Archive of Our Own

Keyleth isn’t aware of the transition from sleep to waking—she registers the touch on her foot, light enough to tickle, and flies upright with her eyes wide and scanning the dimness of her surroundings before she even realizes she was asleep and now is not.

Immediately she knows something is wrong.

She smells rose water and the clean starchy scent of linen. She smells the musky scent of wood polish. And leather, and something that makes her think of the thin air at the peak of a snowy mountain in winter. Her surroundings are a blur of dark colors and deep shadow, but there, at the foot of the bed, is Vax, watching her with an incomprehensible expression. His face leaps out of the darkness at her, pale and wary and still.

“Oh—Vax,” she whispers. It feels wrong to raise her voice. “You surprised me.”

He doesn’t say anything, but the slight frown between his brows smooths away and she swears she sees the corner of his mouth twitch. Vax is so frustrating that way. Even his smiles have to be stealthy.

Wait—the foot of her bed?

Rose water, like Laila uses in her daily washing. Wood polish, like Erwen uses stubbornly in his insistence to help them “maintain a respectable affluence”.

Are they… home…?

But—Keyleth frowns—of course they’re at home. Why wouldn’t they be home? And yet she can’t help but think there is some reason why this is wrong, some memory eluding her that casts its shadow like a looming—a looming—

—dra—

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Vax murmurs, and whatever the shadow is passes. Keyleth glances up at him, still frowning.

“Why are we here?” she asks.

“Well, you’re here because this is your room.” That hidden smile is back, tugging at his mouth like an insistent child. “And I’m here because—” He chokes his words off, a strange strangled sound, and shifts uneasily. He doesn’t finish.

Keyleth looks away, slowly scanning the room, and the blur settles into recognizable details. There’s her staff, leaning in the corner by the door. On the small table close to the bed, a snuffed candle, her anatomy book, the bone headdress older than even she can remember. The hooked rug in shades of blue and green that Percy had bashfully given her months ago. The desk by the window, scattered with seeds, a potted plant thriving on the sill, her small sack of personal gold carelessly left there in the mess. No signs of battle, or recent adventuring. But this is the Keep, not her room in Zephyra, so they must have been doing something. “What time is it?” she asks, feeling the shadow linger as a pulsing throb behind her eyes, at the top of her skull.

“Late,” Vax replies with a shrug. Abruptly he crosses to the window and throws it wide open, letting the night air wash through the room and sweep through Keyleth’s loose hair. The smell of the world—hay, the faint remnants of wood smoke, manure, sweet clover, the bright green smell of the rosemary plant in her window—soothes the headache away and grounds her.

She’s here, in her bed, with Vax at her window, and it’s late. He’s backlit by the moonlight now, but she might not have been able to read his expression anyway. She struggles not to blush. “Um, uh, does your sister know I’m here? I mean that you’re here? With me?”

“No, she doesn’t.” Is she imagining the laughter there in his voice? “I share a lot with my sister, but I don’t feel obliged to share all of my nightly wanderings with her. Why? Would you prefer I tell her?”

“I—uhh… I think that’s between you and her.” That was appropriately diplomatic, right? What’s he doing in her bedroom at night? From what her father said (vaguely, before she left) and what Scanlan has said (explicitly, at every opportunity) she can only think of three reasons why Vax would be here. Given that no one seems to be dying, the keep isn’t under attack, and he recently confessed his love to her, she’s pretty sure which one it is. “So. Um. What can I help you with?”

There’s a long silence, and for a moment Keyleth wonders if he’s not going to answer. Then: “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

More silence. “Okay…?” she prompts gently. “Do you… do you want me to mix you a potion? There are some herbal things that help with sleep—”

“That’s not what—”

“Then what?” she asks, maybe a little too sharply. Vax hesitates, then steps out of the bright silver light, back into the dimness of the shadows. Ironically, it’s easier to see him there. His shoulders are tight. “Vax,” she murmurs, “I’m just—trying to understand. What you want from me.”

“Me too.”

Keyleth takes a deep breath and blows it out in a heavy sigh. She wants to meditate. “Alright, well…” She trails off, thinking. Is she naked under the sheet? Keyleth surreptitiously glances down—she’s wearing a long shift, which is good because if she wasn’t her naked torso would have been on display for the last five minutes. Vex is right, she is a little hopeless. Carefully, Keyleth slides out from beneath the light comforter and folds her legs up beneath the tent-like skirt of the shift, then smooths the bedspread and pats it. “Here. Sit.”

“I’m not Trinket,” Vax protests, but he doesn’t even pause before he crosses the room and sits at the edge of the bed. He’s fully dressed, she notes: boots and belt and everything, even the cloak with its furred lining inside the hood. She’s not entirely certain what Vax looks like without any of his accoutrements. Although it occurs to her, with a little spark of thrill in the middle of her chest, that it could be interesting to find out.

“So,” she says, automatically falling into the same kind of soothing speech patterns she saves for wounded animals and lost children, “why can’t you sleep?”

Vax grunts. “If I knew, don’t you think I’d be sleeping better?”

She resists the urge to pout. “Not necessarily,” she replies a little defensively. “What do you do instead of sleep?”

“Walk around. Think. Train in the courtyard.”

“I’ve never heard you.”

“Most people don’t,” he quips with a quicksilver grin. Musing, he pulls out a dagger and flips it in his hand, flips it again, a line of flashing silver cutting the dark. “I write, sometimes.”

“Write what?”

A one-shouldered shrug. “Just… things. Tactics. Wishes. Regrets.” He pauses, the knife held blade-down in his palm. “I burn them afterwards.”

Keyleth hums sympathetically; she doesn’t know what else to say. After a moment, she asks, “Where do you walk?”

“All over the place.” He shakes his head and gives her a rueful look. “I don’t think tracking me through the city will help you diagnose my sleep problems, Keyleth.”

Keyleth, not Kiki. She feels the sting more than she expected, a sore, throbbing point just above her heart. “Oh. Sorry, I… Never mind.”

“No, I—I’m sorry.”

They both sit in stifled, stilted silence. Vax rises to his feet, making the dagger disappear somewhere into the folds of his clothes again. “I should go.”

“No, wait—”

For once, he isn’t gone before he hears her protest. Already at the door, his hand on the latch, Vax refuses to look at her, but he also hasn’t left. “I didn’t mean to—you know I don’t ever mean to make it awkward,” she says helplessly. “I just… do. But I don’t want you to leave. I’d like to help you, if I can.”

A soft wind blows outside the window, swirling clean night air into the room, and Keyleth tries to take heart from it, to let the wind buoy her. It feels like a hurricane is building up in her body—that stinging, aching point is still there in her chest, as well as the crumbling embers of her intrigued excitement at the thought of discovering where Vax’s daggers go and what he looks like when he isn’t wrapped up in cloaks and leathers. It feels like her heart never slowed down from its panicked waking pace, and her bare arms are tingling. She’s confused, and a little hurt, a little panicked, a little frightened, and a little—a little unsatisfied. She wants—she wants—

Her stomach lets out a rolling, rumbling growl.

She wants food, apparently.

Vax stares at her belly for a moment, then laughs and disappears out the door.

… Well. That was maybe a failure.

Keyleth stares at the closed door for a moment, then turns to look at her open window, overlooking the courtyard and the statue of Sarenrae. She can’t see it from her bed, but she knows it’s there, stretching its arms up to the sky. She could go do that right now—turn into an air elemental and just not be here for a little while, so she doesn’t have to think about the stinging point and the embers and the disturbingly sad circle of thought that whispers why did he leave me was I strange was I childish why was he here why did he go—

She flops back onto her bed, kicking her legs free of the nightgown. It’s too much effort to change her shape now. And besides, Vax is Vax. He’s always stupid and inscrutable and going around appearing and disappearing like it doesn’t give people a fright that would kill them where they stand. Who did he even think he was just appearing in her room in the middle of the night. He probably picked her lock. She should get harder locks. Like an adamantine lock. She should talk to Percy and set a lock with a bomb trap. But then he’d come in the window and—and maybe she would be okay with him coming in the window if he would just explain why he was there and not take off—

No. It’s too late for this. She’s going to sleep.

She lets out a huff, imagining all of her irritation and hurt being expelled into the air and gently pushed out into the night. It’s all right. She’ll just sleep.

She lies on the bed with her eyes closed and thinks of Vax, wandering the streets alone, melancholy and with no one to rely on, no one with whom to share his thoughts except a piece of paper and a fire.

She thinks of Vax snatched off the street by thugs from the Clasp.

She thinks of Vax stumbling drunk out of a bar, accosted by—angry barkeeps, thirsty brothel women, guards of the city—

Oh gods, she can’t stay.

Keyleth throws the sheets back and flings herself off the bed, throwing the wardrobe open and grabbing a tunic at random, fumbling for her boots. She’ll just have to try to find him. It occurs to her to wake Vex and ask for her help, but she remembers what Vax said and decides not to. She’ll just have to make do. Maybe in hawk form she’ll have better chances—but no, hawks hunt in the day, their night vision is poor—an owl then.

“What are you doing?”

The sudden voice breaking the quiet startles Keyleth so badly she falls forward into the wardrobe and hits her head on the wood paneling at the back. “Ow! Oh my—oww.” She rolls onto her side and curls up a little, her hands clutching her head. “Crap.”

“What the hell, Kiki?” Vax’s voice is burred with equal parts aggravation and amusement, but his hand on her shoulder is gentle as he helps her extricate herself from the armoire and sit up on the floor. “What were you doing?”

“I was going to go after you,” she replies, equally exasperated but much less amused. Gods, he’s back in her room and she doesn’t know whether to be pleased or terrified.

But he called her Kiki. He did, and now that sore point in her chest is glowing and warm and maybe a little fluttery.

“Go after me? I didn’t leave.”

“Yes you did! You walked away like you always do.”

With a carefully blank face, Vax reaches back behind him with his free hand and draws forth—a tray, laden with bowls of fruit and nuts and links of sausage and a wedge of cheese.

Keyleth stares at the platter in shock.

Vax clears his throat once, and he pushes a pear so that it topples and spins a little on the tray. “You seemed hungry.”

Keyleth looks from the platter to his face, back to the platter, and then to the open window that she can only sort of see around the bulk of the armoire. “So you didn’t leave?”

“I left for the kitchens.” This time the smile isn’t trying to hide; it’s broad and deep like a river, and Keyleth is electrically aware of that smile and of Vax’s ungloved hand sliding down her arm for a breath of time. Then he sets the platter off to one side, stands and reaches out to lift her to her feet. “But I thought you might prefer breakfast in bed to breakfast in the kitchens in a drafty shift.”

Keyleth is very aware of the breeze stirring her lightweight skirt and tickling her legs, and once again she tries not to blush. She probably does not succeed given how hot her face feels. “Um. Well. It’s a little early for breakfast? And maybe I should change—”

“No,” Vax says quickly, and Keyleth freezes, startled. His breath catches, he looks away—it suddenly occurs to Keyleth that he might be just as awkward and confused and uncertain as she is. “If—you should be comfortable,” he says, staring firmly at the window. “In your nightgown or not. But don’t—” Inexplicably his voice softens— “Don’t feel like you need to change for me.”

Blinking, off-kilter, Keyleth picks up the platter of food, spending all her attention on balancing it. It’s heavier than it looks, and there’s a pitcher and cups on the table beside her circlet. She carries the food to her bed and deposits it on the mattress, doesn’t bother to fix the bedspread, and then she sweeps an arm out to the bed in the gesture of welcome she’s practiced for her father since she was a child. “Will you join me?” she asks formally, and the oddness of the situation has them both grinning.

“I will, with my thanks,” Vax answers with equal formality, and he seats himself on the hooked rug with his back to the bedframe, a handful of grapes in one hand. Keyleth curls up against the pillows again and covers her legs with her skirt (she’s not self-conscious at all, she’s just cold). She takes a dark-skinned fruit, some cousin of a plum or a peach, and takes a bite. She has to cup her hand beneath her chin to catch the juice, and she carefully licks it from her palm, then swipes the juice from her face and licks that from her fingers. She repeats this process through another three bites of fruit; when she looks up, she finds Vax staring at her, his lips barely parted.

“Um,” she says succinctly, and then asks for a napkin.

“Didn’t bring one,” he says in a surprisingly rough voice, and then pays very close attention to his food. Briefly she wishes she could just summon a napkin out of thin air or cast prestidigitate. She looks down mournfully at her partially eaten fruit, wondering at her conundrum, when Vax taps her twice on the leg. “Eat,” he says softly, “and stop worrying.”

So she does. But she’s more careful with her bites.

They eat in a tense, thick silence that slowly—excruciatingly slowly—seems to relax into something companionable and, if not easy, at least not anxious. Vax reaches for the sausages and begins slicing one with his knife. She really hopes it isn’t the poison-tipped one. “How have you been sleeping?” he asks quietly.

“Me? Oh, um…” Keyleth hurriedly swallows her mouthful and thinks. “Uh, fine?”

“Fine?”

“I guess so…” She thinks harder, thinks back. “Well… I don’t know. I don’t remember sleeping badly. But, I mean, I haven’t—” She breaks off, not wanting to insult him. It’s not like she feels unsafe with Vox Machina. If anything, she knows she’s safer with them than anybody else, even the Ashari, even her father. But being with Vox Machina means she sees so much more of what makes the world dangerous. She might be well-protected, but she knows much much more about what she needs protecting from than she ever did in Zephyra. “I think there’s been a lot going on.”

“I’m worried.”

Keyleth waits. Vax is staring down at his hands, at the thin little moons of sausage and the dully gleaming blade, and what she can see of his expression is unexpectedly vulnerable and open and—frightened. “I understand that people die and I even understand it’s inevitable,” he says, “not two hundred years or sixty or one year from now, but tomorrow or the next day or on the full moon. It could happen in the next ten minutes. But I still don’t want any of you to die. Not any of you. I don’t want to die. And I’m fairly sure I will.”

“Oh, Vax,” she breathes instinctively, reaching out to comfort him, but he flinches away.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispers. “That’s the last thing I want to do. More than anyone, more than anything. But that, too, seems inevitable.”

“Is this about…?”

He takes a breath. “Your people and mine aren’t really that different as far as I can tell. But if what you said before—if that’s really—I can’t be an obstacle to you and your magic, your journey, your life. I don’t want to ask you to make that choice. And Vex’ahlia is worried about you coming between me and my life, but what I don’t think she understands is that I’ve already made my choice. I’ve done what I had to do. And if I’m waiting for the next two hundred years, or even if I’m not—that’s fine. That’s what I want. And neither of you can stop me.”

He’s finally looked up from the floor, and when he meets Keyleth’s eyes her breath stops in her throat. His eyes are so dark, so very handsome in his fine-featured face—but they’re blazing. They are absolutely molten with passionate resolve, with an iron-clad certainty that makes Keyleth shake all the way to her core.

“For me?” she squeaks.

As an answer, he nods solemnly, then turns on the floor so that he’s facing her. He puts the knife and food on the platter, reaches out to take her hand in his and draws it to him. Slowly, reverently, he bows his head and presses his lips to the back of her hand. She wonders if his lips are always that warm or if her skin is chilled by the night air.

Two hundred years, without even knowing if he’ll get—whatever it is that he wants. That kind of determination, that absolute faith in following a path through to its end no matter what the outcome—that’s the kind of feeling she has always been waiting for with her Aramente. The kind of feeling she wanted when she joined Vox Machina. She is still waiting to grow up and find that feeling, and it’s horribly intimidating and a little infuriating that Vax has discovered it, but… but it’s also inspiring. And not a little flattering.

There isn’t some great heroic journey or accolade or trophy waiting for him at the end. It’s just her. The only thing that gives him that determination, from what he’s told her… is just being around her.

Holy hells, being in love is the single most terrifying experience a mortal can go through.

It’s probably worse for immortals though.

So there’s that. For perspective.

“That’s probably selfish,” Vax says, and Keyleth’s head feels like it’s spinning as she tries to draw herself out of her whirlpool of feelings to remember what he’s talking about. Oh right. Choices. “And I—well I—” Vax hesitates, searches for the words he wants, then just closes his mouth. He turns around again and goes back to slicing sausages, head bowed. “I wanted to say that.”

“And you did,” Keyleth replies faintly, her heart hammering and her head swimming. “Can I have some of that?” She holds her hand out for some of the cold sausage and stuffs it in her mouth. She feels like she’s buying time, but what would she be buying it for? She’s not trying to stall something. Is she? She swallows and before she even thinks it her mouth is opening and saying, “Damn it, Vax.”

He looks up at her with wide eyes. “What?”

“You just—I can’t—you just say stuff and then—what am I supposed to say—”

“I say ‘stuff’ to you,” he interrupts gently, “because you listen. Because I want you to hear me. I want you to know how I feel. But you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. Although,” he hastily adds, “if you do want to, I—I will listen. I swear it.”

“Did you, um…” How exactly does she wants to ask this? Oh, just—fuck it. “Did you come here so you could… tell me that?”

Vax smiles. This one is a thin spidery thing, like a sick child. She wishes she could feed it and make it like itself better. “I’ll admit it’s been weighing on my mind a lot lately, but no, that isn’t why I came here.”

“Why did you come, then?”

Vax looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “Plants turn towards the sun, don’t they?”

“Well, not always,” Keyleth responds, musing. “It really depends on the plant and the kind of environment they prefer. I mean if you ask a mushroom whether or not it likes the sun you’d get a very different answer from, say, a snapdragon, and there’s always—Oh. Wait. Was that a—did you—Was that a metaphor?” She immediately flushes red. “Oh. I didn’t, um… wow.” Suddenly giddy with pleasure, Keyleth fusses with her hair and giggles a little. “I didn’t know you were poetic, Vax.”

“Neither did I. I guess we’re all learning new things tonight.”

Keyleth reaches for a pear and toys with it. She wonders, idly, what it is that people do in their bedrooms deep in the night. She imagines it varies from person to person, but—

“What do you think Grog and Scanlan do in the brothels when they visit?”

Vax chokes and coughs so hard Keyleth thinks either she’s killed him right there or he’ll wake everyone up and then the two of them will die of embarrassment. Hastily she pours from the pitcher—she’d been content with the fruit, she hadn’t realized the pitcher didn’t hold water but wine—and hands him a glass. “Breathe, Vax, breathe,” she coaches, and frantically runs through the spells she memorized earlier in the day, but now the words and gestures are a little fuzzy and does she even know any spells for impeded air flow? Anti-choking spells? She doesn’t think so. Maybe if she knew Bigby’s hand—

But no, he’s fine: Vax’s choking has transformed into laughter, an almost hysterical, tearful kind that has him clinging to the bedframe for support. Keyleth sits there in her shift with a frown and pursed lips and tries not to feel mocked. “Learning new things,” she grumbles to herself, and she doesn’t think he hears her until he reaches up to squeeze her hand.

“You’re absolutely right,” he wheezes. “Learning new things. Right.” He takes a few deep, nearly whooping breaths. “What do you think they do, Kiki?”

She fidgets and tries to take her hand back. He holds tight. “I, well, I guess—you know, they. Do what they paid their money for. They… have sex?”

He nods with a solemnity that makes her feel like a child being teased. “Probably.”

“It’s just—” She gestures listlessly at her room with her free arm. “Do they do, I dunno, this? Do people pay for this?”

“You’ll have to clue me in, Kiki.”

“I mean… Is sex all they do? Or is it—I don’t know.” She shakes her head, having successfully confused herself. “I just think, maybe, maybe people want things besides sex. In the night. You know? I wondered—maybe there are people who go to a brothel and pay for a companion, and that’s all they want, you know, just a companion. They just want someone to feed them grapes and tell them stories and maybe give them a kiss on the cheek so they feel cared for. I don’t know. I just—wondered.”

You know what I think?” Vax says when she’s finished her fumbling theory. “I think you are an incredibly wise, compassionate, amazing woman, Keyleth. You really are. Maybe there are people who do just that. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

She’s so overwhelmed by the compliment she barely notices the agreement. She flounders for a moment, struggling for new, less provocative topics. Then she sees his smile.

She spends a lot of time noticing Vax’s smiles. Not necessarily because they’re infrequent, or hard to find—although they often are—but because there’s so much to think about in that expression. Why is he doing that? What is he really thinking? Whatever it was that made him smile, can she do that again? Even though she knows he can celebrate and be silly and take joy and satisfaction in life, there’s still such a sad, worn feeling to him that she cherishes every smile she catches on his face. And this one—she’s never seen one like this before, not even with Grog, not even with Vex.

It’s not blinding. It’s not even tender, or shy. It’s a smile that has absolutely no hesitation, no discomfort or self-consciousness. Vax’s smile is broad and comfortable and happy. A genuine expression of genuine happiness.

It’s got that same blaze to it that she saw in his eyes, just moments ago.

That, Keyleth, she thinks she hears in a voice that is just her own but sounds so very much like her mother, is the face of a man who is very deeply in love.

And seeing that smile, Keyleth knows before she even truly feels it, knows before she acknowledges it, that she’s wearing one just like it.

She should probably think about this. She should meditate on it. She should consider some decisions she’ll have to make. But instead, Keyleth takes the platter of half-eaten food and the pitcher and cups and puts them all on the side table (she shoves her book to the floor first and ignores Vax’s muffled laughter when she leans over to lay it down more neatly) and gently tugs on Vax’s elbow.

“Come up here,” she says. “I’m not gonna let you sit on the floor this whole time.”

“It’s all right, I’m—”

“Nope,” she cuts him off. “Up.”

Grumbling a little, Vax climbs up onto the bed. He sits at the foot, his booted feet still on the floor; she’s still folded up under the tent of her shift. She doesn’t feel like she needs the cover now. She lets her toes peep out from beneath her gown. “Take off your shoes, Vax.”

His eyebrows wing up in silent, skeptical surprise. “Kiki…”

“I’m not going to molest you,” she giggles, and Vax snorts and toes the boots off. Barefoot, he crosses his legs and turns to face her.

They stare at each other, he at the foot of the bed, she tucked up against the pillows. He says, “Now what?”

It’s a fair question, she supposes, but he’s the one who came to her room. “I’ve been sleeping,” she says quietly, “but I slept better in Zephyra. I don’t know if that’s because I was younger, or because I didn’t know as much.”

“Because your father was near,” Vax supplies with sympathy.

“I miss him.”

“I can see why,” Vax says with a small, thoughtful nod. “He’s a good man.”

“Wait—you’ve met my father?” There’s that feeling again, that unsettling shadow, just gliding past in the distance—

“I can picture you as a girl,” Vax continues. “Running around in the mountain meadows, barefoot and squealing, picking up flowers and toads and squirrels and introducing yourself.”

“Of course I was barefoot,” says Keyleth. The shadow has passed. “What self-respecting druid would grow up without feeling the earth and air and water and fire on her feet?”

“Fire?”

“We walked across hot coals daily as a meditation exercise,” Keyleth tells him with a deadpan expression, but she’s cracking even before she reaches the end of the sentence. Vax gives her a long-suffering look as she snorts inelegantly into her palm.

“Yes, we did similar things in Syngorn,” he replies dryly. “My father flung my sister and me from the cliffs to teach us to fly.”

“We didn’t do that even though most of us can fly.”

“Well, and neither did my father. But I imagine he would have if it had occurred to him.”

He’s sad again. Keyleth looks at the window, where the moonlight has shifted to spill onto a different part of the floor, and she pats the bed beside her. “You said you weren’t sleeping,” she says. “Lie down.”

But Vax is immediately tense and distraught, backing away, sliding one foot back to the floor. “Keyleth, no, I’m not trying to—”

“I know you’re not,” she says impatiently. “I’m trying to help you relax. I’m not saying you have to sleep here, although if you do I won’t kick you out. But maybe—I don’t know, maybe you can relax a little at least. Rest.” He’s still coiled up and ready to run, and Keyleth gently says, “Didn’t you used to sleep with your sister? Maybe your body just isn’t used to sleeping alone.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“I bet it wasn’t that long. And maybe it’s delayed reaction.” She scrunches her nose playfully. “I promise I won’t bite.”

Slowly, like watching grass grow—which Keyleth has done many a time, so she’s prepared to be patient—Vax gets back on the bed. “My clothes are dirty.”

“So take them off,” she cheerfully suggests. It was that damned smile—it’s loosed some kind of dam in her, something that was keeping her in check. She doesn’t know where the worry, the fear, the anxiety have gone, but she finds herself not missing them terribly much. And she really did wonder what Vax looked like without the cloak. “You can take off the cloak at least. And the belt. Right?”

Vax raises one eyebrow—you really think I’ll just drop my knives on the floor?—but he undoes the ties at his throat that fasten the cloak, and then reaches for the buckle of his belt. And then he undoes a second, nearly invisible buckle underneath his left arm and removes something that looks like a harness—with several knife sheathes dangling from it.

“That’s where your knives go!” Keyleth squeals in delight. “I knew they couldn’t all fit in your belt!”

“Were you looking?” Vax asks, amused, and Keyleth ducks her head.

He drapes both the belts and his cloak over the frame of the bed, then slides up next to her by the pillows. It’s a large bed—large enough that she has on more than one occasion fallen asleep with her head at one end and awoken with it in a completely different position—and the two of them are able to lie comfortably against the stacked pillows and not touch. Keyleth finds this a little disappointing. She watches him, still lying there fully clothed and not relaxed at all, and lets him see her laughing at him.

“What?” he demands gruffly, and she reaches out to stroke his shoulder soothingly.

“Relax,” Keyleth says again, admonishing. She continues petting his shoulder, stroking down over his sleeve with a firm pressure, then moves to stroking his hair. It’s a little difficult with him sinking into the pillow but not impossible. She gently lets her fingertips glide from his scalp down to his shoulders—it’s loose, except for the thin braid pulled back from his hairline and draping down the back of his head. She gently tugs it out from between him and the pillow and examines it, twisting it back and forth in the moonlight. The laughter has drained out of her and the defensiveness out of him, leaving them both quiet and expectant.

“Vex and I used to braid each other’s hair,” Vax volunteers softly. “When we were children. There were servants, of course, at my father’s home—but we refused to let them do it.”

“Do you still?”

“Not as often,” he muses. “Circumstances have changed. But sometimes, yes.”

Keyleth hums and remarks, “This is a little messy… Do you sleep with it like this?”

“I shouldn’t. But yes.”

She hums again, then gently begins sliding the locks of hair one over the other, undoing the braid and leaving three rippling ribbons of black hair swinging from her hands. She can feel Vax’s eyes on her and, vaguely worried, she says, “Don’t worry. I’ll braid it again if you want. Or, or you could ask Vex—”

“It’s fine. It’s wonderful. Thank you.”

She’s been avoiding his gaze a little as the quiet grew closer, but now she takes a glance to really look. He seems more at ease now, softer around the edges, and when she runs her fingers through his hair from scalp to tip he smiles and lets his eyes slide shut. That’s good. Maybe—there’s a flutter of a memory in the back of her mind, a dim image that comes into sharpness—

“Hey,” she says gently. “Lie down. On your stomach. I want to try something.”

He gives her a skeptical, confused look, but willingly slides down the sheets and flips over, resting his head on his folded arms. She doesn’t give him enough time to become nervous, because she can imagine it would be hard for a rogue to turn his back on anyone and not be nervous, and she doesn’t want to give herself time to be nervous either. She swings one leg over his hips and perches there, on her knees, not quite allowing herself to sit but very aware of the brush of her naked thighs against the leather and cloth of his pants.

“Kiki—” he gasps and tries to turn.

“No, no no, it’s fine, look you’re fine.” Gently but firmly she presses the heels of her palms forward and down, into the meat of muscle bunched between his shoulders and neck, and is satisfied when she startles a groan out of him. “Aha. I thought so. Just—let me know if anything hurts, okay? It might, but I’ll try to be gentle.”

He’s silent for a long moment and Keyleth almost draws her hands back, almost backs away, but then there’s a whisper: “Okay. I trust you.”

She’s touched, but she can’t help but say, “It’s not like I’d be attacking you.” He’s being silly and he should just let her help.

And he does, with a grunt and a huff of a laugh. Slowly she rolls her hands back and forth across the bands of tight muscle in his shoulders and back and arms, works her way up and down his spine and along each of his ribs. When the obtrusive thick weave of his tunic gets increasingly frustrating to work with, she slides her hands under it. He gasps, and she stays very still, her palms flat against his back. She’s never done this before, actually; sometimes she used this skill on herself after battle but with her healing magic available it was never necessary. And it still isn’t necessary, but there’s something wonderful about it. Something soothing but provocative about having her hands on his skin, his body under hers, his trust in her apparent in every single gesture. She holds still and waits, and then he breathes again and the blood is thrumming in her cheeks and she keeps going. She digs her thumbs under the wings of his shoulder blades and jumps at the volume of his relieved groan. “No, sorry, it’s good, thank you,” he stutters, voice vibrating through her hands, and she feels hot and a little dizzy but she keeps going because yes it is good and things are fine. The night is quiet and gentle and the air is fresh and his skin is warm and soft. It’s… it’s actually kind of amazing.

They stay that way, quiet and connected, until Keyleth feels only smooth, giving flesh beneath her palms. “Better?” she asks. He hums. “I don’t feel any more knots, so…”

“Was that magic?” Vax asks, muffled by the pillow.

“No,” Keyleth laughs. “No, it’s something I learned from the Earth Ashari. They’re very attuned to their physical forms and how they interact with the earth, so… I don’t really know how they learned it, but it works, right?”

“Yeah,” he answers, in such a long drawn-out sound it may as well be a sigh instead of a word. She smiles fondly down at him, at the funny lumps her knuckles make beneath his shirt, and withdraws one hand to stroke his hair again. It’s hiding his face, a stretch of ink across the shadowy creases of the pillow, and as she draws her hand down she feels the warmth of his breath filter through the locks. It’s sweet in a way that makes her chest ache.

She thinks maybe she accomplished something—maybe he really did fall asleep—when suddenly she’s overturned, the ceiling spinning over and around her as she’s tumbled to the bed. Vax’s face swings into her vision, intent and almost angered.

“I want to do something,” he announces. Keyleth blinks up at him, utterly discomposed and confused now that the quiet intimacy has been shattered.

“W-What?” she stutters.

If anything, he looks angrier. “I want to do something,” he says. “For you. Like—like that. What you—” Suddenly all the intensity washes out of his expression as if wiped away by a rainstorm, and his face descends (she panics briefly—he’s not going to—is he going to—kiss—) until it’s gone, buried just over her shoulder, his arms bracing him so that he’s barely touching her. He’s so close she can feel the heat pouring off of his body, and she knows that all she would need to do is take a deep breath and then—and then—

“Please?” Vax whispers into her hair. “Let me take care of you. I think it might… help.”

“S-Sure… I guess, but—don’t you and Vex take care of each other? Like all the time? I mean, if it helps that’s great but I’m not sure it would work with me and—” She refuses to believe it’s taking care of her specifically that would ease him.

But Vax pulls back and looks at her with that solemn, intent face. “Vex hasn’t needed me to take care of her in years,” he says slowly, “but even if she did… she isn’t the one I want to care for now.”

Keyleth feels her face burn. She squirms a little, but he’s still there just above her, and she’s suddenly pulled apart as half of her wants to cower into the bed until it swallows her and the other half yearns to move, to dive into him, to go up and in and out and towards—

“Um, well,” she gasps eloquently, and then she can’t talk anymore because the feelings are new and powerful and she just doesn’t know what to do.

And Vax, maybe because of that serious, intent look, seems to understand. His eyes curve in a gentle smile that doesn’t touch his lips, and he carefully eases away from her. “Sorry,” he murmurs, “I just—I really want to… do what you did for me. For you.”

Keyleth is sucking air down like a drowning person breaking the surface, but she’s aware enough to say, “What, a massage? I can teach you where pressure points are if you want.”

“That’s good too,” he answers with a ghost of a chuckle, “but… I want—something to help you. To put you at ease.” He shrugs. “Something that would remind you of your home? Something… good. I don’t—I’m not very good at this, but that’s what I want.”

If only she knew what she wanted! But it occurs to Keyleth that she does—very clearly she wants to be close to him, to get closer, to feel. But she’s scared to feel too much. So: feel, but don’t feel too much. She looks at him, sitting up in the bed with his careful hands and his serious eyes and his mussed, beautiful hair, and she can’t help but smile as broad as a child with a sweet because he is here. He’s mad and careless and he can’t sleep and he’s her friend and he’s beautiful and he says he loves her. “Can you—” Her breath catches in her throat like a bad key in an old lock, but she swallows and tries again. She knows what she’s doing, for once. “Can you… take that off?”

He blinks. She surprised him. “What off?”

“Your shirt.”

“Oh. Ah.” Is he blushing? He’s blushing. She resists the urge to squeal. “Is that… Are you—?”

“I’m asking.”

Wordlessly, Vax strips off his shirt in one motion and drops it off the side of the bed. He quirks an eyebrow. “Your turn?”

Keyleth laughs where on another night, something less warm and moonlit and new, she might have lost her head. She shakes her head. “No. Not right now. Maybe—not right now. Come here.”

Whatever sense of well-being she has soaked up, whatever natural magic it is that makes her feel like she might be sparkling, it seems to have affected Vax too. His gestures are no longer stilted as he returns to the pillows; he moves with a smooth, comforting fluidity, something that in the language of bodies says this is a safe place. “So?” he asks, settling in close to her. “What can I do?” When she hesitates a little, he reaches out slowly, as if she were a bird or a small woodland creature, and his fingertips drift across her shoulder. It’s such a light touch it almost feels like a breeze, but her nerves tingle in its wake.

“Um,” she whispers, her voice suddenly tiny, “that’s pretty good. I guess.”

“No,” he says with another stealthy corner of a smile, “that was for me. What can I do for you?” She meets his eyes. A tender smile, something almost wistful but gentle and close and good. “Kiki. Tell me.”

Keyleth breathes in the air. Rose water and wood polish, and the sweet ripeness of the grapes on her table. Keyleth reaches over and snags a bunch, then offers them to Vax. “Tell me a story?”

He lets out a thoughtful hum, plucking the grapes from her hand and cradling them in his palm. “What sort of story?”

“A bedtime story. Obviously.”

“I don’t know many.” Vax sinks deeper into the pillows and lifts an arm to tuck it over Keyleth’s shoulders. She doesn’t flinch or blush or gasp; she lets out a little hum and shifts closer so that her head is nestled into the dip of his body where shoulder meets breast. She lifts her hand and gently traces the bow of his collarbone. She’s seen plenty of naked men and touched them in a medical sense, but never had this kind of easy proximity before. It’s breathtaking. “There’s one I know. Gods know my teachers forced me to translate it a thousand times.” He paused, and his fingers where they dangled against her arm brushed over her skin, then again, a slow, hypnotic gesture. “I know the Ashari are composed of many different kinds of people—do they give up the heritage of their ancestors? When they accept the teachings of your people?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do they give up the gods of their pantheon?”

“For the most part. I think some worshippers are within the clans of the Ashari, but since we deal with nature directly, the idea of gods being some kind of representative for what we already talk to is sort of… weird.”

“So then, I would assume, the Ashari wouldn’t have much in the way of elven lore?”

Keyleth shakes her head and bites down on a smile when Vax shivers under the stirring of her hair against his skin. “Not that anyone told me.”

“There are many gods in the world,” Vax mused, his voice slipping into a slow and melodic tone she’s never heard before, “but they are not all for humankind, not as most believe. The dwarves have dwarven gods; the orcs have theirs, and the gnomes. Today we say many of these gods are mere aspects of the true gods, the gods of humans, but once that was not so. They were whole and powerful unto themselves before the The Sundering, before the Spellplague. At least, that’s what my teachers taught me.

Now there is only one god for the elves—Corellon Larethian, King of the Silver Circlet, lord over magic and music. He is the only one to have survived. But many ages ago, when his children were not even known as Tel’Quessir, he and his people were many, living together happily in the city of Arvandor, in Arborea.”

“We remember Arborea,” Keyleth murmurs, already lulled by Vax’s story. “There are powerful nature spirits there. We talk to them sometimes.”

“The elves do not remember it merely as a plane of nature,” Vax continues. “It’s a plane of emotion—an entire realm ruled by the heart. But all who lived there were essentially good creatures; they celebrated the creation of beautiful works of art, the building of glorious towers and lush gardens, the composition of deeply moving arias. They were happy, and they loved themselves and their land fiercely. Corellon was king even then, and the mysterious and lovely Sehanine Moonbow, Lady of Dreams, was his consort. Though few knew her true mind, they trusted that she watched all with a compassionate eye. And yet, though Sehanine was true to him, Corellon’s heart strayed. This was, after all, a land where passion was stronger than anything, spurred on by beauty. There was another lady: Araushnee, who was more beautiful than any other, dark-skinned and silver-haired and dreaming of destinies for those who had not yet even been born. Corellon fell desperately in love with her, and together they bore children. Those children have since become gods of the drow, for Araushnee the Weaver did not realize that a destiny had been spun for her that would force her and her lover against each other. Araushnee was good, but not kind, and the more she saw others creations’ celebrated by Corellon, and the longer he loved her without giving up Sehanine, the more she grew bitter and jealous of his heart. She began a plot to bring down the entire city and all its denizens, starting with Corellon Larethian. She whispered secrets into the ears of his enemies and poured poison in the ears of his friends.

Eventually her evil would be unveiled—the Moonbow would be the one to reveal the true ugliness beneath her disguise. But before that, a terrible destiny had to be enacted. The purity of Arvandor was failing, and the balance of good and evil shifting. Araushnee knew of the orc god Gruumsh, a greedy and violent entity who was eager to consume the passions of Arborea, and she let him and an army of wicked creatures, demigods and spirits of destruction, through the gates of the realm. She led them straight to the bountiful feast where Corellon and all his followers had gathered, and hid Gruumsh until the orc god was right behind the king. Then she snuck away to rejoin the party and appear as helpless as those she had sentenced to death. Gruumsh meant to impale Corellon on his magical spear, so paralyzing him and keeping him alive but powerless—but in the moment when Araushnee’s powers abandoned Gruumsh to guard her own destiny instead, Corellon sensed his presence and leapt to his feet. A great battle was fought. The two were matched in strength and agility, and the battle went on for days as Corellon’s people armed themselves and defended their king against the hordes of malevolent entities who had stormed the city to aid Gruumsh. There was a moment when defeat seemed inevitable. Gruumsh landed a powerful blow against the elven god and brought him to his knees, where his blood spilt upon the ground. Seeing her lord so wounded, Sehanine, who intervened in Corellon’s moment of weakness to distract the orc god, wept silver tears over his blood.

What happened then is different according to who tells the tale. Some say the Seldarine had made bodies for the elves but mourned their inability to give the bodies life; and when the blood and tears mixed the elves leapt out of time in this pivotal moment to pour the elixir of life into their children to summon them to the battle. Some say in a frenzy of desperation the Seldarine took the elixir and touched it to their works of art—their statues, goblets, paintings, columns, fountains—and the city itself was transformed into the first Tel’Quessir. And a very few say, in a moment of true sorrow and regret for what she had done, Araushnee ran to Corellon’s side to cradle him, but in her fear and guilt could not make it there; instead she took up the tears and blood of her queen and king and wove them into a net of stars, which she cast over the realm. Wherever the net touched the ground, Tel’Quessir arose blinking in the light and forever dreaming of stars. But if that was an act of mercy and goodness from Araushnee, it was the last she would ever make, and few if any elves would ever tell you the tale in that fashion. But however it happened, it was from this horrific battle with Gruumsh that the elven race was born: the clashing of great good with great evil, and a moment when the dark seemed certain to overcome the light.”

A quiet that almost seems to have a presence, a glowing weight, settles after Vax’s last words. Keyleth feels like she’s rousing from meditation; she stirs a little beneath Vax’s arm and realizes his fingers, for the last several minutes, have been scrawling light patterns against her arm. She smiles and curls up into the curve and warmth of his body. “Was that the end?”

Vax half-shrugs, and Keyleth’s head rolls back and forth across his chest with the movement. “Not really. The teachers in Syngorn adored telling tales about Corellon Larethian—how noble, how kind, how wise, how good for the elves and good for choosing the elves. So the saga continues. Stuffy. But I remember that one. It’s a good tale.”

“It is,” Keyleth agrees, and closes her eyes. And then she opens them again. “Hey. Vax.”

He hums in answer.

“We’re lying here. On my bed. Together.”

“Mmhm.”

“And you aren’t running away and I’m not panicking and also I am wearing a nightgown and you have no shirt.”

“Mmhm.”

“Is this… isn’t this something kinda important?”

She tilts her head back to peer into Vax’s face, and he looks down at her with a fond half-smile. “Does it have to be important? Maybe it can just be good.”

Keyleth blinks, startled by this concept. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Just good. It—it is, you know. Good.”

Vax just smiles, eyes crinkled with stifled laughter. Keyleth, feeling a little stunned by how comfortable he looks—how she feels!—straightens her neck to an easier position. Without really thinking about it, she strokes the flat of her palm down his chest, lifts it to do it again, and again.

“Oh. Almost forgot.” Vax lifts the grapes he’s been holding in his other hand all this time with a wry expression. “My lady—the fruits of your labor.” Keyleth laughs and lifts her hand up to accept his offering, but Vax draws the fruit back again. Confused, she waits and watches as he plucks one grape from the bunch and holds it in his fingertips. She doesn’t move as he slowly brings his hand to her mouth and presses the fruit against her lips. “Chew and swallow,” he says, and though he sounds as if he’s trying to joke his voice cracks in the middle. She carefully makes sure her lips don’t touch his fingers, but she can feel the rising heat in her body all the same. Vax clears his throat once, gently, and says, “Stories and grapes.”

“Stories and grapes,” she echoes, “yeah. So, um… do you feel better now? Do you think you could sleep?”

Immediately she feels Vax still and stiffen against the headboard. “Oh. Yeah. Of course.” He begins to shift his weight, swinging one leg toward the edge of the bed. Keyleth’s hand shoots up and smacks against his breastbone, pinning him in place.

“Hang on! Wait, wait, I meant sleep here!”

Vax’s face is, for once, completely easy to read. He really wasn’t expecting that. “H-Here?”

“Well of course!” Keyleth sits up, keeping her hand on his skin, and gives him a mild glare. “I don’t just invite people to take off their shirt and stay in my bed so that they can leave. Wait, what—what I mean is—just don’t go.” The indignant fire drains out of her and is replaced by a prickle of chilly uncertainty. “It’s okay… Right?”

“Yeah. I just thought you—”

“I didn’t—”

They both stop, mouths open, voices stuck. Then Keyleth laughs and reaches over to tug Vax’s leg back on the bed. “Just once,” she giggles, “can we do something and let it be easy?”

“I guess we can try,” Vax replies dryly, and shakes his head at her continued giggles. “What about you, Kiki? Will you sleep a little easier tonight?”

She smiles and slides down deeper into the mattress, reaching down to draw the sheet up over her body. “I think I could try.”

It takes a little while—for all that she does want him here she’s never shared a bed before, and it’s a strange experience. For a few long moments Vax is tense and still mostly upright, clearly not sure if he’s truly welcome. But she takes comfort in the sound of his breath and waits. Eventually, he follows her beneath the sheet, tickling her bare legs with his toes as he does. After a moment, she feels him very lightly, very tentatively, slide his arm over her waist. “That’s good, too,” she whispers, and feels him relax and come closer, his chest against her back, his thighs fitted to hers. Respectfully he keeps a little distance between their hips, and she thinks it might be more comfortable if he didn’t do that, but this is only a first night after all. Maybe… maybe they’ll adjust and get better. With practice.

Yeah. Practice.

“Kiki,” he whispers, and she smiles at his breath in her hair, his voice humming in her ear. “Thank you. You… you’re the moon to me.”

“Better than Selenine?” she murmurs drowsily. She mostly feels his laugh more than hears it.

“Sehanine,” he corrects gently, “and yes. So much better than her.”

“Mkay,” she hums. “G’night, Vax.”

“Good night, my love.”

She wants to turn around at that, wants to address it, answer him, something—but suddenly the sheets are so heavy, so easy to sink into, and his arm where it weighs her down is immovable. She should just stay. She should stay here every night and every morning.

She should stay…

Keyleth isn’t aware of the transition from sleep to waking—she registers the touch on her foot, light enough to tickle, and flies upright with her eyes wide and scanning the dimness of her surroundings before she even realizes she was asleep and now is not.

Immediately she knows something is wrong.

Where she was—wherever she should have been—there was a sense of comfort, a sweetness in the air. Now she smells staleness; the rank odor of unwashed bodies, the smell of charred wood, and ash. So much ash, bitter and acrid in her nose and thick on her tongue. She feels like her mouth was turned to charcoal in her sleep. Around her the thin canvas cloth that was haphazardly set up as a tent has sagged inward, and she felt the blanket tickle her feet where the end of the tent had begun to shift her bedroll with its falling. Outside she hears someone weeping quietly. Keyleth scrambles loose from the blanket wound tightly around her and claws her way forward, shoving aside the scratchy flap of the tent.

The sky is black; the land is black, outlined in red and orange. Embers and low, lazy fires dot the landscape, and everywhere there are lumpy mysterious shapes close to the ground; rubble, felled trees, molten rocks beginning to cool. Bodies. What were once homes.

Pyrah. The dragons. The portal to the Plane of Fire.

Oh, hell.

Keyleth falls backwards through the flap of the tent again, drawing a curtain over the scene of destruction. Even though it is night, it is not quiet; she can hear the low conversation and weeping of her surviving kin, and the ever-present crackle of the voracious fires snaps and roars through the dark. She drags a hand through her hair and scowls at the snarl her fingers catch in. She picks through it, smoothing it down, and as she does pieces of the dream wander back to her. She remembers her room, back in Emon—probably gone now, toasted to dragon cinders. She remembers a story from her childhood, although which one is a mystery. And…

And Vax.

Vax, smiling at her like—like Vex smiling at a treasure chest. Like Pike in the sunlight. Like her father. Like all of them and none of them.

Was that—was that a dream? Or did it really happen? Could it be a memory? No, she had never let Vax into her room in Emon. Or had she? But she had been there, she had tasted wine and smelled the city and felt Vax’s arm around her (she blushes, and shivers, and feels tears prick her eyes). Why did it feel like a memory?

Unless… unless she was remembering something that would be, but had not yet been.

As Keyleth sits in her bedroll, feeling cold and small despite the dry heat of the ground, feeling bruised and sore and fragile, she realizes that she is terribly lonely. Not for the first time. She’s been lonely for a while. But in the dream—she remembers a feeling of absolute comfort, of being cared for and safe and wanted and good. She hasn’t felt like that since she was very small. And also—something new, something exciting and thrilling, like the feeling of falling from a great height knowing that you can cast a spell to catch yourself just before you hit the ground.

She stares at the silhouette of her hands in the dim light. She thinks of the spark stone in her pack. She thinks, strangely, of her father, and of his faith in her during the closing of the portal to the Fire Plane.

And then, before she can overthink her impulse, she crawls out of her tent and stands.

She knows which one is Vax’s. She always makes a note of who sleeps where around the campfire. That way she can count heads if anyone goes missing, and if anyone is too far or too near the fire she can check their temperature and supply blankets or a canteen as needed. Of course here, with the lava still cooling and bleeding cracks still popping open in the earth, no fire is necessary; but out of habit she marked his tent and remembered. She kneels outside it and raises her hand.

What is she doing? You can’t knock on a tent flap. She sits there on her knees, at a loss. She doesn’t really want to call out or make a noise. Vex is right next door and she is positively uncanny with her ability to spot things. And if Scanlan heard anything at all she may as well go home, embarrassed into exile. But she’s here and she can’t keep thinking about it or she might just go back, and maybe she should go back, it’s late and he’s probably already asleep and she doesn’t want to disturb—

A hand shoots out of the flap and yanks her inside before she can blink. Another hand clamps down over her mouth before her shriek can escape. There’s a brief scuffling moment when Keyleth is pulled up short against something solid, the world a blur of dim orange and deep shadow, and then she hears: “Kiki?”

The hands release her, and she tries to gulp down air as quietly as possible.

“Kiki,” she hears again, and turns to see Vax looking somewhat aghast. “What—are you all right, what’s happened, is everyone—”

“Fine,” she wheezes, and tries to breathe some more. After a moment she whispers, “It’s fine, everyone’s fine. I just—I just wanted to see you.”

Vax sits back on his heels, his hands still suspended in the air. He says nothing.

The silence spins out until Keyleth can’t take it anymore, and then she confesses, “I’m sorry, I know this is strange, but I had a dream and I think you were in it and I think it was really nice and I just woke up and was really scared because everything’s dying and everyone’s dying and I just wanted to remember what it was like to not die and I know that sounds crazy but—”

“Kiki.”

She shuts up. The taste of ash is still coating her tongue.

Out of the hellish darkness a touch comes. She jumps a little, can’t help it, but the touch is soft and careful. The brush of fingers against her cheek, the slight smell of tangy sweat and dust and leather. The touch gently moves over the bones of her face, up to the point of her ear, and then away into the dark again. “It’s all right,” Vax murmurs. “We’re all frightened. We’d be madmen or gods if we were not frightened. But if I can give you anything, if—if I can ease you—” He lets out a frustrated puff of breath. “You only have to ask.”

“That was for me. What can I do for you?”

“I’m asking,” Keyleth whispers, and feels a strange sense of déjà vu. “Could I… maybe… could I just stay here with you tonight?”

She hears him draw in his breath slowly, hears the creak of his leathers as he stirs. She tries not to flinch in expectation of rejection. And then he says, “Of course,” and is gently reaching out and cradling her arms in his hands, drawing her in and down to the bedroll. “Do you want—me—?”

“If you could stay,” she says, nodding vigorously as she stretches out on her side across the bedroll. He was sleeping with the blanket spread out as an extra cushioning layer between him the unforgiving rocky earth. She watches him as he lowers himself beside her, setting his daggers within reach, shifting the rolled up cloak he was using as a pillow to her narrow half of the bedroll despite her protests. He produces another cloak from his pack, a much lighter weave, and drapes it over her legs.

“Do you need anything?” he asks.

“Just… to feel better?”

He has no response to that, but soon she feels him settle down on the blankets behind her. He does not touch her until she reaches back and grabs his hand, draping his arm over her waist. With that same déjà vu, she listens for the catch in his breath, the return of that steady rhythm, waits for the feel of it moving her hair like waves washing over the beach. Though it is stifling warm in the tent, in the air, in the ground, he feels blessedly cool to her. She smiles and tugs him a little closer. “Don’t let me hog all the blankets,” she murmurs, and smiles deeper when she feels his chest press up against her shoulder blades. “Thank you, Vax.”

“Yeah… Sleep well, Kiki.”

She wonders if she will sleep at all, here in the burned out cradle that was once the Cindergrove. Doom seems to be writ on the surface of the world and there is nowhere to go. Peace seems to be as much a dream as the memory of her bedroom in Emon. And yet here, in the bowels of despair, she had that dream—that dream that was so vivid, so poignant, so real that she can’t help but feel a spark jumping in her chest. It might be hope. The weight of his arm over her hip shifting as they breathe, she is aware of the fear and sorrow fluttering at the edge of her thoughts—but only at the edges. Because he is with her, those dark thoughts slide away into a vague space of I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Because of Vax.

Somewhere in an elusive corner of her soul, without words, without even conscious thought, Keyleth knows that she recognizes him now for who and what he is. What he truly is to her.

As she rests, she does not dream again. Instead, in a darkness that now feels soft and protected, she is adrift in the sensation of breath on the back of her neck steady like the tides, and the comforting weight of his body against hers.