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Keyleth winced slightly as a somewhat loose board beneath her feet gave out a creak that sounded, in the late-night silence of Castle Whitestone, like it would wake everyone in the rooms that bordered the hallway she was currently traversing. Of course, her whole mission at the moment would involve intentionally waking someone, but that alone was enough to make her feel guilty. No more needed to be added to the pile.
Now keenly aware that the floors were an obstacle, she slowed her place, gingerly testing the boards in front of her before stepping on to them fully. While the progress felt slow, it eventually brought her to the door she was seeking. Which posed a second challenge that she hadn’t taken into consideration -- with her arms as full as they were, there was no easy way to pry it open. She stared at the layer of wood that stood between her and her destination for a good moment, as if it were an offending creature intentionally inconveniencing her. What she wouldn’t give to be in a form that also had a prehensile tail! But shifting now might cause her to drop her cargo, and that wouldn’t do either.
Cautiously, Keyleth turned her right side to face the door handle and tried to maneuver her hand, pinky finger extended, to wrap around it. To her surprise, as soon as she made contact with it, the door swung inwards of its own accord. She gave it a sad smile -- Percy must have been so tired when he got up here that he’d forgotten to shut it properly behind him.
As she stepped into the darkened room, she could hear the soft sounds of her friend’s breathing, exhibiting that unmistakable pattern of someone in a light sleep. Though honestly, the simple sound of him taking breaths again caused a lump to form in her throat. She swallowed it down quickly, setting the things she was carrying on the writing desk in the corner, and wandered over to sit down on the bed.
There was very little light in the room, just the faint glow of the moon shining through a nearby window, but with her low-light vision, Keyleth could see Percy just fine. He lay face-down, causing unruly tufts of white hair -- that would usually be more controlled but had, in the tumult of their experiences since yesterday, sprung free -- to be his most predominant feature. Cautiously, she extended a hand to softly shake his shoulder, but retracted it quickly. She’d felt like this was the right thing to do up until this point, but now that she saw Percy so peacefully getting some well-needed rest it felt almost… wrong. She glanced back at the writing desk, resolve starting to bubble back up. This very well might assuage some of both their anxieties. It was probably worth doing.
She sat down next to him and shook Percy’s shoulder as gently as possible, not wanting to unpleasantly jolt him from his rest. It seemed to have the desired effect, as she heard a muffled noise from the vicinity of the pillow.
“Percy?” she asked.
The young man rolled over onto his side, rubbing one of his eyes and glancing about. Eventually, he spoke.
“It’s still dark out,” he mumbled. “Why are we doing things while it’s still dark out?”
“We’re not,” Keyleth said. “Well, we’re not if you mean everybody, but I am, and I guess you are now too, unless you don’t want to. You can go back to sleep if -- I should have let you sleep, I’m sorry.”
Percy started to pull himself into a sitting position, slowly, looking as if it pained his muscles to do so. Keyleth remembered how he’d used Bad News as a crutch as they made their way into the castle and felt the lump in her throat come back. She didn’t like seeing her friend like this, didn’t want to have to see her friend like this. But life had not been kind to Vox Machina for some time now, and the most she could do was try to make up some of the kindness herself. She gently helped ease himself up, so that he didn’t have to do all the work alone.
“Don’t be sorry,” Percy said to her. “This is already much more pleasant than the sort of dreams I was having.”
Keyleth didn’t know how to respond to that. She recalled Percy saying that he feared sleep earlier. It felt unfair that what he needed right now was yet another thing that would haunt him. All of this felt unfair.
They sat there in silence for a moment, neither seeming to know what to say next. Keyleth again focused on the sound of Percy’s breathing, a reminder that while things were bad, they’d managed to fix something. Something important.
“I- I brought you some things,” she finally said, and Percy, who’d been gazing off into the distance like he wasn’t completely there, turned to look at her curiously.
“They’re a little silly,” she continued. “I don’t know if that’s okay, I just thought they might be nice right now.”
“To be entirely honest, silly sounds wonderful at the moment,” Percy said. “I can’t recall the last time we had a bit of levity.”
“The casino?” Keyleth offered.
“Yes, probably the casino. Now what is it you brought?”
Keyleth got up from the bed and walked over to the writing desk, picking up the coffee pot on the top and the two mugs next to it that she’d snatched from the kitchens. Delicately attempting to balance all three, she wandered back over to Percy, poured a bit of the drink into a mug, and offered it to him.
“It’s not coffee,” she said. “That would probably be bad for you right now, I’ve seen you fight exhaustion with it and it never ends well.”
“Hmm,” Percy said noncommitally. He didn’t seem to agree,
“Take the mug,” Keyleth said, still holding it out to him. “It’s still good stuff, I promise.”
He accepted, reaching out to grab it. As Keyleth passed the mug to him, she brushed his hand, and suddenly felt very grateful that the contents were warm -- the chill of the grave was gone from Percy, but something about him still felt like life was only slowly returning to his body. It fit with the rest of his appearance, really. He seemed like he couldn’t quite hold himself together yet, like the ritual that had restored him to life had planted the necessary seed, but the sprout that grew from it was still very small, and needed protection to return to its former size.
Keyleth knew how to help a plant better than to help a person.
“Now, what is it you’ve given me?” Percy said, and she felt something inside her lighten a bit as a faint whisper of Percy’s typically wry humor slipped into the question.
“Try it,” she said, giving him a small smile.
“I do hope this isn’t something that’s going to kill me again,” he said sardonically.
“Try it,” Keyleth said.
Percy cupped the drink in his hands, seeming to soak in some of the warmth, then took a sip.
“Hot chocolate?” he inquired, sounding pleasantly surprised, and Keyleth smiled wider.
“There was some left in the kitchens,” she said. “Maybe from Winter’s Crest? I don’t know, I just thought you’d like it.”
“I do,” he said. “Although I see that you’ve brought another cup, perhaps it might be more enjoyable if it was shared?”
“I have something else first,” Keyleth said turning around to retrieve the other things she had set down on the desk. She returned to Percy, arms full of the blankets and pillow that she’d plundered from her own room, and set them in a heap on the floor.
“Do you mind if I grab some more from your own bed?” she asked.
“I don’t see any problem in it,” Percy replied.
Soon, Keyleth had piled high all the soft things she could find in the room, in preparation for what was to come. She laid a blanket and a few pillows out on the ground, then glanced back up at her friend.
“I didn’t think this would work as well on your bed,” she said. “Would you be alright settling down on the floor?”
“I can probably manage,” Percy said. “Though I still haven’t the faintest idea what you’re doing.”
“You’ll see,” she said, gently taking his mug from him so he could get up. For a moment, she felt very incredibly guilty asking him to move -- he stood very slowly, looking a bit unsteady on his feet and like he could hardly manage it. But soon he was settling into the small nest she’d created and leaning back up against the bed, closing his eyes and breathing deeply.
Keyleth placed his cup back in his hands, grabbed some of the remaining blankets, and began arranging them around Percy. He let out some small noises of protest, but was either too exhausted to fight it, or only feigning indignation to preserve his dignity. She suspected it was some of both.
When she was satisfied with her work, she poured her own cup of cocoa and settled in next to him, pulling a blanket over her lap and leaning against the back of the bed herself. Wordlessly, she extended her un-occupied hand to gently rub circles into Percy’s leg. Though it was subtle, she could have sworn a bit of tension left his body under the touch of her fingertips.
Silence descended on the pair once again, neither seeming to want to speak. This time it was Percy who eventually broke the quiet.
“Why the blankets?” he queried.
Keyleth felt the lump in her throat creeping back up again, and she stumbled over her words. “Well, I did think they’d be nice,” she said. “But there was also.... we did something similar last night, all of us, while you were -- well, when you --”
“Ah,” Percy said quietly.
“It didn’t seem fair that you missed it,” she said.
Percy made what sounded like a scoffing noise as soon as she said the word “fair,” and Keyleth felt her heart sink. She wasn’t even entirely sure why, but it felt deeply wrong.
“Percy…” she said.
“‘Fair’ would have been leaving me the way I was,” he said. The fact that he said it without a hint of irony scared her, and she instinctively stopped rubbing gentle circles into his leg to instead squeeze it tightly as she responded.
“That’s not true!” she said. “We’d miss you very much if we had.”
Percy gave a bitter-sounding laugh. “Perhaps not fair to everyone,” he said, “but fair in the vast and universal sense. The sort of justice that comes to those who deserve it.”
“Nothing about that was justice!” Keyleth said, raising her voice a bit. “It was just horrible!”
“Do you really not see it?” Percy said. “I was the reason that Ripley had her weapon in the first place. Its design was stolen from my plans, the result of my foolish bargain. For it to be the weapon of my own destruction was rather poetic.”
“I don’t care about poetry, Percy, I care about you! Dying like that isn’t what I want for you.”
“I’m not saying that it’s how I wanted to die, just that it’s how I deserved to.”
Keyleth made an incredibly frustrated noise. They’d only had Percy back for a matter of hours and he was already voicing those bits of his attitude that infuriated her. She’d said that he was her best friend during the resurrection, and she’d meant the words honestly. But their clash in opinions was a feature of their relationship that she also knew would never go away.
“Alright. Whatever you want to think. But I’ll tell you something else,” she said. “You’re alive again because people care about you, and we care about you because you’re better than who you think you are. So maybe you deserve life, too.”
Percy fell silent, and she thought for a moment that maybe she’d offended him. But when he spoke again, there was no malice in his words -- just an annoying desperation to change the subject.
“You know that I can’t see a thing right now, don’t you?” he said. “Your eyes are a bit better suited for the dark than mine are.”
“I’ll light a candle,” she said.
“There’s a lantern on the desk,” Percy replied. “Though I haven’t got anything to light it.”
“You forget who you’re talking to,” Keyleth said, trying to inject some humor into the situation by smiling slightly as she said it. It still felt fake
She got up and found the lantern in question, lighting up her fists briefly to ignite the candle within with her self-generated flames. Once her hands were extinguished, she carried it back over to where Percy was still sitting.
“There,” she said. “Some light.”
It suddenly felt like there was tension between them, and Keyleth worried once more that she’d made the wrong decision in coming to see Percy tonight. Maybe it was still too raw. Maybe Percy needed to be left alone for a while.
Maybe, despite all those plans turning around in his brain, Percy was an idiot.
She was deeply wrapped up in her own thoughts, which meant that when he spoke, it caught her off-guard.
“It’s still so small,” he said.
“What is?” she asked, bewildered.
He gestured to the lantern, mug still in hand. “The light,” he said.
Keyleth instantly caught the deeper meaning to his words. “But it’s still light,” she replied.
“Temporarily. Eventually it will dissipate, leached away by the air around it. That’s what the universe does, it takes things that are ordered and makes them disordered. Entropy. Releasing its warmth to a cold and unforgiving world.”
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight it,” she said. “Even if it’s in little ways. Rebuilding things that are broken, lighting the darkness…… bringing someone back to life.”
As she uttered the last phrase, both of them turned to face each other. There was a long, lingering look between them, saying things that neither of them wanted to say. She took a hand away from her own mug and squeezed Percy’s free one.
“Keyleth…” he said eventually. “I can see it. I can see the chaos, the way it spreads from me. No matter how much you want me to be a spot of light, I’m still one like that candle -- eventually tending towards disorder. Ripley said she made more guns. That she sold more guns. Terrible things that are an indirect product of my own hands are spreading throughout the world. That’s not light.”
“You’re a light to me,” she said. “Isn’t that enough? Because if the universe wants your stupid form of justice, it’s going to have to get through me first.”
Percy actually gave a small laugh at that.
“Don’t you ever worry you might be mistaken?” he said.
“If I worry, I worry about you,” she said. “I’ve already seen the kind of person you are, if something were to shake my faith in that, it would be a sign that no one had helped you. So I’m here to help.”
They both went quiet again, sipping what was left of their hot chocolate and slowly leaning in towards each other, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps intentionally. Feeling the warmth and rise and fall of each others’ chests, which were signs of life that felt all the more precious now. Drinking in the peace of each others’ company.
It was nice.
“Thank you,” Percy said around the time they both emptied their cups and set them aside, “for visiting me tonight. I tend to get a bit wrapped up in my thinking, and after the last few days I have quite a lot to think about.”
“I needed to see you too,” she confessed. “See you like this, up and breathing and not so… still.”
As she spoke, Keyleth’s eyes wandered to Percy’s still blood-soaked shirt and coat. Horrible reminders of horrible sights that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to burn from her brain. To see someone you cared about pale, and unmoving, and riddled with bullet-holes… she never wanted that to happen again.
“Keyleth, are you crying?” Percy asked, and as soon as he mentioned it, she realized that tears had indeed started to slip from her eyes. Small, quiet ones, but they trailed down her cheeks nonetheless. She didn’t even bother to wipe her face before flinging her arms around Percy in a tight embrace, remembering too late that her friend was still fragile and perhaps should not be squeezed so strongly.
But instead of protestation, she felt his arms wrap around her as well, a weaker hug, but one with intent nonetheless. As soon as she felt it, she began to cry harder.
Keyleth buried her face in the shoulder of Percy’s coat to disguise her sobbing, knowing full well she was shaking is she did it. She didn’t care. She hugged him tighter.
“Keyleth?” he inquired cautiously. Not “What’s wrong?,” because they both knew, and not “Are you okay?” because neither of them were. Just her name.
She pulled her face from his shoulder and said, voice barely above a whisper, “You’re able to hug me back again.”
Percy must’ve caught the implication of her words because he leaned in closer and seemed to try to direct more energy to his own embrace. She wondered if it was all he had left in him.
They stayed like that for a while, neither one seeming to want to let go. Keyleth’s tears eventually subsided, and when she felt she had a little more composure, she pulled her face away to look Percy in the eye.
“I don’t care if the universe isn’t fair,” she said. “And I don’t care if it’s cold or dark or chaotic like you say it is. We’re still bright spots in it, and that means we have to keep the fire burning. And that we can.”
“How about I agree to do my best, then?” Percy said. “No promises, but an attempt.”
“I think your best is better than you think,” she said.
“Well in that case, it sounds like a rather good deal for you,” he replied. Keyleth leaned back in for another tight hug.
Though letting go of each other was the last thing either of them wanted to do, Keyleth could eventually feel Percy’s arms growing tired, and she pulled back to lean against the bed once more. He followed suit.
They didn’t speak to each other again -- not for lack of things to say, but because a peace had settled on them both that neither wanted to break. Keyleth wrapped her hand around Percy’s once more, and he leaned his head against her shoulder. It wasn’t until she started to hear soft snoring near her ear, however, that she noticed the exhausted young man had fallen asleep again.
She didn’t feel sleepy herself, given the time change that had resulted from traveling from Glintshore to Whitestone. But not wanting to disturb her friend’s rest, Keyleth didn’t get up to go back to her own room. Instead, she softly ran her fingers through Percy’s hair, watching the candle in the lantern burn low.
But it was still light.
She felt Percy, warm against her, releasing gentle breaths in his sleep. Like he ought to be.
“You are releasing your warmth, you know,” she said, though she knew there would be no response. “But it’s not a bad thing. It’s beautiful.”
And it was. In fact, it was the nicest sensation she’d felt for days.