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Whitestone was beautiful at sunset. The ruddy light was caught by the stone, painting the whole castle a light red, almost pink. The forest cast long, dark shadows on the ground that grew longer with each moment and air was pleasantly cool. The leaves caught the light too, but Vex fancied some of them would have been reddish without the help. Summer was ending. Autumn was approaching.
She stood on the ramparts, leaning against the low wall and watching the sun dip ever lower. The whole thing was so dreamily peaceful that the past few days almost felt like they’d never happened, like they’d been some nightmare that would drift away come the dawn. Almost. Not quite.
She closed her eyes for a moment against the torrent of recent memory. The glass beach, the dead trees, the shattered carcasses of ships and sailors alike. Percy cold on the ground. Ripley ripped to shreds by vengeful family.
The thought of her left Vex feeling… something. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was some emotion, something strong and hot and burning. If it was disgust, she wasn’t sure if it was for what she’d done, or what they’d done. If it was rage, she didn’t know if it would ever go away.
It was hard to open her eyes again. She was so tired. It felt like she hadn’t slept in days, like her last good night of sleep had been in the desert city of Ank’Harel. She certainly hadn’t slept well in the mansion, curled up between Grog and her brother and painfully, brutally aware that Percy’s body was barely a stone’s throw away, cold and getting colder. No one had but it seemed like she’d been awake the whole night, aware of who was breathing and who wasn’t. The last couple of days, Cassandra had given them rooms in the castle and they’d taken as much time as they felt was necessarily proper to rest. Rashidan could wait, dragons could wait, the world could wait for a moment or two. They were tired, so very tired. Percy still looked like death warmed over and Vex was still trying to reassure herself that even when he wasn’t next to her, he was somewhere breathing.
Percy would snore, not loudly but enough to wake Vex sometimes and Vax constantly. More likely to wake everyone up was Vax waking Percy when he tried to roll him over, or after a few months, just hitting Percy in the stomach with a pillow. Once, that had dissolved into a pillow fight that left everyone laughing and breathless, too excited to sleep.
Percy sometimes mumbled in his sleep. Never anything understandable, but Vex thought it was cute. Once, she swore he was grumbling about donuts. He denied any donut-related dreams or nightmares.
Percy sometimes jerked awake in the middle of the night, gasping for air and shaking. She’d never had the courage to get up and ask him if he was okay, sit next to him in silent support the way Pike or Keyleth sometimes did. She’d find him something in the morning though, berries or an extra bit of bacon or toast. Something.
She heard someone approaching, slow and quiet, as if they didn’t want to startle her. Too loud to be Vax, too quiet to be Grog or Scanlan or Pike. The wind caught the scent of them and it wasn’t that of crushed pine needles but of smoke and something sharper, something that made her nose itch.
“It’s a lovely view, isn’t it?” Percy asked softly, coming to stand beside her. She finally forced her eyes open. It had gotten darker since she’d closed them, the sun a darker red as it got closer to the treetops.
“It is,” she agreed. “We didn’t get a lot of time to appreciate it last time we were here.”
“Not particularly, no.” He stuffed his hands in the pocket of his coat and sighed. “How are you?” Vex looked at him, startled.
“How am I?” He scratched his nose, embarrassed.
“Well, yes.”
“How are you? You died.”
“Yes, and how I am has been discussed at length by me, my sister, Pike, and a few other clerics. But I remember how it was when you died and you were only gone for a minute or two. So, I mean…” He paused, visibly gathered himself, then continued. “Vax said you took it hard.”
“We all did,” she retorted. “Scanlan put your corpse on display in the mansion outside our pillow fort.” Percy bit the inside of his cheek.
“I’d… heard that…” He seemed to almost find it funny, which Vex thought was wildly inappropriate. “Regardless. I just… wanted to make sure you were doing well. At least as well as one can expect?” Vex considered that for a moment.
“As well as one can expect,” she agreed. “That about sums it up.” Percy nodded slowly, looking out over the village and the forest rather than at her.
“Which reminds me,” he said, in a tone that made it rather clear he had needed no reminding at all. “I… wanted to talk to you. About the ritual.”
Vex heart plummeted and came to rest somewhere around her navel. She turned to look at him, feeling all the blood drain from her face.
“You said you didn’t remember,” Vex said softly. Percy kept his eyes on the horizon, his expression painfully neutral and tinted gently red by the sunset.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I remember some now.”
“What do you remember?” She wished he had half his composure, a modicum of his poker face. He finally looked away from the skyline, but not at her. Off into a different distance, towards nothing in particular, just away from her.
“Keyleth calling out to me. Saying the story of Vox Machina wasn’t finished. Pike and Saranae reaching out. Crows. Black wings. And…” He finally looked at her, full on now, frowning slightly, like trying to piece together a memory or a puzzle. “You.”
Vex looked away now, wishing Trinket were there to be something warm and solid and dependable. She felt silly, free-floating, like a child who’d be caught out trying to play-act adulthood. Percy said nothing. The rock by the side of the road was an easier conversationalist to face.
“Did you mean what you said?” There was something in his voice that she couldn’t place, a tremble that might be anger or fear or anything really. Vex swallowed hard.
“I… You were… gone,” she whispered. “That… thing attacked you and… she shot you and it felt like… like there was a hole in my chest. It felt like all the warmth was gone, all the color in the world. All in an instant. I didn’t realize…” Her eyes started to burn, but there was more rage there than grief, residual and still hot, still raw and red and steaming. “I shot her through the heart. I would have clawed it out with my bare hands if I could.” Percy said nothing. “But I couldn’t leave you,” she continued. “I couldn’t…”
The glass had bit into her hands and knees as she scrambled over the shards to him. He was broken, bloody, so pale. His chest wasn’t moving. There was a hole in his stomach, leaking bile and blood, and his chest wasn’t moving. He stared up at the sky, eyes blank and dead. Dead. Dead.
Percy was quiet for a long moment. Vex guessed it was somewhere around the length of an eternity, but she couldn’t be sure. Finally, he spoke.
“When I was a child, my parents spent a fair bit of time trying to get me to… associate with the noble ladies of the area,” he said slowly. “I did my best to avoid it. It’s not that they weren’t… lovely ladies. Almost all of them were. But they didn’t… interest me.”
Dammit, he’s gay.
“I just… didn’t know how to tell them. The ladies, I mean. That it was a waste of their time and mine to… be at this ball or that one, dancing or talking about nothing. I had… other things on my mind.”
Definitely gay.
“Science.”
… Okay.
“It just wasn’t… something I was interested at the time. Being with someone like that. And I… didn’t know how to tell them.” He was looking at his hands now. Vex couldn’t tell if he was blushing, or if it was the sunset that was painting his cheeks so red. Her stomach now felt less like a knot of butterflies and more like a pit.
“And you don’t know how to tell me.” She wished she didn’t sound so pathetic as the words came out, all hollow and sad. He looked up sharply.
“No, no, that’s not… ugh… I’m usually better than this, dammit,” Percy groaned, and she looked up to see his head in his hands. “This… isn’t how I wanted it to go. I had a whole thing in my head…” She blinked.
“Uh. What?” He looked at her with blatant frustration, though it didn’t seem directed at her necessarily.
“Telling you how I felt!” He threw his hands up in the air. “I was going to- I had a whole plan, a speech, everything! I had this whole picture in my head and it did not involve my death and it was all very-“
“Romantic?” Vex asked hopefully. Something warm was starting to blossom somewhere behind her sternum as she watched him wave his arms in the air, frustrated.
“Yes!” Percy let his arms fall to his sides with a thud, scowling. Then, reluctantly, “I was waiting for winter.”
“Winter?” She smiled, confused but amused at the same time.
“To tell you,” he explained. “I had this… image. In my head. I was waiting for snow.” Vex stared at him for a long moment, hope and joy and borderline hysterical laughter mingling in her chest, threatening to make it burst.
“You’re telling me,” she said, her tone remarkably casual for everything threatening to bubble up into her throat. “That we’re all fighting ancient dragons. We could all die at any moment, which these past few days proved… and you’re waiting for a specific season to tell me that you…?” She didn’t dare use the word she hoped for. Percy did an impressive imitation of a tomato.
“When you say it like that, it sounds silly,” he complained. Vex laughed, all the emotion finally bursting out in waves.
“It is silly!”
“Not that silly, surely!” He sounded almost offended as he turned to face her directly for the first time since the conversation started. “It’s perfectly reasonable to want the moment to be perfect!”
“The moment for what?” Vex challenged. Percy stuttered to a halt, and this time she knew he was blushing. He coughed uncomfortably, and Vex inched closer, reaching out and touching his cheek. Warm and real and there. Alive.
“The moment for what?” She asked again, softer this time, gentler. She could hear the plea in the question but figured Percy, of all people, after everything he’d been through, deserved someone to share the same amount of vulnerability that he had these past few months.
He looked at her for a moment, pensive under her hand. Then he smiled, and there was something to it that made her shiver.
“I suppose you would probably have preferred the atmosphere of summer better, come to think of it,” he said, his tone deceptively conversational as he leaned in close, his slender frame pressing her own against the half-wall. She smiled and slid her hand down his throat to his chest, gripping the lapels of his coat, using the pretext of smoothing them down to pull him even closer.
“Summer’s good,” she said. She looked up at the trees, the leaves turning gold and red and russet in the dim, ruddy light. She looked up at the sky, the stars beginning to gently glimmer in the darkening blue, the moon a sliver of silver against the dark. She felt the soft, cool, crisp breeze whisper against them, but not between them. There was no room for it. “Autumn’s better.” He grinned, and it was brilliant and bright and full of the kind of love she’d seen before but never had directed at her, felt deep in her chest but never received. It left her breathless and stupid with love.
“You’re my favorite,” he whispered reverently, and she remembered the arrow he gave her, the pale guilt and shame after she had very briefly died. Had it been that far back? Even further? How much time had they wasted? “I love the way you haggle for every damn copper we spend. I love the way the word ‘darling’ sounds coming out of your mouth. I love the way you smirk a little before you shoot. I love a thousand other tiny things that I can’t even begin to list. I love you.” She felt a smile tug at her mouth without her permission, and she was more than happy to let it do as it liked. “I look at you,” he continued softly. “And I’m home.”
Vex felt tears start to burn at her eyes. She’d been crying so damn much this past week but these were good tears, the stinging felt… pure, almost. He leaned down, pressed his forehead against hers, pressed his lips against hers in the tiniest, gentlest kiss she’d ever experienced. He was warm and solid and there. Not gone. Close enough touch, close enough to kiss, close enough to taste. She tilted her head up and kissed him back.
She remembered reading a book once, back in Syngorn. It had been a short, funny little novel about a man and a woman who had fallen in love. The man went out to find his fortune and apparently died, and the woman had decided she’d never love again. Of course, the man had not been dead, and the story was mainly them returning to each other.
She remembered the part about their first kiss. About how there had been five kisses in history that were considered the greatest due to passion and purity and… other things, she couldn’t recall. And that the kiss between the two main characters had blown them all out of the water.
Their kiss blew them all out of the water.
--
Vax crept through the early morning halls of Castle Whitestone, though he needn’t have bothered. Everyone was fast asleep, the trauma of the past week rendering everyone else borderline catatonic with exhaustion. The beds were soft and warm, the illusion of relative safety at least somewhat intact here with Rashidan gone, and everyone was simply… recovering.
Vax decided it was up to him to help that recovery along. Laughter was, after all, the best medicine.
Keyleth had given him a sleepily amused look as he’d crept out of bed, and he’d kissed it away with relish.
“Don’t do anything too mean,” she yawned. “If Grog wakes up with half a beard again-“
“Keyleth, I would never!” Vax protested, pressing a hand to his chest in mock offense. She gave him a look and he finished the sentence with a grin, “Do the same prank twice. You know me better than that.”
She laughed, and that put a little bounce in his step as he walked away down the hall towards Vex’s room.
One down.
He was worried about his sister. Of course she was happy that the ritual was a success, they all were. Percy was back, alive, and apparently no worse for the wear. They’d sent him off to bed that first night and the next day he’d been blurry-eyed and sore, but still there. Still Percy, thank the Raven Queen. And Sarenrae, come to think of it.
But in the days that followed, Vex had gotten quiet, solemn. Percy too, but that was understandable. Vex, though…
She’d spilled out her heart during that ritual, and Percy had remembered none of it. It wasn’t his fault by any stretch, but that must still hurt. She needed a pick me up. Vex considered his options as he made his way through the halls before a brilliant idea came to mind. He snickered with barely controlled glee. She might get a bit miffed at him, but that was better than her staring off toward the horizon like someone out of an old romance.
You’ll hate me for a week and then love me again, don’t worry about it.
He slowly opened Vex’s door, thinking a silent thanks to whichever dutiful De Rolo servant oiled the doors so well. He slipped in without looking at first, sliding through as small an opening as possible and closing the door with exaggerated care before turning to look at his sister.
She was curled up in bed with Percy.
He froze, his heart nearly stopping in his chest. Her head was on Percy’s (bare oh by the gods if they’re naked) chest, his arm was wrapped lightly around Vex’s shoulders. They were still asleep, thank the gods. They almost reminded him of Keyleth that morning when he left, warm and still and peaceful. Percy shifted slightly, settling her more comfortably against him and pressing his face against her hair.
Vax slowly backed out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. He turned and addressed the empty hallway in a whisper.
“I am telling absolutely everyone in this entire castle.”