Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The shadow is gone from him now, a small malignancy removed, but he feels its absence more than he ought, like an odd little hollow beneath his breastbone.

For the first few days, Percy doesn’t explore the feeling much. He’s preoccupied with other things, like the seemingly impossible end of this long battle, Whitestone's recovery, Cassandra, his friends—and Scanlan, at whom he’s still irrationally furious for destroying his gun. He knows deep down it was the right thing to do, perhaps the only thing to do, and he knows, oh he knows, what that telltale curl of smoke above the acid had meant…

But thinking of it makes that spot in his chest ache, like he’s pulled the wrong way at a wound. So he avoids Scanlan for the most part, and he does his best to distract himself.

Wandering through his childhood home might not have been the healthiest of choices, however, and maybe the odd mood that’s settled over him as he walks the halls is what does it in the end.

The Briarwoods have certainly left their mark on the place. Sometimes the signs are subtle, sometimes…less so. They’d removed all the familiar portraits from the walls, had redecorated and demolished and rebuilt things at whim, had customized certain rooms to their tastes and, worse, to their purposes. Cassandra had warned him about much of it, but he keeps spotting things that sting him strangely. The room he’s just entered had been a sitting room once, meant mostly for entertaining, or sometimes group lessons for the de Rolo siblings. Now it’s largely gutted, since Cassandra had already ordered the removal of whatever the Briarwoods had installed here. Inevitably, while walking past jagged holes in the walls and the dark, telling stains that had spattered past the edges of the now-removed carpets, Percy finds himself wondering what in the world had happened here. He turns in place in the center of the room, shuddering slightly.

Then he sees a small table standing by the room’s tallest window, bearing a large and intricately inlaid wooden box.

Percy’s breath catches when he sees it. Oh, gods, the recognition hurts.

Why in the world had they left it here? Why, after they’d changed so much, after they’d repurposed this place for torturous dark rituals for all Percy can guess, had the Briarwoods left this alone? He crosses the room slowly, wondering if he’s imagining things, but no: his mother’s music box is still sitting there before him, virtually untouched, except for what looks like a small, crusted smear of red on the brass handle.

Percy reaches out with trembling fingers and wipes it clean with the edge of his sleeve. Then slowly, carefully, he opens the lid.

For a moment he stares at it in silence, just like he used to when he was little. He'd been afraid to break anything and invoke his mother’s displeasure, but he was desperate to understand how it worked. He has the idea of it now, but he still doesn’t touch anything. He just scans across the familiar pattern on the changeable cylinder. It’s the waltz, if he recalls correctly. His fingertips almost brush the spokes, but finally lower and settle on the handle.

Mechanically, he turns it.

At that precise, metallic cascade of notes, his memories—that song echoing in this room, the sound of his dancing tutor’s instructions, Vesper’s teasing halted mid-word because there was, suddenly, nothing to mock; he’d fallen perfectly into rhythm and everything was so easy—collides with the awful notion of Sylas and Delilah playing the same tune, taking each other by the hand and swirling out onto the bloodstained floor.

Percy’s vision clouds, everything going red and smoky gray. For a horrible—and exhilarating—moment, it’s like Orthax never left him.

And when he whirls around, he can see them.

It’s just an outline, really, a shadowy suggestion, but the imagery in his head is right there like a nightmare writ large. He can see them both, his greatest enemies, holding each other close and smiling—

He feels a sound tear out of his throat, half growl, half scream, and before he even realizes he’s moving, he’s wrenched the cylinder from the music box with a discordant twang and hurled it across the room. It passes through the ghostly image and disperses it, falling with a hard but hollow-sounding knock onto the floor.

In its wake, the room is eerily empty once more.

Percy, his shoulders sagging, hauls in a breath and stares almost blindly into the distance. When he finally regains enough focus, he looks down at his hands instead. His skin is still tingling with the returning rush of energy, and he can see, just for a moment, a shadowy swirl around his fingertips before it fades, too.

He’d done that. He’d cast it without even trying.

Illusion.

Percy stares, and stares, then shuts his eyes, pressing one clenched fist to his aching chest. What he’d wondered about but hadn’t yet dared ask is, apparently, answered: no matter what forces Scanlan had destroyed along with that gun, the powers Orthax woke in him remain.

Percy leans back against the table where the broken music box sits in accusatory silence. In tired reply he whispers, “Well.” And then, with feeling, “Fuck.”

Not even the ghosts in the room have the courtesy to reply.

Chapter Text

If there’s something Whitestone has no shortage of after the Briarwoods, besides the remaining undead that the Paleguard still has to battle and a lingering sense of unease, it’s rats. Vermin have bred in dark corners all over the city, not kept in check as they would have been if the human residents had remained in control all this time. They’re running rampant still. Ratcatching is already becoming a burgeoning industry for the young and enterprising; it’s not anything glamorous, certainly, but it’s a profitable way to fill a practical need.

Percy keeps an eye on one of those young men one afternoon, watching his comings and goings and seeing the sorts of places where the rats are most likely to hide. He makes a few notes, and he thinks things over, and against his better judgment, he makes something of a plan.

He has a very basic goal in mind, really. He wants to conduct an experiment. And for that experiment, he needs subjects.

Specifically, he needs a rat.

If you’d only asked, he thinks dourly while he picks his way through a shadowed alley, one of those ratcatchers would collect specimens for you. You wouldn’t have to go skulking about like some creature of the night yourself. But requesting help would mean explaining himself, or setting out cryptic tasks that would only make everyone wonder what he was up to. It had seemed best to step quietly and do this on his own. The end result is that he’s here, cloaked and gloved, crouching in a dingy street behind an abandoned building. He’s waiting to see what becomes of his bait a few feet away.

It doesn’t take long before one of the rats takes it.

He’s surprised to see it alone, but perhaps that’s fortunate; he really has no idea what he’d do with an entire swarm of rodents. This one is outright brash, running into the open to sniff at the strip of meat. “Confident, aren’t you,” Percy murmurs, quietly enough that the rat either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “And not a bit afraid of me.”

The rat goes on eating. Percy watches it, thinking of what must have happened during his absence that the pests have gained such free rein, then grimaces and begins pulling off one of his gloves.

This experiment would probably work even with the barrier in place. Magic tends to pass through unenchanted leather as if, logically enough, it’s merely another layer of skin. Still, he wants to see this spell as it happens; he hates how unquantifiable magic tends to be, and he has no intention of obscuring things further or muddling it all with extra variables. So he flexes his long, pale fingers to stretch his cold-stiffened muscles, and he reaches out. The rat goes on eating, oblivious.

Impulsively, and almost like he’s taken offense—which he has in some strange way, seeing his city in such a state—Percy snaps his fingers. The rat looks up, nose twitching. It doesn’t run, though. It should. Oh, it should.

You’ll learn to fear me yet, a dark thought whispers.

Despite his instinctive shudder, he reaches into the shadows where that voice came from and pulls out a memory. It’s one of a dark sort of magic, one that settles heavy in the gut and twists at it, one that plagues its targets with uncertainty and leaves a weakness in every step. Percy remembers that feeling and calls it forth, watching smoke coalescing around his hand again. His own stomach turns, but he sets his jaw, fixes his thoughts, and points one long finger at the rat.

Really, Percy thinks, what’s the most distressing about all this is not that it still works, but how easy it still is.

The rat squeaks in distress as the hex hits it. Its little body contorts in discomfort, like it’s trying to get away from something that won’t let it loose. Then it slumps a little, regaining its footing but seeming unsteady. It looks once more at the half-eaten scrap of meat, then turns its head aside. The spell has made its strength uncertain, and its appetite, apparently, has gone with it.

Percy steps closer, focusing in. If he were to hurt the rat now, the magic would do the rest of its work and chew away further at its vitality. The rat would expire with almost no effort at all. It would be so easy, he thinks, with nauseating intensity. So easy. And it would serve the bloody thing right…

But he stops himself short. Indulging that impulse is not what he’s here for.

You proved your point, he tells himself, while the rat lets out another pitiful sound. Let the rat be someone else’s problem. Let it go.

With a wrench of effort, Percy pulls himself away and stops concentrating on the spell.

The hex lifts like a fog from his mind and a weight from his chest. It also releases the rat, its grasping coils unwinding from the tiny form. The rat stumbles free, looks up at him, then bolts. Percy barely has the space of a breath to react before it’s gone, darting through a crack between stones and vanishing from sight.

“Lucky little bastard,” Percy whispers, although after that ordeal, he’s not entirely certain lucky is the word.

He takes a deep breath, coughs, and tries again. The smoky feeling in his throat fades away on the second breath. For a while he stands there collecting his thoughts, and then he begins studying the walls of the derelict building, wondering what had befallen it, trying and failing to remember what it used to be. Maybe he’d never even been here, this far into the edges of town. Likely he’d never cared. A distant sort of guilt pokes at him before it fades away.

Then he blindly thrusts his hand back into its glove. He doesn’t even want to look at himself this time. He can’t ignore the way his hand is trembling, though, and no amount of massaging the muscles is making that go away.

“Two out of three,” he says hoarsely to no one in particular. Then he turns his gaze to see what sliver of a view the alley affords: a narrow pathway that angles slightly up the hill, meeting a road that eventually curves through town all the way to the palace.

He feels oddly like a traitor bringing this sort of power back home, but really, there’s nothing else he can think of to do.

Tugging his cloak back into place, Percy leaves the alley and reluctantly makes his way back onto the proper roads, hoping he won’t run into anyone he knows. Most of all, he hopes that what he’d just been doing doesn’t show on his face.

He doesn’t see another rat for the entire walk back home, but he does hear an odd scuffle once or twice, like something small nearby has just turned to run away.

Chapter Text

For the next several days, as all around him plans swirl for Whitestone’s first Winter’s Crest in years, Percy’s still caught up in unsettled thoughts.

He considers, in a fleeting moment of irrational forthrightness, speaking to Pike about it. He trusts her implicitly, even as much as she can make him anxious. She’s a lot to live up to at the best of times, and his last few weeks have hardly been that. Still, even at the worst of it, she’d helped him. She did everything in her power to draw this place’s corruption out of him. Talking to her feels like a place he could begin.

But his courage leaves him on the day she departs. The moment he looks into her radiant face, the will to confess his troubles withers away.

“Do take care of yourself, Percy,” she tells him when he goes silent, and she means it, too. Every bit of kindness and sympathy is tangible to him, even though her hand on his cheek barely is. “I just…I hope you can be happy here, now that all of this is done.”

He nods tightly, swallowing before he says, “You’d better be back soon. Properly, this time.”

“I’ll try.”

Something about Pike’s smile makes his heart ache. Maybe it’s the way her astral projection is already fading, making this all feel strangely unreal. If the best he can get is half-promises from a ghost…

He tries to set that hollow feeling aside. Instead, he gives his inadequate thanks to Pike before he leaves, withdrawing to find a quiet place to think. He still knows the castle top to bottom, after all, no matter how much the Briarwoods had tried to make it theirs.

What he isn’t expecting is for someone else to find him after he goes.

“Percy,” someone says, and he turns, startled, to see Vex ducking through the access door to the tower where he’s standing. This place is supposed to be for guards and lookouts, but so soon after reclaiming the castle, they’re still understaffed for such things. Percy had thought he’d be safely alone. “What are you doing all the way up here, darling? Sneaking off to brood?”

Her tone’s teasing, but she’s uncomfortably close to the mark. Percy rubs one hand over the back of his neck. “Something like.”

“Not still upset about that gun, are you?”

“Well. Yes, now that you’ve brought it up, but that wasn’t the matter at hand.” He gives her a look. “And what about you? Practicing your tracking skills?”

Vex shrugs and spreads her hands. “I found you, didn’t I?”

She most certainly had. Percy hadn’t even noticed her tailing him. “Expertly done.”

“Why, thank you.” Her head tilts. “That said, you weren’t doing much to throw anyone off your trail.”

“Lost in thought, I guess,” he concedes, but she’s obviously figured that much out already. She looks sympathetic and concerned, and she’s so very intently studying him. All at once he remembers her on a night not so long ago, coming to him when he’d also been…pre-occupied…with darker thoughts. Darling, take the mask off…

He shivers, and knows he can’t blame the cold for it. But the memory also feels important. Maybe it’s Vex that he really needs to speak to after all.

Percy breathes in, sighs, and leans against the wall, trying to find the right place to begin.

“I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, if you must know,” he admits. “I keep thinking about everything that’s happened here. Not just in this castle, I mean, or the town, although of course that’s all true, but…”

“There's a lot to choose from.” Vex’s voice is light, but what she’s speaking of is anything but. “Vampires. Their creepy lovers. Nearly dying, that was a thing.”

It was. Percy flinches to think of it: Vex at the ziggurat on the edge of death, and everyone struggling to get her free of its aura to heal her. But other things had plagued him even in that moment. Delilah. The gun in his hand. The voice in his head, hungry for vengeance.

As if she knows where his thoughts are heading, Vex shrewdly says, “And then there was you.”

“The worst thing of all, clearly.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she chides, but there’s also an uncomfortable pause before she adds, “That demon of yours, though. It’s been on my mind. Is that what’s on yours?” She almost cracks a smile. “No pun intended.”

Percy mirrors her wry expression. “Yes. The demon is part of it.”

“That was scary,” she says softly. “I can’t imagine having had to carry…that…in your head for all that time.”

“For years I never even knew it was real. It was so insidious.” He risks another look her way. “Some things about it did become difficult to miss, I’m sure.”

Vex arches one delicate eyebrow. “Oh, well. For a while we just thought you’d started doing those smoke tricks for the aesthetic.”

Unexpectedly, Percy laughs. It softens Vex’s face again, and she leans against the wall beside him.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” he admits, slowly getting used to the sense of her so close. “The smoke. The powers. All of it.”

“You hexing people was certainly a surprise.”

“To me as well.” He fidgets again. “All of that just…grew, the further in we went.”

“You’ve never been fond of magic, have you?”

He shrugs. “It has its uses. But personally, no. And I’d never had any affinity for it. Casting spells myself was…”

He trails off, thinking about it. The odd rushes of sensation, the hunger to work his will…there’s been a certain dark pleasure to it all along. Even his recent experiments haven’t been free of that. But admitting that much to himself is difficult. Voicing it to Vex?

He grimaces, knowing the silence has gone on too long. “It was strange,” he says inadequately. “Definitely strange.”

“Did the demon teach you how to do it? Or was it working through you?”

“It just came to me. I never even had to think about it.”

Vex makes a quiet, thoughtful sound. He’s not sure what he’s expecting her to say, but she finally tells him, “Some of my magic was like that. For different reasons, of course, but…it just came naturally. Like being good with animals. I never even questioned it.” She shrugs. “The other things I picked up…I did study certain spells. I had no knack for most of the difficult ones, which was a disappointment for a while. I had dreams when I was little about being a mighty sorcerer, flying off to have adventures…”

“Really?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Mostly it was about the flying part, let’s be honest.”

Percy smiles. He’s not much good at personal confessions, but this much he can do. “I used to imagine going off to the Feywild.”

Vex’s eyes spark with surprise. “Really?”

“Oh, absolutely. I read so many stories about it.”

“I can picture that,” she says with amusement. “Little Percy with his nose in a book, dreaming about mysterious magical places.”

He ducks away from her poking finger, smiling until his thoughts turn dark again. “After all that, though, this is the kind of magic I got,” he murmurs. “Hexes and illusions and…”

“And what?”

“Coercion,” he says after a time. “That’s the one I’m struggling with.”

Vex goes quiet. Percy looks out over Whitestone below them, marking out familiar sights, seeing signs everywhere of the scars the Briarwoods left behind. He wonders how many of those targets were suggested by their conspirators. Like Anders. Or Ripley.

Doctor Anna bloody Ripley.

Grimly he thinks that over. “You saw how I manipulated Ripley when we found her in that cell, I take it?” he asks, and Vex nods. He hunches his shoulders. “That’s part of the package I got from Orthax. Charming people into going along with me, at least for a while, because we’re just such good friends.” His laugh cracks halfway through. “My torturer. The woman who took so, so much from me. Of course. We’re the very best of friends.”

“Percy…”

“The worst part?” He turns to look straight at her. “I enjoyed that. I enjoyed every bit of it. I felt so powerful, twisting her of all people to my will. It felt better than anything should. And that…that’s what worries me.”

Vex flinches, but she doesn’t back down.

“That demon was using you, Percy,” she says. It feels like such a thin excuse that it shames him, but she’s determined. “You can’t take all the blame for that. You may have felt…satisfied…about hurting the people that hurt you, but it wanted you to want that, too.”

There’s a whole level of irony to this that Percy doesn’t even want to begin exploring. He shakes his head. “It got…difficult to pick apart the difference,” is all he says. “And I pulled all of you into that with me.”

“Yes, but there’s a reason we stayed to help you out. Even after everything we saw.” Vex gently touches his shoulder. “Percy, it may sound strange, but I think it’s a good sign that you’re having these worries. It means you’re seeing everything more clearly. That there’s a difference between what you and the demon wanted. That matters.”

He wants, badly, to believe that, but he stays silent. Vex fills in the gap.

“Besides…this Orthax of yours? It’s gone. So whatever powers it gave you then…” She pauses. “Do those even work anymore? Like this be-my-friend-and-do-my-bidding trick that you’re so concerned about?”

And there it is: the part he meant to discuss, but is still struggling to approach. With a twinge of shame at everything he’s leaving out, Percy says, “I haven’t even wanted to try that spell again.”

And that much is true, so far as it goes. How can he test it safely? It’s one thing to skulk about the back alleys of Whitestone flinging hexes at hapless rats, but this…this requires a person. It’s a step he’s felt uncomfortable taking. Leaving it unconfirmed, though, is just as worrying. if he’s backed into a corner someday, when that spell may tip the balance on survival for him or someone he cares about—what happens if he doesn’t have the confidence of proof?

He’s still spinning on that thought when Vex interrupts with the last thing he expects: “You could try it on me.”

Shocked, Percy turns to stare. She just raises an eyebrow as if to ask, Why not? Percy stammers through the start of an answer, but only gets as far as “Vex, that’s not…” before she cuts him off.

“I meant what I said, Percy.” She stands up straighter, flinging her long braid back over one shoulder. “If it’s a fair fight you want, this should do. I know it’s coming. I’m prepared. So go ahead and try it. Break my will, Percival. I dare you.”

All he can do is gape at her. At last he sputters, “Even if it does work, I don’t have any real idea of how much I could talk you into. What if I were to cast this spell on you and…I don’t know, convince you to walk straight off this tower?”

Carelessly she waves a hand. “No matter how good a friend you are, you couldn’t convince me of that.”

“And are we?” he asks, suddenly wistful. “Friends?”

“Oh, Percy. Of course we are.”

It’s the simplicity of the statement that stops him. She says it so easily, so utterly without reservation, and the way she’s looking at him…

Another long-forbidden thought crosses his mind. It's a very, very different kind of idea than the shadowy ones that have been haunting him, and for just a second, he’s caught in the moment. Knowing Vex is watching, though—and oh, gods, she’s so close—he marshals his self-control. “Well,” he says, trying to ignore the traces of sensation still fizzing along his nerves. “That renders the entire conversation pointless, since casting the spell on you would be redundant.”

Vex laughs, bright and unfettered. “But then that’s your solution, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Stick close to your friends, Percy. The ones who are already immune to any ill-gotten powers of manipulation still rattling around your head. And then you won’t have a thing to worry about.”

She sounds so at ease about it that Percy finds himself stumped. “It’s that simple, is it?”

Vex smiles. Just as if she’d cast the spell on him herself, Percy finds he can’t possibly tell her no.

“Well,” he murmurs. “I guess that’s that.”

She goes up on her toes, kisses him unexpectedly on the cheek, and whispers, “That’s that.” When she drops back down, she says more somberly, “We’re here for you, Percy. For good or for bad. If anything else needs exorcising…we’ll be there.”

Percy can’t quite make himself reply, but he holds her gaze, and holds his breath, when he nods.

He might tell her the rest someday. He might yet tell her everything, if he ever gets the nerve. But for now, he’s willing to go along when Vex asks him to come back inside. What she’d said has merit to it. Their friends are waiting, and the last of his family, and he can’t let himself forget that he has a home that’s glad to have him back, no matter what may have scarred him since he left.

He can hold to that, and let the shadows sleep a while.

And just this once, at least for the walk down through the tower, he can let himself hold Vex’s hand, too.