Archive of Our Own ^beta

Vex is no stranger to death.

There was a baby bird once, long ago, torn to shreds by the village cats that she’d stumbled upon, its tiny mouth open in gasping breaths, and she’d gathered it up in little hands, startled by something sticky and red soaking through downy feathers. It was light, too light, too fragile in her palms as she carried it to the safest place she knew then, begged with the conviction of a child for things to be set right. Her mother hadn’t fixed it – Vex remembers being startled by that, unaware that there were things her mother could not do until the moment that little bird went still and did not move again.

“Sometimes there are things we just can’t fix,” Elaina had said, her arms warm and solid where they cradled her daughter close. Vex remembered the words years later, staring into the remnants of her childhood home and realizing all that was left of the woman who raised her was a handful of ash, so she did not try to fix it. She did not try – she held Vax close as they grieved, brushed the ash from their skin, ran far away and learned everything she could about the dragon that razed Byroden, but it would not undo what had been done and she knew it. She couldn’t fix it, but she could make sure it never happened again, and the two dragons of five that lie dead at her hand feel like justice enough, at least for the moment.

Sometimes there are things we just can’t fix, her mother said. Vex has seen death a thousand times in a thousand different ways since then, some dealt by her own hand, some merely an end she was made party to. She remembers her mother, no body left of her to bury; remembers Trinket’s mother, the two slavers she ended with a stolen dagger, kept awake some nights by the phantom warmth of their blood on her hands. She’s seen death and dealt it, felt its cold stillness for herself and the rush of adrenaline that comes from outrunning it, but somehow despite the significance of her first encounter, that baby bird has not been the thing she sees in her mind’s eye when she thinks of death. Not for a long time.

She has not thought about that first tiny, broken body in her hands in a lifetime, but the moment Percy is laid still and unmoving before her, his blood mingling with saline on her skin and those last words of forgiveness sitting heavy in the ruin of his mouth, it rushes back in with no warning, something she can’t explain even if she tries. She’s back in her mother’s home, tears streaming, cradling something broken and precious to her chest, sticky-slick blood on her palms, tunic spattered viscous and red. Elaina is more memory than mother to her now; maybe it’s true that there are some things we just can’t fix but godsdamn it that doesn’t mean she can’t try – the rage sings alongside conviction in her veins, pulse thundering in a tattoo beat and she can hear it pleading even without words, not-yet not-him not-yet. She puts one arrow in Ripley’s heart and another in her mouth, watches the life leave her eyes, kneels in the blood and the sand and presses healing hands to Percy’s chest, holds her breath, waits, waits, waits for it to rise beneath her fingers.

 (Sometimes there are things we just can’t fix, her mother said. Vex’s hands are unafraid of holding broken things, blood smeared across her jaw like a benediction, throat gone raw from the force of all her screaming as she reaches sticky-slick palms into the wreckage of his ribcage, white-gold magic curling from her fingertips, seeping through flesh and bone to find some spark of life left in him and waiting, waiting for the moment that spark will find tinder and catch.)

(Sometimes there are things we just can’t fix, her mother said, his skin as white as the cloth she uses to wash away his bloodstains, callus-rough hands shaking where they touch him, black powder scent of him heavy in her mouth and heavier in her heart and where the powder collects and sifts between her fingers she swears, she swears all she can feel on her palms is ash.)

(Sometimes there are things we just can’t fix, her mother said. Vex’s hands know broken things and her feet know the way back home – she carries him to the safest place she knows, makes of him an altar where she kneels and prays for miracles, carves herself open to offer up the thing in her chest that is already his and watches diamond and crystal shatter as she kisses his lips, tastes blood in her mouth, hopes, prays, begs for it to be enough.)

Sometimes there are things we just can’t fix, her mother said – she remembers the feel of downy feathers and fragile bones in her hands, remembers the air seeping from stilled lungs in more whisper than exhale, blood staining her palms and blood on shards of glass as she waits, waits, waits for the rise and fall of his chest. She remembers that first trick arrow and the shadows smeared beneath his eyes as he gave it to her, clenched tight enough now in her fist to draw blood where it presses against her fingers, her lips against his cheek the only tenderness she’d known how to offer then, the first kindness he’d learned to accept. She remembers blue feathers, the same shade as the ones she wears behind her ear, darkened by something sticky and sanguine, drenched until they match the deep cobalt of Percy’s coat – she remembers a tiny twig-marked grave somewhere, dug by little hands, ash on the wind far beyond her reach, the wreckage that is Anna Ripley torn asunder, Percy lying still, still, silent on that table, his last thoughts spent thinking he deserved this, brilliant mind somehow never knowing just how much he is loved.

No, she thinks in the moments between the light fading in the temple and that first ragged draw of breath, there are some things she just can’t fix, but there are some things she can save – she watches him sit bolt upright now in the darkness of his bedroom, chest heaving, startled out of her vigil by the sudden movement, his body curved bowstring-taut at the spine, and she’s drawn to him, his name in her mouth a familiar weight, the sound of his breathing both harsh and a comfort as she reaches for him, halts her forward motion the moment he flinches back, eyes wide and unseeing; swallows the ache of it, curls fingers into crescent-marred palms, offers his name as a tether to bring him back, to fight his way out of whatever holds him.

Vex’ahlia is no stranger to death. No stranger to things she can’t fix. But maybe it’s not about fixing – maybe it’s never been about fixing, but about what can be saved, about staring into the void and sinking teeth into what’s precious, gripping those thin gold threads tight and tugging, finding out what death is to do when it is made to give someone back.

(Sometimes there are things we just can’t fix, her mother said. Her mother and that little bird are dead, but she is here, stubborn and unyielding, staring into the face of someone she laid down her defenses to save.

She watches his lips form around something that’s not quite her name, viridian eyes moon-smeared in the darkness.

No matter what price she paid, she thinks she’ll be damned before she lets someone she loves go without a fight.)