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It had been stupid for the two of them to take a night stroll, meandering into the treeline at the sight of fireflies, Keyleth taking Percy’s hand to guide him through the darkness over the gnarled roots and past tangled shrubs. He’d flinched at first, when her fingers had brushed his, but her touch was soft, her grip relaxed, and the momentary flutter of fear was replaced with the warm glow of growing endearment, as she chattered brightly to him about the types of trees they were passing, what flowers would blossom here in the warmer months.
If it had been stupid of them to venture into the trees, he had been a fool not to notice when they had wandered out of sight of the edge of town, the candlelit windows fading to blurry points of light, small as the fireflies themselves.
Not noticing the bandits’ approach, however- their footfalls on the leaf litter, the black shapes of them in the blue-dark- that had been unforgivable.
Reciting the exhaustive list of his failings in that past hour, Percy found, was easy, but it did not equate to formulating an escape plan. Their forced march through the forest had been too brief to allow him to properly think, and the ghostly shape of a campfire was already materialising ahead of them. Between putting one foot in front of the other in the dark, the dig of the knife in his back, Keyleth’s own tense breathing beside him, it’s quite impossible to concentrate.
He tries to play out an escape plan in his mind- he’ll rip the gun from his holster, shoot his sentry over his own shoulder, without even turning about- but then he imagines a sharp cry of pain from Keyleth as her own captor slips the blade right through her. He turns back the hands of the clock- this time, he’ll fire at the shadow behind Keyleth first- and by the time he has turned to fire again his throat will have been slit. On the edge of his peripheral, he catches Keyleth looking at him.
Not yet.
As it is, no distraction emerges on their walk. When they do emerge into a clearing - a sparse camp, nothing but a fire and a few bedrolls, he is shoved forward without warning. He falls onto his knees, hard enough to rattle his teeth, and before he can recover his head is yanked up, wrenching a fistful of his hair. The blaze of the campfire is searingly, dizzyingly hot, and he sinks his nails into the dirt, and for a moment cannot breathe past the fury- in his mind’s eye, he surges up, ready to rent, to tear, to slash- to rip them to shreds. At length, his eyes adjust to the light.
A woman clad in leather armor has a loaded crossbow aimed right between his eyes. The sharp point of the bolt glisters in the firelight.
“I think,” She grins around something she is chewing- tobacco, maybe. “You might just know the drill, kid.” She lets go of him, and her droning voice is wholly unconcerned. “It’d be fan-fucking-tasting if you could co-operate with us. Arms up.”
Percy keeps his arms at his sides.
“Hayes?” She prompts, and the knife is at his throat again, digging in now, just a little. He sets his teeth, sickened, at the familiar sensation. A muffled noise of distress behind him gives him some idea of Keyleth’s whereabouts- but he can’t see her “Hayes,” so he extrapolates there’s not much she can do for him right now. Deliberately, obediently, he slowly lifts his arms.
“Better.” She says, and then gestures a toss of her head- she’s not enough of an amateur to wave the weapon about, Percy realises. “Take his belt, would ya?”
Percy suddenly finds it very difficult to swallow. The moment Hayes’ arms encircle his waist, he freezes like a prey animal, doesn’t relax until after the tell-tale click of the belt buckle and the smooth sound of the leather sliding free from the belt loops.
“No coin, boss.” A gruff voice, that makes Percy think of Grog if Grog had swallowed a large toad, most certainly Hayes, replies. “Some kinda… bundle of silver wands, though?”
Percy breathes out, and allows himself to be slightly amused by this description.
“You should be careful with that.” Percy says, partly to regain some control, partly to test the waters. Partly because Hayes doesn’t sound awfully bright, and the pepperbox is loaded, and Percy is very much within his range. “It’s rather dangerous.”
The bandit Captain’s eyes go to his.
“Oh,” She says, slow and level, oozing disinterest. “It is, is it?”
This time, Percy says nothing. Addressing a lackey is one thing, but this woman is clearly a different creature entirely. At his silence, she rolls her eyes- Percy barely catches the expression in the flickering firelight.
“His coat now, Hayes, if you’d be so kind.”
Before Percy can process what she has said, he is seized roughly from behind- large, fumbling hands pulling more at his arms than his sleeves. He fights it a little, twisting and tossing his head, but it is practically a formality- Hayes is far stronger than him, and clearly not concerned with breaking him in the process of getting the coat off. At one point, he feels the press of cold steel- Hayes still has his gun in his off-hand, the idiot- he’d snatch for it if not for the crossbow aimed at him. When the coat is finally ripped away, he hears the distinctive sound of tearing fabric, punctuated with Keyleth’s hiss of sympathy, and winces.
“Turn out the pockets.”
Tiberius has the mending wheel. He tells himself, holding the gaze of the bandit leader, whose eyes are still, wisely, trained on him.
Tiberius also has Blight. A voice in his head whispers back, and for a moment he entertains the fantasy- a frostbite black seeping through her fingers, her disinterested drawl turning to a sharp yelp of surprise, the clatter of the crossbow as it falls-
“Nothing, boss.” Hayes answers her, clearly confused.
“What? An asshole with a coat that fucking fancy has to have some coin.” She replies, her frown deepening. “Hey, asshole.” Her voice has changed now. She no longer sounds bored. “Where’s your coin purse?”
Shit. Percy thinks.
An image surfaces in his mind- a pouch full to bursting with silver, sliding down the ancient tavern bar towards Vex’ahlia, who stops it deftly, throwing him a wink. She pockets the coin, and her braid swishes as she turns right back to her conversation with Grog, without a second glance at him.
Actually, I give all the coin I earn to a half-elf woman I’ve known for barely three months, He thinks, hysterically. Maybe because I have poor impulse control or maybe because she deserves it more or maybe because I trust her. She’s not here right now, shall I take a message?
Aloud, he begins, falteringly;
“I don’t carry any coin on me-”
“Hayes, check his boots.” He is interrupted, and Hayes’ shadow falls upon him again.
““This is absurd,” He tries. “I really don’t have-”
“Hey, asshole.” She cuts him off. “Shut up.” Quite suddenly, she flicks the trigger of the crossbow with her fingernail, too lightly to trigger it, but enough for the movement to send daggers through Percy’s heart, for Keyleth’s breath to catch audibly. “I don’t like lies. Keep telling them and I’ll put a bolt through your brain.”
One after another, Percy’s boots are yanked off, while he thinks longingly of delivering a good sharp kick to Hayes’ teeth, trying to ignore his wildly stuttering pulse and the shivering he is failing to suppress. A few moments later, one shoe lies discarded in the grass, while Hayes shakes the other, squinting one-eyed up into the shaft as if through a telescope.
“Nothing again, boss.”
Her frown twists into a sneer.
“Forget the boot, then. Asshole here must have something of value on him asides from the clothes. A necklace or something.”
“What-” Percy can’t help but say, the absurdity of this conclusion distracting him momentarily-
“Cut him out of his shirt.”
Percy goes rigid. He is suddenly excruciatingly aware of Keyleth’s eyes on him. She is watching. She will see.
They won’t. They can’t. He isn’t a child trapped under Whitestone any longer, isn’t even fighting against chains or bindings this time- they can’t do this to him if he won’t let them-
The distinctive, drawn-out scrape of a knife being unsheathed sings out, and his heart explodes in his chest.
“Don’t.” He says, and he does not keep his voice even this time.
“Aw, sorry asshole.” The Captain replies in mocking falsetto. “Gotta.”
At the sound of Hayes’ first step in his direction, he flinches away, all at once shaking,
“Ah, ah-” She scolds, tracking his movements with a marksman’s proficiency. She pauses, to chew once, working her jaw- “He’s not going to hurt you, but if you don’t stop making a fuss, I will.”
Something about the threat conjures up some old passivity in him, and he freezes- or at least, he stops writhing away; he is still trembling uncontrollably. Miraculously, he manages to keep control of his breathing- every shuddering inhale pains him, but somehow, he does not hyperventilate.
The knife must be sharp, because it glides through his shirt smoothly, only snagging once, and grazing him stingingly. He cringes at the sensation anyway, and knows with awful certainty that Keyleth saw- but the breath turns to void in his lungs when the feels the material fall away from him.
Hayes gives a low whistle. Percy hears nothing from Keyleth- no gasp, no suppressed exclamation- and he tries so hard to hold still, it hurts. He feels as though his chest will cave in.
“Shit, kid-” Hayes speaks up, and then, terribly, revoltingly, his fingers ghost one of the raised marks, snaking parallel to his spine. “You must be into some freaky shit, nobleman with scars like that-”
The sensation is like maggots in his still-living flesh, cuts him to the quick- a waking open heart surgery.
Heavy rage thunders through him, torrential.
“Don’t touch me.” He does not turn his head but the words are a malediction, seeping with black blood, with tangible, tasteable darkness and Hayes’ fingers recoil.
The bandit Captain opens her mouth to speak, and then-
An exclamation of surprise from behind Percy is cut off by a pained gurgle. He does not have time to turn his head before with a feral roar, a blur of bronzey fur slams into the Captain, sending her staggering into the fire, embers erupting in her wake, as if fleeing upwards.
Percy takes his chance and throws himself at Hayes. With the advantage of surprise, the larger man stumbles, and Percy wrests the gun from his grip. It back in his hand, he feels like he has been reunited with a severed limb. It’s as effortless as thought, to fire two shots into Hayes at point blank range, and then the man is on the ground.
The whole thing is over in less than six seconds.
He turns to Keyleth, who stands, sides heaving, her wildshape silhouetted by the firelight, eyes shining like two arcane discs in the dark, and he remembers all at once what she is seeing.
On reflex, uselessly, he brings his free hand up as if to try to cover himself- but he can’t decide where to place it, which swathe of skin to hide. His eyes go to the shreds of his shirt. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the man who was guarding over Keyleth stagger to his feet and lurch off into the forest, undergrowth cracking as he runs. Percival does not care to look over to the Captain, and he does not think that Hayes will be getting up anytime soon.
He turns, walks out of the firelight- tripping on a gnarled root, and stumbling, catching himself against a tree. He breathes through his gritted teeth.
The evening is mild enough, for the reasonably clothed, but a breeze wends about him, cold, and snaking, like a ghostly basilisk, and he finds himself shivering in earnest now. He stares intently at the rough landscape of the bark, and tries extremely hard not to think of Hayes’ fingers curled on the forest floor. He is all at once aware of a throbbing, gory headache.
A gently settling weight on his shoulders makes him wince in surprise, but then he feels the familiar softness of it, and looks over his shoulder. Keyleth- once again a half-elf with an unsteady smile- has retrieved his coat, hung it back over his shoulders. Percy puts up a hand to feel the fabric under his fingertips. In her hands, Keyleth holds a detatched sleeve. She looks somewhat sheepish, which is a little incongruous with the smattering of blood around her mouth and chin.
“Tiberius will fix it for you.” She says, tilting her head.
Percy nods, looks away, and waits for it. Even with the coat draped over him, he is painfully aware that with her elven eyes, she must still be able to see- raised scars, some tiny as distant stars, some thick and long and tapering, burns, brands- The headache swells like a mounting wave.
“Remind me,” Keyleth says, and he feels the ground rushing up to meet him, braces for the impact- “Never to go into the woods after dark without Vex again, no matter how good an Ashari I become. What the fuck was that?” She shudders theatrically. “That sucked.”
Percy blinks.
“It-” He says. “Yes, it rather did.” He says, and he knows that Keyleth can hear the tremble to his voice, but-
“Okay.” She laughs, and the sound has a little frantic edge, and then she gets ahold of herself. “Oh-kaaaay. I think I’m ready to go home now.” She says, and offers him her hand. “When you’re ready?”
He looks at it for a moment, and then somehow, finds himself suppressing a smile. He puts his fingers to his temple for a moment. He really is starting to grow unreasonably fond of her, he thinks.
This time, he takes her hand.