philosophical-phangirl

Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana fic, major spoilers up to episode/chapter 5. S’Lemley fluff.

As the campfire burned low, with everyone else asleep, S’Lethkk still couldn’t put the thoughts out of his mind. What if he blamed me… What if they had gotten hurt… Why couldn’t he just have stayed out of trouble? Why… Why wasn’t I there… I should have been there. He tried one more time to fall asleep, hoping things would be better in the morning. His mind would be rested, refreshed, and seeing more clearly. Things would be brighter in the morning, right? But that was just wishful thinking, and he knew it. It never worked out that way; at least, it hadn’t the last few nights. Ever since he heard the cursed word “Kinagytus”.

He heard a quiet, shrill gasp on the other side of the fire pit.

“Lemley?” he whispered.

“Oh, S’Lethkk…” she replied, equally as quiet. “I was just… you know, stretching. My arms.” She quickly raised her arms and pretended to stretch, letting out a yawn.

“More like stretching your lungs,” he chuckled. She laughed in reply, slightly embarrassed. “Bad dream?”

“Oh, you know… The usual. Magical stick, glowey hands. Chasing me. Weird, right? Like that could have come from anything real… at all...” she implied, sarcastically.

S’Lethkk sighed. “The staff… I’m sorry. I didn’t know… I didn’t know it…”

“Scared me? Yeah, well, let’s be honest,” she chuckled, “what doesn’t? It’s just me, little ol’ Lemley. Can’t even do sleep well.”

“You do a lot more than you think,” he stated compassionately.“Yeah, coming from Mr. Bucket over there,” she teased.

“Hey, one time!” he retorted good-naturedly, but a bit too loudly, causing Aankia to stir lightly in her sleep.

“Shhh, quiet! They’re sleeping,” she whispered intently.

“Oh, right…” he whispered back, humoring her as she walked over and sat down next to him so they could talk more easily.

“… Thanks,” she said, after a pause.

“For what?”

“The… you know, the compliment and everything.”

“Oh… Yeah,” he smiled, looking her in the eyes as much as he could in the dim light.

Another pause. “I… I’m sorry. About K’Lath.”

He smiled again, this time more sadly. “Thanks.”

“I wish,” she spoke slowly, “I could have gotten to know him…”

“Yeah… So do I… I think he would have liked you.”

“Really? Do you think so? Well, I mean, who doesn’t, really?” She gently whipped her short, pink locks behind her shoulder, but apologized after a pause. “I’m not really that great, I know,” she smiled relentingly.

“I think you are. My brother would have thought so as well. I… I’ve been around, you know. I know a good thing when I see it.” As if it were an afterthought, he added, “When you first found me, that… That wasn’t the first bit of trouble I’d gotten myself into.”

“Really? Tell me about it!” she asked, excitedly. “Or, oh… You probably don’t want to talk about it, do you?” she realized awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I should go back to sleep.” Lemley started to get up, but felt a gentle hand pulling her back down.

“No, it’s just… There’s not that much to tell. I was looking for my brother, you see. I just… wasn’t welcome many places where I might have found him. At least, my Saurian half wasn’t.”

“Oh… I understand… Sort of.”

S’Lethkk chuckled lightly. “Got in a lot of fights,” he added, still with a smile on his face.

“Did you win?” she inquired brightly.

“Most,” he answered, his eyes full of happy memories. “But not all.”

“Oh… I see…” she trailed off. “Hey, how come you’re still up? I mean, I had my dream that woke me up, you know, forlorn hope and all… Did it give you nightmares, too?”

“No, not really… I just… can’t sleep.”

“Too much light? We can probably poor some water on the fire to make it--”

“It’s not the fire… but thank you.”

“Yeah, ‘course… It’s your brother, isn’t it?”

He let out a sigh. “Yeah.”

“See, I know things,” she smiled, simply but compassionately. “I’ll bet he loved you.”

“What?”

“Your brother! He was probably on his way to find you when he… You know…”

“Yeah… Yeah, maybe he was.” S'Lethkk paused. “Doesn’t much matter now, though, does it?”

“Of course it does! I’d hate to think my parents… Well… I’m sure he loved you, your brother. How could he not? I mean, c’mon, you are pretty great. He probably forgave you a long time ago. You know, for whatever it was that you did. Or that he did. Or…” she trailed off.

He paused reflectively. “Thanks, Lem. I… I think I needed to hear that.”

“Yeah, you know…” she slapped his arm gently, “friends, all that…” She stood up.

“I… I just wish I fit in here more.”

“What do you mean? You fit in with us great!”

“Well, there’s you and Aankia, yeah… You’re good friends. And then Kiliel, she… She understands all of us. She helps, she fights, and she’s too short to get in the way of anything,” he joked. “But me, I’m… In addition to being the only man here – other than Jeremy, that is – I’m just… Mr. Bucket.”

“Hey, now…” Lemley sat back down. “I was just joking, you know me…”

“Yeah, but you’re right. I don’t do much. I don’t fit in. I’m the one who put us all in danger with the Kinagytus, and all for my dead brother.”

“That was our choice, S’Lethkk. We wanted to help.”

“And you did. But if something had happened… It would have been my fault. I don’t belong here, I do more harm than I do good. Like I said, I know something good when I see it, and I also know when I’m… kind of… ruining it.”

“Keep thinking like that and you’ll end up alone for the rest of your life,” she stated bluntly, deciding that for once it was okay to be serious. “You lost your brother, I understand that… Really. I do. I lost my parents… Twice. And it was my fault, at least the second time… But then I found Aankia. And then… And then we found you. This…” She paused for a while, then inhaled and continued. “I loved my Saurian parents, I really did. They raised me. They were all I ever knew. But we were never really… a family, you know what I mean? This… The four of you… You’re the only family I’ve ever known. Aankia, Kiliel, you, even Jeremy. You’re a part of this family now. There’s no getting out of this one, we won’t let you,” she chuckled slightly. “This is your home. Here. With us, wherever we are. I’m not letting you go anywhere.” She placed her hand on his. “Unless it’s to sleep, of course. That, you can do. And probably should, actually. Did you know that you go crazy if you don’t sleep? It’s because of dreams. I learned that once. If you don’t dream, then you lose your mind. Though, you can lose your mind from a dream, depending on the dream…”

S’Lethkk chuckled. “I’ll try my best not to go crazy, then.”

“You do that.” She stood up with a smile.

“…Lem?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek, but instantly made a face. “Blah, scales… Never kissed scales before.”

He smiled. “At least you don’t have to live in them.”

“Aankia says they’re not so bad… They look good on you,” she complimented, slightly awkwardly, but neither one minded. “Goodnight, S’Lethkk.”

“Goodnight, Lem.”

Critical Role fic, slight AU, MAJOR spoilers up to episode 84: Loose Ends.

(Percyleth, AU if Vaxleth and Vex/Percy didn’t happen and Scanlan didn’t leave.)

“Percy?” Kelyeth asked as she knocked on the door to his room in Whitestone castle.

No response.

“Percy, are you in there?” she knocked again, more quietly this time.

No response.

She turned around and walked away but paused as she heard a slight wooden creak behind her.

“Yes, Keyleth?” Percy’s voice sounded from the hallway.

She turned around. “I thought maybe you were in your workshop, still working on fixing your guns, or… whatever it is that you do in there…” she trailed off.

“No, no fortunately that went rather quickly. I decided I needed the rest more than the work, at least for tonight.”

“I see…”

“Can I help you with something?” he asked after waiting a moment for her to initiate the conversation that she came for – like she never does.

“Oh, yeah… I… Can I come in for a moment?”

“Certainly, I’m sure I could use the company right now, or else I’ll just get myself into more trouble somehow, you know how I can be.” He smiled as he opened the door widely enough for her to enter and stepped back further into his room.

Keyleth followed him in and shut the door behind her.

“I apologize for the lack of furniture, Cassandra took the liberty of disposing of all my ‘unnecessary’ items and using them for the treasury,” he commented with his typical mix of apathy and tengulousness which had been prevalent the entire length of the conversation so far.

“Oh, yeah… Well I’m sure she needed it, you know… Castle stuff. I’m sure she’s using it well. I mean, a bed is fine, right? It’s not like we’re here often enough to where you need much anyway, I’m sure that’s what she was thinking at least. And a bed, you know… You can sleep on it and sit on it, so…”

“Yes, it’s quite versatile, I suppose, when you need it to be.” He sat down on it and motioned for Keyleth to follow suit.

She stayed standing, only half noticing Percy’s gesture. “You know, I’ve always liked them… Beds, I mean. They’re so… yeah, they’re versatile, aren’t they?”

“They’re a lot like us, I suppose. Good at the one thing which they do best, usable for other things as well, and also incredibly fragile and rigid and easy to ruin. Such is life, as we are all the more discovering. But you did not come here for my dark, disreputable wisdom, I assume. You have something on your mind, and my guess is you need a terrible idea to show you the light in what you originally thought.”

Keyleth let out a slight chuckle. “You’re not wrong. But you’re not right, either. Not as much as you normally would be.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.” He motioned again for her to sit. This time she obeyed.

“Percy…” She paused, but he let her gather her thoughts. “You have… you’ve been through a lot recently. We all have, but you most of all. We’ve… We’ve known each other for a while now, we all have… We’re like family. We’re all we have left, after Emon… After Thordak. When we lost you… to Ripley… I thought, ‘This is it. This is where it starts.’ We lost Tiberius, I knew that… That stupid, evil… that dragon…”

“Who has now been dispatched and left to rot in his own cursed prize land.”

“I know… But that doesn’t make it any better. It doesn’t hurt any less. And I know. I know this is exactly what you’re trying to tell me about Raishan and the Fire Ashari and all of that… That losing Tiberius and killing Vorugal… It may be justice, but it doesn’t make it right, that doesn’t fix it, and it will be the same way with Raishan, but… But that’s not what I’m here about. I’m here about you, Percy. After we found Tiberius – after you found Tiberius – it hurt. He was… he was family. But… He wasn’t one of us anymore, you know? He was… we’d already lost him when he left, and this was just… This meant he wasn’t coming back. Right? I mean, he was Tiberius, wasn’t he?”

Percy spoke slowly, cautiously, trying to gage where exactly Keyleth was emotionally right now. “He was always a man of Draconia. There was nothing any of us, or even all of us, could ever have done to change that. I think he knew in his heart that what he told us when he left was the truth: that he had his own path to pursue, and Vox Machina, whatever we were becoming at the time, was not on the same road as he was on. We… we are not heroes. We are not good people. We’ve all made mistakes, yourself included, and you know this. But we are called to play the role of symbols behind which the people can rally. Without symbols, something to gather behind, no one would fight back. We fight back because we must, because we have no other choice, because we’re desperate. Most of us are desperate just to make up for the evil that we’ve done in the world. You, you’re desperate simply to not do any more evil to it. Tiberius was a man who, for all his intelligence, could not see the wisdom in fighting an independent battle like we do. He grew up in nobility, in power, as I did. But he was never the kind of person to seek that power from other sources. He believed it came from the heart – and from community. The kind of community we could not provide. He was always meant to be in a position of leadership, in one way or another, over the people and the land he loved so dearly; just as I was always meant to be in a position of subjugation to forces I did not understand and did not care to.”

“That’s not true, Percy.”

He cut her off. “I know what you think of me, and you’re wrong. I said it before; I’ve always said it. I’m not a good person. None of us are. If there is a good person alive, I’ve not met him. Tiberius was not a good man – but he was a good sorcerer. He had great power within himself, and his path was to use it in a way we could not accompany. Draconia was his home. I don’t know how often we must have teased him for it, but his pride, in himself and in his homeland and his people, was one of his greatest attributes – and one of his most dangerous, to himself, to us, and to our enemies. He was always meant to be with his people. He died for his people. For him to have stayed with us, to have inevitably fallen with us, as we all will sooner rather than later, would have been a great injustice to him, to his people, and to us. We would have robbed him of his greatest legacy – that he died fighting for his people in the ruins of his homeland. We did not lose him. We never lost him. He was never part of us to be lost. He just came along the ride for a while. Which means that we never could truly lose him in the first place.”

“Maybe… Maybe so. I think you’re right. He never really seemed to… to mix with us, or to want to. He always kept himself on the outside, and we respected that. But still, to lose him – or to see him there, at least, frozen… Knowing we could have protected him. Could have helped him survive…”

“And killed the person he was all the while.”

“Maybe… But then seeing you there, Percy… Lying there on the ground, not moving… You’d always isolated yourself from us, too, almost as badly as Tiberius had. We’re all isolated, in a way, but you… You are part of this family whether you like it or not, and seeing you there… It ripped away a part of me that I still haven’t gotten back. We’ve fallen before… Some of us have died before, and it’s been… It’s been awful, Percy. But you… You’ve always been…” Keyleth sighed. “When Pike died, it was an awakening for me. For all of us. She was the one who held us together when we were falling apart. The thought that we could lose her meant that we could lose anyone. But we got her back. When Grog died from that stupid sword, that sword you gave him, we almost lost our strongest member. We almost lost Grog in the pursuit of strength, because we were stupid. None of us saw it, and those who did were stupid enough to believe that we were stronger than the evil that burned inside him. We beat your evil, sure, but that’s no excuse for thinking that we can actually handle ourselves out there in the real world. Then Vex died. She just… We got lucky. We got so lucky with her, with Vax. And now we have the Raven Queen on our side, whatever that means. Now Vax has wings and healing magic and a pool of bloody visions and… And we still have Vex. But you… I thought we had lost you – lost someone, one of our own, for good this time. Pike brought you back, but… It took so long, far too long, to get you to her, and whatever it is that happened to you while you were dead, with that stupid shadow demon of yours, and your soul, and that stupid raven skull that’s around your neck… I told you before, when I gave that to you, that we weren’t… None of us were…” She sighed again. “But losing you… I thought that meant the end. Despite what you say, all the doom and gloom that you bring and carry with you – and that sometimes manifests itself into an actual monster of real doom and gloom – I always thought that you would be the last to go. You have so much in you that you hide away that surely all of that would help you hang on, even when all the rest of us had died. Seeing you dead, the first of our real family to die, I thought that was it. The beginning of the end – what should have been the end of the end. I thought that there was no way we could go on after that. We’d all be gone, Thordak would kill us and Taldorae would be in flames for the rest of time. But then you came back to us and… And now I don’t know what to think.”

“And you want me to tell you that it’s all okay because everyone and everything will eventually die at some point anyway, no matter what?” he joked.

Keyleth laughed. “I don’t know. If I wanted a happy answer I would go to Pike. If I wanted some sort of reassurance of this group, this family, I’d go to Vax. I could even go to Scanlan if I wanted to. But I want the truth. Even Vex, for all her perception, doesn’t see things entirely clearly most of the time. But Percival Fredrick… Fredrickstein… Vox…”

“Percival Fredrickstein von Mussel Klossowski de Rolo III.”

“…But Percy of Whitestone sees the world more clearly, through whatever shade-colored glasses you have, than anyone else I’ve ever met. And I need the truth right now.”

“The truth is like I always tell it, Keyleth. We’ll all die someday. I’ve accepted that. Maybe that’s what’s turned my hair so white so soon,” he chuckled. “My goal is to help everyone else accept that as well while trying to keep them alive in order to do it, even though I seem to fail miserably at it. You said it yourself, I’m the reason Grog died.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“No, but you arrived at the truth. I gave him Craven Edge, and that’s what killed him. I was careless after we killed the Beholder, I wanted the vestige, and that’s what killed Vex. I’m not a good person. Maybe that’s why I have such terrible ideas. I can’t help the world. I can’t save it from itself or from me. But I can try. I can try to help preserve it. Fortunately, or unfortunately as most more correctly see it, I can only ever think to do that by destroying everything else.”

“You always talk about destruction. You build things, and they destroy things. And then you destroy the things you built.”

“Oh, not always, Scanlan does that for me before I get the chance to.”

Keyleth chuckled again. “But you’ve built relationships here, with us. And you don’t tear those down. You don’t destroy those.”

“Oh, I will, trust me. Just give me time.”

“No, you won’t. You can’t. You can’t destroy these ties you’ve made with us, Percy. We love you. That’s why we brought you back. Because you’re one of us, and we love you.”

“Is that the truth you came here to find?”

“No…” she sighed. “I already knew that. I knew that before Ripley. I just… I think I want to know what it was like for you to be dead. To be away from us, from this, from Taldorae and Thordak and the world and the evil that we face every day.”

“Oh, I may have been away from Taldorae, but there was far more evil waiting for me beyond Taldorae. You know that more than anyone. You’re the one who saved me from it.”

“I know… And I felt it. I felt him. All that evil that you had inside you for so long, I think I finally understood a little bit of it. But after that, after I separated you from him, what was it like? Death?”

“I honestly don’t know. I don’t remember any of it. I know I felt loved by all of you. I know you all saved me and brought me back. But the last thing I remember before waking up… Right up until the last moment, he was… He was feasting on me, on my soul, and the evil he had planted there that still remained, regardless of his influence. It was terrible, and I won’t forget it. Probably ever. But the last moment, the last thing I remember before waking up on the table to all of you, was you, Keyleth. I remember feeling you break the tie between me and him. And finally I was free of him – not like last time, where I lost the gun too, where I lost a part of myself as well. I was free of everything. Free of him, free of the world, free of evil. And that was only because you reached in and saved me. Now obviously it says a lot about me, none of which should be news to anyone unless they trust me far more than they should – which is to say if they trust me any amount at all – it says a lot about me that both times I’ve needed someone else to save me from him. But I was only able to be free of his influence this time, free of his evil that had stayed inside me, because of you and the goodness that is in you. We’re all evil. We’re all terrible people. I’ve never met a good person in my life. But out of everyone I’ve ever met, Keyleth, you are the most innocent, the most naïve, and the most good. So often I am so proud of you when you learn to do something deceptive or cruel, but more than anything I am most proud of you for staying who you are despite all my attempts to influence you and turn you into myself. Don’t ever listen to me, Keyleth. Don’t ever let me get through to you. I couldn’t stand myself if I let myself turn you into even a shadow of me. Don’t let me.”

“You’re a good man, Percival. I don’t care what you say.”

Percy laughed at the unintended irony. “I suppose I deserve that, and I can’t correct you without retracting my previous statement. Well done. And thank you.”

“’Thank you’?”

“Thank you for saving me from him. Thank you from saving me from myself and my influence on you.”

“Don’t worry about it. There’s a reason I gave you that skull. As long as you wear it, that means you can’t be all bad.”

“Oh, I beg to differ, but in this case I suppose I will digress to you, your majesty. Even if this is technically my castle. Even if my sister has taken all of my stuff…”

Keyleth laughed. “Goodnight, Percy,” she said.

“Goodnight, Keyleth. Don’t ever let me turn into a good man.”

She smiled. “I’ll do what I can,” she added as she started to stand up.

He lightly grabbed her arm. “Sit down, please. There’s one more thing.” She obeyed as he stood up and walked over to his pack. He dug something out, covered it in cloth, and sat back down on the bed. “Here, take this.” He put it into her hands. She unwrapped it to reveal a gun.

“Percy, I can’t—”

“I know you can’t, and that’s why I want you to have it. It’s not an evil weapon, only the people who wield it are evil. It wasn’t Ripley’s; it was one of her henchmen’s. I want to teach you how to use it. I know you have your vestige now, and it’s wonderful. It’s great, and it’s yours. But this is a way to protect yourself even without magic. You may find a need for it one day, and I don’t want to have had the opportunity to help you and to not have taken it.”

“Does this mean you’re giving one to everyone?”

“No. Just you.”

“Why me?”

“Because you saved me, Keyleth. Scanlan just threw my gun into a pool of acid. Pike cast a spell that brought me back. You reached into my twisted soul and saved me, and that deserves some sort of twisted repayment. This gun is the best thing I’ve got that fits that description.”

“Percy, I can’t…”

“Yes, you can, and you will. I’ll teach you. It’s not as complicated as it looks, really. You just point and shoot.”

“I thought you didn’t want to turn me into you.”

“Well, as long as you don’t say ‘okay’ to a dream about an evil shadow monster telling you how to make these things, I think you’ll manage. Besides, I never really mean anything I say, do I?” He smirked in his typical complex fashion.

“Percy…”

“Just take it. Just for tonight. I’ll teach you about it in the morning.”

“No. I can’t.” She shoved the gun back into his hands. “You’ll have to find another way to repay me,” she retorted, trying to seem smart and imposing.

“I don’t think you want me to do that.”

“Oh? Why not?”

He barely let her finish her sentence before he kissed her hard on the lips. He stayed there for a moment, barely caressing her hand – which still held the gun that he refused to take back – before pulling away and leaning back.

“Percy…”

“That’s why. Because, other than finding some way to protect you, that’s the only way I can think to repay you. You said that you came in here because you wanted the truth. There you have it. You saved me, and you’re all I ever think about. You’re all I want to protect in this world. You’re all that seems worth protecting to me, other than simply preserving life itself – which is doomed in the first place. You wanted truth. There you have it. I love you.” He waited for a moment, but Keyleth remained thoughtfully silent. “So please. Take the gun, let me teach you how to use it, and one day, after I’m gone, destroy it. When the world is safe, and you’ve taken your rightful place as headmaster of the Air Ashari.”

“Percy, I…”

“You don’t have to say anything. I’m the one with all the terrible thoughts, remember? I’ll just leave you with that.”

“You said you loved me.”

“I never mean anything I say, remember?” He kissed her again, lightly this time, allowing her more room to back away. She didn’t. “See? Don’t try to figure me out. I’m still working on it myself.”

“I don’t know myself well enough to even try to know what someone else is thinking… But I know there’s more to love than just… than just whatever this is right now… And I don’t… I know you’re not telling me everything. But I know you’ve been telling me the truth.”

“I have been. If I could explain myself then it wouldn’t truly be worth the time it took, would it? People are complex. That’s what makes us interesting. That’s what makes life worth living. If it could be explained away, then it wouldn’t be worth it. If love could be explained or expressed, it wouldn’t be worth it.”

Keyleth kissed him this time. “Maybe not… But it’s certainly worth exploring.”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Are you and I… Are we… I mean… You know… Are we… going to find out?”