Work Text:
A year like this passes so strangely
somewhere between sorrow and bliss.
.
“Is it… Does it feel right? Helping Her?”
Pike stands slowly, brushing the stone dust of their little chapel from her knees as she turns to face him.
“Well, sure,” she says, and he worries at the trailing thread on the back of his gloves where the symbol of Sarenrae has been sewn into dark leather. Pike looks at him, head cocked, a little uncertain, a little knowing. “Why do you ask?”
“Do you think… do you think She’d let me help? Too?”
“I don’t think She’d turn you away.”
“Right.” He nods slowly, fingers still working at the gold thread across his knuckles. “Thanks, Pickle.”
Pike smiles. “Anytime, String Bean.”
.
Shortly after this his world ends, and ends again, and ends again after that because good things come in threes and so do bad, and he spends a very long time falling through the dark with nowhere to land.
.
Whitestone is miserable at the time of year. Winter blows in from the mountains and then lingers, digs into the narrowest of gaps and settles in to wait. It is nothing like Byroden, where the longest months were always wet rather than windy, and even the dripping rain could not entirely chase away the humid heat of the southernmost reaches of the Verdant Expanse. It is even less like Syngorn, which maintained an unflappable equilibrium no matter the season, yet one more testament to the superiority of the Elves, and no doubt why the lot of them were assholes who wouldn’t know how to face change if it showed up and stuck a few knives in them.
Anyway. The point being, Whitestone is a sluicing misery of snow, stone, and solitude, and courtesy of the shadows of drakes that lurk overhead, most are slow to be outside even on the sunny, clear days when the snow has melted to mud and slush rather than towering drifts of white.
Which is perhaps why he stumbles across Shaun tucked away in one of the unused parlors of the castle during an idle sweep of the rooms.
It is clear from a few moment’s watching that the man has not noticed his presence. He sits bent over something in a plush armchair, a square of watery winter sunlight cutting through the window at his side and a delicate porcelain cup balanced precariously on one arm of the chair. He mumbles to himself too, low rumble of his voice familiar as breathing and individual words impossible to make out.
Vax considers slipping back out, pressing on to the next room and see what other secret corners of the castle lie waiting for his discovery, but. But.
He has been falling for a very long time, and finds himself desperate for somewhere to land.
“Shaun.”
The man starts, elbow clattering into his cup, and tea sloshes out over the side as it tumbles towards the ground. Vax darts forward and catches it inches above the dusty carpet, heart pounding. Cold tea spills across his fingers and seeps into the rug. Shaun stares down at him, eyes wide.
“Vax’ildan,” he says, and as he does his expression smoothes out into something closer to amusement. “Gods above, say something next time.”
“I did,” Vax responds, carefully setting the cup on a nearby table and wiping his hand on his breeches. Shaun’s mouth twists.
“Yes, I suppose you did.”
“Working on something?”
“A personal project of sorts.” He rolls his neck out a little, and Vax can see a page of tome spread across his lap. It’s written in a language he doesn’t know. “I’m afraid I’m still forbidden from anything more strenuous.”
Yes, after the–– Vax sees him in his mind’s eye, pallid and limp, breathing shallow, and swallows suddenly, hard.
“How are you?” he asks, and Shaun’s face shutters a moment before he fixes the smile back in place.
“Getting better every day,” he replies. “That cleric of yours has been a big help.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty special.”
“Oh, I know it.”
Vax smiles to match his, smaller but equally strained. Levity is hard when the world bears down around you, all snow and stone.
“Shaun,” he says quietly. There is no gold thread on the back of his hands now; his gloves are battle-ruined and their gold thread dimmed, his soul touched by something far darker. He rubs at his knuckles instead and looks up at the man sitting above him. “Would you mind some company?”
“Not at all,” he says, and there is no smile with the words, but there is more honesty, and Vax thinks he rather prefers it like that. “Do you know any Marquesian?”
“Not a word,” he answers, and Shaun laughs.
He settles himself against the foot of the armchair, shoulder bumping against Shaun’s leg, and the sunlight is watery but warm against his cool skin, and Shaun’s voice is a low, familiar rumble above him. He thinks he dozes briefly, but if he does it is without worry. It does not feel so much like falling and darkness and being buried when there is light and life and the gentle weight of Shaun Gilmore’s hand through his hair.
No. It is a great deal better than that.
.
The trouble with sacrifice is that ending is often change rather than cessation, and he isn’t sure what to do in the aftermath.
The temple Pike has built––will build, is building; it is in transition too, bare bones of what will one day be something whole and solid but is right now only ribs of white stone curving up into the sky, altar heart of the temple sheltered within––sits empty at this time of the afternoon. Long shadows lance eastward towards the bulwark of the mountains, and his shadow as he kneels is another twisting rope cast away from his kneeling form.
He’s no good with praying; he never learned how. On his knees and hands clasped, and, well. He doesn’t quite know where to go from here. But uncertainty has never stopped him before, and it will not stop him now.
“I’m not sure I’m allowed to talk to you any more,” he says. The wind whistles as it cuts against the neat-hewn stone, the only response given. “I’m really not sure you can help me at all, actually, I just. Wasn’t sure who else to talk to.”
Well. He is sure, but. Wary. Pike’s goddess is familiar and the Matron of Ravens is not, and he is tumbling ass over teakettle and looking for something to grab hold of, and one lifeline is good as any other.
“I’m trying to do this right. I’m just… not sure what that is. If there’s… If there’s a right way to do this…” He sighs, head and hands dropping, slumped forward on his knees. “It’d be nice to get a sign,” he mutters to the pale stone beneath him. The wind cuts through the shell of the temple, catches at his hair and his clothes and tugs at them. He sighs.
The croaking cry of a raven shatters the quiet, so loud he jumps, knees knocking against the stone. He pushes himself to his feet, seeking the source of the noise, and finds the bird perched atop one of the half-finished arches, a splash of darkness against the fire of the sunset. It stares down at him.
“That’s very literal,” Vax says, to the bird or to Sarenrae or to Her or to the world in general; he isn’t quite sure. Laughter bubbles up inside him; he notes an edge of hysteria.
The raven cocks its head, first to one side then the other. Beady black eyes stare down at him, and it opens its mouth.
He waits for a breathless moment, which is broken by––
“Vax?”
He jumps again, eyes darting away from the watchful raven above. “Shaun.”
The man stands framed neatly by the pillars that will one day hold the temple door. The last light of the day limns him golden, and he tilts his head curiously as he takes in the scene, Vax and the temple and the stone dust on the knees of his dark breeches, and his hair unkempt-loose. Something in his expression flickers.
“I didn’t take you for the pious sort. Seeking a little faith, are we?”
“Purpose,” Vax replies, word catching in his throat a little, and Shaun’s expression shifts again, tips sideways from humor to concern. He holds a hand out, an invitation.
“Come to dinner,” he says, and Vax straightens. The soles of his shoes make no noise against the temple floor as he passes between golden sunlight and grasping shadows, and he and takes Shaun’s hands. His fingers are warm.
When he looks back, the raven is gone.
.
“Well, here I am,” he says. The mausoleum walls––the shrine walls––press in around him, suffocating. He’s caught beneath them like beetle with a pin through its back, lanced by his own vows and not entirely sure how he feels about it. The comfort of direction wars with a strangling fear he has been holding back for–– Well, for as long as he has understood the offer he made. “But I don’t know what you want of me. I don’t know how to… to serve.”
The mausoleum echoes silence back at him.
(Some time after this a voice tells him left, and he finds something between freefall and interment, and understanding begins to from from the shadows.)
.
“Did you know they could do that?” he asks, breathless, arms still looped around the man’s neck. Shaun tilts his head back to look down at him, eyes dancing.
“I should hope so,” he says. “It would have been a short trip for you otherwise.”
Vax laughs, giddy. “I meant before.”
“I knew it was possible,” he says, and he’s smiling with just his eyes, a softer and surer thing than his usual glorious grin. Something private. Precious. “If anyone could manage it, it would be you.”
And Vax––Vax who is not falling at all, who is flying––holds him tight again, wings arcing above the two of them, and kisses Shaun Gilmore full on the lips.
And Shaun Gilmore kisses him back.
Scanlan whistles. Vex says, “Oh, get a room.”
Vax presses his forehead against Shaun’s and laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
.
The dragons die one by one, yield to perseverance and fury and shadow and strength, and to his family above all else, and when it is done he finds Shaun’s smiling face and warm hands and says, “Let’s go home?”
“Why, Vax’ildan,” says Shaun with his shining eyes. “I thought you’d never ask.”
(A year is a long time to spend away from his family, but it is a happy time too, and he is never lonely. He is never alone.
He thinks: I could live like this a long, long time.
He thinks that, and he thinks of purpose, and in the distance between the two he teaches himself to fly.)
.
There’s something austere to Vasselheim. He’d thought it the season the first time they visited, winter’s tight-fisted grip, but it’s just the city. Even in the clear days of spring and the warmth of summer there’s a bowed-head solemnity settled like a shroud over the whole of Vasselheim.
Well, the whole of the city save for the Duskmeadow, which positively thrives in comparison, awash with motion and light and the sounds of laughter, of music, of life.
“Isn’t it a little morbid?” he asks one of the priestesses, her veiled face indistinguishable from the myriad others that come and go. He’s gotten better at picking them out from the other by other things in these trips to the Raven Queen’s temple: the way they hold themselves, the cadence of their speech, the cut of their robes. The amusement with which they regard his attempts to understand this newfound calling.
“It is a celebration,” Lieve’tel says, standing with him at the door of the Raven’s Crest. A few passers-by drop clinking silver coins in the shallow bowl he holds out. It’s usually the duty of initiates to collect donations on the steps of the temple, but he has been roped into it today. Supposedly there is a lesson in the task, one about the place of the Raven Queen among the living; he mostly watches the ebb and flow of the crowd and wonders how this black-clad district manages to be the brightest in all of the Dawn City.
“Of death?”
“Of life. All things end, but such is the way of the world. We celebrate what we have while we have it, and know it is all the more worthwhile for the ending.”
He squints. “Still seems a little morbid. Just a bit.”
“Perhaps,” she allows, and he’s pretty sure she’s smiling under the veil. He’s gotten better at picking that out too.
“You ever regret it?”
Her head tilts. “What is there to regret?”
“Y’know. Missing out on…” He waves towards the crowd, balancing the bowl with one hand. “All that.”
“I have my purpose.” She says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “What else would I need?”
Vax cradles the bowl in both hands again and thinks of a narrow chapel at the outskirts of Emon. It’s whole now, one more repair seen to in the aftermath of the Conclave’s attack. He hasn’t thought to enter it. Hasn’t thought himself allowed.
“Right,” he says, a little too thick. His jaw works a moment as he turns the word over in his mouth. Purpose. It catches up behind his teeth. “Of course.”
Her hand is firm on his shoulder. “It is not an easy thing, but it is good. The two are not always at odds.”
“Yeah,” he says, thinking of narrow victories and lives bettered and people saved. “Yeah, I know.”
“You do,” she agrees, and folds her arms back into the volume of her sleeves. Vax watches the district, and accepts donations, and say nothing more.
.
Later––though, not all that much later; days, mere weeks at the most––he watches Shaun sleep.
He sleeps like the dead, Shaun, head tipped back and snoring slightly, hair pooling across the pillow. He is smaller like this, undiminished but more human. There are nights when Vax cannot sleep that he sits up and watches him like this, the rise and fall of his chest and the first hints of silver at his temples like stars among the dark and the gentle motion of his eyes behind closed eyelids.
He could drink in the sight forever.
Then there are the nights when he does not indulge his overfull heart and instead finds something else with which to occupy himself until the cobwebs of old nightmares drift away and he can sleep again.
These nights, more and more often, he finds himself turning towards prayer.
Shaun sighs in his sleep, head turning in Vax’s direction, and he brushes a teacup-delicate kiss to the man’s brow before slipping from their bed. He pads across the room to the window, sits himself upon the sill, folded with his back against the frame and his legs drawn up, chin settled on his knee. The moonlight is crystalline, unwavering, like an alchemist’s light through glass. He sits in the pool that drips through the window and stares out at the dim and dark streets of Emon, one hand curled around the holy symbol the priestesses have gifted him.
It is different than praying to Sarenrae. Surer. He understands now how Pike does it, how she always knows her goddess is listening. It is a knowledge that sits somewhere in his heart, or deeper. One of those ineffable truths.
“I understand,” he says to the cool of the night, raven’s wings pressing patterns into his palm. “Or, I think I do, anyways. And I don’t regret it, but.” His eyes slide back towards Shaun. “While we’ve got it, yeah?”
The night is cool and quiet. Behind him, Shaun stirs.
“Vax,” he murmurs. Vax turns. Shaun lies propped up on one elbow, expression unreadable. “Come back to bed.”
He meets Shaun’s eyes for a moment, unwavering like the moonlight, and then smiles soft and a little frail. The floor is chill underfoot, but the bed warm, and when Shaun presses a kiss to his forehead he lets go of thoughts of ravens and fate and duty and allows himself to sleep.
.
It is meant to be a weekend trip. It is meant to be nothing, the reunion of friends and family. He invites Shaun along too––a few days at Dalen’s Closet, a chance to see everyone again after a year of brief visits and briefer adventures––but he has just gotten his feet back under him and the store cannot spare him even a few days.
“Go enjoy yourself,” he says with a kiss to Vax’s forehead. “I’d only bore you and everyone else.”
“You’re never a bore,” Vax tells him, and kisses him properly. “Don’t have too much fun without me.”
“I’ll try,” he says, fond and gentle. “I love you.”
A year they have spent together, and still his heart beats faster when Shaun smiles at him like that. It is the last thing he sees before Keyleth’s spell bores through the tree, and the image fixed in his mind as he steps through to greet the rest of his family.
He doesn’t know, then. There is an inkling, perhaps, a flicker of something at the back of his skull, but in that moment it is nothing more than an old adage. What we have while we have it.
Even with everything that comes next, he won’t regret the smile.
.
(Later there is dust and dark and the black wings of a raven in the place where his heart should beat, and he thinks of a smile, and––
Purpose is a great deal heavier than he had thought. He cannot seem to put his down.)
.
He writes. It is the best he can manage, what with the end of the world looming around them. Keyleth offers to take him, heartbreak worn openly on her sleeve, but the though twists in his stomach, and besides. There are other places they need to go, and not time enough nor power enough to get to all of them. They do the best they can.
So he writes it all down. Goes through pages and pages of scrapped notes, unsure of how to put it, unsure of how to share such a finite ending with nothing but parchment and ink, unsure how to break down the enormity of love and hope and need that is driving him forward as surely as it holds him back.
(The trouble with sacrifice is that ending is often change rather than cessation, and he isn’t sure what to do for those caught in the aftermath.)
In the end he is left with a single page, and it is a plea and an apology and a confession all wrapped up in one.
He sends it by raven. It seems the thing to do.
.
“Hey Vax.”
“Hey, Pickle.”
She folds herself neatly next to him, feet tucked under her. From the open door of the mansion they can see a good few dozen feet into the twisting warren of the titan they’ve climbed into, a switchback path that is vein or artery to a creature older than time. The crown sits heavy far above, end of a journey that is in and of itself impossible.
Funny how these things turn out.
Pike is silent for a long moment, and Vax leaves her to her quiet. He appreciates the company even without the speech. They’ve been wary around him recently, reaching and pulling back in equal measure. He doesn’t mind, not really––it is a weighty knowledge to bear––but he does miss the company, just a little.
At his side, Pike sighs. “Vax.”
“Yeah?”
She’s pressed her lips together, like she’s tasting the words before she speaks them. He smiles down at her, just a little, and she smiles back like a bruise, all bright and aching.
“Does it feel right? Helping Her?”
It takes him a moment to collect his thoughts. He swallows a little thickly. “Yeah. I don’t know if it’s…” He remembers the temple, and the priestesses, and he says, “It isn’t easy, but it’s good.”
She nods slowly. “Okay.”
“Why do you ask?”
She’s quiet again. His feet, hanging out of the open door of the mansion, scuff against the stone beneath them.
“It was never really a question for me,” she says. “Serving Sarenrae. I just, you know. Wanted to make sure this was right for you too.” He looks down at her. She looks up at him with a smile, a little watery around the edges. “I just want to make sure you’re alright.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright. Course I’m alright.”
“You don’t have to lie to me, Vax.”
He isn’t. If anyone would understand service it’s Pike, who gives and gives and gives with no thought of what she might get in return.
“Not saying it’s… Y’know.” It takes him a moment to shape his thoughts into sense, into words he can share rather than half-formed feelings that get stuck between right and needed and destiny and heartache. “I’m alright, Pike. It’s what I was looking for.”
She smiles, a little watery and a little knowing, and he thinks of Shaun back in Emon who has nothing but a raven and some parchment and––
“Besides. We’ve got that asshole upstairs to take care of,” he tells her, because it is easier than thinking of what he will be leaving behind once they do. Pike laughs, just a little.
“Yeah. Vax… If there’s anything you want us to, to tell anyone…”
His lips quirk. They both know the only person he would have a message for. “Tell Shaun–– Tell him–– Oh, he knows.”
She bumps her elbow against his side. “We love you, Vax.”
“I know, Pickle.”
He loves them too. He loves them enough that he’s going to die for it, but that’s okay.
He knows what he has, and he’s lucky to have had it.
.
His heartbeat is still too loud in his ears when he cups the side of his jaw. “Shaun. It was an honor knowing you.”
He smiles. Still, here, at the end of everything, he smiles. Vax memorizes every line, every wrinkle, every prickling tear. “The honor has always been mine. I’ll see you on the other side.”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
And then he is gone.
Vax’ildan takes a breath, dries his eyes, sets his shoulders.
And then, with his family at his side and his feet steady beneath him, he goes to face his destiny.