Chapter Text
When Grog has been rescued from the screaming winds of Pandemonium, when their spell components have been retrieved from a hoarder’s cave, when what remains of Vox Machina has returned to Exandria, exhausted and relieved, Keyleth goes home alone. She steps through the large tree on the edge of town, and as the breeze tosses her hair, short and caked with dust, she sees Zephrah, and for the first time, the colors are dull, muted. She blinks a few times, sure that there are remnants of Pandemonium in her eyes, but no, her vision is clear. She walks into town, passes by the homes and shops and rolling hillsides she knows like the back of her own hand, and somehow, it is different now, even though nothing has changed.
She’s noticed rather quickly, which isn’t a surprise, given the fact that she looks like shit and is also wearing her antlered circlet. She imagines she stands out, even in Zephrah. Word echoes through town like birdsong, so by the time she reaches the headmaster’s quarters, her father is outside waiting. He scrambles down the steps, pulls her into a hug she can’t remember how to fall into. “Keyleth.” Her name is a sigh, and it’s only now that she remembers asking Eskil to send him a message that, in retrospect, was probably more than a little harrowing. “You’re alright.”
Is she? She must be, because he’s extending her away from him, examining her at arm’s length. His eyes remind her of the beholder in Yug’voril, like at any moment, his scrutiny will freeze her or petrify her or disintig—
“What happened? In the Shadowfell? We got word that Vasselheim was under attack—were you there?”
So many questions, all of them written across his face in such thick ink she cannot hope to read them. She doesn’t know where to begin. She doesn’t know how to say these things out loud.
“Why don’t we go inside?” There’s some member of the Tempest Blades just over Korrin’s shoulder now, a half-elf with eyes so kind they feel like knives twisting between Keyleth’s ribs. “This feels like an inside conversation.”
Keyleth looks around, and it seems half of Zephrah has gathered to watch whatever spectacle her homecoming has become. It should probably be grander than this; she’s a god-killer, after all.
She’s ushered inside, her father’s arm around her shoulders. As they pass through the archway made of cherry blossom branches, there is movement in the corner of Keyleth’s eye. She turns to look, but then she’s indoors, and being swept into a small sitting room. A tall glass of water is pressed into her hands as someone drapes a blanket over her shoulders, even though she isn’t cold. In here, though away from the prying eyes of her neighbors, she still feels very much on display, like she’s moments from stepping out onto a stage and she hasn’t learned any of her lines.
“Leave us, please.” She looks up to see her father urging the others from the room. They exit obediently, and he closes the door. He dithers for a moment, unsure if he should sit next to or across from her, and eventually he settles on the latter. “You look like hell,” he says bluntly, and despite herself, Keyleth snorts out a humorless laugh.
“Yeah. Well. I’ve been there. It wasn’t as bad as this.”
Korrin’s voice is careful, measured, as if each word is being deliberately chosen. “Where…are your friends?”
The water is moving in the glass. Keyleth watches the surface fluctuate. “Um. Whitestone.”
“All of them?”
Small tsunamis crest up the sides of the glass, threatening to spill over. “Yes.”
“...Even Vax?”
The glass shatters. It’s only when it smashes on the ground that she understands that her hands are shaking. They fly to her mouth, both of them covering her lips, like maybe if she holds on tight enough, she can keep herself from exploding into as many pieces as the glass did.
Her father is there, collecting her in his arms, and when she buries her face in his chest, the same chest she curled into as a child, when the winds of the Summit Peaks whistled too loud in the night, she feels all of it, each shard of the pain, ripping and tearing and slicing and slashing her lungs into ribbons. She cannot breathe, cannot think, is lost in the riptide of the truth she carried home with her.
Vax is dead.
It’s a week before she can even think about it. She spends that week in her own Pandemonium, a loud, monotone buzz in her head that she sinks into willingly. She clings to her bed like it’s a buoy in a storm, looks at the meals her father has sent to her with disdain; how is she to eat when her stomach is a roiling sea, turbulent and churning? The curtains stay drawn, the lights stay off, and she does her best to follow each breath with another.
At the end of that week, the door to her bedroom opens, and her father, head bowed as if in prayer, slips inside. The bed dips when he sits on the edge of it, reaches forward to brush her oily, ratty hair out of her face. “You don’t have to talk about it.” His voice is tender, and Keyleth, who would have thought herself all dried out at this point, is nearly brought to tears in an instant. “We’ve gotten word back from Whitestone with…with the whole story. Keyleth…” He’s at a loss for words now. She stares blankly into his face, watches it scramble for the right thing to say, but they both know there is no right thing.
His eyes find the last untouched meal she left on the nightstand. “Keyleth.” His hands slide under her, and to her chagrin, she is propped up. Each of her joints feels like sandpaper. “I understand this grief, you know that I do. I cannot let it consume you.” He picks up the glass of water, stagnant and warm, and brings it to her lips. “Please?”
She is hollow, carved out, an empty space surrounded by bones and skin. She remembers seeing this in his eyes, when she was little, when her mother didn’t come home. She obediently takes a long sip from the glass, and it is painful, it is a relief. Her tongue is still thick, fuzzy, but when he offers her some crackers next, she eats them silently. They taste like nothing, like air, like ash, but she watches her father’s face soften, so she eats another.
She knows she is disgusting. She can smell herself, the rankness of her clothes that have not been changed since she arrived. Her skin is screaming to be cleaned, but her muscles are incapable of holding her up long enough to shower or even soak in a tub. Korrin seems to sense this, because he tucks her hair behind her ears and says, “A bath is being drawn up right now, and we’re going to get you cleaned up, okay?” She doesn’t react, has nothing to say, no fight to give. “Keyleth…as much as this hurts right now, as empty and despondent as you feel, I promise you, it will get better with time.”
Keyleth pulls her knees into her chest, ignoring the sharp pains from lying still for so long. “That’s the thing.” She isn’t even sure if this voice, rasped and distant, is hers. “The time is the problem.”
She is washed. She is fed. The minutes continue to tick along, one after the other. When she returns to her room, the sheets have been changed, the window thrown open. It is as if she hasn’t spent the last week of her life molting, decaying, praying to the gods she and her friends just met for it all to stop .
(Not all of the gods. There is one Keyleth will never pray to, so long as she lives. Keyleth has given her enough already.)
Suddenly, the room is repulsive to her. She can’t be in here. She can’t be anywhere. The window is open, the sun a condemning smile in the sky. She does what she does best—she becomes something else.
No one sees the dragonfly, iridescent and buzzing, leave the Tempest’s room. How could they? Zephrah is home to all manner of wildlife; no one would think twice about the dragonfly that zips away, up, up, up, closer to that damned sun, to Pelor’s shining eye. What does he see when he looks down on her? She doesn’t care. Fuck, she doesn’t care. The gods got what they wanted. The world is saved. Their place in the great hierarchy of things is secure. Keyleth is alone. The gods got what they wanted.
She doesn’t stop flying until long after the moon has risen, uses its light to begrudgingly return to her home. Just as she crosses the windowsill, there is a sound in the distance, a low, throaty shriek that makes her tumble to the floor as she shifts midair back into a half-elf. Elbows smarting, she crawls over to the window and peeks outside. Flying away, a shrinking speck amongst the stars, is the unmistakable form of a raven.
She reaches up and slams the window shut, yanking the curtains closed. That night, she doesn’t even make it to the bed.
The first dream comes swiftly, silently, an owl on the hunt. She sits beneath a tree on the edge of town, the drifting rain of cherry blossoms too consistent to be real. The air smells delicious, warm, and she is filled with a hunger that grows from something she can ignore into a rumble that shakes the earth.
The cherry blossoms stop falling, and when she looks down, she is not surrounded by petals of white and pink, but blood red, sticky and viscous. Her fingers brush over the blooms, and they slice her fingers open. She hisses and retracts her hand.
A loud croak from above startles her, and she whips her head up to see it, the raven, weighing down one of the highest branches of the now-bare tree. It flutters down, branch to branch, until it sits just above her, so close she can reach up and brush its wing with her bloodied fingertips.
But she doesn’t. She looks at the raven, and the raven looks at her. Neither speaks, but she knows it has a message for her. Or, it is a message for her. She looks at the raven, and the raven looks at her. The hunger is a maw, a devouring pit in her stomach. The branches above stretch out like fingers of bone. She looks at the raven, and the raven looks at her.
“Please,” she whispers.
The raven takes off. The beating of its wings stirs the cherry blossoms until Keyleth’s vision is a swirl of red.
She wakes up.
Every night, the dream. Sometimes once, twice, three times a night. Every night the raven comes to her, and every night she wakes up, because she knows she hasn’t understood the message. She doesn’t even have the energy to be frustrated. She lays in bed, fingers twisting white-knuckled into the covers, until she falls asleep or the sun rises, whichever comes first.
Pike is the first one to come. Keyleth has done little to keep track of the passage of time as she lets the world spin on around her, so she’s actually surprised when her friend arrives with a knapsack thrown over one shoulder and a frown. “It’s been a month, Keyleth. No one’s heard from you in a month. We thought…”
They’re in the sitting room, across from each other on intricately carved wooden sofas that are far more beautiful than they are comfortable. Keyleth’s knees are drawn up to her chest. “What did you think, Pike? That I’d be coming around for a bar crawl in downtown Whitestone?”
Pike’s eyes dart away, maybe in shame, maybe in annoyance. Keyleth’s too tired to care. “We thought you’d come to us.”
And say what? This is what no one will tell her, not Pike or her father or Derrig, the Blade who’s been tasked with her protection now that she’s important and valuable, or anyone else who’s been to see her these past weeks. No one will tell her what she’s supposed to say, what the protocol is for this. Is she meant to be throwing open the doors every morning and announcing that the hollow pit in her chest has not gotten any smaller? Is the fact that she throws up more food than she keeps down casual teatime conversation? Everyone looks at her with pity, and she can understand that, but it’s the expectation beneath it that floors her. Fuck, if only someone would tell her how she’s meant to be grieving! The misery of this would be so much fucking easier!
Instead of all that, she says, “Vex lost her brother. Her twin. What…what am I in the face of that?”
“How about her friend?” Pike’s giving her the look that Keyleth’s only seen her wield on Scanlan and Tary. “How about her family? How about someone who deserves to be around the people who understand more than anyone else what she lost?”
There’s a sharp pain in Keyleth’s arm, and she looks down to realize that she’s been digging her nails into her forearms, leaving long, angry scratches behind. “I just need…it’s fine. I’m fine. I’m busy, y’know, with…Tempest stuff. I’m the Headmaster now, so…I’ve got that going on.” She doesn’t have the first fucking clue what she’s supposed to be doing, because it usually takes her the first half of her day just to drag herself off of whatever surface she fell asleep on the night before.
Pike’s face makes it quite clear that she’s not buying a word of it. “Right. Tempest stuff.” Keyleth wishes more than anything that it wasn’t Pike sitting across from her, the hardest one to lie to, the one who somehow sees through all of her friends’ bullshit like they’re made out of glass and not skin. “Well, Keyleth, I’m on my way to Whitestone. There’s still a lot of rebuilding to be done in Vasselheim, but I’m taking a little break to visit Percy and Vex. Sure would love it if you came with me.” It’s less of a question and more of an insistence.
Keyleth is one thousand percent sure that if she sees Percy and Vex right now, she will vomit up every meal she’s ever eaten. “Sounds like fun. You should definitely let me know how things are going there.”
“You could always come see for yourself.”
Fuck, she is not going to make this easy. “Like I said, I’ve got Headmaster duties. Can’t really be taking vacations right now.”
“Keyleth.” Keyleth is determined not to look away from the exasperation in Pike’s stare; honestly, fuck her for it, for the judgement, for this entire conversation. “You’re wasting away here.”
She probably doesn’t mean literally, though Keyleth’s caught enough of herself in a mirror to know that her face is sunken, the skin sallow. She’d be concerned, but for what? Keyleth’s gonna be around for a long, long time. “It was nice of you to stop by, Pike.”
There’s a perverse satisfaction in the hurt that darts across Pike’s face, and Keyleth hates herself for it. Is this what she is now, a snarling cat who strikes out at her friends to hide how shaking and scared she is? Pike murmurs some kind of goodbye and leaves Keyleth on the hard wooden seat, staring at the space she vacated until long after the sun has dipped below the horizon.
The one thing that cuts through the noise—or lack of noise, really; she moves through the world as if her ears have been stuffed with cotton—is the guilt. What was it all for, the travel, the peril, the loss, if not to take the mantle of Headmaster from her father? But every day, without question, without complaint, he goes out into the community and does the work she is meant to be doing, the work she inherited from her mother. She threw herself into lava and felt the squeeze of a kraken’s tentacle so she could stand before her people and lead them; instead she sits in various shadowed corners, discovering new, horrifying ways to feel as though she’s dying.
Those who see her express their concern in myriad ways, but again, cotton ears: she hears so little over the echoing void of this left-behind space she’s occupying. She’s given food, soft blankets, herbal teas meant to cleanse the spirit or whatever, but none of it quiets that gnawing in her stomach, something like hunger but darker, more hollow. Derrig—poor Derrig, a genuinely good guy tasked with keeping an eye on the most depressing, most boring charge imaginable—asks one day, two and a half months after her triumphant return, if he can invite someone to see her. She shrugs. It won’t make a difference.
The woman is a halfling, long, reddish-brown curls and a smile like apple pie. Her eyes are a startling blue, and Keyleth feels exposed when she comes into her room. “It’s very nice to meet you, Tempest.”
“Keyleth,” she says automatically. The gods know she hasn’t done a damn thing to keep the title she earned.
“Keyleth. My name is Alma. May I?”
Keyleth’s sitting on her bed, back against the headboard, knees pulled up. Alma gestures toward the side of the bed, and Keyleth nods. It takes her a moment, but the halfling hops up to perch on the side of the bed. “So!” Her voice is bright, out of place in this room, with its curtains drawn and the lights low. “Derrig tells me you’ve been having a bit of a rough time.”
That earns a huff of laughter from Keyleth. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“I remember him, you know. Your champion. He was very kind to my boy, Orym. He was very kind to everyone here. Zephrah is worse for his loss.”
For the first time, Keyleth doesn’t want to claw her way out of this conversation with her bare hands. She looks at this woman, kind-eyed and soft, and she knows that Alma saw Vax the way Keyleth did. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
“I don’t know what it is to lose someone like you did. Orym’s father, he was…” She flutters a dismissive hand. “Not much of a loss, we’ll put it that way.” She grins conspiratorially, like she and Keyleth have been friends for years, and Keyleth finds herself smiling back. “For what it’s worth, I don’t know how you get up every day. That kind of loss…it leaves something hanging over us. Heavy, thick. Like smoke.”
Keyleth’s body loosens. Finally someone gets it. “Yes. Like I can’t breathe through it. Like it’s choking me with every breath.”
“I wish I had a cure for it, I really do. But…I’m hoping I can help make things better. Or, easier, rather.”
It’s only now that Keyleth realizes that she has no idea who Alma is or why Derrig asked her to come here. “How?”
“I’ve heard you’ve had a hard time keeping food down, is that right?”
Keyleth nods. “I vomit almost everything back up. Have since I got back.”
“And you’ve been sleeping more than usual?”
“I don’t really keep track. But…yeah, I guess it’s a lot.”
“I know this might be a silly question, but how has your mood been?” Keyleth gives her a look, and Alma smiles and pats her arm. “Right, right. Do you mind if I ask you something personal?”
Keyleth raises an eyebrow. “More personal than what you’ve asked already?” Alma gives an apologetic shrug. “Sure.”
“Have you been going to the bathroom more than usual?”
Keyleth blinks. What an insane question. But then… She starts to think about it. She never had to get up in the middle of the night to pee before, but over the past few weeks… “I think so? I’m not sure.”
“Right, of course. One more: when was the start of your last cycle?”
Her jaw is on the floor. Never in her life has someone, a stranger, talked to her like this. She’s not even offended; she's just so shocked that this is the direction the conversation is going in. “Okay, what the hell is this?”
Alma rests her hand on top of Keyleth’s on the bedspread. “Do you know what I do for a living, Keyleth?” Keyleth shakes her head. “I’m a midwife.”
There’s a ringing in Keyleth’s ears now, deafening and monotone, rapidly getting louder. She sees Alma’s mouth moving, but if there are words coming out, Keyleth can’t hear them. Something nudges her hand, and Keyleth’s blurring vision beholds a glass of water being pressed into her palm. She drinks it, and the water tastes metallic, like blood. Vaguely, she’s aware of her own name being called, but both she and Alma might as well be underwater for all she can make out.
It can’t be true. It isn’t.
“What…” She gasps, the glass in her hand shaking so hard water spills over the edges. “What are you…”
Alma gently takes the glass and sets it on the bedside table. She wraps one of Keyleth’s hands in both of hers. Keyleth watches her lips form the word breathe, and so she does, in and out, over and over, slowing down with each one. The buzzing starts to subside, and Keyleth has never been more aware of her own body, of her thumping heart, of her searing lungs, of her stomach, hollow and gnawing.
It can’t be true.
(She does the math in her head, over and over and over. Tries to count the days, to remember which ones she spent entirely in bed, to figure out how fast this world has kept spinning since the last time she felt his hands on her. No matter how she crunches the numbers, the fact of the matter is that her sheets have been clean for far, far too long.)
“Grief can take a terrible toll on the body,” Alma says in what Keyleth is sure is meant to be a reassuring tone. “I’m not telling you anything in one way or another. But there are…tests I can do. To make sure. So you know either w—oh!” Alma’s head darts to the side toward the window. “My, that…that is a large bird.”
Keyleth’s spine feels like each vertebra is rusted together as she turns her head to see what Alma’s looking at. It does not surprise her to see silhouetted behind her curtains a raven, perched on the outer sill of the window. From here, it looks monstrous, gargantuan, as if one flap of its wings will take down the entire building. It is an omen, a message for her here in the waking world, after so many she’s been ignoring in her dreams.
It can’t be true.
Except it is.