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Percy sees the blow coming, and knows Vex cannot dodge it in time. So, he does what any rational, clear-thinking man would do.
He throws himself between the archer and the monster to take the blow for her.
The direwolf hits him like a battering ram, knocking him back half a dozen paces, and pain lances up his side, sharp enough to take his breath away. A second later a pair of arrows sink into its eye socket, and it wrenches its head to the side, knocking Percy off balance. Its teeth tear deep into his abdomen before the thing collapses backwards, twitching pathetically. Percy looks up to see Vex standing a dozen paces away, grinning wildly.
Then his legs buckle and he seems to fall in slow motion, watching as Vex’s face shifts from victory to confusion to horror, her mouth shaping his name. He hits the ground with a thud, and the world explodes in stars and agony.
Spots swim across his vision, speckling the afternoon sky as it bleeds from blue to red, the early sunset of the northern mountains. It’s rather nice, he thinks distantly––a wash of reds and blues and purples, an indigo sunset. It reminds him of Whitestone, and he smiles at the thought.
A shape intrudes on his view, dark-hair and wide brown eyes and oh, yes, Vex. He’s glad she’s here, he thinks with an idle sort of comfort, to see the indigo sunset with him.
(Some distant part of his mind catalogues his injuries––internal bleeding, lacerations, broken ribs, and undoubtedly shock––but he has trouble paying attention to that voice.)
“Oh gods, Percy,” says Vex above him, voice high in panic. She grabs one of his hands (it’s nice, holding her hand; if he were less of a coward perhaps he would grab her hand instead of waiting for her to reach for him) and lays it against his side.
“Press here,” she orders, and Percy does.
Pain washes through him at the pressure, jolting him out of his hazy contemplation of the sky, and he does his best to stifle a cry, pressing his lips together and squeezing his eyes shut. He hears himself whimpering even as he tries not to, and hates himself for it. His blood seeps through his fingers, hot and thick and sticky, soaking through the side of his coat. It will be a bitch to clean, he thinks, and then stifles a laugh because people bleeding like this do not survive; he has seen enough battle and death to know that.
“A little help?” he suggests thickly––Vex has magic, Vex is helpful, Vex is not useless like him––and she swears and apologizes and grabs his side, fingers vice-like. He cracks his eyes open to watch her, with her eyes narrow and her mouth set and her brows drawn, and he hisses as freezing tendrils of healing energy seep into his wound.
It is not enough. It doesn’t stop the bleeding, internal or external. Vex swears, and casts the spell again, while Percy’s mind whirrs, doing the math. Ten minutes to bleed out, fifteen to die from abdominal trauma and blood poisoning. And the others are half an hour gone, scouting further up the mountain, their healer with them. They have no health potions, and Vex is nearly tapped out for the day after the draining hike up and the fight this morning.
Percy’s a smart man. He knows how it adds up.
“Vex,” he says, and her fingers spasm against his side. “Vex.”
“Let me try again,” she argues, pushing her hair out of her face. It leaves a smear of blood across her forehead, and Percy wants to reach up and wipe it away, but his heavy limbs won’t cooperate. One hand presses stubbornly to his side, as if he can hold his lifeblood in through force of will, and Vex lays her hands atop his with the foolhardy determination.
Percy falls silent, and Vex tries again, but both of them know better. Vex is no healer. A warrior, yes, but her skills are those she needs to survive in the wilds, and this is a mortal wound. If they had potions, or if Pike were here, things might be different, but she is not, and they don’t. Vex, for all her knowledge of survival in the wilds, can only do so much.
“I called for Pike,” Vex assures him, or perhaps herself. “She’s on her way, just hold on a little longer.”
I can only hold on so long, he wants to tell her, but he doesn’t, because she knows as well as he does that the math doesn’t break down in their favor; he can see that awareness in the crease of her brow, in the slant of her mouth, in the litany of oaths and apologies she mutters in the same breath.
So he nods, and slowly, painfully reaches his free hand across his body to grasp one of hers. Her eyes jump up to his, big and brown and terrified.
“Gods, Percy, I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault,” he says, his tongue thick in his mouth. His skin has started to turn cold and clammy, and his fingers will not tighten the way he wants them to. His heart beats too fast; he feels it in his ears and it in the blood seeping from his side. Hypovolemic shock he diagnoses with a scientist’s distance, as if he is not making note of his own slow, painful death.
Vex squeezes his hand.
“Just, hang on,” she tells him. “Just hold on, Pike’s coming.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promises.
They fall into an almost-silence, broken only by Vex’s quiet swearing and Percy’s intermittent grunts as she presses tighter against the wound, trying to staunch it with the torn coat and her bare hands. Percy feels the minutes tick by, counts them in the fluttering beat of his heart and the breaths he struggles to draw and Vex’s glances up the mountain, looking for deliverance that will not arrive in time.
She is beautiful, Percy thinks. She is always beautiful, of course, but one’s impending death has a way of emphasizing what one cares about most, and Percy is completely unsurprised to discover what he cares about most in this moment is her.
(He understands, now, what drove Vax to declare his love to Keyleth at such an inopportune moment, and doesn’t blame the man.)
“Vex,” he says, struggling to make his mouth move. “Vex, dear––”
“Don’t talk,” she tells him. “Save your strength.”
“I’m afraid it may be a little late for that,” he says, and he watches tears well in her eyes. She does not let them fall.
“You can’t die,” she tells him. “You can’t.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, because she is crying and it is his fault. Vex is strong as iron and refuses to bow to the whims and horrors of the world. That he should cry on his account is wrong. He hates to see it. “I’m so sorry, Vex.”
“Shut up,” she orders.
Percy has never been particularly good at following orders.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” He feels himself fading: darkness dances around the edge of his vision, his fingers are numb, he struggles to breathe. It’s funny; he always assumed he would die fighting, but never thought how long that might take. He had assumed it would be a quick thing, a blaze of glory. Probably blowing himself up, he thinks with a strange sort of regret. He never expected this slow death. Never expected to have time for dying confessions.
But that that it has come to that, he wants to make sure she knows, before he–– Well. Before it is too late.
He’d like to think she knows––they have been dancing around each other for long enough––but he needs to say it anyways, even though it terrifies him. Vex brings out the best of him in a way he does not fully understand (will never fully understand, not now); she burns away his cowardice until bravery is all that’s left. Even as he lies dying, she makes him a better person.
“No,” she refuses. “Don’t tell me anything you wouldn’t say if you weren’t––” Dying, they both know he’s dying, but her voice breaks and she can’t finish the sentence. She tries the spell again, angry and desperate, but nothing happens; she has nothing left to give. “Fuck!”
“Vex,” he says, voice soft, and she catches his eyes, and shakes her head, mouth a stubborn line, refusing to cry.
“You can tell me later,” she tells him, as if there will be a later, and he cannot help but admire her obstinacy, another thing he––
No. If she does not want him to, he will not say it.
“Alright,” he tells her, and lets his eyes flutter shut; he is too tired to keep them open. “Whatever you want, dear.”
“Percy?” her voice above him sounds far, far away, and even the pressure of her hand against his wound barely registers. “Percy, darling, open your eyes.”
He tries, he really does, but he is exhausted, and the ground is comfortable, and what is the point? Help will not arrive in time.
“Please,” says Vex, voice distant and desperate. “Please, not yet. Please, Percy, stay with me, Percy, come on, dammit, don’t…”
Slowly, that too fades away, and Percy floats in darkness and silence and wonders if this is what peace feels like. If this is death, perhaps it is not so bad.
Then a bright-burning light cuts through the black, and his side is afire, and his eyes snap open to see Pike, somehow, miraculously. In that moment he truly believes she is the angelic being they joke about.
She kneels next to him, hands against his side, firm but gentle, head bowed and mouth moving, chanting quietly, and he watches in awe as his flesh knits itself back together. Vex kneels next to him too, unmoved, wiping tears off her face with one bloodied hand. Percy is still holding the other one. Above them the sky has faded to a deep, dark violet, stars glinting and glittering high above them.
“Well,” says Percy, trying to make sense of what is happening, trying to understand how Pike made it back here in time, trying to understand how he is alive to see the violet, star-studded sky. “That was unpleasant.”
Vex smacks him––gently, but sharp enough to register.
“You horrible man,” she says thickly. “You’re awful.”
Percy has a hundred retorts on his mind, agreements and disagreements and bold declarations. Instead of voicing any of them he smiles up at her and says, “So you do care.”
She scowls, but her fingers tighten around his, so he knows it’s alright.
“I’m so sorry,” she tells him, and Percy is shaking his head before she finishes speaking.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have done something, I was useless ––”
“Vex.” He waits until she is looking at him. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Pike nods in agreement. “You saved his life,” she says. “What you did stabilized him long enough so I could, y’know, help.”
“Oh,” says Vex, and she sounds like she doesn’t believe it, but she doesn’t argue either. For a moment they fall silent, allowing Pike to work in peace.
Percy cannot tear his eyes from Vex’s face. She’s bloodied, her hair a mess, eyes red, and she has never looked more beautiful. She meets his eyes and smiles a little, apologetic and worried and grateful, and Percy smiles back, and thinks his heart might burst.
Her hand is still in his, and he squeezes it a little. She squeezes back.
“We should get everyone inside,” says Pike, and as if she conjured them, the rest of the party appears around the bend. Keyleth collapses next to him, looking him over with wide, worried eyes.
“Are you alright?” she asks. “What happened?”
“He saved my life,” says Vex, and Keyleth looks up at her, and down at their interlaced fingers.
“Oh,” she says, glancing between them with a poorly-concealed smile. “Well, I’m glad you’re both okay.”
Yes, Percy rather is too.
As the others come to a stop under the violet sky, Vex helps Percy to his feet, letting him lean against her. Vax slips under his other arm, and Scanlan conjures his ridiculous mansion, and they troop inside together. The twins help him up to his room, and Pike brings him food, and checks him over, and prescribes a good meal and a full night’s rest.
“You should be fine in the morning,” she says as he sips the broth. “Just get some sleep.”
“Thank you,” he says. Pike nods, and shrugs a little.
“We’d all hate to lose you,” she says lightly, but her eyes are shuttered, and Percy isn’t entirely sure what that means. He is too tired to press. When he finishes eating, she takes his bowl.
“Goodnight, Percy.”
“Goodnight, Pike.”
She blows out the candle on her way out, and Percy is left alone in the dark, utterly exhausted.
And yet, even as he lies there, eyes closed, sleep eludes him. He cannot shake the image of Vex’s face from his mind, frightened and desperate and bloodied, and he would go to her but he does not know if she wants to see him, or even if he could make it down the hall without collapsing. So he closes his eyes and tries not to think of it.
Later––he isn’t sure how much, it may be minutes, it may be an hour––he hears the door open and close, and feet slip across the floor, and if they were anywhere but Scanlan’s mansion he might panic, but instead he finds himself relaxing.
He opens his eyes a crack as Vex pulls the chair away from his desk and sets it next to the bed and sits in it, feet tucked tailor style beneath her. His eyes close again, his evening’s anxiety dissipating upon seeing her.
Vex remains silent, but Percy can feel the weight of her gaze on him. The chair creaks every now and then as she shifts her weight back and forth, as if she’s about to move or speak but thinks better of it. Eventually, Percy sighs.
“You should rest,” he murmurs. To her credit, she doesn’t sound surprised to find him awake.
“I don’t want to leave you on your own,” she says. Percy’s lips curve upwards in a smile.
“You don’t have to,” he says, and, made bold by her worry, he blindly pats the bed next to him. “I can be a gentleman.”
For a moment she goes silent, and Percy thinks he has pushed too far, but then the chair creaks, and the bed shifts, and he feels her lie down next to him, skin cool. He is stretched out on his back, so as to not put stress on his just-healed wound, and she curls against his other side, her hair tickling his ear. He turns his head towards it, rests his forehead against her temple.
“I’m still here,” he promises, half to himself and half to her. “I don’t plan on going anywhere for a while.”
Vex chuckles slightly and turns so they lie with their foreheads pressed together. She splays one hand on his chest. An assurance, he thinks, so she can feel his heartbeat. He relaxes into the weight of it, just as reassured as she is to know she is here.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” she whispers. He can feel her words in the ghost of her breath against his cheek.
“I will do my best,” he allows. He cannot promise more, not without lying to her, and he refuses to lie to her. She sighs, and lets it be, and they fall silent. Her breathing evens out, slow and steady, and his slows to match. He relaxes into her touch and the quiet comfort of sharing a bed with someone you––
No, she does not want him to say it. That’s alright; he does not mind keeping this secret. He smiles into the dark, and allows himself this moment of peace.
“Percy,” she murmurs, just as he thinks she has fallen asleep. “There was something you wanted to say.”
She has not forgotten, then. He laughs a little, a quiet huff of amusement, and tilts his chin to press a kiss to her forehead, smiling against her skin. He murmurs his secret there, three simple words, and Vex hums against him, and for a crystalline moment they are the only two people in the world.
“Now sleep,” he tells her, warm and soft and safe. Alive. “I’ll still be here in the morning.”
She does, and he is.