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Here is something you should know: Percy grew up with six siblings, loud and needy and always underfoot, always squabbling, always there when he needed them (and often when he didn’t).
Keyleth grew up with none.
One.
Something wakes him during the night. For a long moment, among the darkness, he cannot pick out what caught his attention. The wind hisses quietly through the tall grass, Grog snores heavily on the other side of camp, and nothing stands out as––
Oh. Yes. He recognizes that sound.
(For a moment Percy is four again, and seven, and fifteen, and all the ages in between, listening to one of the little ones sniffling, trying to hide their tears. For a moment the grass beneath him seems a thick carpet, the canopy of stars an arching ceiling of pale stone.
But the grass is grass and the stars are only stars, and there are no ancient halls here, only the dusty, open road.)
He sits up quietly. The fire has died down to embers, and even in the clear moonlight his weak eyes make out little more than shades and shadows. He finds his glasses, groping blindly next to his bedroll, and sets them on his nose.
They don’t help much.
He hesitates only a moment before he rises to pick his way through his sleeping companions. In the dark he almost steps on Scanlan, and narrowly avoids tripping over Grog’s enormous axe, but he manages to reach the edge of camp without waking anyone or hurting himself.
Keyleth has second watch tonight, the unenviable shift when the world falls cold and quiet, and even with the warmth of the fire at your back you feel utterly alone. Percy picks her out among the night’s shifting shadows as his eyes slowly adjust; she sits with her knees drawn up to her chin, staring out at the waving sea of grass. Her circlet rests next to her on the ground, and she looks unusually small without the antlers towering over her. Her shoulders shake silently. Now that he stands closer he cannot mistake the quiet sound of someone crying.
(For a moment, Percy is standing outside Cassandra’s room as she sobs into her pillow, hand raised to knock, uncertain if he is welcome or not.)
“Keyleth?”
The wind catches her name and carries it off into the grasses as soon as it leaves his lips. But her ears are sharp, and her head snaps around towards him. She hastily scrubs a hand across her face, smearing away tear tracks and dust from the road.
“Oh, Percy,” she says brightly, trying to hide the quiver in her voice. “Is everything okay?”
“I rather thought to ask you the same thing.”
“Oh.”
She turns away from him to stare back out over the shifting grasses and Percy wonders if, caught up in his memories, he has perhaps overstepped. She is not one of his siblings. She is half-a-stranger, a traveling companion. He has barely known her a few weeks. Perhaps he has made a mistake.
But, before he can slink back to his bedroll to bear his embarrassment in quiet shame, Keyleth pats the ground next to her.
“Would you like to sit?” she asks quietly, and this time she does not sound bright or upbeat. She sounds tired, voice tinged with a bone-deep weariness that Percy finds unexpectedly familiar. He hesitates a moment, then settles next to her. Her hair, loose and blowing in the wind, catches against the sleeve of his shirt. She pushes it out of her face.
“Are you alright?” Percy asks again, softly. He feels more than hears Keyleth chuckle next to him, a quiet vibration.
“More or less,” she says.
“You don’t sound particularly certain.”
“I’m okay,” she assures him. “Just... homesick.”
“Ah.” Percy can’t quite explain why that surprises him. Perhaps because no one among this group speaks of home. Perhaps because he has taught himself to forget that feeling. Perhaps because the girl always seems so bright, and he cannot imagine her feeling something so common as lonely.
“It’s silly, I know,” she says a little thickly, and Percy produces a handkerchief without thinking, one of half a dozen habits he has never been able to wean himself of. She glances in his direction as he hands it over, and he cannot make out her expression in the shadows. She accepts it and dries her eyes.
“It’s not silly,” he tells her gently. “There’s nothing wrong with being homesick.”
“No one else is crying about it,” she tells him with a hint of petulance.
(For a moment, Percy is having the most passive aggressive argument of his life with Oliver, both unwilling to back down and being unfailingly polite about it.)
“Not that you’ve seen,” Percy replies, which wins him a laugh. She hands the handkerchief back.
“Thank you, Percy,” she tells him. “You’re good at this whole... talking thing.”
Percy snorts. “I should certainly hope so.”
“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she says. On an impulse Percy starts to wrap an arm around her before he remembers that she is half-a-stranger. He freezes, hand outstretched.
Keyleth makes the choice for him, though, leaning into his side with a quiet sigh, and Percy gingerly lets his arm rest around her narrow shoulders. Her hair his soft beneath his hand.
(For a moment, Percy is sitting next to Cassandra, not saying anything, as the youngest de Rolo scowls at the wall, and he can perfectly remember the scrape of the wall against his back and the smell of dinner cutting through the castle but he cannot remember why she was upset.)
They are still leaning against each other when Vex rouses herself for the third and final watch, Percy in his shirtsleeves with a dirty handkerchief in his lap, Keyleth tucked beneath his arm and staring resolutely out into the dark. Vex gives them a strange look, but says nothing as she settles herself against Trinket’s side, one hand on her bow. Percy nods to her and stands, offering Keyleth a hand up. She shares a quick smile with him as she slips away to her bedroll, and Percy cautiously picks his way back across the camp to his own, grown cold in his absence.
In the morning, neither mentions their quiet talk. Still, as they share a look over an unappetizing breakfast of dried meat and cold cheese, Percy cannot help but think of Julius, and Vesper, and Oliver and Whitney and Ludwig and Cassandra.
For the first time in a very long while, their memories are not accompanied by guilt.
Two.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Keyleth refuses to look up from her tankard as Percy slides neatly into the seat across from her at the table. From here he has a clear view of the twins swindling the poor barkeep, and Scanlan trying to woo a local girl with an improvised ditty, and Tiberius talking the ear off an uninterested dwarf, and Grog and Pike quietly having a drinking contest. The tiny cleric is holding her own quite well, from what Percy can tell.
The druid, though, refuses to partake in the fun. She sits alone at the table in the corner, hair falling into her face, gaze fixed on her drink as she grasps it with both hands and twists it on the table. Percy frowns at her, but waits.
(Patience, he learned long ago, is the key to most discussions. Especially with unwilling participants.
Patience, or pain. Percy, generally, prefers patience. The right tools for the job, and all that.)
Across the table, Keyleth mumbles something, but her words disappear among the clamor of the tavern.
“Pardon?” Percy says, leaning forward a little. Keyleth’s shoulders sag.
“I didn’t want you guys to think of me any differently,” she repeats into her ale. Percy frowns and takes a sip of his own drink.
“Why on earth would we think of you any differently?” he asks. Keyleth glances up at him through her curtain of hair.
“Really, Percy?”
“What?” Has he missed a cue? Vesper always said he was terrible at reading the younger ones.
(Keyleth is not one of the little ones, he reminds himself. For a moment, though, he looks at her and sees half a dozen de Rolo children, stubborn as hell and exasperated with him. He recalls those memories with something that borders on fondness instead of the customary prickle of guilt, and for a moment it throws him.)
“I know what people say, you know,” she says, fire in her eyes. “I know I’m not… good with people. Or being in charge. Or anything, really.” Percy tries to interrupt, but she pushes right on, speaking over him. “I know I’m not a leader. I’m not like you, or Vax, or Vex. I just thought, I don’t know. I thought it would be easier to not tell anyone.”
She returns to her mug and takes a long drink before setting it back down on the table with a heavy thump. Percy stays silent as she pushes her hair out of her face and stares at him, eyes challenging.
“I think you put yourself down too much,” says Percy mildly, and presses on before she has a chance to respond. “But I do understand the desire to be seen first for yourself.” Of course he does. How could he not? Hell, he has been hiding from the rest of the group for months now. “Nothing will change, if you don’t want it too.”
Keyleth scoffs. “Tiberius hals already called me ‘your majesty’ twice, Vex wants to know why I’m not rich, and Grog keeps asking what I’m the ‘princess’ of,” she tells him. “I think it’s already changed.”
She has a point. “I will not change,” he promises her, though he resolves to keep a closer eye on her even as he speaks. If she has no one to look out for her, he will gladly do what he can.
(With bittersweet curiosity, he wonders what it would be like to share Tal’Dorei with Whitney, or Ludwig, or Cassandra. Wonders what he might have shown them, and what he’d have sheltered them from. He does not let his thoughts linger there for long.)
For a moment neither speaks, and Keyleth looks him over with trust in her eyes. What does she see in him, he wonders. Does she see his own secrets? For all her perceptiveness, she has never been good at reading people.
It is one more reason to look out for her.
She smiles at him, small and warm. “Thank you, Percy,” she says quietly. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Percy brings his tankard up to his lips on automatic, keeping his face blank in the way Julius taught him. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know he is here because he is a coward, he is polite because he is afraid, he survived because he cared about his own life more than his own sister. She doesn’t see the blackness inside him.
And yet. And yet.
Despite all that, despite the guilt and the fear and the self-loathing, he too is glad to be here, sitting across from the fire-haired druid girl who sees the good in the world, who isn’t afraid to share it.
When he sets his mug back on the table, his smile is genuine.
Three.
“Percy? Percy, are you alright?”
Percy fights his way to consciousness, hands flailing for his guns, but he cannot find them. Someone grabs him, and in a moment of blind panic he swings out, his closed fist connecting with something. The shaking stops abruptly, and a shadow looms over him. Percy flinches back.
“Percival!”
Vax. That’s Vax; only Vax uses his full name like that. His eyes snap open to a blur of dark clothing and pale faces. Someone puts his glasses in his hand, a fuzzy blue-and-brown shape. Vex. Percy shoves them onto his nose and everything snaps into focus.
They are camped at the edge of the Frostweald. They are searching for the heart of a nymph. He is not in Whitestone. He is not in Ripley’s basement. He is safe. These people are safe. He knows this. (He still must remind himself, sometimes.)
He sits up, stares at them. Vex and Vax loom over him, both looking concerned. And next to them, one hand pressed against her face, stands Keyleth.
He punched Keyleth.
“Are you alright?” Percy asks her, sitting up so fast he almost knocks heads with Vax. The rogue pulls back with a curse, which Percy ignores. His eyes stay locked on the druid next to him.
She winces and nods.
“Oh, I’m fine. You’re not that strong, really,” she says, almost apologetic, and Percy splutters a little, not certain if he is comforted or insulted. She pulls her hand away and Percy sees a faint red mark, but nothing else.
At least, Percy tells himself, he hasn’t hurt her.
“You’ll have to try harder next time, darling,” Vex says to him, and Percy pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Bad dreams?” asks Vax quietly.
“Something like that,” Percy allows. He had been back at Whitestone, stumbling through halls of the dead. He shivers a little, and blames it on the temperature emanating from the woods.
“You were shouting,” says Keyleth quietly. “Who is Cassandra?”
Percy closes her eyes, and her face flashes across the back of his eyelids––pale as the snow, crimson creeping from the corner of her mouth, eyes frightened as she pleads to him, Percy, Percy, please, help me, don’t leave me, please ––and he yanks himself back to the present.
“My sister,” he says tersely. This is not a conversation he wants to have. Not now. Not in front of everyone. (This is not a conversation he wants to have, ever.)
Keyleth has never been good at reading people, but she nods silently and leaves it there. Vex still looks curious, and Vax’s mouth is a familiar hard line of silenced worry.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” he says quietly. “I can take next watch. I doubt I will get to sleep any time soon.”
Keyleth’s brow furrows. “Are you sure?” she asks. “I could stay up with you––”
“Let him be,” Vax murmurs quietly, and Percy has never felt quite so fond of the man. Keyleth looks torn for a moment, and sighs.
“Alright. It’s okay, though, really. It didn’t even hurt, you just surprised me is all.”
(For a moment, Percy is apologizing to Ludwig after hitting him. What had they been fighting over? He cannot remember. Something insignificant, he is sure. He remembers his brother, a head shorter, craning his neck up to stare him in the eyes, hands on his hips, rolling his eyes, you don’t even hit that hard, Percy .)
Percy grabs his gun and escapes to the edge of camp, Bad News set across his lap and the pepperbox at his side. Behind him he hears rustling and low voices, and knows they are talking about him. He keeps his gaze fixed on the forest. Let them talk. He doesn’t owe them anything.
(He owes them his life, and his freedom. Try as he might, he cannot forget it. A de Rolo pays his debts.)
Four.
“Keyleth, let it go.”
“We can’t just leave them!”
Percy crosses his arms with a heavy sigh, and Keyleth crosses hers right back at him, face set. Percy does not want to have this argument. Percy does not want to have this argument because he knows she is right, but the right choice is not always the pragmatic choice, and if Percy is anything he is pragmatic. He cannot help himself; he learned it young. Another old habit he cannot break.
“Percy’s right,” Vax says from somewhere behind him, and Keyleth shifts her scowl towards him. “They told us to move on.”
“What, just because someone doesn’t ask means we won’t help?” Percy has seen this fire in her eyes before but never directed at him. He could have forgone this particular experience, he thinks.
“We’re mercenaries, darling,” Vex says with the casual and eloquent bluntness Percy so appreciates about her. In another life, she’d have made a good noblewoman. (He will never say that to her face, though. He likes living.)
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t be,” Keyleth tells her. Her eyes scan over everyone, and fall back to Percy, a challenge. “Maybe we should be better than that.”
“Doing people favors wins no coin,” says Vax, but there’s an uncertainty in his voice, the kind that speaks of good intentions and harsh realities. Keyleth jumps on that, though her eyes stay fixed on Percy’s face.
(For a moment, Percy is being chewed out by Vesper for some uncalled-for unkindness, the details lost to time and trauma. He shakes the memory away.)
“Doing people favors saved Percy’s life,” she retorts, and damn if she doesn’t know where to hit. She raises her eyebrows at him, waiting for him to back her up.
(Cassandra always knew where to dig in too. But Keyleth is not his sister, he reminds himself yet again.
The repetition rings hollow.)
“She’s right,” Pike says quietly at his side. Her face is drawn. Of all of them, Percy supposes she’d be the easiest to sway. Pike, more than any of them, is a good person at heart. Percy hopes they do not tarnish that.
“We’ve already promised our services to someone else,” he reminds Keyleth, and the look of betrayal he gets for that hits home. For a moment he sees six others there, different hair and different faces but the same eyes, and fuck, no, he’s not going to see his nightmares in Keyleth. She deserves better than that. He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “But an extra day––”
“Percy,” Vex protests, and Percy holds up a hand to stall her.
“Keyleth is right,” he says, because she is, damn it. “She’s right, Vex. You saved my life, and I’m infinitely grateful for it. It would be hypocritical to ignore these people now.”
“Bunch of bleeding hearts,” Grog grunts out, impatient. “But if there’s gonna be a fight, I’m in.”
“Who knows,” Percy says with a dark humor. “Maybe they’ll pay us out of thanks.”
Keyleth gives him a look, but lets the quip go. “Does that mean you’ll help?” she asks them, and Percy feels their eyes on him.
(She reminds him of Vesper, doing her best to be diplomatic, and of Whitney, seeing the best of everyone, and of Cassandra, ever-stubborn. Damn it all, when will he stop seeing the shades of his family in the people around him? The dead should stay dead.)
“Yes, alright,” he sighs, adjusting the holster at his hip. “We’ll help.”
“Thank you,” she says, relaxing as the rest of the party mutters their agreement, some more willing than others. Percy tries to brush past her, but she catches his wrist and tugs him to a stop. The others wander in their separate directions, gathering up their things to move out.
“Keyleth,” he says, a warning. There is too much in his head, too many voice of the long-gone. He needs to clear it before they move out.
“I mean it,” she says quietly, kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you. You’re a good man, Percy.”
“I’m really not,” he tells her, almost amused. She sighs and lets him go.
“You are today,” she says, as if that’s enough.
Maybe, for today, it is.
Five.
The direwolves appear in the dead of night, two orcs behind them shouting orders, and he hears Vex swearing loudly behind him, waking the camp. He grabs his gun, fingers fumbling blindly in the dark, and then Tiberius barks out an incantation and white light blooms across the clearing.
When he sees the wolves charging, Percy almost wishes it were still dark.
The party scatters, unrested, and by the time they’ve found their footing the wolves are upon them, orc handlers at their heels, and then there is no time to think. Percy keeps half an eye on his friends and puts the rest of his attention into lining up shots, click-bang click-bang click-bang , six rounds and reload, the pepperbox a familiar weight in his hand. A wolf falls, then another, then a third, and Percy thinks perhaps this is not so bad a situation as it first looked.
And then he hears the familiar snap of a bowstring, and a cough like a sigh, and the quiet rustle of a body hitting the ground, and Percy finishes emptying his barrel into the face of a charging direwolf to spin around with a sinking feeling in his gut. He can see everyone else; everyone else is in front of him, everyone except––
(They run through the forest, dashing between trees as arrows fly around them, and she is right behind him; and then she is not, then he hears the sound, twang-thwack twang-thwack twang-thwack , a stifled cry, and when he skids to a stop and turns around she is lying there, pale as the snow, crimson creeping from the corner of her mouth, eyes frightened as she pleads to him, Percy, Percy, please, help me, don’t leave me, please–– )
Keyleth.
(Not Cassandra, Cassandra is gone, he cannot save Cassandra now.
He can save Keyleth.)
He drops the pepperbox––emptied, useless––without a second thought. Enemies remain, but he cannot focus on the fight, cannot focus on the threat, has eyes only for the druid on the ground, arrow embedded in her side.
In the time it takes for him to reach her, Vex and Vax take down one orc and Grog the other, but Percy is only half-aware of their victory. He collapses to his knees at her side ( pale as the snow, crimson creeping from the corner of her mouth ; no, that is a memory, he is not there, he is not there, he is not there ) and his fingers fumble at his belt, come on, dammit––
He cups her head with one shaking hand, pulls the cork with his teeth and pours the viscous liquid into her mouth, hands trembling, waiting, waiting, waiting––
She coughs, and her eyes flutter open. Her breathing still comes too fast, there is still an arrow in her abdomen––he presses one hand there now, stemming the bleeding as best he can, and her hand finds his there with a gasp somewhere between shock and pain––
But she is alive. She looks up at him with confusion and coughs out his name.
“Percy?”
Pike appears as if conjured, crouching at her other side with words of healing ready on her lips, and Percy steps back, hands shaking, frightened by his own desperation. Vax puts a hand on his shoulder and he nearly jumps out of his skin.
“She’ll be alright,” his friend tells him with an entirely-too-knowing look. “Pike’ll take care of her.”
“Of course,” says Percy. There is blood on his hands. He clasps them together to hide the tremors. Vax does him the courtesy of pretending not to notice.
“Help me move the corpses?” he asks, and Percy accepts with a sort of relief, happy to have something to do besides think.
(He has lost sisters enough.)
Six.
Fat flakes of snow drift down from the low, slate-colored sky, and the band on the stage plays a familiar carol. The square swirls with the colors of Winter’s Crest, ivy green and berry red, as the folk of Westruun celebrate and make merry, heralding the end of another year. Percy lounges at a table, watching dancers weave together like threads on a tapestry, and remembers festivals visited with his family. Whitestone would gleam with fresh-fallen snow and the townsfolk would hang garlands of holly and ivy from the bare branches of the Sun Tree.
Westruun is not Whitestone and has no Sun Tree from which to hang garlands, but he finds a welcoming familiarity in the strains of music and laughter, and in the smells of cooking meats and hot drinks. He smiles at strangers as they pass by with wishes for a happy Winter’s Crest.
Keyleth, sitting at his side, watches it all with wide-eyed enthusiasm, trying to take in everything at once. She cradles a mug of mulled wine, steam curling up and mingling with her breath as she stares in open-mouthed awe at the chaos and color around them.
“And you do this every year?” she asks him, snow catching in her bright hair.
“Do you not?” asks Percy, curious. She doesn’t talk much of the Ashari.
“Well, we celebrate,” she shrugs, “but the separation between the elemental planes and the material plane is weakest during Winter’s Crest, so we always have to be careful.”
“How so?”
“We hold vigil, as a tribe. But we cook, and dance too. I suppose it’s not that different, really. There are just so many people!” She eyes a vendor across the square selling meat pies. “What did you do, at your home?”
“We would all go to the main square, to the festival.” Percy can almost imagine this to be Whitestone. Mother and Father would be standing right here. The youngest ones would be getting into trouble, until Vesper tracked them down and apologized for their mischief. Oliver would be wooing his latest flame. Julius would be dancing. It almost surprises him, how easily he imagines it. “My family was quite large, and very much enjoyed the holidays.”
Keyleth’s attention shifts from the square to Percy, eyes sharp. “You don’t talk about them much, you know,” she says. Percy smiles thinly and stares out over the crowd.
“No, I suppose I don’t.”
At his side, she looks down at her drink then back out at the crowd. He feels her rest her head on his shoulder, and gently runs his hand up and down her back, furs warm against his palm.
A ways to their right, Vex talks Tiberius out of buying three dozen fancy hats, and at the table next to them Pike tries to match Grog drink-for-drink and holds her own remarkably well, and Scanlan’s foot taps along as he shoots contemplative glances towards the band on the stage, and Vax slides through the crowd with the skill of a pickpocket, and everyone smiles and drinks without a care. This isn’t Whitestone, but he doesn’t need to imagine what his family would be doing, because he sees them all around him, happy and safe. These people who have saved him from himself, and do not even know it. His gratitude is boundless.
“That’s alright,” Keyleth says, breath a puff of white. “Happy Winter’s Crest, Percy.”
“Happy Winter’s Crest, Keyleth.”
+1
The air of the tavern wraps around them, warm and smoky, and everything is comfortably soft, though that is probably the alcohol speaking. Percy lets her lean on him––he almost always does, he’s very nice like that. Vax and Vex are arguing on her other side, but she doesn’t pay them much mind. They argue a lot. Is that what it’s like to have a brother?
Percy would know. Percy knows a lot about family, even though he doesn’t talk about it. Which is okay. Keyleth doesn’t talk about her family a lot. None of them do, really.
But Percy knows a lot of stuff.
“Hey Percy?”
His voice sounds warm and dry above her. “Yes?”
“Whatsit like having a brother?” Or a sister, some people have sisters. Vax has a sister. “Or a sister?”
She feels him move, and sits up a little, shaking her hair out of her face. The room tilts. Percy puts a steadying hand on her back and looks at her, considering.
“Well,” he says, and then he goes quiet. He does that sometimes, when he’s trying to pick the right words. That’s why he’s so good at talking to people and she isn’t. She just says stuff when she feels it.
This isn’t his thinking quiet, though. This is animal-in-a-trap quiet, still and uncertain and brain whirring too fast.
(Percy’s brain is almost always whirring too fast.)
“It’s like this, right?” she asks him, but it comes out more like a statement. “Like, us.” She gestures between them, a little clumsy. “I think you must be a good brother.”
When he doesn’t say anything, Keyleth pulls back a little to stare up at him. Percy blinks a couple of times behind his glasses, like he does when he’s shocked but doesn’t want to say anything about it. He looks like he’s thinking too hard again. Keyleth wraps her arm around his and puts her head back down on his shoulder.
“It’s okay,” she says. “I won’t tell anyone. But it’s nice.” Her eyes are heavy, so she closes them. The dark is warm and safe with Percy at her side. He won’t let anything happen to her.
“Yes,” she thinks she hears him say as she drifts off. “Yes, it is.”