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Things settle for a couple of weeks after they return to Emon. It’s both strange and welcome – strange because of the whirlwind of fuckery that occurred in his home city and his own personal demon suddenly deciding that Percy’s body is his to control; yet welcome because of the chance to take a respite, rest and recuperate before Vox Machina is called upon again.
Percy uses the downtime to tinker. His hand now has a hole in it and that simply won’t do. On top of that, The List had now disintegrated in the acid pit beneath Whitestone and he needs another pistol in order to actually be helpful in battle.
(He knows it was ultimately the right decision to destroy the gun, but the petty side of him is still annoyed with Scanlan.)
He starts working on designs for a prosthetic piece that would fill the hole in his palm – most days he’s either lounging somewhere in the keep with his journal, furiously scribbling ideas, measurements and sketching prototypes. He digs out his old plans for The List and reworks them into a new pepperbox – one without carved names on the sides of the barrels – and that gets finished first. It’s what he’s most comfortable with and it alleviates his guilt of having no weapon to defend himself with should something happen. Which, it inevitably would, because they’re Vox Machina.
Of course, shit will go wrong sooner or later.
He calls it Retort – a fitting name, at least in his complicated, fucked up mind – and it will get the job done, once push comes to shove, and yet, in the quiet of his workshop, when everyone else is off doing who knows what, when he’s alone with his thoughts, he finds he misses the feel of The List in his hand. In those moments, he summons all his will to shake himself off such ridiculous notions and the unnerving feeling of a scar left from Orthax, pulsing with hatred and anger, somewhere deep within his soul.
A rare sense of calm takes over Percy in those couple of weeks. He’s content with leaving Cassandra in Whitestone to take care of the city and reanimate it after the Briarwoods’ catastrophic rule; he knows she was born for this and will be a better ruler than he ever could, and so he has the utmost faith in her abilities. Amongst the new sketches in his journal, a note, written several times over as a reminder appears on multiple pages: Write to your sister. Check up on her.
(The mere fact that he has a sister still catches him off-guard sometimes. It’s often in the wee hours of the morning, when all he can do is think instead of sleeping.)
He’s happy to just work on his projects and not worry about his life or the lives of his friends or the otherworldly demon who had kept whispering thoughts of vengeance into his ear. The others also retreat to their own rest and errands – Pike makes sure to visit the temple in Emon as much as she can, while working on improving the one in the keep; Grog is happy to just trail behind her and help her in whichever way he can. Scanlan is often bent over parchments like Percy, but instead of weapons, upgrades and other contraptions, he writes about their adventures, tries out rhymes and melodies on his lute.
Keyleth picks up alchemy – she plops down with a stack of books next to Percy one day, pays no mind to his raised eyebrow, and starts studying the tomes diligently and taking notes. They spend lots of afternoons together like that, each working on their own projects in silence, and he finds that he doesn’t mind it one bit.
Vex and Vax work on replenishing their supplies at Gilmore’s and running errands in other shops. Sometimes, when Keyleth retreats to her own devices and doesn’t join Percy in the dining area, Vex brings Trinket over and starts carefully grooming him, much to the bear’s extreme delight, judging from the content grunts, escaping his muzzle. She always sits right on the chair next to Percy, even if the table is completely empty, with Trinket laying at her feet.
In those occasions, Percy finds himself more distracted and less productive than usual, and yet he can’t bring himself to mind.
The design for the contraption for his hand takes more time than he’d originally anticipated. He’d set out with just a basic prosthetic that would allow him to move his hand and fingers freely, but his eyes had caught the glint of residuum he had brought over from Whitestone and an idea had struck him.
His name would not be Percival Friedrickstein Von Musel Klossowski De Rolo III if he did not improve upon a basic design with technically challenging parts.
Percy tunes the residuum and manages to get the mechanism just right, so that when he activates it, a burst of lightning erupts from it to anyone who’s close enough. He tests it on a scarecrow in the backyard of Greyskull Keep and the charge is enough to set it wildly into flames, nearly singing off the entirety of the grass around it. Thankfully, Keyleth is close by and summons water to extinguish the fire quickly before Percy can even start to panic about the possibility of setting their new home on fire. He kisses the Ashari on the forehead in thanks and rushes off to his workshop, ecstatic by the promising results, but determined to fine-tune the charge, so it’s much more manageable.
Percy is sitting at his workbench the next day, done with the modifications on Diplomacy – the name for his new gauntlet – as fine-tuned as he could get it to be, with the small chance of the residuum exploding if not handled properly, which was a risk he was willing to take. Having put away his tools, he pauses and inspects his newest contraption, the green stone reflecting the light coming from the window gently. Images from their last night in Whitestone immediately swim into his vision – losing control of Orthax, reliving the deaths of his family and the torture he’d endured at the hands of Ripley, almost killing his new family, Darling, take off the mask, shooting his own fucking hand in a last desperate attempt to take back control over his own body—
He flexes his fingers experimentally and they move accordingly, albeit a bit more sluggish and slow than his right hand. He decides he’ll get used to it easily enough and smiles foolishly down at it.
“Darling, Keyleth’s made dinner, won’t you join us?”
Percy’s grin softens at the sight of Vex, leaning against his doorway, an easy and cheerful expression on her face with a glint of mischief in her soft brown eyes. Their gazes meet and there’s something so unrelenting that pulls his attention to her unequivocally, but he can’t quite put his finger on it and it drives him just a little bit mad, just like all of the things that he can’t figure out (yet). Before he can say Just a moment or I’ll be right there, Vex’s line of sight shifts and he follows the trajectory down to his left hand, the one he hadn’t yet covered with a glove.
“Is that…?” she starts, taking a tentative step further into his workshop, as if she’d done it without thinking about it.
“Oh, this?” Percy raises his left palm slightly, so the rays can catch on the residuum in the middle of his palm and smirks. “Just a little bit of Diplomacy.”
Vex’s grin grows and she raises an eyebrow at his choice of words. He’s about to slip the glove on when he notices her expression sobering slightly.
“May I?” she gestures vaguely with her arm, her gaze on his left hand and Percy is slightly taken aback by her interest. He tries not to let the surprise show on his face and only nods, scooting his chair to the right to make room for her.
Vex quickly slides the other chair over to his workbench and sits impossibly close to him, so close that he can see the individual strands of the blue feathers in her hair. Her hands hover towards his, tentative and unsure, and Percy holds out his left palm up, so that it rests on top of hers. Her eyes dart over the stone and the mechanism, diligent and curious. Her right hand rises from underneath; gentle and delicate fingers brush over the space around the residuum and in theory, Percy knows that’s where his flesh used to be and now there’s only wood and metal, and yet he swears he feels the sensation of Vex’s skin on top of his, sending a shiver down his spine.
(This reaction is entirely unwarranted and he doesn’t know how to feel about it.)
He keeps a keen eye on her face, watching intently as her irises move and her lips thin – Percy knows she’s remembering what caused the wound in his palm and wonders what thoughts are running through her mind.
Her hands keep their hold on his while Vex looks back up at him: “This is residuum, right?”
“Yes. I’ve tuned it so that I can shock any arsehole who, by some miracle, manages to get past my guns. I even tested it, it works beautifully.”
“Is that why Keyleth was shouting about ‘fire safety’ yesterday?” Vex asks, a teasing tone coloring her voice. Percy grins sheepishly, at which she chuckles.
“Tell me you didn’t set our keep on fire, darling. We’ve just moved in!”
“Not—the keep, entirely, just… a small portion of the backyard and a scarecrow may have been on fire, I can’t confirm nor deny.”
She laughs again and there’s this feeling of satisfaction settling deep in his stomach, accompanied by a warmth spreading in his chest.
Percy chooses not to dwell on it at that moment (or ever, perhaps) and focuses on Vex’s soft smile directed straight towards him.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” she closes her palm over his and squeezes gently, “You had us worried there for a moment.”
“I know and I’m sorry. I never meant for it to go that far, I would never intentionally hurt you or any of the others. Know that I am grateful for believing in me and helping me snap out of it.”
The air thickens with tension and Percy finds it slightly more difficult to breathe when Vex is this close and her hands are still wrapped around his, and her eyes are so big and her smile so soft. He gathers all his willpower to keep his gaze level with hers, trying to show her that he means every word and he’s truly thankful for her and this group of arseholes he’s beginning to think of as family.
“Anytime, dear,” Vex replies, her voice barely above a whisper. She blinks suddenly and looks down at their clasped hands, lowering her right hand from where it was on top of his palm. The mischief on her face returns, as easily as she nocks arrows from her bow.
“I look forward to seeing your new weapon in action. Provided it doesn’t set us all on fire, of course.”
He chuckles. “Perhaps I’ll shout out a warning each time before I use it, so you can walk away a safe distance.”
“Yes, but won’t that alert the fucker you want to use it on?”
“In that case, I suppose you’ll have to live with the notion that I might accidentally set you on fire one day.”
“Perfect, my type is exactly people who can make me hot and bothered,” Vex winks and sets back down his hand to rest on the table. Percy’s eyes widen and even though he has never been religious, nor will he be ever, he prays to all the gods that his blush is not as noticeable as he feels it to be.
He knows Vex notices. He decides to ignore her self-satisfied smirk.
Smiling and shaking his head, he puts his glove over Diplomacy and flexes his fingers once more before Vex drags him up and over to the dining table in the kitchen where they walk in in the middle of Scanlan explaining how his masterpiece will shock and awe all of Tal’Dorei, and how they’ll sing songs of his magnificent victory over a cyclops.
Vex sits next to him again, their shoulders and elbows touching occasionally. This time, Percy forces his brain to shut off and just enjoy the way she looks at him for his reaction to Scanlan’s tomfoolery, and leans back on him while laughing at something Grog said, and responds to his dry wit with her own quips.
There will come a time when he’ll have to sit down and sort out all of the thoughts and feelings he’s experiencing more and more lately when he’s around her, but for tonight, he just lets himself be with her, and that’s all he needs.