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Grog’s got a pretty good system for this kind of stuff. If he sees a big streak of blood left in the pale snow like that? Someone or something was hurt. Bad guy, good guy, he could figure out later, but step one was always to find Pike or Scanlan. If it was a good guy, then they could help, because magic was never really Grog’s thing anyway. If it was a bad guy, then that meant there was probably something else around and strong as he is, backup’s never bad. Unless it’s Vax. Sometimes. But only because Vax would slip in to steal his kills because—no, no. He’s getting off track. Step one. Find Pike or Scanlan. Only…
Grog hefts the deer slung over his shoulder, looking up at the sky. He’s out here alone, mainly because sitting inside all day with Pike and Papa Wilhand left him with this restless energy that would eventually make someone snap at him to stop making all the furnature shake. And besides, they were running low on some meat. He thinks it’s a pretty good deal. He gets that jittery feeling out, they get more food—no matter how stringy because winter was winter—and everyone’s happy.
Where was he going with this?
Right! The eye-catching trail of red. Not a monster, Grog thinks, squatting down to squint at the footprints threading through the tinted snow. He’s not Vex, but he’s not dumb either. He knows the difference between a person’s tracks and an animal’s or a monster’s.
He could go back and get Pike. He probably should.
But…Grog considers. He’s got his bloodaxe, he’s not tired at all, and no matter how he looks around, he can’t see anyone else. The tracks start near a tree, pooled like someone had been dropped there, and the snow around it is old, untouched.
Good guy or bad guy?
Hm. Whichever it is, they’re hurt, and they’re definitely hurt bad and while Grog’s not shivering, he knows that he’s stronger than pretty much everyone else. He hadn’t been too cold up when they fought Vorugal. Not as cold as Scanlan or Percy anyway.
Grog stands back up, gaze darting around for a moment before he reaches up and tucks the dead deer into the branches of the tree. It shakes loose some snow, but Grog ignores it, looking at his handiwork. “Now, don’t go anywhere,” he says, pointing at the carcass, trying to put some of that crossness Papa Wilhand’s voice always had when he was being stern and telling Grog to do something he should definitely do into his tone. After a beat, he adds, “I’ll be back soon. Don’t make me hunt you again.”
And satisfied, he unslings his bloodaxe and marches off along the trail of blood.
He can see where the snow’s been kicked up and pushed to the side, red weaving around the squiggly trail that looks like the paths Scanlan takes whenever he gets drunk. Oh, yeah. Whoever this is, they’re definitely hurt bad. Grog could probably kill them with his bare hands at this point. He looks down at his axe, sharpened and polished because Papa Wilhand had told him to take care of it, and duh, of course he takes care of his weapons, though its nice that Papa Wilhand cares enough to still remind him, and he feels himself frown.
Maybe he should have gone to get Pike.
Actually, he’s already here. Grog shakes his head, holding his axe at the side. He can hear something from the tree up ahead, the snow around the base all messed up, this kind of quick huffing and Grog immediately knows what sound that is.
“Uh,” he starts, because in case it is a good guy, he doesn’t want to startle them too bad, “are you okay?” His voice trails off as he reaches the tree and glances around the bark.
Whoever it is, they’re curled up against the tree, small and covered in gashes, the hair flopping over their face as white as the snow around them and wait, hey, that’s kinda like Percy and Cass, isn’t it?
Grog hesitates. They sure don’t look like a bad guy, huddled there with almost blue fingers, shivering. Carefully, he pokes at them with the handle of his bloodaxe, and they shift out of their balled up position, toppling into the snow with a soft whumph.
He waits. The figure doesn’t move, just stays there, their breath and blood steaming slightly in the cold. Grog puts his weapon away and moves closer, kneeling down. “Hey, buddy. You, uh, you alive?” No response again. He nudges the body, tipping them over onto their back, and—
Oh. Ohhh. Oh shit.
“Percy?” It sure looks like Percy. Grog would know that face and those cracked glasses and that odd white hair of his anywhere. But there’s also something off, and as Grog narrows his eyes, he realizes it’s because Percy looks younger. His hair is longer than Grog’s ever seen it, and he looks like a kid, face softer, limbs even smaller without the tiny muscles he’d grown from running around and killing things with his guns.
It's Percy, but it’s also…not. He almost asks if not-maybe-Percy is a shapeshifter or something before he realizes that not-maybe-Percy is also knocked out.
“Think, Grog,” he mutters to himself. He should have brought Pike. Pike—
Wait. Pike.
Grog perks up. She’s got the healing to close that gash ripping across not-maybe-Percy’s chest, and he knows wounds and scars like the back of his hand, so he knows that it’s a perfect match to the healed and slightly faded one that Percy wears, and she’s got that many spells, surely she or the Everlight could figure out who or what not-maybe-Percy is.
Yeah, finding Pike is a good idea. Mentally, Grog pats himself on the back while carefully picking the body up, trying not to jar any of the cuts. “Hang in there buddy,” he orders, before setting off towards Papa Wilhand’s cabin.
“So,” Grog pipes up, sitting on the floor by not-maybe-Percy’s head, “is he Percy?”
The glow fades from Pike’s hand and she turns to him, scratching the back of her head. “Uh,” she says, “good question buddies. I’m not sure. It’s not an illusion though, I think.”
“Hmm.” Grog looks down at the boy—and he really does look just like a boy. Grog’s not too great with numbers, but he’s good at other things and he knows that their Percy is already pretty young, Cass even younger, and this person’s even small than both of them, so he’s gotta be a kid. His face is all scrunched up, even while asleep, and it’s the exact face Percy makes when he’s hurt and scared but he isn’t trying to show it.
Grog knows that face pretty well. Percy won’t like if it he says it out loud, but he does.
A tsk draws his attention away from staring and he looks up in time to see Papa Wilhand push a warm bowl of soup into his hands. “You two can ask him when he wakes up and has some food,” he says briskly. “Poor thing, so thin. Now, let me see those.” He points at the cracked lenses held carefully in Grog’s palm, there because he hadn’t wanted to accidentally step on them.
Dutifully, Grog hands them over, watching as Papa Wilhand squints at the glasses, holding them up to the light, raising his own pair up onto his forehead. Pike lets out this small snort of laughter. “Don’t forget about them on your head again Pop-Pop.”
Ooh. Forget. Grog was forgetting something, definitely. He could feel the itch of it, spreading from the back of his head and down to his beard, and—the deer. Oops. He throws the soup into his mouth, hurriedly swallowing and setting the bowl down on the floor with a soft clack. It warms him up all the way down and damn, does Papa Wilhand make a mean soup. But that’s not the point.
Both Pike and Papa Wilhand blink up at him when he (gently, of course, not-maybe-Percy’s still sleeping) leaps to his feet. “I’ll be right back,” he says, hurrying out the door.
The deer listened, thankfully, and he finds it right where he left it, though it’s frozen solid and he has to break a few branches and its foreleg to get it down. It forms an awkward cup shape, and he’s not really sure how he’s supposed to finish butchering it, though he had already scooped out all of the insides that weren’t good for eating.
He carries it back, snapped off leg and all, and since not-maybe-Percy’s still asleep when he gets back, he helps Pike warm the carcass up, cut it into different sections, and put the pieces into their storage hole under the house.
Then, he goes inside to sit beside not-maybe-Percy because Pike wanted to go help Papa Wilhand inside the kitchen that was definitely too small for the three of them and because someone’s gotta watch, just in case it was a shapeshifter that they brought into the house.
Grog’s very good at watching. It’s easy. He just sits there, hands on his knees, and stares down at not-maybe-Percy. Yep. Uh huh. Totally not falling asleep. Nope. Not at all.
Hmm.
He does wonder what Pike and Papa Wilhand are making though. It smells nice. He wonders if he can wheedle a taste away if he asks nicely, pretty please and big eyes to—no, no. Wait. Focus. He has to keep watch.
And, as he refocuses, he realizes that not-maybe-Percy’s stirring, eyes shifting as his eyelids flutter slightly. His lips move, a faint whisper that’s too soft for Grog to properly hear slipping out. Something with a ‘k’ sound?
“What’s that?” He leans in, and immediately, those feverishly bright blue eyes snap open as not-maybe-Percy yelps, flinching hard enough that he smacks his head against Grog’s. It doesn’t really hurt, more like a tap than anything, but not-maybe-Percy immediately doubles over, clutching at his nose.
Grog rubs his head, but straightens, blinking curiously. Awake and glaring balefully at Grog, as if Grog had messed around in his workshop again and broken yet another experiment, the kid looks even more like Percy. Still small, but also still Percy.
“Who are you?” His voice is raspy, muffled by the hand over the lower half of his face, and wow, if this was a shapeshifter, they really got everything right.
“You even sound like Percy,” Grog finds himself replying, before he can stop himself.
The boy’s face flickers, different emotions flashing across it like lightning through storm clouds—shock, fear, apprehension, wariness. That doesn’t really seem like what a shapeshifter would say, right?
“You—where am I? Who are you? What do you want?” Oh yeah, that sounds like Percy alright. What does that mean then? Because this Percy was small and he doesn’t seem to recognize Grog at all, and Grog’s never heard of this happening before. Percy isn’t even supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be back in Whitestone with Vex and Cass, and the more Grog thinks about it, the more he’s confused by it all.
He must have been staring real hard at Percy this entire time, and yeah, he can be intimidating sometimes when he wants to be, since he’s big and all, but Grog doesn’t mean to scare him, so it kind of hurts a little when Percy flinches away, curling in on himself like those tiny pill bugs he and Pike had played with sometimes when they were younger.
“Whatever this is,” he announces, voice shaking but loud, “I’m not falling for it, Delilah!”
“Delilah? What—ohhh.” Without a doubt now, Grog’s convinced. Somehow, Percy’s really just become younger. “Like. Delilah Briarwood? She’s dead.” Percy stares at him and he shrugs. “Yeah. Cass shot her and Kiki did this cool thing with the Sun Tree and blasted Sylas—vampires hate the sun or whatever, right?—and I was holding him when he just got melted away and it was awesome. Although, you probably don’t remember Kiki, right? You don’t look like you remember me.”
Percy sputters. “I-I’m sorry? Sylas and Delilah Briarwood are…are dead?”
“Uh huh.” Grog makes a slicing motion, quick and easy, over his neck. “Ripley too.” He doesn’t miss the way baby Percy flinches at that name and immediately, Grog wishes that he could have helped kill her too. It was no fair that Vex and Vax got to kill her all by themselves.
Grog frowns, absentmindedly scratching his beard. Percy keeps staring.
Then, unexpectedly, he shakes his head violently. “No,” he says, curling in on himself, a hand winding through his limp hair. “No, no, no—this-this has to be a dream or a hallucination or—” he buries his face in his hands, letting out a low noise, animal and hurting.
Grog’s frown deepens, and he finds himself reaching out. “Percy?”
Percy ignores him, a shaking hand pressed to his chest right over where that long and nasty gash had been, fingers searching for something, and when he doesn’t find it, he lets out a bitter laugh. “I,” he hisses, “am not falling for this illusion you’ve created. What have you done to me?”
Well, that’s a little rude, but it’s also Percy, and Percy is a bit of an ass sometimes, so Grog brushes it off. “Hey,” he protests, crossing his arms. “I didn’t do nothing. Found you out in the snow and I brought you back here and Pike healed you…” he trails off, watching the mounting fury on Percy’s face. It’s not like his battle rage, but it’s something defensive and hurt and small. “Sorry,” he says. He’s not quite sure what he’s apologizing for, but it feels like the right thing to do, even if Percy puffs up more. “I promise I’m not an illusion.” He inches closer, holding out his hand. Percy’s eyes flick to it, then back up at him. Slowly, Percy reaches back out, and he pokes at Grog’s hand, finger still cold. “See?”
Percy’s expression twists into something Grog can’t quite read, and he jerks backward, retreating again. “Fine. Say this isn’t an elaborate illusion designed to trick me. Why the familiarity? Why the-the—” His face starts to crumple, eyes dropping to the floor, and Grog straightens in alarm.
“Wha—oh, no, please don’t cry,” he says frantically. Percy never cries. Well, he’d cried once when he was all half possessed by the demon that was trying to make him shoot them, but that’s once. Out of options, he turns his head and calls out, “Pike!”
That doesn’t make Percy stop crying, hunched over and shaking, and it kind of reminds Grog of the few times when he’d cried after the Herd kicked him out, because yeah, Kevdak had sucked, but the Herd had also been his home, though he found another and better one with Pike and Papa Wilhand and all of Vox Machina, really. But oh, Grog thinks he understands Percy now. What had Pike done to make him feel better back then? A hug, right? A hug always cheers people up, and he thinks that maybe even Percy, so shy of touch normally, would like a hug at least once in his life?
This time, Percy doesn’t flinch away when Grog moves, though he lets out this big shiver that seems to rock him from his head to his toes when Grog wraps his arms around him. “There, there,” he says, trying not to be awkward, because that ruins the mood. “It’s okay.”
Quietly, almost too quiet for Grog to pick out at first, Percy whispers, “You’re sure?”
“Huh?”
“T-The Briarwoods—”
“Oh, yeah, they’re definitely dead. Vex and Vax can tell you how they killed Ripley.” Percy seems to go boneless, but Grog can still feel tears sliding onto his skin, so he keeps talking. “And Whitestone’s fine now! You don’t remember, but you—and you’re supposed to be older now—and Vex went back to help make it stronger and I think Kiki sometimes stops by to help the Sun Tree. Ooh! And Cass is still alive!” Percy stiffens at that. “I like her,” Grog says, patting Percy’s back, hard enough he hears a hiccuping oof. “She’s in charge of Whitestone because you’re busy running around with us fighting dragons and shit—”
Somehow, that gets a faint snort of laughter out of Percy. “Cass?”
“Yeah!” Grog nods enthusiastically. “She’s a great leader. You said she’d be better than you, anyway.”
Another laugh, followed by a small sniffle. Then a pause. And stronger, Percy asks, bewilderment flooding his voice, “Did you say dragons?”
Grog pats him on the back again. “We’ve got a lot of stuff to catch you up on,” he says seriously. “Like, I bet you don’t even remember my name right now, right?” He doesn’t bother waiting for an answer, because he gets the sense that Percy’s real close to getting embarrassed and jumping away and honestly, hugging him is real nice. He resolves to hug the grown up Percy as soon as he can. “I’m Grog Strongjaw, and—”
“Hey, buddies, what’s…” Pike, halfway through the door stops. “…going on?”
Grog perks up at the same time Percy stiffens, more like a board of wood than a person in his arms now. “Percy woke up!”
“Let go of me,” comes the muffled order, grouchy and annoyed.
Judging by Pike’s face, she wants to laugh too. “You know, I was gonna ask how you were sure, but that’s definitely Percy,” she says dryly. “Wanna let go of him? I can explain why he’s, uh, small again.”
Begrudgingly, Grog obliges. Percy scrambles away, eyes red and with a frown carved onto his face, but he looks better. Not quite as wary, as scared. Grog feels rather proud of himself. Hugs are great, aren’t they? He turns back to Pike, standing fully in the doorway now, her Everlight symbol on the outside of her clothes. Grog can see Percy’s eyes catch on the symbol. “Did you ask the Everlight about it?”
Pike nods. “Yup.
Percy narrows his eyes. “And this means…?”
There’s this grin that splits open on Pike’s face—the planning, prankster kind of smile, passed down through the Trickfoot line—and it immediately makes Grog start smiling too. She leans forward, hands propped up on her hips. “How do you feel about meeting yourself from the future?”