Work Text:
Vaguely, Percy hears Scanlan’s shouts, but they come a moment too late, swallowed in the booming sound of Ripley’s gun, or perhaps the hissing of purple energy that is his own name being wiped off the barrel that spat the bullet at him. But it is vague. And it is brief. And he is dead.
It is silent, of course, after he dies. This makes sense to him, as his ears would no longer serve that purpose after death. It is silent, and still, and even cold. But it is not dark. That is what surprises him, in the dulled sort of surprise of a new piece of scientific information. It is not dark, nor is there a tiny pinprick of light as some rumors went.
It was radiant.
Light and shadow and color danced in never-settling patterns across his vision. More than that, across his entire awareness. For what was a field of vision when you had no eyes to be limited by? The shimmering, iridescent beauty of Whitestone is nothing compared to this.
This was glorious! His soul, for the first time in his memory, was free. There was no veil of physical limitation or sensory confusion. He could indulge in this beauty - pure and unadulterated as a drug - without ever having to stop.
If the gods had allowed him to see this, perhaps he was not as damned as he thought. And if even one such as he could see this, what greater heavens had awaited Vex’ahlia when she had briefly shed her mortal coil?
Vex’ahlia. That thought halted him, as though he had hit a wall, invisible and yet far more real than anything else. Vex’ahlia. And Keyleth, and Vax and Grog and Scanlan and Pike. Vex’ahlia.
Here, wherever here was, he did not have the sensation of grief and guilt. It did not weigh on him, pull him down, or even dim the polychromatic experience around him. And he had not been aware that he was moving through this infinite space until he had been stopped. The thought of Vex’ahlia had erected a wall or tied on a tether, something to make him stop moving. Stop moving away. Away was the only direction there was to move, and with that withheld from him, he felt like a becalmed ship.
The distinct sensation of being held enveloped him as his movement stopped. Something, even fainter than Scanlan’s cries, echoed through this place, through him. “Darling wake up.” Warmth momentarily brushed away the stagnant chill that had filled him - for moments, days, years? Even without the sound of her voice, he knew her. Gods help him, he still knew her.
And with that realization, he plunged back into dark, into cold, into shadow.
#
Blood paid for blood. That was how Vax’ildan had understood his bargain with the Raven Queen in the waterlogged cave. His lifeblood, sold to the Raven Queen for sparing his sister’s. They were of one blood and bone, and it was an even trade.
But he could not forgive Percival for shedding that blood in the first place, and Vax dangled it over his head like a debt unpaid.
It was worse because he could see - any fool could see - that Percy would never forgive himself. That he held a debt against his own life for the taking of Vex’ahlia’s. There was no price that Vax could exact from Percy that the smug, white-haired prick would not pay doubly in his self-flagellation.
It was worse because Vex’ahlia held no such grudge, and seemed almost lighter after her brief sojourn. She laughed and joked and pushed back the darkness with the light of her smile and a wink. She forgave Percy for taking her life faster than she had forgiven Vax for ruining the carpet.
It was worse because anyone with eyes could see that they danced around each other, his shadow and her light, and damn it all if they were better in the company of one another.
It was worse because it was clear he loved her.
But there was no grudge now, and all the things that could have been worse were wiped away.
Because this was the worst. Blood paid for blood, and Percival had paid with interest.
#
Scanlan’s hands did not shake. He was no novice performer whose breath quivered in the pipe and weakened the note. There were simply moments that one did what had to be done, and the show went on.
He had traveled the world, and seen it in all its splendor and squalor. He knew the places and peoples and triumphs and tragedies. He wrote them down and he sang them. And he was honest when he told Vax that this was better. This broken little family with too much blood and guts and drama - this was better.
Once Scanlan had stood and watched as Pike - beautiful, pure, adorable Pike - had been utterly destroyed. She had taken a blow that wasn’t meant for her, and the radiance that shone out of her at all times had snuffed out in a moment too quick to catch in a blink. He remembered to this day the bitter taste of bile and horror as the weight of that reality sunk in. Pike was dead. Pike was dead. Pike was dead.
There were magics enough in town to bring her back, and no money could be worth the relief of having her back. His heart had learned to beat again, and faster.
But there was no magic here on Glintshore, not now that they were completely tapped out. They had used the last of their effort to cut down the demon and Orthax. Neither his wit nor his magic were of any use, and the same dread that had settled on him that day in Westruun hit him in the gut now. He focused one last moment on Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere, and let it fall. “It’s not us killing you - it’s Percy killing you.”
#
Pike knew every time. Of course, she had died first. And she was the one with the power to bring them back. But she knew, even when she wasn’t there.
She was never there.
Service to Sarenrae was something she understood. Her father and grandfather and great grandfather had pledged their service to the Lady of Redemption, and she had returned their faithfulness in spades. Pike couldn’t remember a time when she had not been skilled at healing. When she had nursed Grog back to health, it was slow process, to be sure, but there was something so right, so certain about his restoration.
But when Vex had been claimed by dark magic in the tomb under the water, it was Kashaw, not her, who had opened the path for offerings to the gods, the offerings that would decide whether a life was worth bringing back. Kashaw had prayed, had risked the attention of his vicious bride, and Vex had breathed again.
But back in Vasselheim, she had felt it, glaring and hot as an ember pressed against her heart.
And that was nothing compared to now. In cold Whitestone, as Gilmore and Alura and the other mages discussed strategy and lent energy to the spell, Pike reached for a wall, her fingertips digging into the stone to hold her up.
First, the tiny ping at the back of her mind that her necklace had worked. Fear, followed by relief. It was not unheard of for one of her companions to fall unconscious in battle, and the amulet was meant to guard against further injury. She couldn’t be there, and so she had given Percy that gift. Sweet, broken Percy.
The relief flickered, beating like a butterfly against her heart, faster and harder and hotter - oh gods hotter. And she knew this feeling, the one of life being sucked away when she had no right to invoke the goddess. She tried to focus, to beg Sarenrae in her mercy to take her to Percy’s side so she could do something, anything. Her tiny fingers made a powder of white stone on the ground where her too-strong hand pressed for reassurance.
Why would Sarenrae bring her to where they were so many times, even in the Feywild, far from home and in another plane? Why would she offer that taste of being there for them without sacrificing her service to the goddess? Why would she, the Lady of Redemption let her suffer in this limbo of knowing without being able to help?
She clutched at her symbol, tears forming without words as the burning pain in her chest ended.
Percy was dead. And she was not with him.
#
Grog had been dead twice. And near dead more than that. And he made things dead most often. He understood dead, even when Pike or Kash messed up the order of life and death. He appreciated that, he really did. Especially when Pike brought him back.
In the midst of rage, Grog saw none of this. He saw blood, in the broken vessels in his eyes and the blade of his axe, red on the ground and red in the spray as he drew weapons back and streaked across their faces. There was red everywhere. Grog understood red.
And he understood, even through his rage, that there was too much red on Percy. That the way that Vox Machina, gathered like executioners around Scanlan’s magical ball, had blood on their minds. He swung with all his force, and felt it carve a gaping cavern of a wound as he separated Ripley right across her navel. He understood dead. Ripley was dead.
Percy was dead.
#
There was no life without death. Keyleth knew that. She could call down either, channel it through her understanding of nature and into whatever target she chose. She could part the clouds whose rain gave life. She could heal wounds. She could drain the life from plants and animals alike.
But she could not raise the dead.
Perhaps she and Vax’s Raven Queen were the same in that regard - a distaste for those who denied the natural order of life and death. The gods could deal out mercies and condemnations that disregarded nature if they pleased. She would do no such thing.
Never had she wanted to so badly.
She was dry, her connection to the earth stretched to the point of breaking. Her head pulsed with the pain that comes from overdrawing her mana well, and only the smallest elements of nature could do anything. She had called up a vine to choke the life out of Ripley, and could do no more.
He had tried to tell them how much to fear her. He had tried to tell them that she was not a trifling pitstop on the way to Thordak. But they were full of hubris and tried to talk him out of it. After all, they had a dragon on their side, and they had killed two others. They controlled the storms and had the goddesses of death and redemption on their side. And still they were arrogant.
And he was dead.
She wanted to clutch at him, to hold him and sob against him, to cause the life of the earth to flow into him. But this was a dead shore, and she had spent what she had been given like a prodigal son, come back to beg forgiveness of the father.
Besides, there would be no moving Vex from his side.
How had she not seen it until today? Until the moment when Vex pulled his face into her hands and gave him that look. Keyleth might not have recognized that look until a few days ago when she and Vax had finally cleared the air, but now it was there, plain on Vex’s face.
Keyleth’s knees wobbled, and she felt Vax hold her up from behind. The druid and the paladin of death. And both of them could only watch as Vex leaned over Percy’s body, begging one of them to do something. Anything.
But there was no life without death.
#
She remembered color. She remembered shadow and light. And she remembered wanting to tell her brother not to worry and Percy to forgive himself. These were the things she remembered about death. It was not so very long ago. A month. And life had gotten easier knowing that death was so simple. She had been dead, and then she had not. Nothing to it.
Her fingers felt cold as she willed what little magic she had to find its way to Percy’s heart and make it beat again. She felt the familiar glow on her fingertips, but it felt metallic and hard rather than soft and comforting. It skittered off of her hands like so many fireflies, never quite finding purchase in Percy’s body.
“Darling,” she whispered. “Darling, wake up. The fight’s over. We’ve won!” She tried to sound pleased through the thick haze of tears. She ran her sleeve across her face, drying her eyes and nose. “Wake up, Percy.” Her fingers tried to trace the path of the healing magic, trying now to press some other magic into him, the magic of the words she could not say to him, nor he to her. She willed those to his heart, wherever he was. She willed a boundary in that land of opalescent color, one that would tie him to her. She willed it, and prayed to Sarenrae and the Raven Queen and Bahamut and even Kord if he had any sort of influence.
And she felt a tug, like a fish on a line. She held him, or tried to. Her heart pounded in her chest. “We’ve won, Percy.” And then quieter. “I won't’ lose you, not now.”
She understood the desire to remain, the peace of making no more decisions. But she would make this decision for him. Cold surety filled her. He would come back, she would make him. She would take him back to Pike or to High Bearer Vord or to any other person who claimed to speak for the gods and she would sit down with them in the ritual and she would put her own broom on the altar to tell them all - even him - how serious she was.
Because she forgave Percy long ago, without a second thought. And she cared for him even when the shadow demon spun out around him like a hellish halo. And she would not lose him now.