“Not a good guy?” Tary volunteers.

“Not a good guy,” Percy affirms, “He’s a lich who tried to ascend to godhood ages ago. Informally the god of secrets, and is also known as The Whispered One to his followers.

When Tary doesn’t ask anything else, Percy takes a deep breath, the smell of black powder filling his nostrils, and goes back to the bullets.

They work in relative silence for a while, until there’s only a bullet apiece left to grind the stub of the mold away from.

“Vex showed me the ziggurat under Whitestone,” Tary murmurs. “She said that I ‘should know there’s a potentially deadly calamity underneath the city’.”

“Vex always has been the clever one.”

“I don’t know, you’re pretty clever,” Tary says, and then he recoils slightly, blushing.

Percy smiles at the unintentional flirting.

“I’m going to say what I said earlier – I’ll take the compliment.”

Tary chuckles half-heartedly, but Percy can see that the man has a complicated look on his face, much like Percy imagines his own mind to be – an amalgam of emotions that, in his current state of mind, he’s not able to sort out.

“Could you tell me what happened?”

It’s certainly more vague a question than Percy had anticipated, but he thinks he knows what Tary’s getting at.

“Do you want it from the beginning? It’s not a happy story,” Percy warns, and while part of him is wary to recount the tale, he distantly wonders if going through the tale again might help him pick up on a detail he’d missed, or understand something that they might have glossed over in the moment.

“Since coming out into the world I’ve learned that not all stories have happy endings,” Tary says, chuckling.

“It’s a sad but real truth,” Percy agrees. “But if you’re sure…”

Tary nods, and Percy takes a deep breath before beginning.

He tells the story, from the Briarwoods fleeing Wildmount and running to Whitestone to their overtaking the city and laying low for many years. He speaks briefly to his own escape, and then jumps to when he had first heard their names after so long – just after Vox Machina had returned from the Underdark. He tells about their return, and how Vox Machina helped him take back his city, and he explains the ritual (or what he had seen of it) that Delilah performed at the top of the ziggurat under Whitestone.

(And Percy’s never had this before – someone who will listen who knows him, knows some of where he’s coming from, but who hasn’t lived those experiences with him – and he feels an ache in his chest knowing that Tary has set his heart on returning to Wildmount as soon as possible.)

Pressing on, he explains in detail, the images imprinted on his mind, Sylas and Delilah’s deaths, though he tries to leave Orthax’s involvement out of that as much as possible. He finishes with Cassandra’s death blow to Delilah and the subsequent throwing of the necromancer in acid.

He looks up at Tary just in time to catch a distinctly green tinge to the man’s cheeks, and his lips turn up in a smirk at the thought, May you never change, Tary.

“And that’s the story?” Tary asks, swallowing, the glimpse of nausea fading.

“That’s it.”

“You know, I always had ‘defeat an evil wizard’ on my list,” he hums with a wry smile. “But it seems like you’ve all done that already. How many things have you done that I’ve been waiting my whole life to do?”

“Probably everything on your list and then some,” Percy admits, “Though I’m still not sure about the ‘rescuing a damsel’. The stories really are wrong about how often there are any damsels.”

“Mmhmmmm…”

“Is there something else on your mind?”

Tary’s mouth twists into a frown, eyes narrowing as he thinks.

“You said the Briarwoods hailed from Wildmount, once upon a time?”

“Yes – do you know where they might have come from?”

“Not where, exactly, but I do remember there being a bit of uproar six or seven years ago, in the north. There were rumors, never anything concrete, but people started to go missing, and my mother always wanted eyes on us if at all possible, despite my being of age at the time. There was some political upheaval, I remember that, and Maryanne was constantly talking about her friends who lived up there – she said-“

He frowns again, tapping the side of his temple as if it will push the memories into his head.

“What she learned from them, was that one city in particular seemed to be drawing people in, only for them to disappear. I never heard specific names – honestly, I wasn’t very interested at the time, too involved in my fantasies as I was.” Tary gives chuckles again, and shrugs. “I know it’s not much to go on…”

“No, no, it’s something,” Percy argues, taking out his notebook from his bag and flipping to a clean page to draft a quick outline of the known lands of Exandria. Wildmount to the Northeast, Tal’dorei taking up the middle, Issylra to the Northwest, and even, further west, though slightly more south, Marquet.

It’s a sad excuse for a map, he knows, and he imagines Tyriok, the mapmaker, looking at it disdainfully before he quickly jots down the locations of the two ziggurats they’ve been to, in Whitestone and about a days’ walk north of Ank’harel.

“You said it was in the far north of Wildmount?” he asks Tary, who nods.

“Yes, though I’m not sure where. At least a couple days north of Deastok, though still in the Dwendalian Empire.”

Percy makes a dotted circle around the northern half of the continent, not knowing its geography well enough to have a decent bead on where a former temple to Ioun might be…

“There’s one in Vasselheim,” he realizes, glancing over the blank areas on his map.

“There’s a what?”

“A ziggurat,” Percy says, and he wonders why he hadn’t seen it before. Osysa had come from behind one in the temple of Ioun, when they had received their brands from the Slayer’s Take.

“In Vasselheim?” Tary asks, and Percy nods frantically, already marking its rough location.

“There’s one on every continent,” Percy notes, but as soon as he’s said it he feels a swooping sense of dread. “But what if there’s more?”

“More?”

“There’s already three that we know of that have siphons,” Percy points out, and he sets his pencil down as he feels his hands start to tremble. “How many more might they have turned? How many-“

He cuts himself off, realizing the sheer scope of the task before them, and suddenly he feels like he might gag on the sheer enormity of the task set out for them. Ziggurats all over the world, travel to another plane as Vex and Pike had seen… This was so much bigger than just Whitestone. He’d heard the answers to Pike’s questions from the dead man’s lips, he’d known since their first encounter with the ziggurat in Whitestone that Vecna was trying to return through the Briarwoods, but to see, tangibly, laid out before him, the scope of the Vecna’s plans?

“Percy? Percy, look at me,” Tary says, and Percy does so, though it hardly feels as though he’s inhabiting his own body in that moment.

“Percy?”

“We were nothing to them,” Percy mutters, instead of the hesitant placation that had been on his lips, an incredulous sort of chuckle pulled from his lungs as he shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“To who? To whom? The Briarwoods? Percy, you’re starting to scare me-“

“You should be scared,” Percy says, and he remembers Tary when they first met him, shying away from anything and everything. “And… all of us, all of them, have just been some stepping stones on their way up, no more than irritating pebbles in their boots.”

“Percy-“

Tary’s voice seems to get stuck in his throat, and Percy understand that, wants to be empathetic, but then Tary’s hand presses down on his shoulder and its grounding, it’s solid, and even if it’s not quite enough to steady him entirely, he takes a breath.

“My whole family, Tary, my whole city. We were pawns to them, plebeians that they didn’t mind crushing under their boots. We were nothing in their eyes, less than nothing. They walked over us like leaves on the ground and even when we try to get rid of them they come back. We are nothing.”

Percy chokes on his last sentence, laughing again, and almost unconsciously grabs at Tary’s arm to keep himself steady. He’s always considered himself nihilistic, but this is something more, something new, in the wake of a lifetime of life and fate sticking up their middle finger in his face. “They just breezed through, and when they had left their mark they breezed away and kept going – they’re like cockroaches. They just never-“

“Stop.”

Tary’s interruption comes with a light slap to the face and Percy blinks hard, the surface pain working its way through his skull to join the headache he seems to have grown in the back of his head without him knowing it.

“I’m not going to hear you self-depreciate like that,” Tary says, and Percy blinks again, his vision clarifying on the man who is older than him, but looks younger, and who, at one point, seemed so naïve to the world around him. “Alright? Can you do that?”

“I- I can-“

He wants to lie, wants to say he’ll be fine, that he’s just had a long day, they all have…

“I can try,” his mouth says instead, and Tary’s eyes sparkle at that, his frown softening.

“I know something about hating yourself, let me tell you,” Tary says. “And I know it sucks, and I know it’s a loud voice in your head, but you especially have helped me move beyond that, right?”

He nods encouragingly, and Percy copies the gesture, head bobbing slightly. His guns, the destruction they caused, the victories they’d won… It all seemed to pale for a moment in comparison to what was looming on the horizon.

“Now, I’m headed home soon.”

Percy hums in agreement, and the dull ache in his chest sharpens slightly.

“And you know my reasons, but you all? You understand saving the world. You’ve got years of experience and practice that I could only dream of. I know you all don’t want to say it, but you are all so talented and so powerful…”

Percy scoffs before he can help himself, and it earns him a glare from Tary.

“Again, I know you don’t want to believe it, but you are,” he says, shaking Percy’s shoulders slightly for emphasis. “Can you understand that? That you’ve all done good and you’re going to do it again?”

“Maybe?” Percy says, because he really doesn’t know, and he feels like the whole world is going to crash down on him for a moment-

“Hey, stop that.”

Percy’s vision refocuses on the man in front of him, expensive armor dented and hair looking slightly windswept despite having been under a helmet all day.

“I’m going to tell you what you should do, okay?” Tary offers, and Percy nods, letting himself take a deep breath.

“Excellent. You are going to go to the kitchen with me and get some calming tea, alright? And then we’re going to get you back to bed with Vex and you’re going to sleep until morning, when we can do something about things, alright?”

Percy opens his mouth to refuse, but he finds himself nodding yet again. He feels wrung out and almost like he’s drowning under the weight of everything that needs to be done, everything that they’re going to do. Perhaps sleep will help.

“Sounds like a plan,” Tary says with a grim smile, and a pat on the back as he stands up. “Now, do you know the way back to the kitchen, or should we call for a servant to show us the way?”

“I’ve got it,” Percy says, because he does know, and it’s something to do.

And as his feet carry him up the stairs and down the hallway, Tary’s footsteps echoing behind his own in the silence of the magical mansion, Percy takes a deep breath, pushing himself forward.

[ameliathermopolis]

Percy as a Druid?

Your wish, my command, etc. With a splash of Perc’ildan, as per your request!

[read on ao3]

The world always looked so much larger from the air, Percy thought, looping around one of the watch towers of the castle before flying upwards again. Allura and Shaun had told him countless times that there was no need for nightly fly overs with the shield up and running, but Percy had spent so long forcing down the need to feel wind beneath his wings, that he couldn’t bring himself to deny it now. The late afternoon sun felt warm, even this late into the winter, and the land fell away beneath him as he flew higher and higher. Percy let out a scree when he landed on the first tree that led to up the mountains proper, and it echoed down into the valley.

It’s the world, my dear, his mother’s voice echoed in his memory. Did you expect it to be small? He couldn’t keep his animal shapes so well then. He was lucky if he kept his skin in one form for an hour, and only as something small and simple. He could not fly or run then, could not make the earth itself bend to his will. Cassandra had made fun of him often enough in those days, even if she would also be the first to give him a cuddle when he turned into a white bunny rabbit for her amusement.

Percy shifted back into his usual form and stretched his legs as he leaned against the wide, thick truck of the tree. He had been the only one of his mother’s children to inherit her gift. His brothers and sisters had all gone for blades or the arcane or to the temple of Pelor, which was just as well. It had left all of the garden to Percy.

Bile rose in the back of Percy’s throat at the memory of the garden after the liberation of the city. It had been black, gnarled, poisoned to within an inch of even the most generous definition of life. Seeing it had felt like the Briarwoods were murdering his mother all over again. It was her place, then their place, and now just his - a sacred shrine she had cultivated over the course of her tenure as Lady of Whitestone, standing desecrated and broken. If he squinted, Percy could just see the huge labyrinth that stretched from the castle to the forest beyond, and the stone statue of Melora that reached up from its center.

The de Rolos had never been god fearing people, his mother least of all. Does the earth need worship to know it must grow? Does the fire listen to prayer? Does the water heed requests at the promise of gold and sacrifice? Does the air cease to chill and blow when there is no one left to will it so? Perhaps that reverence, that knowledge that the natural world would go on with or without you, was a kind of worship in its own way, Percy thought. His mother may have never worn the sunburst of Pelor as his father’s people had, but her bracelets of twisted heather and vine, her necklaces and crowns of flowers, and her pendants of wood and stone, were her holy symbols, just the same.

Whitestone stretched before Percy’s perch, from the very edge of the forests to the north where the mountain was just thinking of lifting up to meet the sky, far to the valley’s end and the path south to the wide world. It all felt so big, even after Percy had crossed so much of it with his friends, even after trials of earth and fire and air. His mother had never told him about the Aramente or about the tribe she had left behind on a mountain in the snow to find her own way. The mountains around Stillbend had taught him two things about his mother: she had never been a Headmaster, and his grandfather still mourned her.

The Ashari were not his family, not really. Percy found himself smiling a little at that word, family. Five years ago, it had meant a mother, a father, and a veritable stockade of siblings. Now, it was a rag tag group of assholes who had become heroes quite by accident. Was it an accident? Percy blinked and for a moment he thought he saw a woman, looming tall in black robes and a white mask, a hundred thousand weaving threads bound to each of her fingers. Was anything ever by accident?

Percy shook his head and sat up. Such questions were beyond his realm, and he was happy to leave them to others for a time. The sun was just cresting over the western ridge of hills when he leapt from the tree and slipped back into a hawk. As he flew down past the tree tops and back towards Whitestone, he repeated the words his mother had taught him as she watched him nurse small animals back to the health and grow flowers from winter’s frost. I am the land. I live so long as Whitestone lives.

The castle windows stood open on the first floor and Percy swooped into one of them, taking a sharp turn to the left of the entrance hall and down a flight of stairs. Vax’ildan would still be at prayers, he thought. Percy wondered if Vax actually knew any true prayers to the Raven Queen or if he was making it up as he went along, and decided it was probably a little bit of both.

Percy ducked under the stone archway that led to the temple and dived towards the floor. He landed as a hawk with a flurry of feathers and rose as a large white wolf shaking out his fur.

Vax’ildan didn’t move when Percy walked into the temple. His eyes were closed, his lips moving quickly in prayers Percy only half heard. May our Lady guide us and protect us as we serve her will…may we have the wisdom to know what can change and know when to witness only…strike true, fly high… Percy laid down on his stomach a few feet back, head tilted on crossed paws as he stared at the back of Vax’s head, his dark hair loose around his shoulders. He never got tired of watching Vax’s piety grow, even if he didn’t always understand his devotion.

Vax grew quiet after a few minutes and Percy’s ears perked up when he saw him put his right hand on the ground next to him, palm up. Percy scooted forward so his nose just touched the tips of his fingers, a whine rising out of his throat.

“Hello,” Vax laughed as he turned to look down at him. His fingers were quick and light as they moved to scratch at the thick fur behind Percy’s ears. “Did you know I was praying for you?” Percy leaned into his hand and whined again. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Percy stretched and arched his back, slipping out of his wolf form and back to normal over the span of a breath. Vax’s fingers were still buried in the white hair at the base of his neck.

“That’s still a little weird,” he says. “Watching you do that. Not bad, just…weird.” Percy shifted up so he was sitting with his legs crossed and raised an eyebrow.

“You’ve watched me shift before,” he said. “You all have.”

“I know but it’s different when it’s with everyone else,” Vax said with a shrug. “When it’s just us, it’s different. It’s…it’s…”

“Intimate?” Percy prompted. It was hard to tell in the dark of the temple, but Percy could have sworn he saw pink creeping up Vax’s neck.

“Yes. Intimate.”  

Never trust anyone who says they love you, if they haven’t seen you without your skin on.  Percy pushed his mother’s voice to the back of his mind and learned forward to kiss Vax, one hand braced at the front of Vax’s armor. The fingers at the back of his head stiffened before threading anew into his hair. They were both still so shy, painfully so whenever Percy would look back on their little trysts hours later. This thing, this bond they had started to weave together, was still new, like a bud waiting for a burst of sunlight to help it grow, and Percy feared more than anything that running headlong towards it would be akin to ripping the whole plant up by the root. Still, he had never thought he could take to this kind of affection, to softness and gentility and care. Where even a few weeks ago, every kiss and touch would be a contest, a battleground, now they were starting to mellow into conversations, to explorations, and Percy found that he didn’t mind not having to fight for everything he wanted.

When their lips did finally part, Percy leaned forward and press his forehead to Vax’s. “Intimate isn’t so bad, you know.” Vax’ildan smiled. He lifted his hand from Percy’s hair to press his palm to the side of his face.

“No. Not so bad at all. Come on,” he said. “We’re already late for dinner and I don’t doubt my sister will march down here and drag us out herself, no matter what compromising position we threaten her with.” They both stood and Percy noticed for the first time now noticeably dark it had become, even through the small windows that opened the temple to the outdoors. He groaned inwardly. Vax wasn’t the only one with a sister who had no qualms about having his head for lack of propriety. He started towards the door, and had just reached the stairs to the castle proper when he heard Vax’ildan’s footsteps stop beside him.

“Percival…do you ever feel like there’s something heavy just weighing down on all of us?” Vax asked. Percy looked back at him and saw Vax’s head still turned towards the alter, his gaze level at the image of the Raven Queen he had placed there upon their return from Duskmeadow. His fingers brushed against the back of Percy’s hand before joining with his and squeezing hard.

“It’s the world, Vax,” Percy said, giving his hand a squeeze in return. “Did you expect it to be small?”