Chapter Text
In retrospective it was painfully obvious that i would not solve my past problems with the same solutions i had already tried once. But the mind works in repetitive patterns and not once it occurred to me that recreating what brought so much destruction and death to the other world would do any more harm than the harm i was going to stop.
It might have been Orthax’s influence or my own bloodlust, it matters not anymore. History repeats itself in the small details even if you aim to change the big ones.
I choose to believe that no matter how old i may be getting, no matter how hard headed i might have always been, there will always be time and the opportunity to learn from my mistakes.
They taught me that, and so i learned.
Years flow by when you travel across the world while focused on one thing and one thing along.
Percy amused the thought while looking through the scope to the street just a few hundred meters away. His left eye closed, his right dead set on the loud street where merchants and artisans seemed to be selling their wares in a sort of shouting competition.
While he travelled by ship, he had embarked on the reconstruction of his most trusted ally. It had been difficult and finding the parts sent him in a more than enraging set of long journeys, but once everything needed was at his disposal the design came to mind with as much clarity as the first time.
And with that Bad News had been reborn, though in this world it was the first time that it had seen the light of day.
Now looking through the aiming glass he felt a familiar coldness in his blood with a controlled rushness of energy and bloodlust.
Suddenly he came into view. The man, a young man compared to the now-into-his-fifties Percival, had a black mane of hair falling behind his shoulders and the subtle shade of a couple days beard that was starting to show. He was dressed in semi-formal attire and he carried bags with what he supposed were groceries. He was smiling and the smirk in his lips caused Percy such anger in his veins that his hands started to tremble.
Sylas Briarwood.
Alive and in the flesh, much more than he had ever seen. Of course, the first time he had had the displeasure of meeting him he was a vampire, and not much after that also a killer. Well, now had the tables turned.
Percy took aim, the crosshead aligned perfectly in the centre of Sylas forehead as he happily talked with some elderly women that had a fruit stand in the middle of the street. Percy took a big breath and held it in.
He was in a third story building, on top of it to be more precise, so no other building got in the way between him and his target. He could have followed his tallying around most of the town without almost any obstruction, without having to let him out of his shooting sight, and he had done it, countless times. He had learned by heart his routine and had studied the best spots for where he could take the perfect shot. Just one shot and that was it.
One shot for him, one shot for her. Sadly familiar, but this time the circumstances were so much different. This would prevent stuff. This was the correct thing to do.
His finger pulsed near the trigger, aching to press it and let the bullet fly.
Percy’s mind was racing. Sylas laughed and his face was as exposed as it would ever be. Electricity pulsed through Percy’s mind and he knew this was the moment.
His finger pressed the trigger ever so slightly while his face reddened with the pression of the moment.
Three, two, one...
Sylas turned around, waving goodbye to the lady and kept on his marry way. Percy let his breath out, letting his finger drop to the side along the others. Then he let the gun drop and rest at his side. And then he dropped himself to the ground breathing heavily through a coat of sweat that had covered his face and back.
Why? He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Why?
He had taken every precaution and had planned extensively for this. He had been ready to execute his plan for two months now. This situation had repeated time and time again and he didn’t understand.
What was stopping him?
It was just one more shot, one more bullet, one more kill. But this one he wouldn’t have to mourn or carry like a weight on his shoulders. This kill would liberate him, it would make the world a better place. Wasn’t that what he was aiming to do when he came here? When he travelled to this whole not-messed-up timeline?
Percy sweared and trashed the little chairs and things around him while no one was watching.
Before he was the lord of Whitestone, a member of Vox Machina even if he couldn’t really remember their names. He could remember their faces and what they had done and how they had died at his side. But here, here he was no one. Vox Machina hadn’t been formed yet and there was another lord in his place, a much better one at that.
Here he wasn’t important, so he could act petty. He didn’t owe explanations for his conduct. So he threw a tantrum, at least while no one was paying attention.
When he finally finished, he just looked at the sky and thought, as he had done countless past times.
Something was wrong, was off. But he couldn’t quite put a pin into it.
The door to the ceiling opened and Estelle came through.
“Morning Vic.” She said nonchalantly while ignoring all the obviously trashed furniture. “Breakfast?”
She had a platter with eggs and a bit of some meat that he didn’t know from where it came. He didn’t want to eat but his stomach growled nonetheless and so he complied and nodded.
“Downstairs then cowboy, i don’t like it up here.” She said with and eerie voice. “Feels like everyone’s watching us.”
So she went downstairs and he followed silently.
Through all these years she had followed him without hesitation no matter how hard he tried to get rid of her. Every time he would ask why she wouldn’t leave him alone, every time he warned her that this was dangerous and that she hadn’t anything to do with this, she would answer something to the extent of “I don’t know Vic, sounds like and adventure and that’s a good sound.”
Damned girl, he couldn’t make heads or tails about her. At least she had stopped asking about his guns and so he didn’t have to think of new ways in which to make the phrase “none of your business” sound classy and sarcastic at the same time.
“Did you do it?” She asked with the same indifference as before.
“What do you think?” He said while taking a piece of bread and eating it very slowly.
“I think this has been the most boring part of this expedition. If you’re are not going to, we could move on to the next thing.” She said deflating on one of the couches
“Or I could do it for you.” She suggested sheepishly. “I’ve seen you shoot a lot of things, mostly animals, but i doubt humans are very different. I could definitely do it.”
He sighed.
“No.” He said for the thousandth time. “This is my shot and i will take it when i care to do it, not a minute before or after. I’m so very sorry that my tribulations cause you boredom, may i suggest we part ways and if destiny so likes it will take you in a more adventurous and rather fun journey?” Also, i will never let you even put a finger in these guns if my life depends of it, neither you nor anyone while I'm alive.
Even trying to be as snobby as he could to her, she would not budge. Instead she just sticked her tongue out like a five year old and carried on.
“I don’t get why you don’t just do it.” She continued. “You could have done it like a million times, I've seen you. You know you have it and you just let it go, like you don’t want it. Why don’t you want it, Vic?”
“I don't know.” He thought. But he didn’t say that, instead he remained silent, eating and feeling a very maddening pity for himself.
Maybe next day.
That night he couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes nightmares of black smoke and death reached through him, changing form every time but torturing him nonetheless. He felt in his bones, with each passing moment, how some other bit of knowledge, of his memories, flew away from him. He saw it banish without anything he could do to stop it.
He woke up in a cold sweat and reached for Bad News in a reflex that had been given birth in a world where no time or place was safe enough.
The gun was not there.
He looked to both sides of his bed and then took the whole bedroom in. Moonlight was entering from a slit through the curtains. It was late, maybe one in the morning, and he was alone. The other bed was empty, where Estelle should have been.
At this time of night Sylas would be coming back from one of his meetings with other lords from the regions. They happened twice a month and, though he used his carriage to come and go, there were several openings where someone with a point of vantage high enough could see and follow him or, more importantly, shoot him.
He raised the stairs while barely dressing himself and putting two and two together and he arrived to the ceiling just in time to hear the noise of horses galloping not a few blocks from there.
Estelle was there, her gaze affixed in the scope of Bad News, taking aim, completely ignorant of his presence.
She had the stance of a gunslinger and the concentration of a warrior. Had she learned that just from watching him? Her hands were firm on the grip and the barrel, and her fingers were ready on the trigger for when the mark hit the exact point. But none of that mattered for in that moment he knew that if she took that shot, she would become him. In some way or another she would fall in his same path and one more life would be ruined by his inventions. Not merely one more life, a life that, either he accepted it or not, mattered to him in some strange chaotic way.
The other thing that he knew with unrelenting certainty was that she wouldn’t miss, and so he did what his aging reflexes would let him and he ran and jumped in front of her.
Estelle took the shot at the same moment she realized what was going on.
Then everything faded to black.
When Percy opened his eyes once more, he was still in the ceiling. Bad News laid at his side, thrown without a care in the world on the ground, the point of the barrel still smoking.
There was someone on top of him. An unfocused girl, probably Estelle. She was putting pressure on his stomach that, though through blurry eyes of having forgotten his glasses, he could now see was profusely bleeding.
She was saying something but his ears could not translate it. The deafening sound of the gunpowder burst still ringing through them.
“... The fuck!?” He could finally understand as the world ended coming into view.
“What?” He mumbled to say.
Estelle was about to keep saying whatever she was before when she realized that he was conscious once more. She took a step back letting him bleed, her face a slur of anger, guilt and tears.
“Why!?” She yelled at him.
He breathed slowly, letting his senses as a fighter come back once more and take control of the very minimal, and removed from his mind, parts of his body. The bleeding relaxed and almost stopped, though the wound was still there. His mind became clearer.
“I...” He started and trailed off.
“I don’t understand!” She continued yelling. “This is what you want, why don’t you take it?”
He shook his head, the words not coming to his mouth.
“You told me about that other world Victor. I don’t know if i believe in that or if it’s just some weird way you have to tell to yourself and others why you are the way you are but i do remember you told me you killed him there. Both of them, what’s stopping you now?” She continued unrelenting.
“Because i, we ... did it.” Percy said.
“So?”
“So... We did it.” He repeated tasting his words. “We.”
She dropped to her knees, more tears streaming down her cheeks.
“We.”
He understood now, it was so simple. He was such an idiot. Of course, he couldn’t. This was not right, this was vengeance. He had let that go a long time ago. At least this one.
“When I was young,” he started, “my family took them in when they needed it, the Briarwoods.”
He accommodated himself trying to listen to the sound on the street. They had time yet.
“They proceeded to kill my entire family. Well, most of them. Only my little sister and i managed to get away. And not even that lasted forever. As a direct consequence of that event i ended meeting another horrible person. As terrible as them. And that in turn ended up with me trapped in a cell almost dying of hunger a thirst.”
Estelle was listening intently, as only she knew how to do. Her eyes had softened but the harshness in her voice still slipped through.
“That’s horrible.” She said in a hush.
“It was, wasn’t it?” He admitted. “But, in that cell, that fucking horrible dirty and abandoned cell, was where they found me.”
“There and then was how i met and joined Vox Machina. My new and true family. The people that would save me from myself, from my mistakes and from my past and help me be a better person, the best version of myself i could achieve.” He added.
“And also, they are the ones that saved the world countless times, and the only ones that if given one more chance could save it from Vecna.”
“If i kill him, like this, here. And then I do the same to her. Then all those things, those truly terrible things, will not happen. And when Vecna comes, and he will come, the world will not have his warriors and defenders to stand up to him and to seal him away for eternity. And then the number of horrible things that will happen in this world will be too many.”
He was standing up now and trying to move with difficulty.
Estelle appeared at his side helping him and taking Bad News of the floor.
The sound of the gun had alerted the people and they would come into the building any moment now. They had to relocate before they were found or everything would be for nothing.
“But, Vic, if you let it happen like last time all your family... your life will be...” She couldn’t continue the sentence.
He smiled a bitter smile.
“If a have to suffer so that everyone else gets their bloody happy ending, then it is what it is, and I'm fine with it. So you have to be fine with it too, got it?” He said decisively.
She was silent for a couple steps while they descended the stairs.
Then finally.
“Okay, but what do we do now?”
He thought for a moment trying to remember how things were supposed to go, and his face darkened.
“Now we have to poison a well.”