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Percy met Keyleth like this:
Shortly after making the acquaintance of the twins (which was a story, in and of itself), Vex and Vax decided that Percy needed more friends. This was not an incorrect assessment, given that they were, in that time of his life, his only friends, so one night they dragged him to a local bar and sat him down in the middle of a group of the oddest people he had ever met. At some point in the blur of names and faces, he was introduced to a very pretty red haired woman.
“Hi!” she said. Her face was flush, from the heat of the packed room or the alcohol, he couldn’t tell, and she lit up with a smile when he sat next to her. “I’m Keyleth!”
“Hello, Keyleth,” Percy said, warily shaking her proffered hand. He suspected that she was drunk, given the number of empty glasses on the table in front of her, and he’d never been the best at handling drunk people.
His suspicions were confirmed when she spoke again. “Vax said you don’t have any friends.”
It was spoken without malice, a statement of fact, but Percy still winced. “No,” he said, realizing too late that his voice was raw, too open for this place, for a first meeting, “I suppose I don’t.”
Keyleth looked at him. He wondered what she saw in that moment; what was it about him, sitting in a dim over-loud bar, too hot in his jacket but unwilling to take it off, that made her look at him. She smiled again, eyes bright. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll be your friend.”
And that was that. Keyleth took Percy under her wing, so to speak. She dragged him to plays and to the ballet, claiming that their other friends had no patience for it. She had coffee with him between shifts at the clinic, regaling him with stories about the animals that passed through. On one particularly memorable occasion, she recruited his help in transplanting vegetable seedlings from their window boxes to her back garden, an effort that ended in both of them laying flat on their backs in her yard, covered in dirt. Percy grew to enjoy the company of everyone in the twins’ self-proclaimed band of misfits, but his friendship with Keyleth was, he had to admit, an unexpected one.
It was because of this friendship that Percy felt justified in knocking on Keyleth’s door one evening in early autumn. They had planned to meet for dinner that night, as Keyleth’s work schedule had prevented them from meeting up for some time recently, but she hadn’t showed. It wasn’t unusual for Keyleth to have to bow out of plans on short notice, especially if some veterinary emergency was involved. It was unusual for her not to show up, and not to call or text telling him what had happened. Perhaps it was paranoid of him to assume something was wrong, and coming to his friend’s house uninvited because of one missed dinner was almost certainly overstepping, but.
Percy’s friends were relatively few. He could be forgiven for being protective of the ones he had.
He knocked again. “Keyleth?” He shifted on the concrete stoop. The streetlight a few feet away flickered on begrudgingly, the last hold out to the onsight of night time. “Keyleth?” he called again. “It’s Percival. Are you there?”
A pause. Shuffling feet. The door opened. Keyleth appeared slowly, blinking rapidly, one hand rubbing across her nose. “Percy?” She ran a hand through her hair, loose and bedraggled around her shoulders. “What are you…” She trailed off, turning to look a the clock Percy knew hung on the wall just inside the door. “Oh. Oh, we had plans for dinner.” She turned back to him, eyes wide with apology. “I’m sorry, I completely forgot.”
“It’s quite alright.” He hesitated, taking in her ratty sweatpants, her red-rimmed eyes, the slump of her body in the doorway. “Is everything alright with you?”
Keyleth opened her mouth. Closed it. She leaned over to rest her head against the doorframe. “No,” she said. “It’s not.”
Slowly, Percy took a step forward. “May I come in?”
Keyleth bit her lip. Then she nodded and stepped aside to let him through.
Percy stepped into Keyleth’s house. He’d been here before, of course, but every time he visited he was struck by how… lived-in it was. He grew up a home that was kept neat and polished, always giving the appearance of order, and after. Well, after he didn’t stay anywhere long enough to call it a home.
That’s what this house was: a home. A small home, perhaps, just large enough for one woman, but every inch bearing the evidence of a resident who loved it dearly. Plants sat on shelves and countertops, in varying stages of growth and flowering. Books were stacked in towering piles, very occasionally on bookshelves, more often on the floor beside them. A wind chime hung in the open kitchen window, long glass spirals tinkling faintly as they danced in the light evening breeze. Keyleth's enormous white cat, Minxie, looked up from her perch on one of the shelves, then returned to cleaning herself dismissively. It was not a neat place, to be certain, overflowing with the detritus of living, but Percy loved it dearly nonetheless.
Today, however, there was evidence of more difficult living than usual; a pile of used tissues sat in the corner of Keyleth’s couch, a hamper full of laundry sat on the floor next to it, and dirty dishes still sat on the living room coffee table instead of in the tiny sink where they were usually placed at the end of every meal. Keyleth was no neat freak, but she generally prided herself on having her house in some sort of order, even if it was an order that made sense only to her. To see her being messy was disconcerting.
Keyleth sat on the couch, feet tucked under her, arms wrapped around her chest. Gingerly, Percy sat next to her. When she didn’t speak, he stretched out a tentative hand to rest on her shoulder. “Do you… do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head, once, sharp, then paused. Nodded slowly. “Alright,” Percy said, squeezing her shoulder, not really knowing what else to do. She was quiet for a long time, long enough that Percy opened his mouth to say it was alright, she didn’t have to explain anything, but before he could, Keyleth finally spoke.
“My mom left.” Her voice was quiet, more quiet than he thought he’d ever heard. “When I was little. I never really-” She swallowed. “I never really knew why. My dad just always said that she had something she needed to do.” She shrugged. “I guess it must have been something really important, because she left seventeen years ago today and she still hasn’t come back.”
Percy blinked. “I’m… Keyleth, I’m sorry.”
She shrugged again. “You didn’t know.” She picked at the embroidery in the couch cushion with a fingernail. Her hands were trembling. “Anniversaries are…” She bit her lip again, and Percy could see her eyes welling up.
“Anniversaries are hard,” he finished. “I know.”
Keyleth looked up at him. She must have seen the recognition in his eyes, the understanding, because that was what finally broke her. The tears began to flow freely, and without thinking, Percy wrapped his arm around her and pulled her in to rest her head against his shoulder. He could feel her begin to shake. “I fought with Dad this morning,” she said, voice thick with tears. “I was- I don’t know, I was angry and I just wanted- He’s never even looked for her, he’s never even tried-” Her voice cracked on a sob. “I asked him why, and he just said- He said she’d come back when she was ready, but what kind of bullshit-”
She broke off, sobs wracking her body. Percy tucked her head under his chin, a posture he had often adopted with his siblings, years and lifetimes ago. He’d forgotten how to be close with someone, to offer comfort in times of trouble, but his body remembered.
After several minutes, and the creation of a fairly large damp patch on Percy’s collar, Keyleth’s tears subsided. She pulled away, wiping her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, a self-deprecating smile already on her lips. “I don’t know why I’m still- I mean, it happened years ago, you’d think I’d be over it by now.”
Percy shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how long ago it happened,” he said, honest without thinking. “It still hurts.”
Keyleth looked up at him. “One of these days,” she said, soft and serious, “we’re gonna have to talk about that.” She bent over until her nose was practically touching her knees and stretched her arms up over her head with a groan. “For now, though,” she said, straightening with a wince as her back popped, “I owe you dinner.”
Percy stammered. “Oh, no, Keyleth, that’s really not-”
She bumped his shoulder. “Come on. Delivery pizza and a crappy movie?” She smiled, the same smile she’d given him in the bar not all that long ago. “My treat.”
Percy pushed his glasses up his nose and smiled back. “Very well,” he said, “if you insist.”
So Percy stayed for pizza and a crappy movie. And when they both fell asleep on Keyleth’s couch, he stayed for breakfast the following morning. He spent the rest of the day with a crick in his neck and a twinge in his back, but really, he thought, it was worth it.