Trust Exercises

Chapter 4

"Another!"

"That's gonna burn your throat missy," said the nun in the mess hall, but she didn't stop glopping more fiery red jam onto another roll.

"I don't care," said Pike. "Another!"

The nun didn't seem to care either, apparently surprised but amused that at least someone liked the lichpepper jam enough to eat four sandwiches of it and beginning to work on her fifth.

"There you are," Percy rushed to meet her, dodging out of the way of other acolytes to get to her at the long table. Even the smell burned his nostrils, and considering all the smoke he had been exuding only weeks ago, that was saying something. "You couldn't even wait for dinner."

"I can't fucking think when I'm hungry," she said, gulping down the roll. "Another!"

"Slow down ch–"

"No!"

The nun sucked on her teeth and began another sandwich, and Pike gave a nearly incandescent cough as she finished the one in her hands.

"Why in the nine hells are you still here? Weren't you going to go home or something?" she asked

"They're not letting me leave –" Percy started, but he didn't finish.

"Bullshit. It's not like this place is locked down and I'm the only real threat to you here. You can leave anytime you want. Go. Go home."

He took the seat next to Pike and watched as she tore into another lichpepper jam sandwich.

"I don't want to go home," he said.

"Yeah, well," she paused long enough to take a swig of water, to cringe at the burn, and then stopped for a moment. "I figured as much."

"I don't know what to do," he said finally.

"Well, you know, you could start by maybe listening to me? I had an entire crisis of faith thing for you guys before getting back to Whitestone, do you remember that? Like, I did all that and realized that, wow, Vox Machina actually needs me more than here, that like, ok, I can still serve the Everlight and not everyone is meant to be churchy, and like ok some people can just be monsters and even monsters have to do what they have to do and then I go back and it's great and then none of you listen to me, because hey! It's Pike! The heals dispenser! Look at her little mace ain't it cute? She's so shiny and look at how being tight with Sarenrae makes her fart glitter!! I'm older than like all of you, you know, maybe sometimes I know what I'm doing."

This was not Percy's forte. The nun, in a moment of quiet, seemed to have backed off leaving them relatively alone in the mess hall, as alone as one could ever be in a temple anyway. He had no backup for this. None.

"I'm listening now, Pike," he tried.

"You don't get it, it's... it's fine, I mean, I enjoy it. Being needed, I mean. But. I'm. Hhhhgh." She contemplated the jam and stuck out her tongue, stained bright red by it. "Things were just so much easier when it was just me and Grog. I'm starting to think I should have brought him, but on these kinds of things there's never enough to punch to keep him occupied."

"I appreciate you trying to help me," Percy tried again. "I just. Don't like these places. There's something off about them."

"You know why you think that?" said Pike, but she didn't wait for an answer. "Because until literally a week ago you were hosting a demon that was using you as a vehicle to eat souls. When it's wearing your skin, that skin will crawl in places like this, and then you learn that places like this make your skin crawl. You learn things, you can't unlearn things... that's why there's so much about hosts being weak, and needing to be gentle with them, and making it as easy as possible for them to get help, because you can't really come back from it. You can't undo it. And all the Pelors and Kords and whatever just decide that if you can't pretend like it never happened you deserve to have never happened, and just, it's so, so hard, for everyone involved, like, everyone, and then to get to the point right after the exorcism and after literally all that the former host wants to off himself and," she had slumped further and further and further and looked at the cup in her hand. "I need an ale."

Another nun, a different nun, placed two cups before them, not enough to be called a pint but the smell coming off of them was strong. "There you are, love," she said, returning to the kitchen before she could even be thanked.

"And anyway, the reason you hate Miral is because you're too much alike," she said after downing half her ale in one gulp.

"Who?"

"The priestess," she said. "You both think the worst of everyone and that you're the smartest person in the room, and are going to butt heads with anyone else who thinks the same. I know she's good at what she does. She helped me when I was here for my stuff. Her herbalism work is genius but there's a reason even though she's senior she's not in charge of anyone and they just let her putter around the garden with her weird crossbreeds."

"Hmm." Percy stared into the ale, the back of his head still pinching from earlier and he had a feeling drinking this would make it worse. He wondered if they had small beer or something -- they had too -- but was also too afraid it'd be rude to ask for something else.

"I've just got to warn you, if you leave because you think she's weird and off-putting, well, everyone who does exorcisms for a living is weird an off-putting. It's just the nature of the job. No matter how much you like Keeper Yennen, if you went back to Whitestone, she wouldn't be the one doing it... if the one they had doing it in Whitestone is even still around, which now that I think about it, they probably aren't. If I was a vampire despot, they'd be one of the first people I purged."

He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes, cursing himself for not having thought of that.

"And I just keep thinking about how Cassandra was with... them... and if you go back like you are right now, stinking of the demonic, it's a really bad look. Even if you're right about Yennen, she's still only one person, and relying on her to protect you and do this for you after everything is kind of... a lot, I don't know," said Pike.

"I did not realize what you were asking of me was so involved in the first place," Percy admitted.

"You keep saying you like to read, you must have know about this," she said, and then took another gulp from her cup, setting it down, empty.

"This, being..."

"The aftermath of demonic possession. Scanlan is really, really lucky he found that source, otherwise it could have gotten worse."

"I'm afraid that's not really the sort of thing I like to read."

"There's a lot on it," said Pike. "People think the only things that matter are the points from discovering the demon to getting rid of it. No. I mean, you're aware of all the points before, but then there's the after, too. The whole stigma is the first part of it, sure. The idea that something can be in you, that your ideas are not your own, it eats away at people, and it's not like demons give people only bad ideas, so it's not just evil inclined ideas that are questionable, it's all of them. You watch this happen to someone you know, why hasn't it happened to you? You keep trying to make a list, to justify it, to make it not just luck, to make it not just continued luck that it's not happening to you, or anyone else you know. And the thing is, everyone has thoughts they'd rather not... so it's easy to spot something as foreign, to blame them on something else, something sinister. And it's easier, the Dawnfather temple thinks --traditionally, in their scripture, I mean -- to just get rid of these people, and isolate the possession to that one person, that one fault, and then when you get rid of that person, the community's problems are all solved. Corpses can make a simple solution to a complicated problem. Every mercenary knows that."

"It's brutal, but I do understand the logic of it," he said.

"But it's bad logic. It just makes people scared, because it means that imperfect people who are touched by these forces have to die, so they just deny or hide when they have instead of get help or fix anything," she said. When she gazed despondently into her empty cup, Percy handed over his, which she sipped from gratefully.

"Am I here because you need to make an example of me?" he asked.

"I can't make you do anything but it sure would help, to prove that this can be taken care of to everyone else in the group, at least. I mean, I admit it, I fucked up. I had a whole big crisis of faith at exactly the wrong time and fucked off to have visions while all of you were having your asses handed to you by vampires, and when I finally get there I can only be there for like an hour and blip out of existence while Keyleth is fucking dying and then I completely miss your exorcism, you know, I, the cleric, the only one who knows fuckall about what the fuck is going on, totally abandon --"

"It's not your fault, Pike. No one blames you for what happened," he said. She chewed on her lip almost has hard as she had the sandwiches. "To be honest... I had completely forgotten you weren't there."

"Well of course you don't remember that I wasn't there, you were busy being beset by a literal fucking demon!"

She slurped her ale.

"I'm sorry," she muttered. "I just. I have a role, you have a role. I know this is hard and you're scared, that's how it's supposed to be. I'm the cleric and I'm supposed to be the one doing the hand-holding, and you're supposed to be able to just cry as much as you need to."

"Pike, I dragged all my friends into the sub dungeons of an ancient castle to fight all the skeletons in my closet and actual demons for me and nearly got them all killed. If you think that I will do anything difficult with just a little crying and hand-holding, you have not been paying attention."

"Don't worry, I know," she said dully.

Even if there was only a trickle of people entering the hall all of them seemed to be avoiding them, he thought he could feel eyes on him even if he could not see them. Maybe it was as Pike had said, and maybe this was just a place like any other. He needed to think about something else, anything else.

"So Vex didn't put you up to this," he said finally.

"Vex? What are you talking about?"

"I thought maybe she had been the one to ask you to do something about me. To fix the team, as it were."

"Uh, no? Keyleth said you still stank like demons even after we left Whitestone and so I decided to check that. Like, she can smell everything. Once, she left tampons on my bed because she could smell it? I hadn't started yet but she could even smell that it was about to, and I had to tell her that you can't do that because it's creepy as fuck, like I know Trinket can smell it too but at least he's considerate enough not to say anything about it... why did you think Vex put me up to this?"

Percy decided not to reflect much on how much he didn't need to hear any of that, as he had bigger statements to combat. "She just, seems to be taking the de facto leadership role in things, I suppose."

Pike searched his face a moment, and then turned back to her sandwich. "You know, when we first brought you on I thought for sure you were gay. But if it went that badly last week, I mean, you still could be. Something to think about."

"I –"

"There's not anything wrong with it! It's fine, you don't have to do anything with people you don't want to. And if someone tries to make you, tell me, so I can mace them in the crotch," she said.

"You have a very incorrect idea of what happened that night."

"Then enlighten me."

"I don't think I will," said Percy.

"Okay, whatever. Not my business, I know. But. I can say you should do this to make Keyleth or Vex or me happy, because appealing to your own sense of well-being isn't going to work, and you're going to argue with anyone trying to reason with you. Because like, I get it. I mean I don't. But everyone else is really shook up about it and I can only imagine what it was like for you, and like, asking you to dig that back up so soon and literally just do it again not even a month later has got to sound insanely cruel. But then even saying that it won't be that bad, you probably won't even remember it, because we downright baby demonic hosts, if you're raised with the Dawnfather that probably also sounds so insane. You've learned that someone like you needs to be punished for it, and by not doing it you're anxious for more suffering, or are upset we think you too weak to handle it... and it's a lot. It's not something you can reason out of because you didn't reason into it. It probably goes against everything in your nature but this is one of those things you need to stop thinking about and just trust me, that you'll be fine and feel better for it."

The mess hall began to fill. The world would go on as usual, regardless. And that was always the problem. Percy had been left behind.

"Fine."

"You'll do it?"

"I am going to trust you," he said.

"That's great! I'll go tell the priestess now, so we can try for tonight. Thank you, thank you, thank you!" She dropped her sandwich and left the remaining ale on the table as she ran off. And out of inevitable curiosity, Percy tore off a piece of the bread with the lichpepper jam to taste. He did not think of it much at first, but it was not that it was not hot – it was too much fire to comprehend, and the dawning realization of what was already done began to flood his mouth and he downed the ale there, then the water, and that only seemed to make things worse, and the nun nearby watched bemusedly as he fled the room for something to put it out.