Trust Exercises

Chapter 8

"Pike, I need to talk to Cass," was the first thing Percy said to her when he found her in the corridor that afternoon. The dwarf child who Markus had ordered to trail him to ensure he actually made it to her quickly rushed off once Pike was in earshot, her obligation to this frightening stranger finally complete. Meanwhile, Pike watched him cautiously.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" she asked.

Percy's face had been a mask as best he could muster for Markus and the kid he'd been sent off with, because they didn't know, and he didn't want to answer their questions. And normally it would have stayed on for Pike, too, but here, it was too much, here, it was slipping. His expressions weren't working, and his face grew hot.

"I need to tell her -- you know what I need to tell her. You know everything. You heard it. She won't forgive me. I know. I don't deserve it."

Pike's expression shifted to one of muted horror, but she wasn't completely frozen from acting.

"Come on," she said quietly, taking his good hand in her small one and pulling it forward, "Come with me." He didn't argue with her. He wasn't able to -- physically his body had shut down to only a numb plod and she led that shambling human mass into a nearby study, shooing out two young acolytes who had somehow managed to get the top ties of their robes undone. She shut the door and pushed him toward a threadbare cushioned chair. "If you're going to have a breakdown It's much better to do those seated." It was around then that his knees gave out and he nearly collapsed into that chair.

"You know everything," he said.

"I don't know everything, but I know that much," she said, slipping in the deadbolt just below the door.

"I told you everything," he said.

"Oh," she said, her hand falling from the doorknob, "Yeah, you did."

"I don't know how to tell her," he said. "I mean, it's an excuse. But I didn't... I didn't get what I'd done until after. And once I did... that's why we all had to die."

The List had only had five names for six barrels. But there had always been six names, since the beginning.

"You don't have to know what to tell her right now because she's not here, Percy," said Pike.

"Don't you, can't you have the... don't you have any way to --"

"Even if I could, I wouldn't do that for you right now," said Pike, the edge in her voice cutting at his breath. Softening it took obvious effort from her. "You're not in any state to have that conversation and even if you could, she deserves more than a twenty-five word sending. You can at least agree to that, I think?"

He wanted to agree but his body wouldn't listen to him, it was too busy trembling and squeezing the last bit of moisture from his still-soot-caked tear ducts.

"I think maybe what you should do is try to write down what you want to say for now, so you know what to do when you do go," she tried. But he was already choking on sobs, folding himself over in the chair like he would puke.

"Everyone who killed the de Rolos, we were all supposed to die. All of us, that night."

"Percy," she said finally, "And I mean this in the most gentle, life-affirming way, please -- shut the fuck up."

He clutched at his elbows, unable to support his own weight, his damp face a sign that he was about to melt into the floor. And this went on for a while, like maybe the animal would tire itself out and stop.

"I wasn't supposed to leave, Pike," the words fell from his mouth. "I-I wasn't supposed to make it out the first time, and I wasn't going to the second. I'm not supposed to be here. I --"

Pike scoffed and finally crossed the study to the chair and grabbed him by the nose.

"I'm getting fucking sick of this," she said, pulling his face forward. "I am fucking sick of this. I'm not going to tell you what you did was justified, or okay, or for the right reasons. It's fucked up. It's super fucked up. But you were a fucked up kid in a fucked up situation and in your own fucked up little mind it had made some fucked up sense at the time. But you are not the same as them. You are not. You didn't massacre children in front of their parents, parents in front of their children. You didn't save two of the children to be brutally tortured for fun and profit. You didn't plunge a once-thriving city into starvation, you didn't desecrate an ancient holy site for power, you didn't execute random civilians as an example to your enemies, you didn't eat your servants when you got a bit peckish, you didn't begin making blood sacrifices of your city to an ancient evil god! Your sister might never forgive you for your fucked up little murder-suicide attempt? You know what? Fine. She doesn't have to. But the kind of evil that the Briarwoods did? That doesn't happen in one night of crazy. You have to actually show up and put in the work for that kind of evil. And even possessed by a literal actual fucking demon directing you to build killing machines the likes of which the world had never seen before you couldn't do it. You just don't fucking have it in you. It's not even that you're a good person. You're too fucking lazy to be compared to them. So Percival whatever-the-fuck-your-name-is de Rolo, please, for the love of Sarenrae and Pelor and all the others, shut the fuck up!"

He watched her, stupidly, waiting for her to finish, and then stupidly watched her some more, until she finally let go and wiped his snot on the shoulder of his robe.

"Sorry, I --"

"No, you're not wrong," he said, finally, his voice cracking. Pike dug through her pockets for a handkerchief and handed it over, and he took it and started blowing his nose.

"Of course I am," she said. She didn't want to look at him. "But you know, what you planned when we went to Whitestone -- you do realize you also led a whole bunch of people who cared about you back to your hometown to watch you die, right? Like, we do all care about you, even if you're a pain in the ass, and you, of all people, should know how much it fucks you up to watch people you care about die. You understand you did that to us, right? Me, and all of Vox Machina?"

"Yes," he said in a small voice, face buried in the handkerchief.

"Do you not think that maybe you owe all of us an apology for that, too?" she said.

"Yes," his voice shrank even smaller. And finally, as nearly a squeak, he said, "I'm sorry, Pike."

"And I forgive you."

After a moment of trying to process those words, Percy peered at her from over the handkerchief.

"Why are you looking at me like that? It's kind of my job," she said with a shrug. "Also, like, you did just kind of follow me onto hallowed ground to get your soul cauterized by a religious crackpot to prove yourself so if I didn't forgive you after all that, I'd be some kind of asshole, which I'm not. But I'm warning you, I'm going to be the easiest one of us."

"The easiest -- I have to do this for everyone in the group," he muttered.

"Tell them all that you dragged them all to Whitestone with the intent of killing yourself in front of them, apologizing for doing that, and then promise that you won't do that again, yes. I know you think that you can just bottle all this stuff up until you die, but it doesn't work that way -- like, they all already suspect that much, so you do have to deal with it at some point. They're not as dumb as they look, you know."

Having to do this five more times did seem like some kind of nightmare.

"All right," he said, his voice still weak as he pulled away the handkerchief, "I... I can do that. And I won't do it again... In the future, I will be sure that if I do intend to off myself, I'll do so privately -- ow!!"

She had punched him hard in the knee.

"Fucking hell, Percy. Not the time."

On top of everything else, he grabbed at his throbbing knee.

"And if you are thinking about doing that, tell me, so I can help you," she said.

"So you can help me how?" he'd found his voice again, finally, even though it scratched, "By taking away my weapons? locking me out of my workshop? Putting me in a cell? chaining my hands to a bedpost --"

"By talking to you," she said. "Tell me so we can talk."

He let go of a shaky breath, the knuckles on his knee white.

"You're not the Briarwoods, and neither am I," she said. "They're dead, and we're not."

He breathed, and as some of the tension in his body released the space it left filled with exhaustion. After getting his soul cauterized -- it struck him then how both nonsensical and gruesome that phrase sounded at once -- just this conversation was too much excitement for one day.

"You're right... they're dead, and we're not."

Pike put her hand on his knee. No burning-heat of Sarenrae. Just Pike.

"You really do look like shit. Do you want to go back to bed?"

"I do, but -- I don't know what to say to them. Any of them. Cass. I don't know."

"Like I told you before, write it down. Don't just leave them notes, that'd be a dick move, but write it down so you can figure out what you need to say," she said.

"I can't --"

"Percy -- oh." She had started but saw him hold up his tightly-bandaged left hand, and point to his face, still missing his glasses. "Right." From her skirt pocket she pulled out his glasses, which he gratefully perched on his sore nose, and then she pulled out the prosthetic, or at least what was left of it. "Sorry. I uh. I didn't know this was going to happen to it." She dropped it into his hands, both leather and metal pieces corroded and twisted by something much stronger than the acid it was supposed to contain when it was in use.

"It's fine," he said, "it was just a prototype... I should have brought the brace Keyleth made as a backup," he said.

"Yeah, you should have," Pike agreed, even though she wasn't really supposed to. She sighed, looked toward the door, and said, "Shit, I need a drink."

"I think I do too," said Percy. As steadily as he could muster he stood up.

"Didn't you want to go back to the infirmary to lay down?"

"I mean, I do, but," he said, having to blink because standing up had started the throbbing in his head anew. "Do you think you could sneak some in for me?"