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They camp in the cave, amidst piles of gold.
Maybe it’s a little morbid; Umbrasyl’s corpse stinks and everyone almost died in here a couple of hours ago, but the walk back to Westruun would be too long and the city would be too empty—especially now that the Herd, well. Scanlan doesn’t know if there’ll be a Herd of Storms after today. No one’s told him yet if there were any survivors from the first, doomed attack. He’ll ask Percy later. Percy will have counted them, somewhere in the back of his ever-cataloging brain.
At some point somebody says that first, holiest phrase of Vox Machina: let’s drink! So Grog pulls a keg of ale from the magic bag—Scanlan recognizes it from the party in Westruun, and spares half an entertained thought to the image of Grog and three other goliaths trying to stretch the bag around it—and Vax reveals a decanter made of cut crystal, throwing light around like a sun reflector in a palace garden.
There’s a wry twist to his mouth, at Vex’s look, but as soon as she goes back to combing through the treasure he unstoppers the thing. The smell of it—Syngorn brandy, it must be, with the scent of citrus trees in the full height of summer—soon floats in the air around him, and even he manages to relax a little.
“Stole it from our father’s house,” he explains to Scanlan in an undertone, his words short but his eyes a little warmer than they have been lately. “Let’s not talk about it.”
Scanlan, who is in the middle of some very complicated feelings regarding fathers and what they ought to be, nods and hums a long, low note that bounces around the treasure until it hits a chest and chimes—opening it reveals gold-plated goblets, embedded with jewels. They’re not quite the right glass for the drink, but it’s better than their traveling tankards. He passes the box around and everyone but Grog accepts, and Vax flits from person to person, still a little faster than usual, pouring.
The brandy is all oak and orange and burning sunlight, one long line of warmth from Scanlan’s mouth down his throat, settling in his stomach. It leaves something floral on the back of his tongue that he can’t quite place, not rose but something close. It feels like he should be exhaling petals in some roundabout pleasing way.
Oh, yeah, and it’s strong enough to lay out an ox. Maybe even Grog, if he quaffed it back like he’s doing with the ale, wrinkling his nose at all of them drinking that fancy shit when there’s good Westruun brew to be had.
Percy looks pleased at the taste—you can’t take the noble out of the nobleman—from where he’s sitting on a wooden trunk that’s so old the velvet lining’s coming through gaps in the boards. He’s watching Vex examine the emeralds embedded in her goblet and if Scanlan was in a meaner mood, he’d reach for his lute and pluck out the one about the shepherd and the Baron’s daughter— oh he swore that he would love her, and he kept his promise true, and the Baron’s daughter’s father’s men did beat him black and blue. It’s got a happy ending if you can get through all eight verses. Well, they were buried together. That’s as close as most of the songs get.
It seems in poor taste to mock Percy for pining after someone who could do much better when Scanlan’s. Well. When Scanlan’s—and his lute is gone, anyway, crushed under Umbrasyl the way he wasn’t. He goes to take another sip and realizes his cup is empty. He looks around for Vax, but the rogue is nowhere to be seen. Probably off somewhere working up the nerve to hold hands with Keyleth.
A shoulder bumps his and he looks up, surprised. Pike grins and gestures for his cup, pouring half her part of the brandy into it.
“Grog’s saving me part of the keg,” she laughs easily, nodding to where Grog is now squinting at the level of the ale. “I’ll have my share.”
Pike smells like blood and sweat and dust. Her closeness is even better than the brandy. Gods and monsters, it’s been a long day. A long month.
He’s been pushing, all this time, for Vox Machina to step off this path. The dragons seemed too big for them, impossibly big, no matter what half the party found in the Fey Realm. He and Pike spent two and a half weeks dragging Grog’s often near-comatose body through the wilds of Tal’Dorei and the last four days in the echoing, empty Westruun. The world has been reminding him, over and over again, you’re too small, you can’t do anything, the world doesn’t care about you. No one cares about you.
The happiest he’s been in the month since Emon burned was when he was knocked out in a dragon’s acidic gut, dreaming of grandchildren he’ll probably never have. His daughter—his daughter, what god out there cursed a kid with him for a father—wants nothing to do with him. Less than nothing, if she can manage it. And everyone else...
Vax has wandered his way into the world of parts and players with the wildest interpretation Scanlan’s ever heard of, like there’s another hand writing his life—which wasn’t the lesson Scanlan was trying to teach on the balcony—and it’s driving him into danger that far outstrips his friends’ ability to pull him out of it. Something happened in the Fey Realm that fucked Vex up so completely she won’t talk about it, even to make jabs; Keyleth’s still boiling over Pyrah and Scanlan’s sure she’s having nightmares about the bodies of the Fire Ashari; Percy’s drowning over what happened in the tomb, one more weight piled on his back; Grog barely got his strength back, just in time to get beat to shit, and Pike—and Pike—and Pike’s tapping herself out every day, reaching for the Everlight. She ends every evening with a drawn, pale face, something ethereal looking out from behind her eyes—it’s beautiful, like a veil growing thin between her and divinity, but it’s not Pike.
When he looked at the mountain he knew they were already dead, both feet in the grave and shovels to dig it deeper, not because of any fate bullshit but because it was the only thing that made sense. He knew, he knew, that if Vox Machina went after the dragon in its den, not all of them would come out. Their luck was spent a long time ago.
Pike gets up and makes her way over to Grog, both of them gleefully bickering over the keg, but all Scanlan can see is the splint still around Grog’s leg and the way Pike’s hair is glowing at the ends, almost too faint to see, like she’s slipping into her astral form. Vax is saying something to Keyleth but all Scanlan can hear is the way he’d cried sister as Vex screamed, like something in him was dying too.
Here’s a truth: Scanlan doesn’t like fighting. Sure, trying new spells is interesting and telling stories after the fact is fun, but the adrenaline and terror of combat is more Grog’s style. Even Percy gets more out of it, with his gadgets and the light in his eyes when there’s an explosion. Scanlan only enjoys a fight when he knows he’s going to win. And with Umbrasyl...
Vax was wrong about fate, but there’s something to be said for stage direction—SHORTHALT ENTERS, STAGE LEFT, ON DRAGONBACK. When Mythcarver’s in his hands, he can almost believe there’s a play at work in the world, even if it’s one of the big tragic showpieces and not a the fun romp he’d prefer. With Umbrasyl, with Mythcarver singing in his hands—he didn’t give himself the gift of looking at Pike. There was only the dragon, hot and heaving under his feet. There was only the overwhelming smell of acid, burning the inside of his nose. There was only Mythcarver in his hands, whispering without words, there, dodge, move, strike. Dive now, because a hero throws himself at the dragon’s face, and Mythcarver would make Scanlan a hero of legend.
The heroes of legend—Scanlan’s told their stories plenty of times. They always die. But he’d raised his voice anyway, the sword singing with him, and when he’d fallen something in it had felt right, like the sound of a good book closing after the last page.
Now, with the vestige sheathed at his side, a cold drop of horror rolls down his spine at the thought of it. He doesn’t want to die, no matter how narratively fitting it would be, and he doesn’t know, he can’t be sure—he doesn’t know if Mythcarver knows that, if it can care for its wielder or just for the story he’ll make. Vax has changed so much since they found the armor, and Vex is so unsettled with the bow...
Grog laughs, chanting, “Chug! Chug! Chug!” At least he’s still acting like himself. He’s tipping Pike’s tankard back with one careful finger as she gulps ale, letting it clatter to the floor when she lets a tremendous burp loose.
Pike laughs and her eyes catch Scanlan’s, cheeks flushed and splitting with a grin. There’s a drop of ale making a shining trail from the corner of her mouth, down her neck and into her collar. It gleams like gold in the light from the hoard, dozens of enchanted things brought together and all he can think about is the way they illuminate her.
She looks at him and there’s something contemplative in her expression, just for a second, long enough that he knows he didn’t imagine it. She raises an eyebrow, the grin softening on her mouth.
So then he does imagine—both of them ducking deeper into the cave, a spell he stole making them quiet enough. Pike whispering, Shh, laughing with a hot look in her eyes as she presses him against a stalagmite, and maybe if he’s good she’ll pin his hands above his head—and he can be, he can be so good for her—and his mind skips like a stone to the next morning, all of Vox Machina standing together and Pike with a cheerful grin, the knowledge that it was a celebratory tumble between friends and nothing more.
And he wants it, by the gods does he want it, to know what she looks like in the hot wave of pleasure, to know the sounds she makes and the way she touches her lovers and how her voice might waver on his name—and the dizzying lust crashes right into the chilling realization that he can’t have any of it, because if he does he’ll never be able to let go. That she kissed him and he’s still going to run away, because the only other option is making an idiot out of himself over something temporary.
He wants it all, the whole rest of her story written alongside his, PIKE & SCANLAN ENTER, STAGE RIGHT, ARMS LINKED, and there’s no way she wants the same. It's a foundational fact: Scanlan is flash paper and wit while Pike is light itself. She’d never say it, but he knows he’ll never measure up. A story as unlikely as theirs won’t see the stage as anything more than a punchline.
He grins back and shakes his head a little, tipping his chin to where Vax is daring Grog to eat one of the coins, and in the resulting scuffle her attention is neatly drawn away. The rest of the brandy warms him, all the way down.
I could love you, Scanlan thinks, a little drunk but more delirious with longing. He’s so good at wanting things he can’t have. Let me love you, let me love you, tell me to love you. I could. I really could.
When he blinks, his face still feels wet with Pike’s tears. His lips are still warm from her mouth. The only thing he can hear is her voice, whispering over him.
He falls asleep on his bedroll to the hacksaw sound of Grog snoring, the glow of the gold softening the lair around him. The light reminds him of her.