Chapter Text
“It’s open.” Keyleth said in response to the light knock at her door.
It swung in and she saw the familiar and always welcome figure of Vex’ahlia.
“Oh hey Vex. Sorry, what time is it?”
She looked out her window to see the sun outside the stained glass was indeed much higher up than when she had started her day.
“Don’t worry darling, I’m early.” She said earnestly with her light, beautiful smile. She casually leaned against the doorframe and Keyleth gave an appreciative nod, returning to her forms in front of her. Some treaties that needed fine reading and signing.
Bureaucracy was awfully dreadful sometimes. 1000 years of this sounded like a punishment.
“Actually, I had something I wanted to talk to you about…” She said in a nonchalant tone that was just a little forced so she knew she was trying to appear more casual than was necessary.
Keyleth set the papers aside. They were far from done, but would take more time than she had.
“Yeah, of course. What- is it something about the kids? Or Whitestone? Or-“
“I’ll tell you what it is Keyleth, you don’t have to guess.” She said with a twinkle of a smile. “It’s actually…”
She took a deep breath.
“It’s actually about us.”
Keyleth blinked, tilting her head.
“Us like… Vox Machina? Or about… you and me? Like that us?”
“The latter.” She said, still leaning against the door frame. She bit her lip as if in thought. “Keyleth, darling… what are your thoughts about romance?”
Okay, they must be topic jumping pretty wildly.
“Uh, I mean…” She shrugged, eyes drifting out the window the perch the raven would sit some days. “I think you’re pretty aware of my exploits. As a concept it’s beautiful… I think what I’ve seen you and Percy have…”
She paused over his name and glanced quickly at Vex. She always did when they spoke of him. Early on it had obviously wounded and she hadn’t been able to not flinch at the mention. She was doing better now it seemed. Time really did heal all wounds.
“What Pike and Scanlan had… messy as it was.” She chuckled and shook her head. “What my vassal Orym had… with his husband Will? It’s deep and gives purpose to existence. A hunt for your other half.”
She set the quill she was holding down, noticing it had started to drip.
“Is that… close to what you were getting at?”
Vex gave a nod, but was still studying her.
“Have you thought about... more recently, exploring it for yourself darling?”
Keyleth scoffed. She couldn’t help it. The sound forced its way out in a silly little laugh and she waved her hand, leaning back in her desk chair.
“No Vex, I uh… I’m all set on that.”
Vex hummed and nodded, looking out the same window toward the empty bird post. Of course she’d know where it was.
“I sort of thought I was too… thought I’d had my time in the sun. And now would reside to the shade. See the next stage of my life as a mother… grandmother… widow…”
She bit her lip again.
“But the thing is… I keep seeing these rays of light… and finding myself thinking that maybe I’m not done with that part of myself just yet.”
Keyleth tilted her head and smiled lightly at her. Happy for her. Vex was a being of great light, it made sense.
“That’s great Vex. You should pursue someone if you have the inkling to. You’re…” She paused, mind correcting before the thought ever started. “Anyone would be lucky to court you.”
“Flattered for you to say so.” Vex said with a sweet, sincere smile directed back at her. But something more. “Because this may actually… relate to you.”
And then Keyleth’s mind skipped a few beats.
Vex turned that deep loaded gaze on her. That one that radiated like an instant sunburn where you’d feel it on your skin the next day.
“I think… we’ve been alone long enough.” Vex said walking on gentle footsteps to the edge of Keyleth’s desk. It was odd to think she knew someone well enough to know the difference in how they stepped. Vex walked proud. Stomped with grace when she needed to. Never let herself appear as anything less than what she was.
Which was why the current shift… the soft… demure way she carried herself to Keyleth’s side was so… distracting. Odd to see her let someone in past that carefully controlled appearance. Even herself.
“Keyleth…” she said, pulling her from her mind. She tended to revert there often. Examine things. Overexamine things. She was doing it again.
But then her hand was on her cheek.
“Sometimes I think my power is a curse. And I’ll have to mourn you all.” Keyleth said, blurting what was at the root of her overthinking as of late. “So yeah… I’m alone. I mean, loneliness is expected. Who could love someone that’s so… stuck?”
“I could.” Vex said gently, carefully walking her fingers under Keyleth’s chin to tilt her face up to hers. “If you’d let me… I already do. Love you that is.”
Keyleth stared. Felt her lips part in awe as she took in the admission.
“You… you love me?”
“You don’t?” Vex countered with a playful eyebrow raise, which was unfair.
“I asked you first.” Is what she comes back with, feeling a bit childish but seeing that playful expression morph into something laced in sincerity.
“I have gotten the privilege of knowing you from Keyleth, the girl who was never too scared to try but often too scared to succeed, to the Voice of the Tempest… who’s not scared of anything.”
Keyleth shook her head wryly, distracted as Vex walked her fingers along the edge of her desk and following their movement rather... diligently.
“I still get scared of things.“ Like right now. If that’s what you could call the thumping in her chest.
“As do I.” She said, taking Keyleth’s hand and guiding it up over her chest where she felt Vex’s pulse matching her own. “But mostly it’s the regrets, not the fears, that keep me up at night.”
Keyleth looked at where their hands met and thought how warm she felt… and that was coming from a fire Druid.
“You want to know one that’s been eating at me lately?” She continued, voice dropping an octave like it was a great secret or great sin. Keyleth nodded.
“I regret how long I let you be on your own. I should’ve come to you sooner.” She stepped even closer, putting her free hand around Keyleth’s wrist and gently drawing circles that sent shivers in its wake. “I’ve seen the world underestimate you… I’ve been part of the world that did. Now? Now I’ve never been so proud to be wrong about something. About someone. And I should’ve brought you in from the cold so long ago… forgive me for not seeing your heart… hidden under all those damn leaves and titles and responsibilities. You took on so much of the world, so easily, because there was no other choice. Because no one was there to see and stop you.”
She slid the edge of Keyleth’s sleeve and the curved edge of one of Otohan’s slashes still lived there. The medicine had healed it years ago, but those scars would be with her a long time.
“And that blindness almost cost me you.” She leaned her head down and kissed the scar, featherlight. Keyleth gasped lightly at the touch. Seeing tears blink away on those delicate lashes.
“You owe me nothing.” She insisted, shaking her head. “You had Percy, you have a family, you had titles of your own. I wasn’t your responsibility Vex.”
“Loving you has never been a responsibility, it has been a gift… and a choice. One I’ve put off making for decades.”
Keyleth shook her head. “It’s not meant for me…”
She felt the tree inside her. The roots she was. The nervous system of being the Tempest that pulsated within your blood even when you weren’t trying to feel it.
“Love, that is.”
Vex looked at her with sad eyes and Keyleth hated that expression.
She rose from her seat, kissing the back of Vex’s knuckles in apology, and took a step around the desk.
“I can’t… can’t love like that Vex.” She felt her own expression falling with the weight of her duty.
“Keyleth you are love.” Vex said, as if it were her name she’d forgotten. And she smiled a remorseful little thing.
“I do love Vex. Perhaps I’m not explaining it well, but I do. I think I am equal parts love and duty and anger these days…” she curled her fingers on her staff. Ran a thumb over a knot in the wood. “They are all the things that keep me going. Make me move. But love like how you’re talking… that love…”
She shook her head.
“I don’t think I’m meant to experience it.” She paused running her hand through her hair and catching the raven feather. “Again, at least.”
“Not if you hide from it, no.” Vex said gently, with a curve of challenge as she eased around the desk to be standing beside her again. Leaning into her line of sight.
“It’s not hiding Vex.” She shook her head. “It’s not. I know how it looks it’s just… I became this without knowing what it was but I am it now. And I think part of that… separation… that thing that will keep me here long after everyone I now know… is meant to do just that. Keep distance.”
She stepped further around the desk.
“You have to have love… you have to care about people… or else you could never live in service of them for this long.” She ran her finger across a flower petal from her vase. “But the love you’re talking about… would consume me.”
She gripped the petal and released it just as quick. To preserve before she could destroy it.
“I can’t be consumed Vex…”
Vex closed the distance, a sad understanding, and reaching a hand to her cheek. She ran a thumb along her skin, beneath her eye and Keyleth felt her body stiffen. Tried to stifle the need of a hand… the addiction of a gentle touch…
She felt her breath shudder out of her, eyes crease, saw Vex lean closer slowly and felt a spike of something deep in her heart.
Vex put their foreheads close together, making her eyes the only thing she could see. She ran the tip of her nose along her cheeks, sighed a slow deep breath that Keyleth could taste. Could feel echo down her throat. She traced the edge of her lips with the barest hint of her own, and Keyleth saw how her eyes became half lidded… loaded and wanting… restraining and offering.
“Keyleth…” she whispered. “Darling, take the mask off…”
She felt it like a gunshot, failed to hide her gasp. Shook her head and tilted her gaze away. Vex didn’t release her hold. Didn’t let her retreat.
“I think you’d be disappointed to find there’s no one behind it now Vex…”
She was like… an eggshell if she truly thought about it. Sound in the surface but the barest tremor and inside would be nothing. Neither sunny side up nor hard boiled nor poached.
She was a suit of armor that walked from place to place on its own and remembered to capture the little wonders of the world. The smell of dew in the morning. A perfect breeze. A sunset so beautiful it would never be reused.
She was not a person anymore… humanity was something she’d given up in order to protect it.
Now Keyleth was the mask, and the Tempest was the storm beneath.
“That’s why I want you to let me in.” She said with more surety. “You just need someone to remind you… someone who knew… who knows…”
She kissed her cheek and she felt the warmth there. Like the first rays of light in the morning, breaking through the mist.
“You’re wrong…” Keyleth said, voice stalling. “About me not being afraid. I’m afraid every day… that the mistakes I make will live with me for centuries to come. Will cost me things I will have infinite time to replay.” She reached up and took Vex’s hand, threading their fingers and holding to her tight.
“And I’m so sure that I will break your heart because I simply have forgotten how they feel.” Her voice came out a whisper, strained like a breeze through a forest. Could only reach so deep into the growth.
“Break it then.” Vex said, challenging and encouraging and lovely. Looking at her like she were the stars above and not the roots below. “Mangle it. Shatter it. It is yours darling, you may have it anyway you wish. In a perfect glass box away from the light, or fast and fierce and shredded to make confetti. I don’t care.”
Keyleth felt a crack in her shell… violently ripping through. A burst of air through a cavern, threatening to tear her in two.
“Do you truly… want me so badly?” She grit it out, because asking was real. Asking meant no more hiding. Asking was terrifying… but she had to.
And Vex’s expression said it all. Confirmed what she sought and offered and wanted both to give and take of her.
“You have no idea.” She all but whispered.
And Keyleth’s shell was broken.
“No idea… how I want the girl that changed so much of my heart… expanded it and rewrote it and cradled it… to finally have it.”
She pressed the last step closer.
“How I want to give her so much, even if it is only for a fraction of the life she will endure…”
She gripped tighter to the hand in hers, then with her free one trailed the line beneath her eye again.
“How I want to know her… in a way that few others have because she is a garden, and I am greedy for her beauty… I crave her dandelions, her vines, her seasons. As many as I can get.”
Keyleth felt a tear blossom from uncertainty and Vex caught it before it ever fully formed.
“I want and I want and I want, Keyleth. But I know not what for. Until I think about… you. And then it’s so clear, even if a bit unexpected.” She smiled at her again in a way that was like a total eclipse. Something you’d see once in a lifetime…
And then Keyleth stopped thinking and kissed her.
Her mind went blessedly blank and focused only on…
The sensations.
The everything.
If she were a river she imagined this was what it felt like, to flow and ripple and bubble and break. If one were a river, were they a part of the water stream that moved and lived in a present space… or were they all of it… all the time. The entire flow moving and wrapping and chasing, even as new beads and drops joined. Even as you hit damns and fish and spilled over the land.
If she were a river it would feel like this. She was sure. Even if she didn’t know how the river felt, she knew it had to be as bound and boundless as this moment.
Chest pressed to Vex’ahlia. Lips trading life. Cheek to cheek like a sun to a sunflower. And then she felt Vex lean back against the desk and pull her with her, bending her at the waist to lay all of her weight atop.
Now she was a mountain. Meant to shield and grow and encase. Rock on rock. Earth bent and secured and holding fast. Caverns created for security and allure and the dark to thrive.
Because the dark was where secrets could be shared. Light could form. Roots could grow and life could resolve.
She shifted a hand to hold herself up, staff abandoned to lean against the desk and other hand holding onto Vex’s side. Carding between her ribs like they were meant to live in the indents.
Vex kissed her like she was the air. Everywhere and fierce and giving and taking.
Gods she was beautiful.
It was beautiful.
It was so easy to forget.
To just feel.
They were just elements… spiraling and fueling and reforming around each other.
And what was the Tempest meant to be... if not the elements?