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They’ve been watching the group for almost an hour now.
Percy and the rest of Vox Machina have been sprawled across the dim interior or a rundown tavern on the very outskirts of a village just east and several hundred miles from Whitestone for almost two and a half hours now, each of them getting progressively drunker and rowdier in deference of their win against a pack of feral werewolves that had been steadily moving northeast in an campaign of terror.
Percy, fresh off a Greater Restoration and Cure Wounds thus unwilling to test Pikes patch job so soon after almost having his own guts ripped out, has been nursing his own pitcher of honey and peach sweet tea for the best part of those two and a half hours, watching those who are watching the group, as if they’re trying to be stealthy.
They are a duo, a man and a woman, leaning in close to one another, through the gloom of the dimming candlelight, Percy can just see their faces. They’ve been nursing the same drinks since they’ve sat down only half an hour after Vox Machina had sat and their eyes have been fixed upon the back of Keyleth’s fire wreathed hair from where she sits directly opposite Percy, tucked between Vax’ildan and Pike, giggling into her pint of ale as Vex challenges Grog to a drinking contest they all know everyone but Grog is going to lose.
As Percy watches them through the gloom, heavy lidded and hawkish eyed, something sinister stirs freely in the pit of his belly.
He knows their types, has found himself escaping them more than enough times, especially after he’d just escaped Whitestone and the Briarwoods and the clutches of Anna Ripley with not even his shame and dignity to keep. As a lonely, somewhat pretty boy, lost and alone with his quite obviously noble accent; everything about him from his shock of white hair to the emaciation from torture had been designed to be a beacon to the more lesser morale of criminals. If he hadn’t already had suffered at the hands of Anna that type of loss and hadn’t been simply floating through life as if nothing was real until his imagination and dreams and Orthax had dreamt up a machine great and brutal enough to dissemble anything that stood in its - and his - path, he may have been a shade more terrified; a woman he’d sheltered with briefly had said that perhaps something had stood out about him, saying he’d already suffered that type of cruelty. He’d walked away from her then, if only to stop the violent impulse that had arisen in him.
Still, he watches over Keyleth’s slender shoulder, watching as they watch, and with a delicate tilt of his head that allows him to view them both through glasses and magnifying lense, he watches as they murmur something beneath their breath, an exchange of something glistening and bottled; a potion, he thinks, and something smoky lingers at the back of his tongue, a familiar flavor of sinister and vengeful.
Their waitress melts back into the hustle of the crowd by the bar, and Percy loses sight of her, if only because he keeps an eye on Keyleth and another on her watchers. He will not allow what he has been through to befall his friend, not anyone.
It was his hatred and his want for justice and vengeance for the de Rolo family that had called Orthax to him, but the demon had only enhanced what was already there, and those tasted like smoke and brimstone on the very tip of his tongue. Perhaps his mother and father would be disgusted at who he was now, sometimes unable to stop missing the demon that he’s carried with him for almost more than half his life, but those are a part of his past, something he has shed like a bird sheds feathers. Cassandra and Vox Machina are the things that tug him inexorably forward, marching on when his will and hands falter.
Vex'ahlia gesturing for the waitress has his grim gaze turning towards the rest of the group. It’s only a few minutes when the waitress returns and Percy offers a polite smile to her, thanking her in a quiet undertone as she leaves two rounds of alcohol for the rest of the group and another pitcher of honey and peach sweet tea for him. She laughs good naturedly at Scalans flirting, and how Grog, already having downed both his pints, slaps the gnome so hard on the back that he face plants into Pikes lap, who laughs uproariously and makes a rude gesture to Grog above Scanlan’s head.
Chuckling softly, Percy refills his glass from the pitcher, sighing at the sweet vapor of it before he sips at it, the taste cloying on his floral, floral like it wasn’t before. He peers into the pitcher; seeing the rose and other petals the bartender must have sprinkled into it. He has the faintest memories of his mother having her rose sweet tea like that, dyed pink by the petals that bathed in her delicate teacup, floral and bittersweet. The taste is headier, more earthly than he remembers.
He drinks the rest of the glass of honey and peach sweet tea steadily, eyes still stuck fast to the duo watching the group, but seeing far beyond them. With mechanical motions, he refills his glass from the pitcher, almost spilling it when his arm falters, the muscles suddenly weak for a moment, and Pike tosses him a concerned if somewhat drunken look as she pushes the pitcher further into the table between them.
Memories of his family come both easier and harder than before; having been wreathed in a flame of smoke and fire from Orthax’s influence, devastated by the hatred and need for vengeance inflamed in his heart and further incited by the Demonic Deal he’d made so unknowingly. He’s more able to recall memories, familial and full of love; thinking of Whitney and Oliver dog piling on Julius in the fallen leaves, hearing how Cassandra cackles her triumphant with Percy himself at her feet, wooden sword having felled him and tucked beneath his armpit in a mockery of death. In return however, the worse memories come more easily with details brighter, heightened as if Orthax had blurred the details of his humanity. Easier to think of the blood as the bolts pierced his mothers throat, the sword that had felled his father before the man could even stand, the four long long weeks in the Briarwoods tender company, questioned over and over for things he had no way of knowing. The way Cassandra, hair almost of a match to his, fringe whitened with stress, the arrows jutting from her shoulder blades like a mockery of Celestial wings as she bled out in the snow. Anna Ripley’s hands reaching lower and lower; her pragmatic gaze and the journal she kept as if he was an experiment to her, the way her hips moved over him-
As if on its own accord, his hand grips the delicate glass, shattering it completely, the remnants of the glass biting into his skin. Percy swears to the Dawnfather, hissing through clenched teeth as blood spills from his clenched fist, dipping into pockmarked scars and seeping into his nail beds. He stares, arrested, by the sight of it. The shattering of glass however had echoed around the corner and he’s immediately beset by his friends' gazes. For a moment, all is silent, and Percy clenched his bloodied fist tighter as blood and warm tea seeped into the lining of his trousers.
Grog then howls with his laughter, smacking a hand on the tottering table, narrowly missing imp along his own hand on the glass.
“An’ you thought it was gonna be me who broke the first thing!” Grog laughs loud enough and hard enough he’s almost in half; Pike, far drunker than before and all the less magically capable of it never mind the power she’d exerted in healing them after their fight with the werewolves, grimaces cheerfully at him, patting Grog on his massive shoulder, ducking his arm without even looking.
“Sorry, Percy; I’m still tapped out,” To her utmost credit, she does look sincerely put out; her expression falls further when she glances towards Scanlan, having manipulated a table into playing a game of cards that is no doubt highly rigged, and towards Keyleth, who is swaying where she sits, as if on a boat. Perhaps the only reason she stays upright is both Vex and Vax’s grip on her slender waist. “And everyone else is too; I’m sure I’ve got some healing potions though-“
Her search through numerous pockets comes up disappointingly short, and the rest of Vox Machina follow their clerics lead in searching any available pockets and pouches. However, Percy - now cradling his hand and despairing of ever getting blood from his snowy shirt - is pretty sure that they haven’t the foggiest what they’re looking for, owing to Vax’ildan leaning across Keyleth to stage whisper to his sister what they’re searching for and if anyone has found it but is only answered by her loud guffaws.
Deciding discretion is the better part of valor, and seeing how Pike has begun to slowly sober up even as everyone else seems to be seeping further into their cups, he feels able to leave Keyleth safely in the grips of two overprotective half elves that would scarcely let anything happen to Keyleth if the worst came to the worst, nevermind the monstrous bear he can see peaking through the window, eyes like lamps as Trinket watches them mournfully. He waves his unharmed hand in the air; Keyleth goes somewhat green watching the motion, eyes crossing.
“No need to fret, I know I have some basic healing potions in my bag upstairs; I shouldn’t be too long.” Despite the fact that Percy hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol, it takes far longer and more energy to get up from his low slung seat, skirting past Vex’ahlia, who grins charmingly up at him, sloppy and lopsided like it only is when she’s drunk. Her ever present braid is slowly unraveling, and her thick hair curls around her face, getting caught on her eyelashes.
“Don’t go too far, darling!” She wags a long finger at him, and Percy laughs quietly.
“I shouldn’t be more than a few minutes, if not you can rouse the alarm and send Trinket in barrelling after me. I’m sure he’s due for some fun after having to sit out fighting werewolves.”
Vex gives a snorting laugh, shoulders hiking up to her sharpened ears. Her eyes scrunch up as she looks at him.
“You’ll be the one giving him a bath tonight, Percival, dear.” She threatens him, and he only chuckles and shakes his head, feeling how blood is slowly dripping down his wrist and how he’s going to have to redress completely if he has a hope of feeling clean.
It’s like walking through molasses, trying to reach the tucked out of the way stairs that lead up to the second floor, creaking beneath his weight despite his slight stepping. Half way up, his head swims, eyes crossing before he has to close them. Vomit rises, cloying right at the back of his throat, sweet and honeyed but with an earthy taste like dirt to it-
He stumbles to a stop, shoulder resting heavily against the door jam leading into his room. His mind, slowly feeling like it’s gone sideways, misting from his metaphorical grip as he tries to make sense of trying to open his door and the way his surroundings seem to sway, faster and faster in a dizzying display. The earthy taste lingering on the back of his tongue, on his gums, has a sickness rising further in his throat, belly turning inside out as he realizes, vaguely and in a dream-like state, why he’s suddenly so lethargic, why his legs don’t want to move.
Oh dear.
It seems he’s miscalculated slightly.
He tries the door knob again, but his hands go placid, blood dripping from his flesh to the well worn hall runner at his feet.
“Fuck. ” He growls, and for a second all is silent, before footsteps bound up the stairs; he must almost black out, because for a second they start at the very bottom of the rickety staircase, and then the next they’re right next to Percy and something grabs his shoulder-
A hand he doesn’t recognise, too big for Vex or Keyleth or even Vax, smaller than Grog’s, and far too high for both Pike and Scanlan. It grasps at his shoulder through his greatcoat, and he’d imagine he’d probably feel nails digging in if it weren’t for the three layers. It takes only a moment, but despite how his fingers fumble, more like sausages than fingers; the hilt of a slender dagger is palmed into his hand, and with as much energy as he can muster, which seems to be both too little and yet taking far more effort, he slips the dagger into a backwards grip and throws .
His assailant, the same man he’d been watching for so long, is quite literally built like a brick house and though he’s forced to step and duck away from Percy’s daggered backhand, his enormous size and Percys’ staggering steps from the sedative are more than enough to have Percy at a disadvantage.
A disadvantage that proves perilous. Ducking hurriedly and feeling somewhat drunk as Percy manages to avoid a grab around the waist, throwing his leg forward and feeling something give beneath the heavy leather of his boots, a roar right by his ear has Percy cringing. Between how the world has seemed to become unsettled upon its axis and how the sedative has his ears ringing in his ears like a Church Bell, he doesn’t quite realize when the man - more of a bear really, Percy finds himself thinking - kicks a heavy foot out.
It catches on his left thigh, already tender from the werewolf fight, and it crumples his knee. Percy cries out, hoarse and hurting and his eyes clenched shut reflexively. He manages to keep a hold of the backwards grip of the dagger, sliding across the wall as he tries to escape the bigger man, trying to aim another blow but that heavy foot kicks out at him again, higher than his knee and right across the tender gutting wound Pike had barely managed to heal. Percy grunts, a soft, hurt noise escaping from the very back of his throat when a heavy back hand has his glasses flying from his face, his lips splitting; he can taste old pennies and fresh copper on his tongue, it tastes like smoke as he swallows it down.
The world is a coloured blur and he can’t help how it chokes on the blood when a hand grabs the arm he’s still managed to hold onto the dagger with; large fingers tight around his wrist. Tight enough that he can feel the bones grinding together, choking back another hurt, furious sound when the man jerks it to the side. His eyes cross for a brief moment, pain apparently magnified as he tries so hard not to slip into unconciousness.
His assailant lifts, and despite Percy’s relative tallness, he’s left hanging by the wrist, boots barely scraping the rucked hall runner, and with not enough leverage to make enough noise on the wooden floor to alert the rest of Vox Machina. Blood from the shattered glass prior runs hot and putrid down his wrist, catching on the man’s hands, but the slippery liquid doesn’t weaken the man’s grip, only makes it tighten. For a brief second, Percy has a moment of clarity, the world standing still, and he’s almost able to reach into his greatcoat, hands just barely grasping the grip of Retort before another set of hands, smaller but just as strong, just as calloused, muzzles him, the other clenching down on his throat, nails digging in. A warm body pressed against his back
“I don’t think so,” A woman murmurs into his ear, and for a heart wrenching, vomit inducing moment, Percy has only the name Anna Ripley on the tip of his tongue.
It’s only the knowledge that Anna Ripley wouldn’t hesitate if she had her hands on Percy once more, and that she wouldn’t have left this dirty work in the hands of others that she deemed incompetent that allows Percy even a modicum of sanity, that the knowledge that these hands are not Anna’s that has his teeth baring into a snarl. The woman yells, shoving Percy into her partner when Percy bites savagely down, tasting blood that isn’t his own, missing that smokiness that reminds him that although he’s cast out Orthax, the demon still retains some not insignificant parts of his soul.
“Fucker!” She snarls back at him, and the man releases him, using the leverage of his wrist to spin him around enough to backhand him heavily. Percy grunts, spitting blood even as he lands heavily on the floor. A heavy kick lands in the middle of his back and Percy hisses through bloodied teeth, thankfully managing to dodge the following one that aims at the back of his head.
“Fuck you.” He says, sounding more sibilant than snarling. They stand above him, watching as he fights the sedative pulling at his eyelids, the way his body begs for him to simply lie down and sleep . His muscles ache like he’s been working the forge for nigh on sixty hours, a mixture of potion, exhaustion and the aftermath of the werewolf fight. He didn’t have a pack of werewolves with north of ten numbers gut him just to lie down and die where he should have been safe, especially when those should be human hands.
The woman, her face pockmarked with his blood, tries to make herself look more welcoming, as if concerned about him. She kneels between his spread eagle legs, sprawled from dodging her partner's kick. One of her hands rests high on his thigh, only inches from his belt and he bares his teeth in a way that’s more reminiscent of Trinket than any of the humanoid figures of Vox Machina.
“Don’t you want to go to sleep, darling?” She croons, and he grits his teeth, skin crawling as she presses closer. She must have enchanted something on her, because it’s only by Percy’s own will that he doesn’t fall prey to the way she says it. One of her legs moves, as if she’s attempting to straddle one of his, and he kicks out ruthlessly. He yowls his disagreement when the man grabs his ankles in his meat like hands, holding it in a tormenting grip that only has Percy trying to escape as the man forces closer, forcing Percy almost in half. The press of his leg against his chest has Percy’s chest struggling to rise. “We’ll make it all better for you, if you just sleep.”
However, it also provides cover for his bloodied hand, further bloodied and bruised by the two brutes in front of him, to sneak into the holster at his hip, Retort seemingly to almost vibrate beneath his grip.
“I said,” He tells her, tongue feeling clumsy in his mouth, bloodied and earthy. Her face grows red. Black smoke drifts freely from his mouth. “Fuck you.”
Pure instinct and reflex has Percy able to rip Retort from her leather holster, and it’s on the very apex of his movement that he presses the trigger, feeling the kickback of the gun, how Retort near enough explodes in his hand, feeling how his shoulders shudder beneath the power of the gun. He’s propelled backwards by the sheer power of it, ears ringing with the discharge of it in such close quarters, his teeth vibrating in his tightly clenched jaw. In the aftermath, silence pervades.
Then the woman howls, thrown against the wall opposite them, her shoulder a wrecked mass that spurts blood against the wood of the floor; the limb lays severed at Percy’s feet, a lump of flesh that has something horridly satisfied sitting in his belly. It lasts for only a few moments, before her partner is upon him, face twisted into a mask of cruelty and hatred. His entire palm wraps around Percy’s lower face, squeezing into where his lower jaw connects to his skull, digging into the grooves of the joints found there. Percy can barely breathe through the violence of it, nose smashed awkwardly against face and palm; he tries to bite down but he can’t find leverage.
The man shakes him, like a recalcitrant dog; he’s yelling something, but the burning pain his grip ignites in Percy’s head and jaw only drowns it out, he’s forced upwards for the second time in almost as many minutes, scrabbling and trying to get his feet below him, Retort stays tight in his hand, but the man’s hand only grasps at the wrist holding the firearm.
For a moment, Percy wonders if he’s going to be pulled apart, or if his head is simply going to be ripped off his shoulders. He never gets the chance, because the man’s hand, so big it wraps around Percy’s wrist with the fingers overlapping, clenches tighter, and then tighter still and then-
“FUCK!” He could have shouted it into a pillow for all the good the curse does, muffled by his assailant's hand, but his wrist has snapped, clean in twain, and Retort drops to the floor heavily, barrel pointing towards the already bleeding out woman that watches them with dimming eyes, blood drooling from her mouth.
Good, Percy thinks savagely, even as tears well up and then out at the pain; they pool into the small spaces left between nose and palm, and for a moment Percy thinks he could drown. Fitting, that he’d drown in his own tears and blood, at the mercy of a human he doesn’t even know the name of.
The woman slips away, dead and having bled for it as she deserved, and the man, face angered and blisteringly red-
The man gets a dagger to the neck, sliced across his throat with all the indignity of an animal to the slaughter as Vax’ildan steps from the shadows, his face a rictus of fury, in his hand a handful of hair from Percy’s assailant that the rogue then drops, as if disgusted by it.
More concerned with the blood spurting from his neck, the man lets Percy drop, hands clasping around his throat as he gargles something out that neither Percy nor Vax can understand. Vax seems to care even less than Percy as he turns his back on the dying man and his dead partner, crowding Percy against the wall and floor as if he didn’t want even a drop of blood to touch him more than it already had.
A hand touches upon his face, and Percy flinches reflexively. He can see when Vax realizes, because his face, having smoothened from that fury, abruptly whitens, and for all he looks a little wild and feral around the eyes, his hand reaching out again to Percy can only be described as tender.
“Are you okay, Percy?” Vax’ildan says, and Percy has never heard his voice as soft as it is towards him; to his sister yes, perhaps even to Keyleth, but never to him. It makes him think of home, of Whitestone, of curling into his fathers side as he showed Julius the accounting books, and Percy had tagged along because he was curious . It hurts as much as it soothes him.
Perhaps it’s the sedative they’ve drugged him with, perhaps it’s because memories of the Briarwoods and Whitestone are so close to the surface recently, maybe it’s just because of all the trauma that Percy has suddenly had brought to the surface, but something about Vax’s sudden concern has something splintering where once horrid satisfaction sat.
In the blurriness of his vision, from both awful eyesight and the sudden tears that have threatened to fall, he can see Vax’s suddenly horrified face, the way he leans closer and clutches Percy’s shoulder as Percy tries to breathe deeply, tilting his head back so he can try and drag each reluctant breath in.
For a brief, horrific moment, Percy thinks he’s actually going to start crying, sobbing like a panicking child in front of Vax’ildan, but a sudden ruckus and then a demanding furry head shoving into Percy’s chest draws a pained chuff out of him as Trinket seems to be doing his best to meld into one with Percy.
“Ah,” Percy says, unbroken hand hovering above Trinket’s massive form, missing his armor but no less threatening for the loss of it. Movement behind Vax and Trinket’s bulk shows that the rest of Vox Machina have followed the trail of destruction left behind by both Percy himself and Vax and Trinket. The world shimmers for a little while, and Percy has to blink frantically. “Vax, Trinket, I’m terribly sorry about this but-”
Percy has to swallow convulsively; it’s as if the sedative has suddenly kicked back in after his energy and adrenaline had pushed it back, and the violence has drained Percy’s system more than he’d like to admit. He feels like he wants to throw up or like he wants to sleep for a thousand years.
Vax is suddenly at his side, closer than he has been for a while since Whitestone, and Percy jumps, hands tightening upon Trinket’s fur; the bear doesn’t even grumble at him, but he must be able to feel how Percy has suddenly frozen, because the bear only presses closer to him, dropping his entire not that inconsiderable weight upon Percy as if in an effort to let Percy know that Trinket won’t let anything happen to him.
It helps more than Percy would care to admit.
“Trinket, darling,” Vex’ahlia croons, and there’s still that stumbling edge to her voice that’s only there when she’s half drunk. “We need to make sure that Percy is alright. Come along Trinket, and we’ll take the trash out, yes.”
Loath as Percy is, especially since Trinket is Vex’s bear, but something cold and panicky slips down into his belly at the thought of Trinket disappearing when Percy is, for all intents and purposes, incredibly vulnerable.
Trinket, as smart and as perceptive as his mother, doesn’t move. In fact, he even growls at Vex when she comes closer, her hand and voice still in that soft coaxing croon. She throws a somewhat apologetic look at Percy's way, but something in his face must let her know that this is not something to be even remotely apologetic about, because something in her face goes both white with rage and furrows with her immense sorrow.
“Grog,” Vex says instead, and her face is still that half horrified, half sad expression when Grog’s immense bulk makes Percy flinch involuntary as the Goliath moves a little too fast in his peripheral vision. “Why don’t you, I and Vax go take the trash out, and Pike and Keyleth can come and heal Percy, hmm?”
Whatever the reply is, Percy doesn’t hear it nor does he pay attention to it, because his heart feels like it’s going to throb out of his chest, sudden panic making it hard to breathe. Maybe it’s because it was Vax that first saved him, that first drew that blade across his assailant's throat, and though Percy knows that he’s completely safe in the middle of Vox Machina, something curdles like soured milk at the thought of Vax leaving.
With little thought, his uninjured arm shoots up and his fingers tangled in the hem of Vax’ildan’s dark coloured tunic. The rogue, half stooped from where he’d risen to follow his twin’s orders, turns to Percy with an expression of surprised concern. Even Vex, still in her non-threatening crouch, is surprised but Percy only has eyes for how his fingers keep their steady grip on Vax’s tunic, a little surprised himself.
“Percy…?” Vax asks him, and this is the second time he’s used Percy’s first name rather than his usual ‘Freddy’. It just has the exhaustion in Percy’s bones deeper, has him ebbing more towards unconscious rather than upright.
“Stay,” Percy asks quietly, through a thick voice that threatens the appearance of tears. Then, when Vax doesn’t do or say anything; “Please?”
For a handful of moments, Percy is sure that Vax is going to push himself away, is going to sneer at Percy for even thinking he could ask anything of the rogue, but Vax’ildan only slips further into his crouch. Hovering over Percy’s fingers tangled in his own tunic, it’s only when Percy gives assent through numb lips that Vax gently holds onto Percy’s fingers, and becomes a warm weight resting alongside the wall with Percy.
“Of course.” Vax’ildan says, as if it was always a given.