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She finds him on the ramparts of the keep, a ghost in blue looking out at Whitestone underneath them. She supposes she shouldn’t be so surprised to see him up here—between the two of them, Percy’s always been more keen on his trinkets and his workshop, and since he doesn’t have access to the latter and Cassandra kind of let Scanlan throw the former into a pit of acid—
Cassandra sighs. For once, she can’t see anyone from Vox Machina either subtly or unsubtly stalking her brother, but just because she can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t keeping an eye on him.
She steps closer. “I spoke with Archie,” she says. “I’m thinking about putting up a sign, upon his suggestion. Welcome to Whitestone: It’s Safe to Live Here Now.”
Percy chokes on nothing, but recovers admirably and tugs his collar up even further, to hide the scars. There’s a scar at his throat where the blade of Cassandra’s rapier almost pressed in, but for a man begging her to kill him just weeks ago, he looks surprisingly—not bad. Pale, yeah. He should really come outside, more often.
“I doubt it,” he says, and irritation surges under her chest. “There’s still too much to do, and then there’s—”
He stops. Then he gestures at himself.
“That depends: Are you planning on thinking up new types of weapons to kill people any time soon?” says Cassandra, her voice sharper than she means it to. Percy flinches, a little, and Cassandra curses inwardly. “No, of course not—that was rhetorical, you don’t have to answer.”
“Oh,” says Percy.
There are a lot of things Cassandra wants to ask her brother. They range from the stupidly trivial—isn’t it a bit cold up here?—to the deeply incisive, such as the one she’s been wanting to ask him since the ziggurat, since Delilah’s death: Did you mean it, when you said you blamed me for leaving you behind?
She doesn’t know what she wants the answer to be.
He breaks the silence first, and says, “Why did you come find me? Usually it’s one of your new family members, coming up here to drag me down for another barrage of questions about the Briarwoods’ plans.”
“I told them to back off on that,” she mutters, tucking her fingers into her pockets. Some tiny little part of her misses the weight of her blade on her hip, but Keyleth, damn her, had been right to knock some sense into her about how dangerous it was. Percy’s name, engraved on the hilt after the others, only proved as much. “They must’ve wrung everything they could out of you by now.”
“Everything I knew about the Briarwoods’ plans, yes, and the things I made for them,” says Percy, and Cassandra frowns. She leans against a rampart and looks at her brother—if someone looked at the both of them together, she thinks, they might’ve been mistaken for people much older than them. Percy’s hair is a messy shock of white, and the way he moves around reminds Cassandra of a street cat, wary of others, afraid of being hurt.
And she’d know how that felt like. She spent her teenage years on the streets, after all. She looks better now than she did then, she thinks, healthier and only as jumpy as is required for an itinerant adventurer, but her hair is streaked with white, and sometimes when she dreams—
She cuts off that thought before she can go any further with it.
“Did they ask you about anything else?” she asks.
“Your friend Vex asked me very nicely what the hell was wrong with me,” says Percy, “but I told her it would take some time before I finished.”
Knowing Vex, Cassandra’s certain her ranger friend wasn’t all that nice. She sighs. “She’s concerned,” she says. “So is everyone else.” These past few weeks have not been easy on them, and Percy’s something of an easy target for some of her more temperamental companions. Probably why she hasn’t seen him around as much.
“I can’t blame them for being concerned,” says Percy. “What with—”
He pauses a moment, then flaps a gloved hand between them, uselessly. She’d wondered why he’d worn them so much, when she was first back in Whitestone. Now she remembers the sight of the scarring on his fingers, their father’s own stern lectures on never showing weakness in front of an enemy applied under extenuating circumstances.
“You and me and the demon that nearly managed to get one of us to kill the other,” says Cassandra, dryly.
“Yes, that,” says Percy. “I—don’t entirely know why you didn’t, honestly.”
She blinks at him. “What?” she says, caught off-guard.
“Isn’t that what you do,” he goes on, as though she’s never spoken, as if the insufferable prick would know better than her, “when someone commits treason?”
“Percy,” says Cassandra, as reasonably as she can manage, “you insufferable prick.”
She takes a vindictive kind of glee in the thunderstruck look on his face, like he honestly cannot believe she said that directly to him. “What?” he says.
“Did you not hear a word I said, back there?” says Cassandra. “When I told a bloody demon that I never agreed to putting you on my list? When I said you were my brother, and I would be damned first before I could finish what the Briarwoods started? When, oh, yeah, I had to fight off a fucking shadow monster from the depths of my soul so it wouldn’t go through with the deal anyway?” She steps in front of Percy, looks her brother straight in the eye. “You’re my brother.”
“You’ve never liked me very much,” says Percy. “And you have a new family.”
“I also said you’re an insufferable prick,” says Cassandra, annoyed. “But you being my brother and you being a shit aren’t mutually exclusive. I think Scanlan is a shit, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s family.” And she would die for him. For any of them. “Everything you did, everything the Briarwoods did to you, they don’t change the fact that you’re my brother.”
Percy opens his mouth, as if to argue. She knows what he’s going to say, because he snarled it at her before, with glass between them and acid pouring into the room. You left me behind to bleed out in the snow. You left me there to die. You left, Cassandra, you left.
“And,” Cassandra plows on, because she’s on a roll now, “for five years I thought it was my fault you were dead, and for five years I nearly killed myself so many times because I couldn’t leave anything or anyone behind. Because I left you when you needed me.” She breathes out. “I never wanted to be the one who left again.”
Percy doesn’t say anything, but an odd look passed over his face, like she’s caught him off his guard and nothing in his training prepared him for this.
He looks—young, she thinks, suddenly. Despite the shock of white hair, the scars, the things they’ve done and the things they’ve spat at each other (you left me to die, Mother would hate you what about her and Father and Julius and Vesper and Whitney and Ludwig do you hear me you fucker what about them), despite all of that—
When that look comes over his face, he looks like the boy she had grown up with in these very walls.
“When I saw you alive,” Cassandra says, “alive—I couldn’t do it again. I wouldn’t. I left you in the snow once, and of all the things I regret,” and there are plenty of those, so many that sometimes she can hardly breathe, “that is the thing I regret the most.”
Percy blinks at her, stunned. De Rolos never show their weaknesses, Cassandra remembers her father saying that, but considering that the both of them have seen each other at their very lowest, nearly killed each other, Cassandra figures she’s entitled to ignore that lesson for this moment.
Percy says, “Oh.”
“Besides, it’s cold out here,” says Cassandra, rubbing at her forearm. “Come inside, the fire’s warm and if my friends are allowed to get thoroughly acquainted with the wine cellar, we’ll have to restore even more of the keep.”
She takes her brother’s hand, and leads him in from the cold.
--
Cassandra had a sword, once.
Key word: had.
She’d called it Justice. In her defense, when she’d received it from a monster made of black smoke, it had promised her that she could get justice for her murdered family, if only she lived.
Somewhere along the way justice and revenge blurred into one, to the point where she couldn’t tell one from the other, anymore.
But justice wouldn’t ask for her to kill her brother, wouldn’t push her to the point where she almost did. Revenge did that. Revenge and Orthax.
And she’s done with that son of a bitch, so.
That being said, she’s well aware she still needs a sword. And there are plenty of those around, she’s building a small collection just for herself, even, but none of them feel as right in her hand as her rapier did. There’s something off about the balance, about the grip, everything.
She practices, anyway. She finds Grog and they whack the shit out of each other with wooden training swords, and it ends in the both of them laughing about it in the middle of the courtyard. Grog’s wooden sword is splinters now, poor thing.
“—an’ then, then,” says Grog, “Keyleth, right, she comes outta nowhere, ain’t ever seen her look so pissed, and she just—should’ve been there, Cass, she broke a chair on his head—”
“I’ll find you and Keyleth a new bar, Grog, promise,” says Cassandra, laughing.
Percy’s voice pipes up: “Is this a bad time?”
Grog’s demeanor instantly shifts. He gets to his feet, this huge lumbering goliath, and glares down at Percy. “Maybe,” he says.
“It’s not a bad time, Percy,” says Cassandra, lightly patting Grog’s shoulder. “Grog, you should go.”
“What, an’ leave you alone with him?” says Grog.
“He’s my brother,” says Cassandra.
“Yeah, uh, he tried to kill you,” says Grog.
Percy shrugs. “He does have a point,” he says.
“I also tried to kill him, find a better point,” says Cassandra, annoyed once more. “Grog, he’s my brother. If it makes you feel better, you can sit outside and I’ll shout if I need you.”
Grog’s eyes flick to her, then to Percy. “Fine,” Grog rumbles, but there’s a low heat in his eyes as he leaves, the kind that means he’s just waiting for Percy to cross a line.
“Which one of your friends,” starts Percy, reluctantly, “would you trust with not touching something they absolutely should not?”
Cassandra raises a brow. “Not Grog,” she says, almost reflexively. It’s—honestly hard to think of anyone in Vox Machina who hasn’t gotten in trouble at least once, for touching something they shouldn’t have. “Or Vex and Vax. Or Scanlan. Or Trinket.” Which leaves Keyleth and Pike, and Tiberius, still in Draconia, and Cassandra herself. “What’s this for?”
“I’d like to get my workshop back,” says Percy. “There’s—a couple things I have to check on, and I get the feeling I’ll only get it back if I let one of you keep an eye on me.” He doesn’t sound too pleased about it.
“Why not ask me?” says Cassandra, feeling a familiar wave of irritation. “I’m not a child anymore, I know how to not touch things that look dangerous.”
Percy huffs out a breath, shakes his head. “It’s not that,” he says, “it’s just—I don’t want you near them at all. It’s nothing to do with how young you are, and everything to do with—”
He falters.
“You don’t know about what I’ve done,” he says. “Not the whole of it.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done either,” says Cassandra. “Do you think my hands are clean of blood? Do you think I haven’t done things I shouldn’t have?”
“That isn’t the same,” says Percy.
“Do you think I’ll be frightened,” says Cassandra, looking her brother dead in the eye, “to go into your workshop? After everything? After Orthax? Percy, I am not a child for you to protect. If you want your workshop back, I can come watch over you.”
Percy breathes out, his breath a puff of white in the cool air. “All right,” he concedes, and Cassandra exhales, feels her heart lighten somewhat. “Just—don’t touch anything. Don’t ask about anything, you won’t like the answer. Help me clean up, I—think there’s some plans there I could use.”
--
Percy’s workshop is dark, dreary, and exactly the sort of workshop only a madman might think to maintain. There are tools hanging from hooks protruding from the walls, half-finished projects sitting on the table, traces of soot and black powder left on the furniture, a fine film of dust covering everything and making Cassandra cough and sneeze.
Oh, and blood, too. Cassandra’s gut churns at the thought, of what else Percy might have constructed down here for the Briarwoods.
Keyleth, who’d volunteered to accompany Cassandra and Percy down, turns around, eyes narrowing at the sight of all the weapons she sees. Cassandra can’t blame her, those are more guns and bombs than she ever thought anyone could make. “You made all these?” Keyleth says.
“Yes,” says Percy, yanking out some drawers and taking out rolled-up plans. “Don’t touch them,” he adds.
Keyleth holds her hands up, and sticks close to Cassandra. “Not touching,” she says. “You couldn’t pay me enough to.”
“Good,” says Percy. He goes back to the plans, muttering to himself.
Cassandra drifts away, careful to avoid the sharper weapons, the bombs. Instead she finds herself walking up towards a small box, tucked away in a corner. She bends down in front of it, almost reaches out as if to touch it, then thinks better of it and starts to stand.
“What is that?” says Keyleth, resting a hand on Cassandra’s shoulder and squinting.
“I don’t know,” says Cassandra.
“Not yours, that’s for sure,” says Percy’s voice just behind them, and he squeezes in to pick it up. He glances to Keyleth, and Cassandra sees his fingers twitch just the slightest bit on the box. “It’s—Will you at least do us the favor of granting us an illusion of privacy, ah, Keyleth, wasn’t it?”
“If you think I’ll be leaving you two alone in a room full of weapons with each other—” starts Keyleth.
“You won’t be,” Cassandra assures her. “You can stand guard outside. If anything happens, I’ll scream Jenga.” And make Vax proud, too.
Keyleth does not take her eyes off Percy for one moment as she leaves, walking backwards as she goes. Somehow she manages not to trip over anything, though part of that might be Cassandra helpfully telling her to step to the right, step to the left, yes, that’s perfect.
The door shuts, and Cassandra turns to Percy, who’s—opening the box?
Who’s taking something out of the box, and out of reflex Cassandra’s hand drops to the hilt of her sword—or to where it would be, anyway. Her fingers close around empty air instinctively before she remembers: it’s gone.
She blinks at what Percy’s taken out of the box.
“They let you keep Mother’s music box,” she whispers, gobsmacked, as she takes the music box out of Percy’s hands. How many times had she snuck into her mother’s room, just to wind it up and listen to its soft tune? How many times had she fallen asleep to its lullaby?
“As a reward,” says Percy, as she winds up the music box. “For building something for them.”
He doesn’t specify what that something is, and she doesn’t ask. It’s a twisted kind of reward, from a twisted sort of people, and not for the first time Cassandra finds herself wishing the Briarwoods had died just a little bit slower. Even more, when the music doesn’t play as she thought it might.
“I never really looked at it, afterwards,” says Percy, as if to explain why it’s not working. “I’d forgotten it was down here, honestly.”
Liar, liar. But Cassandra doesn’t call him out on it. Instead she just says, “Could you fix it? I don’t have your gift for tinkering, and I think there’s a place for it back in our keep in Emon.”
“Your keep,” says Percy. “In Emon.”
Too late, she remembers: they’d forgotten to mention that. In the chaos of the past week or so, it’s slipped her mind to mention that, oh, yes, she and her friends aren’t just sleeping in inns all over the place, they have a keep.
“If you want I can find the deed that granted it to us,” she says, dryly. “It’s still standing, by the way.”
“No, no, I believe you,” says Percy. He looks around his workshop, then sighs. “I can’t clean this up in a day,” he says.
“Not alone, you can’t,” says Cassandra, rolling up her sleeves. She catches the incredulous way Percy glances at her, as if he can’t quite believe that Cassandra of all people is offering to help him clean. She bites back the reminder that she isn’t twelve anymore.
They clean it up. Cassandra does not ask any questions, and Percy seems quick to lose himself in the work of at least making the workshop less dusty, if not less terrifying. Together they even manage to take care of the explosives still sitting on the table, although the actual disposal happens out in the forest, thirty feet away from a box full of explosives, and behind a thick, sturdy tree.
It leaves behind a small crater and a slightly dazed and singed Percy, lying prone on his back and blinking up at the sky. Cassandra laughs, from her vantage point in a tree further back, and climbs down, strolls over to help him up.
“You look ridiculous,” she tells him, as Percy brushes the soot off his jacket, fixes his ascot again. “Is that all of them?”
“The ones I made for the Briarwoods, yes,” he says. He turns and calls, “You can come out now.”
Keyleth lopes out of the woods in a lithe feline form. She butts her head up against Cassandra’s palm, and Cassandra laughs, scratches her friend behind her ears.
“I apologize for the explosions, Minxie,” she says, fondly. Keyleth purrs under her hand, noses at her palm. “You could have avoided them, though.”
Keyleth, in answer, shakes her off, and lightly butts her palm again, slightly more aggressive this time—her way of disagreeing, Cassandra’s found, when she can’t speak. Cassandra sighs, because she knows all too well why Keyleth wouldn’t want to leave her alone with her brother. She’d been there, when Cassandra’d pointed her rapier at her brother’s throat and Percy pointed a gun at his sister’s head.
“We should be getting back,” says Percy, drawing Cassandra back from her thoughts. “Archie was asking after you, when I last met him. He wanted to give you an update on some of the more major repairs’ progress.”
Cassandra straightens up, tucks her hands into the pockets of her coat. “Let’s get back, then,” she says. “You should come with me. I’ve been away too long, and I daresay you know Whitestone better than I do now.”
“Whitestone trusts you more than it trusts me,” Percy points out.
Keyleth rumbles beside them. Cassandra imagines she’d be saying something pithy right now, and if this were anyone else, anywhere else, Cassandra would be doing it too. God knows she’s done it plenty of times before.
But this is Percy, so she shrugs. “Consider this a chance to earn it back,” she tells him, sincerely, and tugs him along with her.
--
“Keyleth, darling,” starts Vex’ahlia, opening the door late at night, “not that I’m not happy to see you, but it’s late, what do you—want…”
She trails off and stares at Percival de Rolo, standing in front of her door in work clothes.
“Oh,” she says, none too happy to see Cassie’s brother here. “You. What do you want?”
“When does Vox Machina plan to leave?” he asks.
“So eager to be rid of us,” huffs Vex, leaning against her doorway and crossing her arms. Trinket’s stirring awake, giving a soft rumbling noise. “I wonder why.”
“I’ll admit,” says Percival, a little stiffly, the same kind of stiff Cassie was in the first few months she was a part of their party, “being followed around by one of you at all times is trying, but I can’t blame you for that precaution. I only ask because—”
He hesitates, then sighs.
“Never mind,” he mutters.
“Hey,” says Vex, reaching forward to catch him by the shoulder, gripping him hard. She spots the flash of panic and fear across his face, but it’s gone as quick as possible, and he’s all stiff and proper again. “Whatever it is, you woke me up for it. I believe I’m owed at least an explanation as to why.”
Percival grabs her hand by the wrist, and very deliberately takes it off his shoulder. “This,” he says, “was a mistake.”
“And you’d be an expert in those,” says Vex, her tongue sharp.
Percival flinches back.
Vex sighs. Now that they’re here, now that he’s not goading his sister into trying to kill him, she can see the resemblance between Cassandra and this brother of hers. She’d been just as jumpy, when they’d first met. “Well, now I’m awake,” Vex says, “and I can’t go back to sleep. You might as well follow through on what you meant to do.”
Percival stares at her a moment, like he’s not sure where to go from here. Then he sighs and says, “I—need you, and the rest of your group, to keep a secret from Cassandra for me.”
“Why?” says Vex. “And why were you asking me when we plan to leave?”
“Because I need to know how much time I have to make something for her,” says Percival. “Something to keep her safe.”
Vex straightens up. “I’m listening,” she says.
--
There used to be a great variety of books, in Cassandra’s mother’s library.
This is what Cassandra remembers of her life, age six and a half: clambering onto a chair, balancing on her very tiptoes to haul out a book that looked particularly attractive, and then absconding with her ill-gotten gain into her room, giggling all the while. She’d loved adventure stories, books about pirates and bandits and wizards and witches, stories where heroes fought against bad guys and always, always won.
She steps into the library now, close to fifteen years since those days. She knows better now.
The Briarwoods hadn’t spared the library either, Percy had told her. They’d taken the adventure stories she’d loved, the fairytales Whitney adored, the romances neither Vesper nor Julius would ever admit to reading, and burned them. Instead they filled the library with books on anatomy, books on science, books on dark magic and darker rituals and gods that required something gorier than an altar in a home.
Now that the Briarwoods are gone, the library is all but empty. Not all the books have been disposed of or locked away, but the shelves look strangely hollow, the room just too damn big.
She stops at a shelf near the window, where her mother used to keep all the adventure stories Cassandra had loved so much. There’s a book on the shelf, and for a moment she lets hope rise in her chest as she picks it up, cracks it open—
—requires an arcane circle to be drawn in a man’s ashes—
She shuts the book and shoves it into another shelf. Her eyes are beginning to blur, something stinging at the edges of them, and she furiously reaches up to wipe the tears away before they can fall.
“Cassie?”
She blinks, and turns to see Scanlan. “Oh,” she says, quietly, and makes another discreet wipe at her eyes. “Scanlan? I thought you, Pike and Grog were trying to haggle with a shopkeeper.”
“We did!” Scanlan says, cheerfully. “It just wasn’t as successful as we’d hoped it would be.”
“You may get that discount yet,” says Cassandra. “Just not today.”
“Oh, thanks, you sure know how to reassure someone,” says Scanlan, hopping up onto a chair. “You all right? Don’t tell me you miss your sword.”
“I do, but that’s not what I’m here for, and also, you still owe Percy a few thousand in gold,” says Cassandra. “I just—came down here to do some cleaning.”
“We have been doing a lot of cleaning lately,” says Scanlan. “You more than usual. You’re all right?”
No, she isn’t. No, she doesn’t think she could ever be. The Briarwoods did not have her in their dungeons for very long, but they left their mark on her all the same, and no matter how hard she tries she can’t scrub that out. It’s worse for Percy, she thinks, because he was their favorite for so long. Her replacement, because she escaped.
She can’t scrub out that stain, either, not from the both of them.
“I’m fine,” she says, because she can’t tell Scanlan all this.
Scanlan hums. Keeps humming, and she recognizes the tune as a song he’s been working on a while. He hops off the chair, wanders over to the curtains, a deep, ostentatious red paired with black. “These look incredibly tacky,” he says. “We should take it out and burn it.”
Cassandra stares at the curtains.
“I think,” she says, slowly, “you might be on to something here.” She looks to Scanlan, rolls up her sleeves, and says, “Help me get them off.”
“With pleasure,” says Scanlan.
--
They start a fire outside of the keep, and Scanlan has the good sense to bring along some beef jerky that he claims needs some warming. Cassandra doesn’t call him out on that, and instead simply sticks a bit of jerky on the end of her stick and lets the flames lick at it.
The books haven’t been burned yet, simply because Cassandra’s not too sure what sort of enchantments either the Briarwoods or their compatriots might have laid on them to prevent their easy burning. One day she’ll get rid of them, too. One day she’ll scrub Whitestone clean again, even if her fingers bleed—it’s the only thing she can do, the only place where she can yank out almost any trace of the Briarwoods’ existence, as they tried to rub out the de Rolos’.
One day.
For now, Scanlan says, “Do you remember, when you first said your full name in front of us? After that mess in the sewers, when we were about to be arrested?”
Cassandra laughs. “I remember,” she says. “Your face stands out best of all, whenever I think about it. You were so shocked.”
“You were so scrappy,” says Scanlan. “It did explain why you were so bad at pickpocketing anyone, though—don’t wave that jerky at me, Cassie, I’m only telling the truth!”
Cassandra draws her stick back to the flame, the jerky still dangling on the end of it, but gives Scanlan a final smack on the shoulder. Scanlan, true to form, falls over in a theatrical fashion, giving a dramatically betrayed gasp and a loud, groaning lament, which she summarily ignores in favor of dangling her jerky over the roaring fire.
“If you’re finished,” she tells him, cheerful, “you can have some of mine.”
“I have plenty of jerky,” sniffs Scanlan, in a dignified manner, as he brushes the dirt off the seat of his pants. “Anyway, you’re still terrible at it.”
“Why would I need to learn, when I’ve got you and Vax?” says Cassandra. “Besides, you have to admit, I’m better at picking locks now.”
“And I couldn’t be prouder,” says Scanlan. “You’ve come such a long way, you little lawbreaker.”
“Your approval and pride fills me with a sense of shame,” Cassandra tells him, and Scanlan puts his hand over his heart.
“You wound me,” he says, eyes twinkling with mischief. “And here I thought we left shame behind after you used your status to get us tickets to that lovely little establishment in Emon—”
“You mean I flaunted my last name so we could go gambling and drinking with a discount,” says Cassandra. “Generations of de Rolos before me are rolling in their graves. They curse me every night. Every night.”
“Poor you,” says Scanlan, not at all sympathetic to her imaginary plight. She laughs to herself, relaxing into the banter, into Scanlan’s infectious good cheer. She hasn’t felt this light since she set foot into Whitestone again, since she saw the bodies dangling from the Sun Tree—hadn’t realized it, she thinks, up until now.
Scanlan leans against her, his weight warm against her side. “So,” he says, quiet, once the laughter has subsided. “You’ve been doing quite a lot of cleaning, lately, and while I’m very impressed—”
“I,” says Cassandra, with great dignity, “have cleaned up far too many times after far too many dinners at the keep—”
“While I’m impressed,” says Scanlan, “you’ve been going at this with a bit more, shall we say, fervor than you usually approach cleaning with.”
It’s not false. Cassandra’s good at running Greyskull Keep, but she’s not the one personally going around scrubbing floors and tearing down curtains and throwing out the dirt and mud and bloodstained carpets, not usually.
But then again, the Briarwoods never really stained Greyskull Keep, the way they did to Whitestone.
She lets out a slow breath. “Did you know,” she starts, “that when I was younger, we used to play on the Sun Tree?”
“Really?” says Scanlan, surprised. She can’t blame him. The Sun Tree is so withered and dead-looking that it’s hard to imagine anyone climbing onto it for a laugh, leaning against the branches, sleeping amongst the leaves, safe and sound. Not only that, but the first time her friends ever saw the Sun Tree, there were bodies dangling from its branches.
“Yes, really,” she says, pushing the memory aside. The Briarwoods are dead. They cannot harm her city, her people, her family anymore. “Me and my siblings. Well, me and Oliver and Whitney and Ludwig, in any case. Vesper and Julius were too old, and Percy thought he was too old. But the four of us, we were hellions, and we thought ourselves invincible. So—we climbed the tree a lot.”
“That explains why you’re so damn good at climbing,” Scanlan muses.
“That, and the year I spent breaking into people’s homes for a living,” says Cassandra. “Anyway. You should’ve seen it, then—it was so green, so beautiful, and whenever we’d climb into it we’d always feel like we were safe. Like nothing could touch us.” She breathes out. “I don’t know how long it will take,” she says, “for the tree to be that way again. I don’t know how long it will take for Whitestone to recover from all the damage the Briarwoods dealt it. I don’t...”
“I get the feeling,” says Scanlan, after Cassandra falls quiet, “that you’re not just talking about the tree, or the city, here.”
“Percy wasn’t the only one the Briarwoods had tortured,” says Cassandra, drawing a knee up to her chest. “Just—the one that they got back.”
Scanlan doesn’t say anything. But his hand rests gently on hers, and he tugs her in close for a one-armed hug.
She goes, and hugs him back.
--
(An interlude:
“Hey,” says the gnome, startling Cassandra out of her thoughts.
One of the gnomes, anyway. Cassandra turns to look, and yeah: it’s the girl gnome, with dark hair and a purple streak, and bright eyes, and a holy symbol around her neck. Pike, her name was—Pike the cleric, Pike the bright, Pike the one who laid a glowing hand on her and pulled an arrow from her shoulder.
“Hey,” says Cassandra, a little less wary than she used to be. She gives Justice a final wipe, and slides her sword back into its sheath, the weight reassuring on her hip.
“You okay?” says Pike, sitting down next to her on the rock. Her legs barely reach the babbling brook they’ve camped beside.
Cassandra’s almost tempted to laugh. When is she ever okay, these days?
“I’m just fine,” she says. “Never better, in fact, now that I’m not a pincushion.”
“Mm, that does help matters, I’ve found,” says Pike, “but—that wasn’t what I was asking about.” She looks up at Cassandra and says, quiet, “You threw yourself in the way of those arrows.”
No use denying it. Cassandra shrugs. “Yes,” she says. “I knew my armor could take it, I just didn’t realize they’d find a chink in it.” It doesn’t even sound like a lie.
“Mine could too,” says Pike, and Cassandra bristles a little in response. “I’m not—ungrateful, Cass. What you did, it bought me time, and time is valuable in the midst of a fight. But at the same time...I don’t think it was as necessary as you think it was.”
“Would you have liked being turned into a pincushion, then?” Cassandra snaps back.
“Of course not,” huffs Pike. “But I’m wearing heavy armor, I’ve taken arrows before, and the fight was almost over. You didn’t need to throw yourself in front of me like that.” She looks up at Cassandra, and says, once more, “You okay?”
Cassandra swallows, and looks away. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.
Pike presses her lips together, then exhales. “Okay,” she says, pushing herself up to her feet. “If you don’t want to talk about it now, it’s fine. Just—if you need to talk to someone, anyone about it, my bedroll’s not too far away.” She looks at Cassandra once more, with kind blue eyes. Kinder than Cassandra might deserve. “You look like you need someone to talk to.”
She doesn’t take her up on her offer then, but it still rattles around in the back of her mind. You look like you need someone to talk to.
She seeks Pike out the next day, and says, “I still don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s fine,” says Pike. They’re taking up the rear this time, with the rest of the party just up ahead, already scanning for traps. “You don’t really have to, if you don’t want to.”
“But I do want to talk to you,” says Cassandra.
“About what?” says Pike.
“Uh,” says Cassandra, groping around for some topic. “How’d you become a part of this—Super High Intensity Team?”
Pike giggles at the name. Cassandra blinks at her, and her image of the gnome cleric, holy and almost a saint, cracks a little to see the tricky little gnome underneath it. She had thought Pike hadn’t figured out what the name stood for, but—and she really should’ve seen this coming—apparently Cassandra’s underestimated her once more.
“Well,” she starts, “long story short, it involved Grog and a necromantic mage.”
“Wait,” says Cassandra, “really?”
Pike grins up at her, and says, “So before Grog and I joined the SHITs, we were living in Westruun…”)
--
Cassandra finds Pike in one of the nearby temples, helping another, younger cleric with preparing the place for a cleansing ritual. She stands in the doorway for a moment, uncertain of whether she should head inside, before she takes a deep breath and steps across the threshold.
“Pike?” she calls.
“Cassie!” Pike shouts back, eyes bright. “Come here, there’s a spot we can’t quite reach by ourselves.”
Cassandra obeys, stepping up to Pike and lifting her up with a grunt of effort. “Gods, but you’re heavy, Trickfoot, please take the armor off,” she complains, but she holds her aloft as long as she can. “Where’s Grog gone, anyway?”
“The k-keeper whisked him away for s-something,” says the cleric, stammering as he stares at Cassandra in awe.
“They needed Grog to smash up a few things,” Pike explains, not taking her eyes off her task.
The cleric, still staring, starts: “You’re—You’re—You’re Lady Cassandra de Rolo?”
“Yes,” says Cassandra, with all the dignity she can muster while she’s lifting Pike up in her arms. She supposes she doesn’t look much like a lady, at the moment: her choppy hair is only now growing out to touch her shoulders, and her mother would’ve blanched to see her dressed much like Julius did to go riding. “You?”
“Coral!” blurts the man, then colors redder than a tomato. “I mean, Corazon! I mean—Corrence! Ah—”
“I just call him Cory,” says Pike.
Cory the cleric nods, frantically, eyes still fixed on Cassandra like she has somehow blessed the very temple they’re standing in just with her presence. How wrong he is. Cassandra has never felt completely at home in a temple, not since her family died, not since she left Percy in the snow.
“Done,” says Pike.
Cassandra gently sets her down, and then gratefully collapses into a pew. “I just need to talk to Pike a moment,” she says to Cory. “Maybe you should go check on Grog.”
“He—He seems like he can t-take care of himself,” says Cory.
“We’re not worried he’s unable to look after himself,” says Pike, “we’re a little more worried about your reserves of wine.”
Cory pales, and hurries off with a muttered excuse. Cassandra watches him go, then looks at Pike and says, “Did you take any wine from them or—”
“No,” says Pike. “We can drink at the bar. We can drink so much at the bar.” She sighs and collapses next to Cassandra as well with a sigh, wiping paint of her nose as best as she can. “There’s so much work to be done here, and so many of these people are so young, so scared.”
“The Briarwoods made an example of the elders and the braver ones,” Cassandra says.
“Oh,” says Pike, frowning.
“I sometimes regret not taking my time with them,” says Cassandra. “I mean, yes, in the end a quick death was the right thing to deal out, and any worse would’ve been disastrous for us too, but they deserved worse. So much worse. They killed my family, Pike, and they were so close to corrupting my brother.” She pauses, then looks up at the holy figure looking down on them and murmurs, “Sorry.”
“You did the right thing in the end, though,” says Pike. “You even got justice for your family, and saved your brother.”
“Yeah,” says Cassandra.
“That’s not what you came here to talk about, is it,” says Pike.
Cassandra straightens up, and says, “I never told you how I escaped, did I? How Percy almost escaped too?”
Pike sits up. “What happened?” she asks.
Cassandra breathes out—
--
—and she’s fifteen years old, and her brother, exhausted and tortured and slower than he normally would be, is running alongside her and the two of them are running with snow under their bare feet and there must be something stuck in Cassandra’s sole but she doesn’t care they have to get out they have to get out—
—come on, Percy, this way, come on and her brother follows, half a heartbeat behind her and they are almost out they are almost there if they can just make it to the river if they can just jump Percy can you jump—
—a laugh, a call, arrows whizzing past and Cassandra is a touch faster or Percy is a touch slower but the result is the same red stains the snow and Cassandra jumps into the river and I’m sorry I’m so sorry—
—you left me there to die!
--
“Oh, shit, Cass,” says Pike, once Cassandra’s finished the whole sordid tale. “Shit.” She reaches over for Cassandra’s hand, and Cassandra lets her, feels the gentle warmth of Pike’s hand on hers. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“If I had a dime for every time someone said that to me—”
“You were fifteen,” says Pike, her tone brooking no argument. “You were fifteen, and scared, and you saw your family massacred. You did everything you could.”
“It wasn’t enough,” says Cassandra. “If I did everything I could then that means I failed, and if I didn’t then that means I could’ve done something, and I don’t—I don’t know what’s worse.” Either way she was inadequate. Either way, she let someone down. She let her brother down.
“Cass,” says Pike, “Cass. Either way, you can’t dwell on that. All that’s going to do to you is put you in this vicious cycle of—of misery and self-loathing, and to be honest with you, it’s not going to serve you well in the long run.” Her fingers slot into the spaces between Cassandra’s fingers, and she brings Cassandra’s hand up and gently closes her other hand over their joined hands. “Believe me, Cass. You can stop hating yourself for your past now. You’ve done so much good.”
“I’ve done a lot of shit too,” says Cassandra.
“Who hasn’t?” says Pike. “I have too. All either of us can do is to move forward, as best as we can, and try to be better than we were.”
She leans up to peck Cassandra on the forehead. “And you, Cassie,” she says, “are better than you think you are.”
--
She finds Percy in the library, with Vax keeping a watchful eye on him. Her gut twists a little—it’s been a long time since she saw two of her brothers in the same room together. And Vax is her brother, is her family, even if he isn’t her blood the way Percy is.
“—and you’re sure about that?” Vax is saying, softly. “Forgive me if I’m a bit doubtful about these claims of yours, Percival.”
“Forgiven,” says Percy. “You’re more sensible than I thought you would be, honestly.”
“That’s me, the sensible one,” says Vax, and Cassandra shakes her head. She’s seen Vax pull off some incredibly reckless things, and if she didn’t know better she’d wonder if he’s got any concept of his own mortality. Between the twins, she’d pick Vex as the sensible one. “So, all right, say I do believe you. How long will making this glove take?”
“Too damn long,” says Percy, and he sounds frustrated, as she creeps up along the bookshelf. “You’re all staying here until Winter’s Crest only, right?” A pause. Vax must’ve nodded. “Then I don’t have very long. I have to design the damn thing first.”
Huh. Percy’s making a glove? That’s weird.
She knocks on the bookshelf, and says, “I do hope neither of you were trading embarrassing stories about me.”
Percy jumps away from Vax, having been just a little too close to him for something not to be going on. Vax does not, and mouths, I’m so proud of you at her.
“Cassandra!” says Percy.
“Hey, Cassie,” says Vax. “We were talking about the time you got hit with Feeblemind, licked Vex, and told her she was the prettiest and shiniest person you knew.”
“We agreed never to mention that again,” says Cassandra, not very heatedly, swatting Vax’s shoulder. “Why are you bringing it up to my brother, asshole?”
“Feeblemind?” says Percy, his voice a little strangled.
“It was a bad day,” says Cassandra. “But Pike managed a Greater Restoration, so I’m fine now.” She leans against the bookshelf and says, “So what’s this about a glove?”
“How much of that did you hear?” says Percy. He shoots Vax a Look, and on anyone else it might’ve worked. Vax, however, lets it sail past over his head.
“Not a lot,” says Cassandra. “Are you planning to show something off for Winter’s Crest? Was that why you wanted access to your workshop?”
“...yes,” says Percy, looking strangely relieved. “Don’t tell anyone. I want it to be a surprise.”
“You told Vax,” Cassandra points out.
“He stumbled on the design and wouldn’t stop hounding me about it,” says Percy, and Vax shoots him a look this time. “I’m—sorry I kept this from you, I truly did want to surprise you.”
“No, it’s fine,” says Cassandra, holding up a hand. “I’m glad you’re tinkering again, honestly. If I couldn’t train, I’m liable to go mad.”
“You’ve never liked training for anything,” Percy says, a little nostalgic. “You hated it. You used to try and bribe me to help you weasel out of archery lessons.”
“I hated archery, I was never the best at hitting a target from a distance,” says Cassandra. “As I recall you were a little bit better.” She looks at Vax and says, “I’m surprised you agreed to this, honestly. You didn’t like him very much.”
“What can I say,” says Vax, “Freddy is really beginning to grow on me.”
Percy makes a horrified little noise, and smacks Vax on the shoulder, says, “My name is not Freddy—”
Cassandra’s throat closes up, then. For a moment she doesn’t see Vax and Percy, bickering—she sees her mother and her father, playfully teasing each other. Freddy, love, her mother would say, and her father would smile at her, that soft little smile he reserved for no one else but his beloved lady.
She makes a small, choked noise, and her hand grips on to a shelf, suddenly the only support she has when her knees give out from under her.
Vax catches her first. Percy’s at her side just a heartbeat later, though, and it’s his hand she feels holding her middle.
“Are you all right?” says Vax, worriedly. “Did you—Is there something in here that we missed?”
“No,” says Cassandra, “no, I—I’m fine. I’m fine.” She swats their hands away, and staggers back to her feet, reeling. “I’m—I just need some fresh air, that’s all.”
“I’ll come with you,” says Vax, a heartbeat before Percy does.
“I can walk by myself, thank you,” Cassandra replies, and she can’t help but let the words sour on her tongue. “Just—I’ll go get some air and get out of your way, and you keep talking about whatever it was you were talking about.”
“Cassandra—”
“Cassie—”
“I’m fine,” she says, trying to convince herself.
She turns on her heel and, without looking back, walks away.
--
Vax finds her just about half an hour later, as she’s ripping a dummy to shreds with a sword. It’s too heavy for her, too broad and big for her frame for her to make more than wide slashes, but Cassandra can’t quite bring herself to care for finesse at the moment.
The sword slams into the dummy, over and over. Grog would be proud, she thinks, to see this.
Cassandra’s just angry. Grieving. Heartsick.
She doesn’t know, anymore, only that her arms are aching and her sword is too heavy and Mother called Father Freddy. Always affectionate, always soft, that nickname in her mother’s mouth, aimed towards her father.
Her father who died with a sword through his chest. Her mother who died with a crossbow bolt to the heart. Her family who died and her and Percy the only survivors and why me, why me, why—
“Cassie?”
Cassandra drops her sword, her legs giving out from under her. Vax is at her side in a click of his boots, and his arm is around her shoulders, his body is pressed against hers. He’s warm.
They’d charmed him. The bastards had charmed him, and they’d corrupted her brother and they took her fucking family—
“Cass. Cassie. Cassie, I’m right here, and Percival’s just coming in through the gate. We’re all right.”
Cassandra blinks. How did she get here? When did Vax start holding her like she was something fragile, and when did she start holding on to him like he was an anchor? Why are her eyes burning like she’s been crying?
Oh.
“Cassandra?” says Percy.
She has to wipe the tears away, furiously. Then she looks up at Percy, who settles down next to her and Vax. “Hey,” she says.
“Is,” starts Percy, before he stops and frowns. “Is it—I’m sorry, it’s been too long a time since I’ve had to comfort anyone—”
“I have never,” says Cassandra, “in my entire life, seen you try to comfort someone.”
“Will you just let me try, at least,” says Percy, and he doesn’t even sound irritated or truly angry. Just scared, voice and fake anger shaking with worry. “Was it the library? Winter’s Crest? Me?”
“It wasn’t you,” says Cassandra. “It wasn’t the library, or the festival. It was just—”
She falters, and lets go of Vax’s leathers.
“I can’t do this here, Vax,” she says. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to.”
“I think you can,” says Vax, glancing at Percy. “I’ll be around,” he tells him, and steps away and just—blurs, after a moment, and suddenly it’s as if he hadn’t been there at all. It’s a little strange, to say the least. She should ask him if he can teach her that one day.
Percy says, “I’m—sorry.”
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately,” Cassandra points out.
“It bears repeating,” says Percy, sounding so old and tired that Cassandra’s heart breaks. Again.
“I don’t want to get into this with you, right now,” she says. “I just—do you know what Mother used to call Father, when she thought he was being really stubborn?”
Percy’s quiet for a moment, before he says, “Oh.”
Cassandra curls up on the ground, the soles of her shoes scraping across the dirt as she pulls her knees up to her chest. She looks up at Percy and says, “I forgot. Up until now. Or I didn’t let myself remember up until now, because how would I—what would I be able to do with that? I couldn’t go on. And I had to go on, no one else was left to.” She exhales, and says, “Do you remember? When she took us riding once?”
“I almost fell off the horse,” says Percy, fondly.
“I pushed you off the horse,” says Cassandra.
“You were a little hellion then,” says Percy. “You’re still a hellion now.”
“I hope you’re holding on to horses better now,” says Cassandra. “Do you think—no. No, I don’t think she’d be proud of us. Of me.”
“Don’t,” says Percy. “Mother would be proud of you: an adventurer, the savior of Whitestone, a slayer of monsters.”
Cassandra looks down at her hands, and thinks of the Broker’s blood spattered across her, Desmond’s fingers lying in the dirt where she cut them off, Percy’s name on the hilt of her sword. “You don’t know the details,” she says. “She would be horrified.”
“She’d be more horrified by me,” says Percy. “You’re the hero of Whitestone now, no one cares for the details of how you saved the city. She would be proud, Cassandra. No matter what you’ve done, she would be proud of you.” He smiles at her now, a sad and brittle thing. “You’d finally be her favorite.”
“Fuck you, I was always her favorite, she told me so,” says Cassandra, but there’s a laugh bubbling at the back of her throat and tears stinging her eyes. “I miss her. I miss her.”
“I miss her too,” says Percy, quietly, after glancing around the yard. Vax is still nowhere to be seen, but in Cassandra’s experience, that doesn’t count for much. “I have her keepsakes. Father’s, too.”
“Could I have some?” Cassandra asks, unable to keep the yearning out of her voice.
“Of course,” says Percy. “I—still have some of our old family portrait, in fact, stuck in my closet.”
Cassandra nods, and says, “I know. I rummaged through your room.”
Percy stares at her a moment, and then says, “If you moved anything in there—”
“I did not touch anything,” says Cassandra, primly, deciding not to tell him she took a coat to stave off the freezing cold, “except a healing potion. Why do you have a healing potion when you never leave the castle?”
“My work involves explosions!” says Percy, throwing his hands up. “Oh, gods, you went through my closet, now I remember how annoying you were.”
“Your clothes are so boring and drab, Percy, I left a few surprises just to make them look better,” Cassandra tells him, just to see him sputter and glare at her. “I’m joking.”
“You’d better be,” huffs Percy. “What else did you find?”
“Letters to Archibald,” says Cassandra. “Some of your smaller contraptions here and there. The portrait. Things I thought I’d never see again, things I didn’t realize I missed.”
“You can have them,” says Percy. “If you wish.”
Cassandra breathes out slow. It’s been so long since she held anything belonging to her family in her hands, real and tangible proof of their existence, of their love. “I do wish,” she says. “But—what about you?”
“They were rewards,” Percy says, with a pained look, as if that explains it all: his willingness to part with the things that used to be their mother’s, their father’s, their siblings’. For a moment Cassandra can’t understand.
Then it sinks in what he means.
She hopes to Pelor, Sarenrae, Bahamut, every god that she can think of, that the Briarwoods are burning in hell.