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“I don’t usually,” Keyleth gestured to the tangled bedsheets and discarded robes and armor strewn about her room, “on a first date,” and she laughed, and put her hand on Vax’s chest. “But it’s been a long time since my last boyfriend.”
“It can’t have been that long,” Vax teased back. “You hardly look a day over twenty-five.”
“I could say the same about you,” Keyleth breathed. Unless we were looking into each others’ eyes, she thought. For that was where time had left its scars on both of them, she knew. Not in the sharp stabbing of a fresh loss, but in the slow struggling agony of wrists and ankles bound in chains. “It’s been thirty years, Vax. I have been so busy doing everything I could to try and forget you.” She slumped into his shoulder. “Couldn’t do it. It would have made sense, really, for you to stay in your lane, champion of death, and me to stay in mine, guardian of nature. But I couldn’t let go of that tiny hope that maybe she would have had enough of you. And really,” She managed a tiny smile, “I’ve got all the time in Exandria to wait.”
“I had a long time to think as well, but,” he stumbled over his words, hands catching in her hair, combing through the copper strands as he gathered his thoughts. “The Matron provides - provided - provides? A certain numbness to her champions. It is useful, when you see so many deaths, every day, to distance yourself from your emotions somewhat. It is the only way to remember that each one is a mortal life, loved by someone, and not go mad with sorrow.” He paused to guide her face up to the level with his, showing her the tears that filled his eyes for the first time in decades. “It was the only thing keeping me from going mad with sorrow,” and Keyleth knew that he meant her, not the countless, nameless children and lovers and parents and grandparents, the pillars of the community and the loneliest pariahs, whose last breaths he had watched.
“It’s -” and Keyleth froze. She was never poetic like Scanlan, not even as good with words as Vax was. “It’s good to see you too,” she managed, and prayed it would be enough. Vax’s lean features broke into a thin smile, and, relieved, she bent to kiss it. “I’ll have to send Imogen a fruit basket - the one who carried the god-eater.”
Vax grinned up at her. “I checked in at the church before I left Vasselheim, and let’s just say she’s been amply rewarded.”
Keyleth groaned and flopped onto her back. “I don’t know how long I have you for, but maybe we don’t talk about the Matron, for however long that is? Maybe we just take some time and remember how to be two half-elves in love?”
“I’d like that,” Vax promised. “I’d like that very much.” He rolled over and sealed the promise with a kiss. “I, um, don’t usually ask to spend the night on a first date, but, well, I’m new in town and haven’t got a place to stay.” He blushed, and oh, that was new again, too. It was fitting, he supposed, for his heart to come back to life in Keyleth’s arms, joy and longing and embarrassment all alike. How marvelous, he thought, and bent to kiss her again.
“I think I can probably fit you in,” Keyleth said with a wink, and parted her legs beneath him, then immediately paled. “Or are you not up for round two? I was trying to say yes, but in a fun, sexy way, and, well, I haven’t had a lot of chances to work on my flirting. So, yes, please stay?”
“Nothing would make me happier,” Vax replied. Nothing would make me happier, Kiki, he thought, but if a first date wasn’t too early for sex and spending the night, it might be too early for pet names. But for now, he mused, between the pain of the past and whatever uncertainty the future held, there was the present to savor.