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As soon as Keyleth closed the door and turned around, Vax’s arms were around her.
She wound her own arms around him without even thinking, holding him to her tightly. When he hunched over the slightest bit to bury his face in her neck, she stretched up on her a toes to make it easier for him, turning her face towards his as much as she could, her lips brushing against his ear, then his neck.
His breath started to shake, and Keyleth told herself it was just the overwhelming emotions from the day catching up with him. Quietly though, in the more selfish part of her mind, she hoped maybe it was just because she was close to him. Their proximity was certainly having an effect on her. Every time she felt his chest move against hers, every breath she felt on her neck, every time his fingers clenched at her back into the fabric of her nightgown, she felt like the whole world was shaking underneath her.
The relief surprised her the most. When she opened the door to see him standing there, so openly vulnerable, waiting for her answer, always waiting for her, something inside of her that she hadn’t even realized had been wound tight with worry broke open. Things had felt so unsure, so stilted after their talk at the Sun Tree. The way he’d just pulled away from her when she was trying to get him to stop Vex from going after that loot… Vax had been colder to her lately than he ever had been before, and though Keyleth tried to be logical and remind herself that there was a lot going on, especially for Vax, she couldn’t quite shake the fear that she had taken too long and that he had shut the door on them for good.
She didn’t even realize that she had started crying until Vax was pulling away from her, taking her face in his hands and looking at her like he had forgotten all of his worries the second he felt she might be upset or distressed.
“Kiki?” he said, wiping the tears away.
Keyleth shook her head, feeling selfish. Everything that Vax had gone through today, with seeing what had happened to Gilmore, and the Clasp, she should be the one comforting him right now. Not the other way around.
“Kiki, what’s wrong?” Vax persisted.
“I’m fine. I just… I thought you hated me.”
A sound of pure disbelief left Vax. “Hate you?” His hands moved from wiping away her tears to frame her face. “I could never hate you.”
“I know. I know that. And I know that ever since we got back from Whitestone there’s been a lot going on. But, you just… you’ve been distant. And not just your normal distant. You didn’t even listen to me when I was asking you to talk Vex out of going after that loot that had been gathered for Thordak. When I tried to grab your hand you just pulled away. I don’t know, I was worried… maybe I had waited too long.”
“I told you at the Sun Tree that I would wait for you,” Vax reminded her. “I meant that.”
“I know.” She rolled her eyes at herself, feeling silly. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“No, I do. You came here tonight and you’ve had so much to deal with today and then I laid this all on you…” Keyleth babbled on, unable to look into Vax’s eyes.
“I’m glad you told me,” he responded with a quiet, gentle voice, using the hands that were still holding her face with the slightest of touches to bring her eyes to his.
“Still…” Keyleth trailed off, taking in his face. While his eyes were gentle and loving, as they always seemed to be when he looked at her, she could see how drawn he was, how tired he looked. “It’s been a long day,” she finally finished. “We should get some rest.”
Vax nodded in agreement, and then teetered on his feet as his hands started to pull away from her, his eyes shifting between the door and the bed, clearly not sure what he should do.
Taking his hand in hers, she started toward the bed, tugging on his arm when he didn’t follow. “Come on.”
His eyes lit up, in that moment looking happier than he had in a very long time, and Keyleth returned the look with a soft smile as she moved to get into bed. After a few seconds, she finally heard Vax start to move, and soon the she felt the mattress dip as he slid in beside her.
Turning onto her side, she met his eyes. At the Sun Tree the vulnerability in them had made her uncomfortable, because she was so confused and she knew she wasn’t telling him what he wanted to hear. But lying in bed with him, only a few inches separating them as they both rested on their sides, she felt breathless at the vulnerability she saw now. That he trusted her so much to be vulnerable with her in the first place… it made her feel loved in a way she never had been before.
After several long moments, Keyleth reached out her hand to cover his own. “Sleep. It’s been… well, it’s been a pretty horrible day. We’ve got work to do tomorrow. We need our strength.”
Vax’s eyes flicked away from hers as his brow began to crease.
“What is it?” she asked, shifting closer to him and folding her fingers into his.
“We probably have more work than we would have because of the choice I made with the Clasp.”
Squeezing his hand, Keyleth ducked her head to try to catch his eye. “You made the right choice. An alliance might have been advantageous now, but those are not the kind of people we should be beholden to.”
“Percy’s right, though. We made a powerful enemy tonight.”
“I’d rather have them as an enemy than be indebted to them,” Keyleth said fiercely. “Sometimes there’s no such thing as a good decision. Sometimes all of the options are bad. You just have to go with the one that you can bear the most.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Vax conceded. “I know Percy thought that I was trying to be noble, but such a thing never entered my mind. I just kept thinking about the fact that they had wanted to take my sister from me, and of all the things I had seen when Vex was marked. I just thought of having to actually deal with them, to trust them enough to be partners with them on this, and I couldn’t do it.”
“You’ve spent enough of your life under their thumb. It would be unfair to expect you to voluntarily be beholden to them,” she responded. “Percy will understand that. He just needs time.”
“I felt right in the moment, though. I did,” he continued, as though Keyleth hadn’t even said anything. “I wasn’t sure, but when you agreed, when you said it was a bad idea, that it wouldn’t be right to trust them, I really felt I was doing the right thing. Knowing that you feel that way about it, it’s the only thing that’s keeping me from doubting my choice entirely.”
Keyleth paused before continuing. When it came to things like this, she didn’t always like admitting that she had other things on her mind than the greater good. Normally she might not say anything, but Vax was being so open with her, and she knew she had to trust him just as he was trusting her. “I can’t pretend that my motivations for my choice were completely noble, either,” she finally admitted, unable to maintain eye contact during her confession. “I admit that I don’t know what would be best for Emon right now. I don’t know if it would have been better for the town in the long run if we had made the alliance. I just knew I couldn’t bear being beholden to those people. I couldn’t bear you being beholden to them.”
After finishing, she looked back up at Vax, as the corners of his lips lifted, just the slightest bit, and the look he gave her was filled with so much love that Keyleth thought she might burst from it. He stared at her for a long moment, his handing folding around hers more tightly, drawing her eyes to where their hands were joined, their fingers entwined and wrapped around each other. Silence like this, when she was with another person in such a private, emotional way was never something that she had felt comfortable with, but she marveled at how safe and calm she felt here with Vax, laying side by side in a silence heavy with feeling.
“Still,” he eventually said, his thumb stroking the back of her hand, drawing her eyes back to his. “When I’m on your side, I usually know I’m on the right side.”
“That goes both ways,” she whispered back, allowing the quiet to fall over them for a few more brief moments before speaking again. “You don’t think Percy was right, do you? What he said about ruling, that it meant making those kinds of compromises. It doesn’t always have to be that way, does it?” She moved her hands up, gripping his shirt in a sudden, frantic need to steady herself as Vax pushed her hair over her shoulder and stroked his fingers down her neck. Her eyes drifted closed as she breathed in deeply, focusing on the feeling of his skin against hers, before once again meeting his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never really had to lead before. For a long time the only two people impacted by my decisions were me and Vex. And Trinket of course.”
Keyleth let out a small laugh at the mention of the bear before turning somber again. “I already have so many doubts, and if that’s what leading really means, I don’t know if I want…”
Vax’s hand stilled at the curve of her shoulder. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” she replied as the tears started flowing once more. Vax closed the little space remaining between them and wrapped his arms around her, whispering soothing words into her hair. Keyleth let herself cry, releasing all the fears and worries she had into Vax’s chest.
They remained entwined even after her tears had dried. Keyleth’s arms wound around Vax, pulling herself into him, flattening her hands against his back, wanting to feel as much of him a she could. She reveled in his warmth and tried to let the strength of his arms around her and the feeling of his body pressed to her own calm her worries. One of her hands moved up toward his shoulders, and Vax flinched, hissing in pain as her hand made contact with the new scar on his back.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice gasping as she pulled back, the calm that had started to wash over her breaking. “Are you okay?”
“It’s fine, really,” he responded, a small smile coming across his face as he met her eyes again. “I’ve had far worse.”
“I know,” came Keyleth’s dry response. “I seem to remember you being very close to death on more than one occasion.”
His smile grew wider. “Exactly.”
“Why did you get so upset when Vex tried to heal you?” Keyleth said, giving voice to a question that had been in the back of her mind all night.
Vax’s smile turned bashful as he brought his hand to her elbow, pulling her hand around from his back and taking it in his own. “It’s… it’s your hand that’s there now.” His eyes lingered on her fingers for a moment before he brought them to his lips. “I like the thought of you always being with me, always having my back.” His lips brushed the tips of her fingers as he spoke, and when he finished he pressed a gentle kiss to each one.
“I always have your back,” Keyleth promised. “No matter what.”
“I also…” his eyes grew serious, as though he was trying to tell her how honest his next statement was. “I like feeling like I have a piece of you with me. Always.”
Vax folded her hand into his and pressed it to his heartbeat. Resting her forehead against his chest, Keyleth took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She focused on the rhythm of Vax’s heart and the sound of his breathing to calm her, and soon she was relaxed. Vax’s breathing was deep and steady, and she thought he was asleep, until his quiet voice reached her ears.
“At the Sun Tree, you said that you see my face most nights before you fall asleep.”
“I did,” she whispered back, not moving. “I do.”
“So earlier, when you opened the door, when you said you haven’t wanted to be alone most nights, did you mean… that you just didn’t want to be alone, or…”
“Did I want you here with me?” Keyleth pulled back to look at his face, unsurprised to see the vulnerability that had returned, tinged with a bit of what she thought might be hope.
He nodded.
She was quiet for a long moment, staring at her hand, still in his, pressed against his heart. After a long, tense moment, she slid closer to him. “I don’t usually mind being alone. But… I’ve found recently that when I’m alone… I miss you. Even if you just saw you. Even if I know you’re just in the other room.”
The smile that broke across his face was small, but it was still one of the brightest things she’d ever seen.
Steeling herself, Keyleth took a deep breath and spoke, “Vax…”
Seeming to know exactly what she wanted to say, Vax cut her off. “We don’t have to do this now.”
“Yes, we do. I do. I have been doing a lot of thinking and things have become clearer for me, and with all of this going on right now has taught me anything, it’s that we don’t always have all the time in the world to do the things we want to do.”
She looked into his eyes, imploring him to understand, to let her continue, and he nodded.
Keyleth took a calming breath before continuing. “It’s been hard for me… living with you all, loving you like family, all while knowing I couldn’t stay forever. I’ve been a quest. My AraMente. And… it’s almost over. I’ve lived most of life with a goal in mind. And every single thing I’ve done has been, in some way, about getting to that goal. And no matter what I feel for you, I couldn’t figure out where you’d fit into that. I can’t stay with Vox Machina forever, which would mean that I can’t stay with you forever, which would mean you’d have to come back to the Air Ashari with me, and I could never ask you to do that, so I didn’t think it could work. Because it didn’t fit with what I thought my life was supposed to be.”
“Has that changed?”
“We’ve been through so much lately. I’ve watched people I love go through so much. And I’ve seen how much one person can lose. And then with the Fire Ashari… they’re all just… gone. And for a while I was terrified that all of the Ashari could be gone. I realized… what’s it all worth if you spend your entire life building to one thing, cutting everything out of your life that doesn’t fit with it, if that one thing can just be gone in an instant?”
Vax was watching her, his hand clutching hers to his heart and his other arm around her, holding her firmly to him and keeping her steady. She took that to draw the strength to keep going. “And I don’t know what I want anymore. I don’t know if I want to go back, and after what happened to the Fire Ashari I don’t know if I’d be going back to the same world that I left. I don’t know where the Ashari go from here. I don’t know where I go from her. But I think that there’s finally one thing I know for sure. One thing I’m certain of.”
Keyleth swallowed nervously as Vax nodded at her to continue. She could tell by the way is hand had tightened around hers that he was anxious about what she had to say, but his face never changed, allowing her to see everything he felt for her.
“Say it again. What you said to me in Anders’ study. Say it again.”
As he looked at her, she could see the vulnerability in his eyes stronger than she ever had before. She knew that she was asking a lot. Vax had already laid his heart out in front of her twice, only to receive nothing, or very little in return. But she needed to hear it again. If she was going to take such a huge step into the unknown, she had to be sure he would catch her. And she had to be sure he trusted her enough to catch him.
After a long, quiet moment of his eyes searching hers, Vax finally spoke. “I’m in love with you.”
Everything they had been through together, all the fights they’d had and horrible things they’d experienced, she had never seen him look so vulnerable. She knew that he was putting so much trust in her by saying that again. So she returned that trust. “I’m in love with you, too.”
She didn’t wait to see the expression on Vax’s face before leaning in to press her lips to his. He responded immediately, pulling her as close to him as he could, tightening his arm around her waist to keep her pressed to him, the slight movements of his arms both careful and desperate at the same time.
It wasn’t like the first kiss, Keyleth found herself thinking. That had been such a shock that she’d barely even had time to respond, to decide if she even wanted to respond, before Vax had moved away. And he’d lost so much blood and was so weak… the whole thing was completely unlike now, with his strong arms holding her tightly to him, his lips moving with hers, their breath mingling.
“I love you,” Vax said fiercely as they separated.
“I love you, too,” she breathed. “I don’t know what that means for the future. But right now I want this. I want you. We can figure the rest out as we go.”
Vax nodded, pressing another brief kiss to her lips, then to her forehead. He lingered there, letting out a breath loaded with so many things: happiness, contentment, love, disbelief, and exhaustion. She felt his lips move against her skin as he said, “As much as I’d rather stay up doing other things, we really have a lot to do tomorrow.”
Keyleth nodded. “We really need to sleep.”
“Yes.” He pulled away, looking down at her, his eyes almost glowing and his fingers coming up to trace her jaw reverently. “I never thought…”
“What?” Keyleth asked when he didn’t finish, even as her eyelids grew heavy.
“I never thought I’d be this happy,” he finished in a whisper.
As he pressed a final kiss to her forehead and then settled down to sleep, his arms still wrapped around her, Keyleth was surprised to realize that she never thought she’d be so happy either.
THE END