Chapter Text
Keyleth did not remember walking away from the battlefield.
She remembered the light.
Green first. Sickly, violent, impossible green that stained the world the colour of something rotting beneath skin. Then gold, thin and fading, caught at the edges of wings she had watched open against the dark like dawn trying one last time to happen. Then nothing.
No, not nothing.
Nothing would have been merciful.
There had been a sound after.
There had been screaming.
Hers, she thought.
Vex’s, maybe.
Both.
The sound had gone through her until it stopped belonging to a throat and became part of the air itself. It had filled the space where Vax had been. It had clawed at the stones. It had torn across the sky with the Whispered One’s voice until grief and divinity had become tangled, monstrous things.
And then there had been hands.
Pike’s hands, small and shaking, glowing uselessly against Keyleth’s shoulder.
Grog’s hand, enormous and uncertain, hovering as if he was afraid his own strength might break whatever was left of her.
Percy’s hands around Vex, holding her back or holding her upright or maybe holding himself together through her because the world had gone cruel in a way none of their cleverness could outthink.
And Vex.
Vex had been there.
Vex had been everywhere and nowhere. Her mouth open. Her face broken. Her eyes fixed on the place where her brother had vanished as if looking hard enough might force the universe to admit it had made a mistake.
Keyleth remembered that.
She remembered Vex lunging.
She remembered Percy catching her.
She remembered wanting to move and finding that her body no longer understood commands.
She remembered clutching Vax’s cloak so tightly that her fingers cramped.
After that, memory became water.
Someone had opened a portal. Someone had guided them through. Someone had said, Whitestone. Someone had said hurry. Someone had said his name and then choked on it.
Keyleth did not know who.
Maybe everyone.
Maybe herself.
Now she was in a room she knew, and that felt like an insult.
Whitestone Castle had survived so much. The Briarwoods. Acid rain. Dragon fire. Siege. Blood in the streets. Darkness wearing familiar faces. It had stood through monsters that believed stone and people were the same sort of thing, both meant to be owned, carved, emptied, and filled with someone else’s will.
It stood now, too.
That was somehow worse.
The room was warm. A fire burned in the hearth. Someone had drawn the curtains against the unnatural green smear still bruising the night sky. There were blankets. There was water on the table. There were bandages and half-used healing poultices. A chair had been overturned near the door, and no one had righted it.
The world had ended, and there were still blankets.
Keyleth sat on the floor.
She did not remember choosing the floor. She was simply there, knees drawn to her chest, back pressed against the side of a couch, Vax’s cloak gathered in her lap like something wounded.
It smelled like smoke.
Like blood.
Like rain.
Like him, if she buried her face in the fabric and lied hard enough.
Her fingers had gone numb around the clasp.
She stared at it.
The metal was dark, shaped by shadow and battle and the ridiculous, impossible fact that he was not wearing it anymore.
Vax should have been pacing.
That thought arrived so suddenly that her breath caught.
He should have been pacing.
He never sat still after a fight. Not really. Even injured, even exhausted, Vax moved like stillness was a trap waiting to close around him. He would have been near the window, pretending to keep watch, though everyone knew he was listening to every breath in the room. He would have glanced at Vex first, then at Keyleth, then away before either of them could catch him caring too openly.
He would have made some dry comment.
Something irritating.
Something tender disguised as irritating.
Keyleth pressed the cloak against her mouth.
The sound that left her was small and ugly.
Across the room, Vex flinched.
Keyleth looked up.
She had forgotten Vex was there.
No. That was not true. She had known. She had felt Vex’s grief in the room like a second fire, one that gave no warmth. Vex stood near the far wall with her arms wrapped around herself, still in her armour, still streaked with ash and blood. Her braid had come loose. Dark strands clung to her damp cheeks. Her eyes were swollen, red-rimmed, and terrifyingly bright.
Percy had tried to follow her in.
Keyleth remembered that now.
Vex had told him no.
Not cruelly. Not even loudly. She had simply put a hand to his chest, looked at him with something shattered and pleading beneath her expression, and whispered, “Not yet.”
Percy had gone pale.
Then he had nodded, because Percy understood locked doors better than most people. He understood grief that needed privacy before it could bear witnesses. He had kissed Vex’s forehead like he was afraid she might dissolve too, and then he had left.
Now it was only them.
Keyleth and Vex.
The lover and the sister.
The empty cloak between them.
Vex stared at it.
Keyleth’s fingers tightened.
“I’m sorry,” Keyleth said.
Her voice did not sound like hers.
It was thin and scraped raw, a ruined little thread of sound dragged from somewhere behind her ribs. She hated it immediately. She was the Voice of the Tempest. She had stood before her people and taken a title older and larger than her fear. She had become fire and air and beast and storm. She had taken Mythcarver in both hands and flown toward a god.
And still her voice came out like a child’s.
Vex closed her eyes.
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Keyleth.”
“I’m sorry.”
The third time broke something.
Vex turned away sharply, one hand flying to her mouth. Her shoulders trembled once. Twice. She swallowed it down with the kind of violence that made Keyleth ache to watch.
When Vex spoke, her voice was low and dangerous.
“Do not make me comfort you for apologizing.”
Keyleth went still.
The words hit cleanly.
Not because they were cruel.
Because they were honest.
Vex inhaled, shaky and shallow, then pressed her palm hard against her own sternum as if trying to hold herself in place.
“I can’t,” she said. “Not yet. I can’t have you look at me like you killed him, because if you say it enough times, I might start screaming, and if I start screaming, I don’t know if I’ll stop.”
Keyleth looked down.
The cloak blurred.
“I stopped him,” she whispered.
Vex’s breath caught.
“Vax was going to—” Keyleth swallowed, but his name tore on the way down. “He was going to let the Raven Queen take him. He was going to sacrifice himself, and I couldn’t let him. I thought if I could be faster, stronger, if I could just—”
Her fingers dug into the cloak.
“I killed Gideon before he could finish it. I thought I was saving him.”
The fire cracked in the hearth.
Keyleth flinched.
“I thought I was saving everyone.”
Vex said nothing.
That was worse than anything she could have said.
Keyleth squeezed her eyes shut.
“But it was what he wanted. It was part of his plan. The Whispered One needed to die like that. He needed us to think we’d won.” A laugh broke out of her, sharp and humourless, turning immediately into a sob. “I did exactly what he wanted, Vex. I took Mythcarver, and I flew right into his trap.”
“Stop.”
“I took your brother from you.”
“Stop.”
“I loved him so much I—”
“Keyleth!”
The name cracked through the room like a bowstring snapping.
Keyleth looked up.
Vex was shaking now, not with fear, not exactly. With rage. With grief. With the impossible pressure of love having nowhere to go. Tears slid down her face silently, furious and unwanted.
“Do not,” Vex said, each word trembling, “you dare make loving him into a crime.”
Keyleth’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Vex crossed the room in three sharp steps, then stopped just out of reach, as if touching Keyleth might undo them both.
“My brother made his choices,” she said.
Her voice broke on her brother.
She closed her eyes.
For a moment, she was not Vex’ahlia the archer, not Lady of Whitestone, not the woman who had faced dragons and devils and her own father with her chin lifted like pride could be armour. She was just Vex. Barefoot in grief. Twinless in a room too warm for mourning.
“He made them long before tonight,” she continued, quieter now. “When he put on that damned armour. When he went to the Matron. When he made a deal with death and decided not to tell me until it was already inside him.”
Keyleth’s chest hurt.
Vex looked away, jaw clenched hard enough to tremble.
“I hated him for that,” she whispered.
The confession fell between them, small and sharp.
“I hated him,” Vex said again, and now the tears came faster. “For about three seconds at a time. Then I loved him, and that was worse, because loving him meant being terrified every time he moved. Every time he looked at the sky. Every time the feathers appeared. Every time I saw those marks under his skin and knew he had put himself somewhere I couldn’t follow.”
Keyleth’s hands loosened around the cloak.
“I could feel him slipping,” Vex said. “Not all at once. Not enough that anyone else would understand. But I knew. I always knew when something was wrong with him. We were born knowing each other. I knew his breathing before I knew my own name.”
Her face crumpled.
“And I still couldn’t keep him.”
Keyleth’s breath hitched.
Vex covered her mouth.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Then Keyleth pushed herself up on numb legs.
The movement was clumsy and too fast. Her knees nearly gave out. Vex reached for her on instinct, one hand catching Keyleth’s elbow. Keyleth grabbed her wrist at the same time.
They froze.
The touch was electric.
Not magic. Not romance. Nothing neat enough for that.
It was recognition.
Vex’s hand on her arm, Keyleth’s fingers around Vex’s wrist, both of them shaking so hard they might have been standing in a storm.
Vax should have been between them.
The thought struck them both.
Keyleth saw it in Vex’s face.
Vex saw it in hers.
And then Vex made a sound like something wounded and folded forward.
Keyleth caught her.
Barely.
Vex was taller in Keyleth’s memory somehow. Sharper. Untouchable. The sort of woman who could raise an eyebrow and make kings feel underdressed. But grief made her human in Keyleth’s arms, terrifyingly fragile and warm and shaking.
Keyleth held on.
Vex’s fingers twisted into the back of Keyleth’s shirt.
“He was my first person,” Vex whispered.
Keyleth closed her eyes.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
The words were not cruel.
They were broken.
Keyleth nodded against Vex’s hair. “No. I don’t.”
Vex shook harder.
“I don’t know who I am without him.”
Keyleth’s throat closed.
Because what could she say?
That she understood? She did not. Not that. Not the strange, sacred, lifelong language of twins. Not the way Vex and Vax had moved through rooms like two halves of the same shadow. Not the way they could speak with glances, insults, silence. Keyleth had loved Vax with every trembling, stubborn part of herself, but she had met him as a stranger first.
Vex had never had to meet him.
He had simply always been there.
“I don’t know who I am without him either,” Keyleth said.
Vex’s breath stuttered.
Keyleth opened her eyes and stared over Vex’s shoulder at the fire.
“I know it’s not the same,” she said quickly. “I know. I’m not trying to say it is. But he was—” Her voice failed. She tried again. “He saw me when I was still terrified of taking up space. Before the Ashari called me Voice of the Tempest. Before I believed I could be anything but a disappointment in an antlered circlet.”
Vex gave a wet, broken laugh into her shoulder.
Keyleth almost smiled.
Almost.
“He looked at me like I was already brave,” she whispered. “And I wanted to become the person he thought he saw.”
Vex pulled back enough to look at her.
Her face was a mess. Keyleth loved her for it, suddenly and fiercely. Loved that Vex, who polished every edge of herself until it shone, had no polish left in this room. Loved that she had let Keyleth see it. Hated why.
“He was right,” Vex said.
Keyleth’s mouth trembled.
“Don’t.”
“He was.”
“Vex—”
“No.” Vex wiped at her face with the heel of her hand, smearing ash across one cheek. “I was there. I saw you. I saw you face Raishan when all of us were terrified she’d poisoned everything she touched. I saw you walk into fire and come back stronger. I saw you stand before your people and become what they needed without losing the ridiculous, wonderful part of you that still apologizes to doors.”
Keyleth let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh.
“I do not apologize to doors.”
“You have apologized to at least three doors.”
“They were in the way.”
“They were doors, darling.”
The word darling slipped out so naturally that they both froze.
Vex’s face twisted.
Keyleth’s eyes burned.
Vax used to say it like that sometimes. Teasing. Fond. Borrowed from Vex and made softer in his own mouth.
The room went quiet again.
Vex looked down.
“I’m sorry.”
Keyleth shook her head.
“No. Don’t.”
Vex breathed out.
They stood close, still holding each other because letting go required a strength neither of them had. The firelight painted Vex’s armour in dull copper. Keyleth could feel every tremor that ran through her. She wondered if Vex could feel hers, too.
Probably.
Vex noticed everything.
Even when she pretended not to.
Especially then.
“I was proud of you,” Vex said suddenly.
Keyleth blinked.
“What?”
“At Zephrah. When they named you Voice of the Tempest.” Vex’s mouth pulled tight, aching with the memory. “You looked like you wanted to faint.”
“I did want to faint.”
“I know.” Vex’s expression softened. “But you didn’t.”
Keyleth swallowed.
“You stood there,” Vex said, “and I remember thinking, oh. There she is.”
Keyleth stared at her.
Vex’s eyes shone.
“Not because you became something new. Because you finally let everyone else see what he saw. What we all saw.” Her voice cracked. “What I saw.”
Keyleth looked away before the words could completely undo her.
Too late.
They undid her anyway.
Her face crumpled. She covered it with both hands, leaving Vax’s cloak hanging between them. Vex caught the fabric before it could fall. For a moment, the two of them held it together, black cloth stretched between their hands like a banner for a country that no longer existed.
“I don’t feel brave,” Keyleth whispered.
Vex’s fingers tightened on the cloak.
“Good.”
Keyleth looked at her, startled.
Vex gave her a watery, trembling smile.
“Bravery is usually just terror wearing better boots.”
That sounded so much like something Vax would have said that Keyleth laughed.
It broke immediately into crying.
Vex stepped closer and pressed her forehead to Keyleth’s.
They stood like that, bent together over the cloak, crying too hard to be graceful.
Outside the room, the castle murmured with the living.
Somewhere down the hall, Grog was sobbing openly.
He had tried not to at first. They had all seen it. His face had gone rigid, his mouth pressed into a hard, trembling line, eyes wide and shining like a child’s. Then Pike had touched his arm, and the sound that came out of him had filled the corridor. Huge. Devastated. Helpless.
Pike had gone with him.
Not because she was less broken. Keyleth had seen her face. Pike looked like someone had reached into her chest and crushed every prayer she had ever carried. But she had taken Grog’s hand and led him away anyway, glowing faintly in the dark, because Pike always found a way to be light even when the light shook.
Percy was outside too.
Keyleth knew it.
Not directly outside the door. Vex would hate that. He would know she would hate that. So he would be farther down the hall, close enough to come if called, far enough to pretend he was not waiting. Probably sitting very still with one hand over his mouth, glasses off, trying to make grief into a plan and failing.
And Scanlan—
Keyleth’s chest squeezed.
Scanlan did not know yet.
Or maybe he did.
The Whispered One’s voice had gone everywhere. The broadcast had crossed cities, mountains, oceans, all the places Vox Machina had once wandered through, laughing too loudly and breaking things they could not afford to replace. Perhaps Scanlan had seen. Perhaps he had heard. Perhaps he was somewhere with Kaylie, staring at the sky, feeling the shape of the empty place he had left.
Keyleth hoped he was not alone.
Then she hated herself for thinking of anyone else’s grief when Vax was gone.
Then she hated herself for hating herself.
Grief was exhausting.
It made every thought a trap.
Vex drew back first.
Her eyes flicked to the cloak.
“May I?”
Keyleth understood at once.
Shame flooded her, hot and sudden.
“Of course,” she said quickly. “Gods, Vex, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Keyleth.”
She stopped.
Vex’s face was pale but steady in that terrifying way again, the way she became steady when feeling anything too deeply might knock her off her feet.
“I wasn’t asking you to let go forever.”
Keyleth stared at her.
Vex touched the cloak with shaking fingers.
“I just need…” Her voice faltered. “I need to hold something that was his.”
Keyleth nodded.
They lowered themselves to the floor together.
Not gracefully. Vex’s armour caught awkwardly. Keyleth nearly tripped over the edge of the blanket someone had left nearby. The whole thing would have made Vax laugh under different circumstances, and the thought hurt so badly that both of them avoided each other’s eyes.
They sat beside the couch, shoulders nearly touching.
Keyleth passed half the cloak into Vex’s lap.
Vex held it like something sacred.
For a long while, neither spoke.
The fire burned lower.
The strange green stain beyond the curtains pulsed faintly, a reminder that the world outside had not paused for them. The Whispered One still existed. Vax was still gone. Tomorrow, there would be plans. Weapons. Maps. Arguments. Dangerous hope. Someone would have to decide what came next.
But not yet.
For now, there was only the room.
Only the cloak.
Only two women who loved the same man differently and completely.
Vex broke the silence first.
“He used to steal my blankets.”
Keyleth looked over.
Vex was staring down at the cloak with a distant, fragile expression.
“When we were children,” she said. “He’d deny it every time. Lie straight to my face with my blanket wrapped around his shoulders.”
A soft laugh escaped her.
It was almost unrecognizable.
“He was terrible at lying to me.”
Keyleth managed a small smile through tears. “He was terrible at lying in general.”
Vex looked at her.
Keyleth hesitated.
“Not about serious things,” she said, then winced. “I mean—no, that’s not true. He lied about serious things, too. The Raven Queen. The deal. The armour. The marks. The way he’d say he was fine when he looked like death had already started packing his bags.”
Vex gave a broken snort.
“He was very committed to being annoying.”
“He was.”
“He thought brooding counted as communication.”
Keyleth laughed weakly. “It did not.”
“No, but try telling him that.”
Their laughter faded almost as quickly as it came.
But for one breath, Vax was in the room differently.
Not dying.
Not gone.
Stealing blankets. Lying badly. Brooding in corners. Loving them with every terrible choice he made.
Vex wiped her cheeks.
“I don’t want to only remember that moment.”
Keyleth looked down.
“Me neither.”
“But it’s all I can see.”
Keyleth’s fingers curled in the cloak.
Green light.
Golden wings.
His hand reaching.
Her hands closing on nothing.
“I keep thinking,” Keyleth whispered, “that if I had moved faster after he refused, maybe I could have—”
“No.”
Vex’s voice was immediate.
Keyleth flinched.
Vex turned toward her fully.
“No,” she said again. “We are not doing that.”
“Vex—”
“No. Because if you start, I will start, and then we’ll never get out.” Her eyes were fierce now, wet and blazing. “I will think if I had shot faster. If I had stood sooner. If I had screamed louder. If I had noticed the Raven Queen taking pieces of him earlier. If I had been a better sister. If, if, if, until there’s nothing left of me but the question.”
Keyleth’s lips parted.
Vex reached across the cloak and took her hand.
Her grip was cold.
Strong.
“We cannot live inside the if,” Vex said.
Keyleth stared at their hands.
“Then where do we live?”
Vex did not answer quickly.
That was how Keyleth knew she was telling the truth when she finally spoke.
“I don’t know.”
The honesty hurt.
But it helped too.
Keyleth was so tired of impossible answers. Prophecies. Divine bargains. Ancient evil. Titles. Trials. The weight of everyone looking at her like the storm inside her should know where to go.
I don’t know felt like a door opening.
Small.
Dark.
Real.
Vex squeezed her hand.
“But I think,” she said slowly, “we live in the next breath. Then the one after that.”
Keyleth’s eyes filled again.
“That sounds awful.”
“It is.”
“I hate it.”
“So do I.”
They sat with that.
The next breath.
Then the one after.
Keyleth breathed in.
It hurt.
She breathed out.
Still there.
Vex did the same beside her, though her breath hitched halfway through.
Keyleth squeezed her hand back.
Vex looked at her.
There was something terrible and beautiful in her expression. Pride, grief, fury, love. All braided together so tightly, Keyleth could not tell where one ended and another began.
“He loved you,” Vex said.
Keyleth made a small, wounded sound.
“I know.”
“No.” Vex leaned closer. “He loved you so much it frightened him. And Vax did not frighten easily, no matter how dramatic he liked to be about shadows.”
Keyleth laughed through a sob.
“He was dramatic.”
“He was unbearable.”
“He was kind.”
Vex’s face softened.
“Yes.”
“He made me feel…” Keyleth searched for the words and found only fragments. Safe. Seen. Terrified. Alive. “Like I could be messy and still be worth loving.”
Vex’s eyes closed.
“Oh, Keyleth.”
“I don’t know what to do with all of it now.” Keyleth pressed a hand to her chest. “It’s still here. I still love him, and he’s not—” She stopped, shaking her head. “Where does it go?”
Vex looked at the cloak.
Her thumb brushed over the edge of it.
“I don’t think it goes anywhere.”
Keyleth’s throat tightened.
“That’s the problem.”
“Maybe.” Vex swallowed. “Or maybe it’s the only part death doesn’t get.”
Keyleth turned toward her.
Vex looked embarrassed by the sincerity, which made the words hurt more.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Vex muttered.
“Like what?”
“Like I’ve said, something wise. I hate it.”
Keyleth smiled weakly.
“Sorry.”
“You’re not.”
“No.”
Vex huffed. It trembled at the edges.
Then her face crumpled again.
“I miss him.”
Keyleth moved without thinking.
She pulled Vex into her arms this time, and Vex came easily, all the sharpness gone out of her. Her forehead pressed to Keyleth’s shoulder. Her fingers twisted into the cloak between them.
“I miss him,” Vex said again, and now she sounded younger than Keyleth had ever heard her. “I miss him, I miss him, I miss him.”
Keyleth held her.
There was nothing else.
No spell. No wildshape. No fire. No sword. No title. No Voice of the Tempest.
Just arms.
Just breathe.
Just the next right thing made painfully small.
“I know,” Keyleth whispered, though she did not, not exactly. “I know.”
Vex cried until she had no grace left.
Keyleth cried with her.
At some point, the door opened a crack.
Neither of them moved.
Pike stood there.
Her face was pale and swollen from crying. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. One hand rested on the doorframe, glowing faintly, not with power but with habit, as if light was the only language she had left.
Behind her, Grog loomed in the hallway, red-eyed and silent. Percy stood farther back with his arms folded tightly, his gaze fixed on the floor. None of them came in.
Pike looked at Keyleth.
Then at Vex.
Then at the cloak.
Her mouth trembled.
“Can we…” she began, then stopped.
Vex lifted her head.
For a second, Keyleth felt her tense. The instinct to lock the door. To guard the grief. To keep one piece of Vax from becoming communal when he had already been taken by the entire world.
Then Vex breathed in.
The next breath.
Then the one after.
She wiped her face with one hand and nodded.
Pike entered first.
Grog followed slowly, ducking beneath the doorframe though he did not need to. Percy came last. He crossed to Vex without speaking and sat beside her on the floor, close enough for their shoulders to touch. Vex leaned into him with exhausted surrender. His hand covered hers over the cloak.
Pike sat on Keyleth’s other side.
Grog lowered himself with a heavy thud that shook the floor, then stared at the cloak with tears immediately spilling down his face again.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
His voice was so small.
Vex reached across the cloak and took his hand.
“Neither do we.”
Grog nodded, miserable.
Pike’s fingers brushed Keyleth’s sleeve.
Keyleth looked at her.
Pike’s eyes were wet, but there was something steady in them too. Not healed. Not fixed. Never that. But steady enough to offer.
“You saved us,” Pike whispered.
Keyleth’s face twisted.
“No, I—”
“You did,” Vex said.
Keyleth looked at her in disbelief.
Vex’s voice shook, but she held Keyleth’s gaze.
“You saved us before he took him.”
The sentence broke in the middle, but she finished it anyway.
“You saved us because that is what you do. You saved us from dragons. From Raishan. From ourselves half the time.” A faint, devastated smile moved across her mouth. “Vax was proud of you for it. So am I.”
Keyleth could not breathe.
Proud.
The word entered her like sunlight through storm clouds.
Painful. Warm. Unbearable.
She looked around the circle.
Pike, trembling and luminous.
Grog, crying openly.
Percy, hollow-eyed, one hand locked around Vex’s.
Vex, ruined and still reaching.
The empty space.
Always the empty space.
Keyleth lowered her forehead to the cloak.
For a moment, she let herself break again.
But this time, when she did, Vex’s hand was at her back.
Pike’s shoulder pressed against hers.
Grog’s enormous fingers closed clumsily around the edge of the cloak.
Percy bowed his head.
They did not fill the space where Vax had been.
Nothing would.
But they gathered around it.
And that, Keyleth thought dimly, might be the only way to survive an absence so large.
Not by filling it.
Not by pretending it was smaller.
By sitting beside it together.
By breathing.
The next breath.
Then the one after.
Vex leaned her head against Keyleth’s.
Keyleth reached for her hand under the cloak.
They held on.
Outside, the sky still glowed with the Whispered One’s terrible victory.
Inside, Vox Machina sat on the floor around what was left of Vax’ildan and grieved him badly, honestly, together.
For a long time, no one spoke.
Then Vex, voice hoarse and barely there, whispered, “He would hate this.”
Grog sniffed. “What? Us crying?”
“No,” Vex said, wiping her face. “Us being quiet.”
Pike let out a broken little laugh.
Percy’s mouth twitched once, painfully.
Keyleth closed her eyes, and for one fragile second, she could almost hear him.
Something dry. Something fond. Something about all of them being dramatic.
Her fingers tightened around Vex’s.
Vex squeezed back.
It was not enough.
It was not supposed to be.
But it was something.
And for that breath, something held.