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Being titled ‘defenders of the realm’ meant that more than once Vox Machina was greeted with celebration when they made themselves known in a new town. Reverent glances and hushed whispers, starry eyes and fawning sighs from everyday farmers and merchants who recognized that in that moment, they were in the presence of those who shaped history.
Just as often, it came with chores.
“I’m just saying, why can’t grand heroic missions ever take us somewhere with a sandy beach,” Scanlan said longingly as he finished scrambling down the rocky shale ledge that met their path in the Elvenpeaks above Lyrengorn – the lone civilization before the Cliffkeep Mountains gave way to the frozen Neverfields. The gnome fought through a shudder and pulled his coat tighter around himself as he went on, “The Bay of Gifts, the Swavain Islands, Nicodranas, there’s a courtesan there that they say is the best—”
“Hey, look at this,” Vax called from a dozen yards ahead, just low enough to keep his voice from carrying too far from his scouting position.
“Tell me we are finally catching up to this bloody Remhoraz,” Percy said, weariness just beginning to steep into his voice as he stepped forward.
The half elf glanced back but in lieu of an answer, he just nodded them all on before walking on over the next swell of stone and disappearing out of sight. The rest of the party let out a collection of groans as they made their way on over the dull gray rocks until they were lined up to stare down over the uneven ledge before them.
Vax was standing at the very edge of a sinkhole. A shallow sunken circle in the earth that was filled with a wide plain of pure white snow that stretched at least a hundred feet across to the other side, an even as an undisturbed pond amidst the towering peaks and trees.
“Didn’t they say the last snow was a month ago?” Vax said as he glanced up to his sister.
“They did,” Vex replied slowly, eyes scanning the far reaches of the clearing before them.
“This place feels… strange,” Keyleth said softly, tapping the rock right at the edge of the sheer drop. Her eyes fell shut for a moment, a faint line creasing her forehead before she opened them again and looked down into the sea of white. “This is… a huge crater, the snow goes down just—” She looked over her shoulder, eyes searching amongst the others and landing on Vex’ahlia. “Do you think I could take a few minutes to just… commune?”
“By all means,” Vex replied with a brief shrug. “We can take a breather.”
“Not too long, Kiki, I’m freezing my tits off,” Pike said from her place on Grog’s shoulders, so huddled down against the windchill that she was nearly wrapped around his head.
“You want my fur, Pikey?” he said, flipping his own ruff up from its place over his back to cover the gnome in a small pile of grey fuzz.
“That’s nice, buddy,” the bundle said, low and muffled.
“I’m going to look around a little bit,” Vax said, stepping to the side and slowing at the snow’s edge.
“You’re going to—?” Before Scanlan could finish the words, the half elf was stepping cautiously out onto its crust, carefully balanced weight barely leaving an impression behind as he walked lightly across the pristine surface. “Well. If he gets eaten by a snow-worm, that’s our answer.”
Vax raised a hand – more specifically a finger – behind him, but he kept walking out without incident, his eyes scanning for any abnormalities or dips in his path.
“So we’re jus’supposed to wait?” Grog said, one giant finger already tapping impatiently on Pike’s ankle as he squinted after Vax.
“You’ll just have to find a way to entertain yourself, bud,” Scanlan said, reaching up to pat the goliath on the hip. “Wanna see who can run around the ominous crater the fastest? You first.”
Before anyone could move, Keyleth came back to herself with a soft stuttered breath, fingers fidgeting around her staff as she sank down to rest a hand on the frozen stone. “A great battle happened here,” she said solemnly.
“Statistically a great battle has happened over nearly every square inch of Exandria at one time or another, it might take a little more to impress.”
“Percy.”
“Now that’s just a true observation, and I don’t think I can be scolded for it,” he replied.
“Vax?” Vex called out, eyes narrowed out at the figure of her brother standing near the center of the snowdrift, his head tilted slightly up towards the sky.
“What?” Keyleth said, eyes moving from one twin to the other before her expression started to twist with new worry.
Vax hadn’t moved.
“Scrawny?” Vex called, walking out quickly across the snow, though she was careful to stay in his footprints to avoid any hidden hazards beneath, the rest of Vox Machina trailing not far behind with considerably less care. She sped up on the last few paces, finally close enough to put a hand on his shoulder and tug him back towards her when she froze too, eyes widening as she stared at her twin’s face. “Vax?”
The others circled around, watching as Vex nudged her brother gently and though Vax swayed, he stayed on his feet, eyes still locked on the grey blue sky above – a dull silvery glow overtaking the usual hazel of his irises.
“I think’is brain died,” Grog said, ducking down to squint at the half elf.
“I think he’s having a vision,” Pike said softly from her perch on top of him, brow screwed up with concern as she craned further out to see. “Like… Matron stuff.”
“How long is it going to last?” Vex asked, looking back and forth quickly between Pike and her brother.
“I don’t—Grog.”
The goliath’s hands snapped back quickly from where they’d been reaching for the other man’s waist, looking up to try to catch the gnome’s eye despite their position. “Wha?” he said, badly feigned innocence in his voice that quickly gave way to guilt. “I was just—I was… I was just pantsin’ him,” he finished in a low mutter, shoulders dropping as he leaned back.
“He’s lucky this didn’t happen in a fight,” Percy said, lips pursed as he took a slow step closer and raised a hand to snap beside the half elf’s ear to no reaction. “Vax’ildan?”
Silence stretched. All of them glanced around at each other with expressions ranging from confusion to badly concealed unease.
“Do we just wait?” Keyleth asked, scanning briefly around them and up to the cupped horizon beyond for any sign of threats approaching.
“I don’t think there’s a lot else to do,” Vex said slowly, studying Vax intently.
The six of them stood in a vague circle for a minute more, uncertainty keeping them paralyzed in place.
“Ssso… do we break out lunch?” Scanlan asked.
They startled as one as Vax suddenly jarred back to himself, breath catching in his chest as a hand snapped up to press over his sternum, eyes clear and his own again. His attention snapped between them with a moment of near animal fear and all of them simultaneously felt the tension flood through them too as they froze.
“Vax?” Vex asked again, reaching her hand out towards him once more.
“T’s alright, I, uh…” Vax cleared his throat, fingers still twitching absentmindedly over the front of his armor as his eyes dropped down, his back still rising and falling rapidly with each breath. “I think there’s something here I need to deal with.”
“You look a little peaky,” Scanlan said from the rogue’s hip, eyes moving in a quick once over.
“No, seriously, what the fuck was that?” Vex pressed, her eyes narrowed, though the sharp edge to her voice wasn’t enough to completely disguise the worry beneath.
“I’m alright, I’m good,” Vax reassured, tension steadily bleeding out of his shoulders as he took a step forward, trying and failing to urge the rest of them onward across the snowbank
“What do you have to deal with?” Pike asked, her expression screwed up with concern as she slid down from Grog’s back to land in the snow.
“We don’t have to stay, it—Not something actually here,” Vax said, his voice still dull as he took a long breath in and out. “Something about Purvan.”
There was barely a beat of silence before one of them broke it with a badly stifled snicker and then they were all dissolving into giggles together, Vax included.
“You’ve gotta go Purvan some things?” Grog said, voice rolling with the words.
“Yeah, I’ve gotta go Purvan myself,” Vax replied, grinning as he looked up to the goliath above him.
“For now, how about we get out of here,” Vex said, elbowing Vax’s side and urging him on towards the other side of the plain. “We’ve still got a monster to kill and favors to collect, and nobody wants to see that, brother.”
Vax laughed with them. He walked on with them, smiled with them as they stepped out of the low basin and left the strange pool of snow behind them.
And Percy watched from the corner of his eyes as the half elf forced himself not to look back.
They marched on to the edge of the Neverfields. They fought a giant blue-skilled monstrosity with dozens of legs capped off with an insectoid head that eagerly tried to swallow them whole and burned at the touch despite the snow surrounding them. And after they killed it, they broke off one of its dozens of hand-length razor sharp teeth to bring back to Lyrengorn and spent the entirety of the return walk debating if the reward would be worth the trek back or if they should just find a tree and transport to Whitestone for the night.
“Oh, it was barely any trouble at all,” Vex said airily to one of the liaising captains of the guard, a smile curling her lips as she offered her hand and graciously accepted a worn leather tome inlaid with a weathered symbol of three eyes. “You can always call on Vox Machina when you are in need.” She turned back to face them, tucking the book under her arm and speaking through her smile to the others, “Let’s get the hell out of here and get this thing to Allura.”
And they returned, found a near-branchless tree that had poked its way up through the mountain and stepped through it, out into the comparative warm air of the city of Pelor.
“I hope this thing has what she’s looking for,” Vex said, walking ahead towards Whitestone’s castle, where the mage was waiting for them.
Percy looked up at the familiar peaks and rooftops as they approached, a cool shard in his heart softening at the sound of the wind through the Parchwoods and the feeling of the city itself alive around him.
It still wasn’t quite enough to cover up Keyleth’s voice behind him, lowered though it was as she spoke. “You okay? With that thing…?”
Silence dragged for just long enough for Percy to think a reply wasn’t coming when Vax murmured back, short and light, “Yeah.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked – open, friendly, but with an identifiable slant beneath.
Keyleth had never been that invested in the divine pantheon of their world, and Vax’s pact with the Raven Queen had long been the plainest example of their differing perspectives. The offer was genuine, altruistic, but the reply was still hardly a surprise.
“Think I just want to—you know. Get back to the night,” the rogue finished, a little clumsily, as they passed by the first guard station and up towards the comforting glow of the castle.
“Sure. Just… if you need a friend.”
“Thank you. I’m good. I’m alright.”
Percy had to stop himself from visibly shaking his head as he scaled the steps and watched the doors be drawn open for them.
Self-sacrificing prat.
“Please send word to Allura that we’ve returned, and some dinner, I think, Miss Carrow,” he called to the attendant present as he gestured the rest of Vox Machina on towards the dining room. “Everyone get comfortable, I have to see to a few things first.”
He left behind Scanlan and Pike to chat over their plans for pastries in the morning, left Grog’s enthusiastic call for meat and ale, left behind the girls for their well-deserved relaxation after the day’s long task of guiding them through the wilderness.
And he left behind Vax’s unsurprising silence, but that was fine.
Perhaps this was the petty choice. Perhaps it wasn’t the most mature thing to nonchalantly make his way up to the guest wing and into the room where a servant had already brought Vax’s pack. Perhaps it was an overstep to bring a roll of silver thread, feed it through a tiny metal nut and then through the edges of the window and pull it tight, securing it in place on the outside of the glass.
If so, it was certainly too far to station a guard in the courtyard down below that same window.
“Just come report to me when you hear something metal fall into the courtyard,” Percy said decisively, grateful as always for the lesson that a request could not be seen as ridiculous if it was posed with enough confidence.
He watched the guard’s head start to twitch up, eyes fighting to search above them before forcing themselves still. “… Yes, my lord.”
And then he joined the others for dinner, quietly soaked up the comfort of a cacophony of voices echoing off the stone walls, the scrape of a dozen chairs as Allura explained to the others what the next steps were.
“… the Cobalt Soul isn’t what I’d call generous with their information, but there are appeals that can be made,” the wizard said, one eye on the book set in the middle of the table. “And in my experience, they’re not wholly unreasonable, it may just take a little finesse. We’re hardly holding this relic hostage, it just seems prudent to take the opportunity to gain the knowledge we can before a potential loss…”
“Yeah, yeah, still no spellbooks with dinner, Ally,” Kima said from beside her before sinking her teeth into a lamb shank, the spatter of sauce across the table enough to quiet Allura’s protests before she’d even finished opening her mouth.
“Yes, yes, I do recall,” she said, pressing her lips together to force down the beginnings of a smile.
Conversation went on. Laughs shared, heroic exploits recounted until finally, when plates were cleared and goblets emptied, they all began to split towards their various rooms, biding farewells as they did.
“We’ll be headed out tomorrow morning, no one get— it would be preferable if no one got too drunk tonight!” Allura called, her brow screwed up as she watched Kima and Pike nearly devolve into grappling from an arm-wrestling match that somehow took them both to the ground.
“I’ve never been two drunk, only one drunk, is two better?” Grog asked Scanlan from his place nearby the ruckus.
“Oh, yeah,” the gnome replied confidently, arms crossed and a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Get’er, Pikey!”
“G’night, all,” Vax said, raising a hand in acknowledgement to his sister that she briefly returned as she made her way from the hall.
Amidst the combination of scattering people and growing chaos, Percy stepped up beside the half elf. “You don’t look very tired,” he said, looking to Vax and continuing on quietly. “Would you like to stay up and have another drink?”
He watched the surprise bloom across the half elf’s face and suddenly heard his own words, shoulders straightening subtly as he watched the other man’s expression morph. Intrigue, pleasure amusement, Vax was so open that he could see every minute shift like watching colored dye reveal the currents of the ocean. He watched the impulse to poke fun rise to the surface and then just as gradually fade away as his expression softened.
Percy’s ears felt warm.
“I… think I might like that,” Vax murmured, and with those words, there was a subtle flip somewhere below Percy’s ribs. A not-unpleasant twist.
Before he could force himself to interrogate it, the smile faded a little again as Vax cocked his head and went on, “Tomorrow night, yeah? I just feel like I’ve got to get to bed.”
“Of course,” Percy said with a respectful bow of his head.
Liar.
For how hard it was to keep track of where the rogue was from time to time, it was so much easier to map where he was going.
Percy put the conversation from his mind and retired, but not to his bedroom. He went to his study, settled in an emerald green armchair by the fire, and took the rare opportunity to read a book. The quiet sound of the wind whistling against the window, the crackling of the flames, and the quiet ticking of the clock kept him company for a long-overdue moment alone.
But sooner even than he’d expected, less than an hour later, he was interrupted by a quiet rap on the door. “Enter,” he said, laying a silk marker on his page and closing the book.
The door opened and a familiar guard stepped inside before standing at attention. “My lord,” they said. Without any further words, they held up a tiny shining metal nut.
Percy gave a nod in return. “Ah, thank you.” He set his book aside and shifted to his feet, adjusting his coat and spectacles as he went on, “You’re relieved from that station, inform your captain you’ve been reassigned to the south wall.”
“Yes, my lord,” they said, brow faintly creased with curiosity, though much too well trained to ask.
Percy dismissed them with a short wave before making his own way from the study and descending the stairs while he considered the options. It was lucky – in a way – that Vax had already used his wings that day during their fight; it limited things considerably. There was of course, the secret passage to the west that they had all entered the castle through years ago now, when they first overthrew the Briarwoods. There was the most direct route of scaling the sheer wall above the Eastern Ruins, though that would take considerable strength and stamina. But the last few times this had happened…
Percy pressed his lips together as he walked across the gleaming ivory tiles of the entry hall, and he waited.
It wasn’t long until the doors began to open and before he could even catch sight of the rogue, he could smell the strong metallic tang in the air.
“We have enough of the servants talking about ghosts without you walking through the halls like that,” Percy said, one brow quirking up as he watched the doorway. There was a moment of near perfect silence before the light footsteps continued and Vax stepped inside.
He was soaked in blood. Hastily wiped from his face, but his clothes, his hair, the other rare visible inches of skin were dripping crimson, long gone cold from the walk.
Judging from the way the half elf was shaking, colder than just cold.
“What was going to be the plan?” Percy asked evenly, pushing up to stand and forcing himself to wait in place.
“I… need a bath,” Vax finished a little numbly, eyes thoroughly lost as he glanced down to himself.
“You certainly do,” Percy said with a nod as he turned on his heel and took a few steps on through the hall, slowing after a few paces as he was met with silence. He looked back over his shoulder to Vax, watching him stare down at the scattered drips of gore staining the white stone beneath him. “Vax,” he said softly, watching as the half elf looked up again, blinking hard to pull himself out of whatever daze still held him. “Come along,” he urged, not unkindly, as he nodded him on and started again down the hall.
Vax nodded back this time and followed, leaving bloody footprints with every step.
He could feel the nonverbal reaction of each guard they passed by, but each was blessedly silent as they made their way to the bathing chambers. Percy opened the door and ushered Vax in before following after and closing it behind. He moved past and busied himself with firing up the small engine to warm the water, pulled a lever to allow for a continual flow into the tub as he watched the half elf wander on like a restless spirit himself, nearly swaying in place for a moment before starting to work distractedly at the clasp at his throat. After thirty seconds, his fingers just seemed to be less cooperative, digits slipping over the tiny fascinator.
“May I?” Percy said, already stepping up to his side and waiting for Vax to let out a soft sigh and drop his hands before leaning in to help pull off the cloak, then to undo the buckles of the Deathwalker’s Ward. He was hyperaware of each brush of his fingers over the other man’s exposed throat, but Vax didn’t flinch at the touch. That was something. The blood was cool and tacky, though he had a sneaking suspicion that it was warmer now than it had been, after so many minutes of stealing away the half elf’s body heat. When he’d sunk into that pool…
Percy remembered it so clearly from his own experience. Utter silence. Utter darkness. A space between that so obviously didn’t belong to the realm of life.
He set the cloak aside on a hook – it would need to be cleaned. The armor needed a little less care, the blood would all drip from it without issue on its own after long enough, he knew that well enough after a dozen battles. He slowed his hands before the point where he’d feel like he needed to ask if Vax wanted his continual help, but the half elf was still standing like a statue.
“Vax?” He prompted again, moving to the side and keeping his eyes up from the newly exposed skin. They’d all seen each other in every manner of undress before, that was hardly new. But it still felt… strangely intimate, even invasive to put his hands on him again now that he was down to a skin-clinging black shirt and trousers. The other man’s daze took his mind right back to the unnatural stillness to him as he’d stared up at the sky in the mountains. He remembered the joke of Grog reaching for him, frozen as he’d been.
It hadn’t seemed particularly funny in the moment to start with, and now it seemed…
Like he was fighting through a delay between them, the half elf blinked, still unmoving even as his eyes came back into focus.
“Do you want me to wake your sister?” Percy asked, his voice carefully measured.
“No,” Vax said softly as he sank down to sit at the edge of the tub, watching the water slowly begin to steam.
How often had visions come? Had it happened before without them even knowing? Staring down at the water right now, was it water that Vax saw?
Hallucinations left one a very particular kind of powerless.
Percy bit his tongue to hold it all back, took a beat to gather his thoughts and find a way to present his concerns without pushing what the half elf would accept. “I don’t know if it’s entirely wise to—”
“Percy,” Vax said, his voice level but brittle. Like the perfect surface of the snowdrift they’d come across just hours before. “Can you promise me something?”
“… I can promise to hear it,” Percy replied. He waited through seconds of silence as Vax took a long breath in, out, the faint hiss of steam and the susurrus of water against stone the only sounds in the air.
“Don’t put me in a tomb,” Vax said softly.
“What?” Percy asked, brow furrowing as he stepped closer again, leaning forward to try to catch sight of the other man’s face. He was just in time to see his expression finally come out of numb apathy and into fear, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes until he bowed his head and they spilled over.
Without hesitation, Percy dropped down to a knee beside him, one hand coming up uncertainly to rest on his back as Vax brought a hand up to rub them away, washing away the crimson on his cheeks as his breath hiccupped through his words. “Don’t leave me in a stone box when I die, and don’t bury me with my things, I don’t…” He swallowed, hands dropping down to grip the marble on either side of him as he stared down into the water below, crystal clear, but reflecting so dark under the lanternlights. His words tumbled out one after another as he went on, “I don’t want to be put somewhere dark and cold for someone to dig up a hundred years from now, I don’t want people to pick apart my hands for fingerbones, or—or pull the armor off me and—” The words stuttered, shoulders tight as he shook his head and tried to catch his breath. “I don’t want my grave to be someone’s treasure box.”
“You did see him, didn’t you?” Percy asked, watching closely. “Purvan? You’re thinking about…”
What we did.
He took a slow breath and settled down to sit beside Vax, searching for the right words but much as he tried, they didn’t seem to come. There were no platitudes that would erase what Vax had seen, and what had been left to stew in his mind.
“Where do you want to be buried?” Percy finally asked, his voice gentle.
“… in Byroden,” Vax murmured. “Where our house used to be.”
Percy gave a single short nod.
Somewhere in the scattering of their mother’s ashes.
“Just do it secretly,” the half elf said, looking to him with an edge of panic in his voice. “You can do that, right, you have people who could do that?”
“Would you like me to construct a false tomb here for people to while themselves away at?” Percy asked, looking to the other man.
Vax blinked, staring for a moment as a faint line creased his brow. “A fake?” he asked.
“It’s not an uncommon practice,” Percy said with a short roll of his shoulder. “I’m certain there would be those who sought out…” He pressed his lips together briefly and silently side stepped the phrase ‘your grave’. The day had already been draining enough, and the prospect of it… throbbed somewhere between his ribs. “Who would seek that out for nothing more nefarious than giving their respects,” he finished before another thought struck and his brows raised with interest. “And then for those who have sinister intentions, you’d be giving me the gift of designing a maze within your supposed resting place, I can think of nothing more satisfying to do with my spare time.”
A tiny smile flickered at the corner of Vax’s lip as he stared back at him, more present than he’d been since he first walked through the castle doors. “… I could be two places at once then,” he added. “There and also here.”
“Mm, all the perks of having a place to shower you with adoration without any of the disruption of having people stomp around on top of you,” Percy said wryly, relaxing a little to see the horrible stillness gone from the other man’s face. He looked back down to the steaming water below, reaching down to test the temperature and giving a short approving nod before starting on the laces of his boots. He might have been more used to the cold than most of his companions, but he was hardly going to waste the chance to soak in the heat. “Get in,” he said, a short command that he hoped would override the uncertainty in Vax’s movements.
Percy held in a soft relieved sigh as the half elf slowly started to undress, lowered his eyes down to his own feet as he listened to wet cloth hitting the ground before Vax slid into the water with a hitched breath. He kept his eyes down until the liquid below him started to steadily tinge with pink and he finally allowed himself to look up.
On a typical day, Percy would have thought nothing of watching one of his party members disrobe if needs be. They’d all lived on top of each other for too long – medical triage, communal rooms, but all that aside, most of his companions just didn’t put much stock in modesty. He’d certainly seen more than he’d needed of Grog before, of Scanlan – Pike, Keyleth and Vex were all comfortable enough to divest of everything when they shared the mansion’s hot spring. He’d certainly seen Vax before too, it was hardly a new revelation.
Maybe it was just… the moment of it. Conventional or not, the half elf was a priest who had just come from communion. It felt shameful somehow to let himself look now and think about keeping his eyes from roaming.
Percy listened to the water shift, to Vax washing away the blood from his skin with his hands, and he swallowed down the well of warmth in his chest.
He was already going to hell, but gods, was this really the moment to test that?
“You’re awfully sure that I’m going to be around to see out this promise,” he said, hiding the short shake of his head as he set his boots aside and rolled up his trousers before lowering his feet into the water with a soft sigh. Finally, he raised his head enough to look up at his companion. “You know, numbers are not on your side.”
“I know,” Vax agreed from his place in the middle of the bath, long dark locks of hair spilling down bare shoulders, still dripping faintly pink. “But… you’re so clever, and I’m a little bit of an idiot,” he said with another short attempt at a smile. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you outlived a lot of us, human or not. Besides, you said you live as long as Whitestone lives. If you’re not here…” The silence stretched and Percy watched the smile die again at the thought.
He gave a short nod. “Whitestone would take care of you,” he said softly.
“You do promise then?” Vax asked, the last of his fear finally banished from the tense line of his spine as he sank down into the steaming water up to his neck, breath leaving him in a long, slow exhale.
“You will be laid to rest and stay at rest,” Percy reiterated with another nod.
Vax returned it almost absentmindedly, but his attention just seemed to drift further away again.
“Come here,” Percy said softly, shifting up until he was sitting at the sheer edge of the basin, and offering his hand out.
Vax moved just as gracefully in the water as he did out of it, shifting closer until he was nearly sitting at Percy’s feet. It felt strangely incongruous as he reached out to take the half elf’s hand and raised it between them, gently squeezing his fingers as he murmured, “I swear it, Vax.” He hoped it helped, but silence stretched between them again, heavier this time before the half elf broke it.
“I don’t want to be a reliquary,” Vax said softly as he stared up at Percy, adam’s apple moving as he swallowed. “I don’t want to be… components.”
“No one is going to use you like that,” Percy countered automatically to placate the flicker of rage in his own chest. Impulse seized him, and before he could stop himself, tell himself that there couldn’t be a worse time, he raised Vax’s fingers up to press a short kiss to the scared knuckles, before pressing the half elf’s hand over his heart. “If she doesn’t protect you, we will,” he finished resolutely.
Vax was looking at him with so much naked fondness that it nearly hurt to know the moment had to end. Percy ended it first, releasing his fingertips with another throb deep in his chest. “What is it she wanted from you anyway?” he asked, forcing his mind back onto the task at hand, the possible solutions he could help find.
Vax took a long breath in before he let his head fall back to look up at the pale ceiling above them, the flicker of dancing flames casting shadows like flittering moths. “Someone’s trying to do something to Purvan’s soul, bind it into a phylactery. They were… that was where he died,” he finished.
Percy watched one hand twitch up through the water towards his sternum – the same place he had reached to with panic as he jolted out of his vision – and he pressed through his contempt for the Matron.
If one champion had already experienced that brutality, why make the next endure it too?
Before he could sink too much further into his outrage, Vax was going on, brow furrowing with empathy for someone long dead. “I saw it, they went back to the Marrowloch. And they have his skull,” he finished, nearly flinching as he closed his eyes and sank under the water again to wash himself clean.
Percy’s brows rose. The skull of a champion of the Matron of Ravens, being used to anchor what remained of him to an unholy ritual for power. “Well,” he said after the half elf surfaced again, calm and measured even as he heard the echo of Retort loading as if he was holding the pistol in his hand. “If they have his, surely they can’t be much in need of their own.”
He was torn from that brewing cloud of rage by the quiet sound of water lapping against the edge of the bath and then—
His breath caught in his throat as Vax shifted even closer between his legs to settle before him, tipped his head forward to rest his forehead against the curve of Percy’s knee. “Thank you for taking care of me,” the half elf said, and it didn’t even matter that water was steadily dripping down to soak into his clothes. “Today. Then, just— thank you.”
“Of course,” Percy breathed, lungs too tight for anything more as he slowly let a hand drift down until his fingers brushed over the other man’s hair, fingertips skating over the wet locks.
He didn’t know how long the moment stretched until Vax raised his head, looking up to him with an expression of relief and exhaustion in equal parts. “I don’t really want to be alone tonight,” he said quietly. “Could I—… can I still say yes to that drink?” he finished with a short attempt at a smile.
“Yes,” Percy breathed. “You— of course. Yes.”
He was already going to hell. Why not share a little joy with one of the gods’ servants while he was here?