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Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
-"Sometimes", by Sheenagh Pugh
Emon had been in the process of rebuilding for a full month now, and Pike had never felt so exhausted in her entire life. Not after a full night fighting storms on the Broken Howl, not after a long brutal trudge through enemies in the Underdark, not even after being dragged back to life.
It should have been heartening: they have made tremendous progress. Walls are being built back up, faster and faster as people return to the city. The dead were mostly seen to now, properly cared for and interred. The malcontents and the malingerers and the ones who easily bent the knee to the dragon had either settled down or struck out and been knocked down. She still healed, every day, dawn to dusk, but the injuries were less brutal now, small untended hurts and construction accidents and resetting bones that didn't heal quite as they should. Her friends certainly seemed to feel like the burden has lightened: they spent most of the day apart, in pairs and singles, Vax there seeking out the untended dead, Grog here lifting cords of wood tirelessly into rafters, Percy and Keyleth about the business of making and mending, Vex and Trinket spearheading the efforts at hunting game, Scanlan nowhere and everywhere and apprently sticking his nose into everyone's business except Pike's.
Vox Machina sees each other when they return to Greyskull Keep in the evenings. Dinner, whatever it might be, was shared with friendly chatter or comfortable silence. It was after one such dinner that Pike found herself alone in the dining hall. The Plate of the Dawnmartyr was safely stored in her quarters, and her arms were bare; she let her head rest on them, the smooth wood of the table soothing against her scarred forearms. She took in a deep breath, held it for a ten-count, then released it in a huge gusty sigh.
"You ok there, Pikey?"
Too tired to startle, she merely cracked open an eye and looked over her fellow gnome. Scanlan looked as clean and put-together as usual, which must be an arcane thing--Tiberius had been the same, and Pike had never seen Allura with so much as a hair out of place. She opened her other eye and straightened up to study him more closely. His face and hair were clean, true, but there were lines of strain around his eyes, and his colorful clothes had unmended rips here and there and tattered cuffs. "Hi, Scanlan," she said, and let her head fall back onto her arms.
"You know...." Uncharacteristically hesitant, he eased into the bench next to her. "You know, you can talk to me if you want, Pike. I know I'm not normally a good listener but I'll do my best." His thumbnail inched its way towards his mouth, and as the silence drew long he started to worry at it with his teeth.
"I'm just tired," she finally burst out, then winced at her own vehemence. Scanlan was looking at her like she was something she's not, something good and pure and to be treasured; Vox Machina usually looked at her like that, these days, and it was exhausting. It's easier to take from Scanlan, somehow. Maybe because he had always looked at her that way.
"We're all tired," he offered. "It's a lot of work. Rome wasn't built in a day." He had moved on to biting at a hangnail. Pike didn't know what Rome was, but then Scanlan knew a lot of shit the rest of them didn't.
"It's not even like I'm doing most of the building. And what I do do isn't that hard."
"Not for our Pike," he said proudly. "Beautiful as a sunrise and strong as an ox."
She laughed without meaning to, then buried her face harder into her hands as an unexpected tear escaped. "I mostly heal, and even then there's enough healers now that they make sure no one ever gets overworked. There's enough for people to eat, mostly, and the whole city doesn't smell like smoke anymore, and there hasn't been a fight all week--" she cut herself off as more tears started to appear, desperately trying to not break down entirely.
Scanlan made a jerky aborted movement that she felt more than saw. Carefully, he scooted closer on the bench until his warm side was pressed against hers. "That's the problem, I think. People were mostly just fucking thrilled, at first, and then everyone was so busy there wasn't time for thinking. Now that things are starting to slow down...things are starting to sink in."
He sounded completely serious, and she sat up, scrubbing at her cheeks. When she looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, he had his wise old man face on. It should look silly. "I don't mind helping, I really don't. But everyone is just so sad, and so angry, and so hurt..."
"And you want to fix it, of course." He tucked his arm behind her back and squeezed her far shoulder. "It can really wipe you out, having to be the one happy face amid all the gloomy ones, huh?"
"I guess you'd know about that." Looking at him from this close was giving her a strange confused constriction about her heart, and so instead she tilted down to rest her head on his shoulder. "How do you do it?"
"People keep asking me that. I don't know, really." His voice reached her both through the air and through where her ear rested, and she closed her eyes to focus on it better. "I guess...the trick is that you can only lie to yourself for so long. Even if you are an outrageously talented liar like myself."
"Outrageously," she agreed, and he pretended to growl.
"Says the sneak who read my letter!" He waited for an answer and when it didn't come continued: "That being the case, you have to find the truth you want to cling to. Things are shit, and we are all tired, and those over-dramatic fuckers leach the good feelings outta you like emotional vampires."
"Scanlan!" she scolded.
"--but," he continued, ignoring her, "Things are also better, and we're alive to feel tired, and when you can get them to turn those frowns upside down it feels pretty good, right?"
She hummed, and thought on it. He let her, and they sat in silence for a long comfortable minute. "...I really am sorry about reading your letter," she eventually said softly.
"Water under the bridge."
For him, maybe. Pike herself knew full well the just punishment of the eavesdropper and the snoop. "It was a good letter," she said: and that's the problem. It was a very good letter.
The sentiments expressed in it were nothing new, really, and Pike knew better than to doubt Scanlan's ability to turn language to his advantage. But maybe there was something to his claim that he got 'ham-handed' around her, because reading those words, in black and white, when he'd written them expecting her to not read them until he was dead and she couldn't respond in any way, struck her in a way his constant admiration never had managed. She'd never had any trouble dealing with his flirting: it was fun, and silly, and nothing too personal, given how he chased after any other girl who looked at him twice. Never had she really, truly considered him to be in earnest. The letter made it all too clear that he very much was, and that was what had made their teasing rapport suddenly leave her confused and uncomfortable.
She drew away from his arm and turned on the bench to sit sideways facing him. "Scanlan," she began, then stopped.
"Yes?" he said quietly. The silence grew longer and longer, and this time both thumbnails went towards his mouth to be gnawed on.
"Scanlan," she said again, gently scolding this time, and drew his poor abused fingers away from his teeth. He sat perfectly still, then, when she didn't let go of his hands. She had never seen that look on his face before. Pike searched her heart, and found a warm amused voice there that said, We are people of second chances, dear heart.
So Pike, who no one had ever accused of being timid in the face of fear, drew both hands up to her lips and kissed them, the knuckles, the string-callused pads, the warm chapped palms. "Pike!" Scanlan squeaked, like he was trying to make a smooth remark but couldn't quite make it happen, and he clenched his fingers in hers as he flushed clear to the points of his ears.
"Shut up, Scanlan," she said, fondly, and leaned forward to kiss him.