AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm still many episodes behind on Critical Role, so forgive me if anything here contradicts something that has been mentioned or has occurred that I haven't seen yet. I also haven't written any CR fic before. But when the idea came to me it was desperate to be written.

She held him tightly, waiting.

Suddenly his still form bucked, like a sleeping man woken by a bucket of cold water. Gasping for breath, shock and surprise at the unexpected sensation, like a man rescued from drowning. Spluttering, eyes wide open.

"Gah!" He yelled it incoherently, so unlike his usual carefully considered manner. His hands clutched at his body, feeling for injuries that were no longer there. She barely noticed anything or anyone around them, they could have been anywhere at all, but the smile and tears came in equal measure regardless of all those she knew were watching. They were keeping back, giving him the time to recover before they crowded in.

His flailing ceased but his eyes, free of lenses, darted around as he struggled to take in his surroundings.

"What-?" She shushed him as the question was loosed explosively from him.

"It's alright, darling," she said quietly, "you're back with... us."

"But what..." His words trailed off. "I... was dead?" He nodded to himself. "Must have been. So that was why..." He frowned.

"Why what?"

"If that was... Then that was why I saw them. Their faces. It could only be..." His eyes widened. "In death."

"Who is 'them'?" She thought she knew but her own experience was different, her guess could be wrong.

"They were there." His voice suddenly wavered. "In that place. I don't remember the place, it's like it's fading, slipping away, but... they were there too." He turned awkwardly in her arms, looking up at her as his eyes began to well with tears. "My family. My father, and mother. My brothers. My sisters." His eyes closed. "Oh god, I'd forgotten how much I missed them." His voice had become ragged with pain. "All that anger, it made me forget their faces. Until only their names remained. Names and vengeance."

"It's alright," she said again, her voice a whisper as the echo of his loss spoke to her own sorrow. She knew her words were not as important as her simply being there.

"They were happy," he said, almost incredulously, at the thought. "But how could I see them there if I..." A pause, a sniff, a cough. "I've always thought that, after everything I've done, that I would never..."

"See them again?"

"Yes." He rubbed at his eyes to clear them. "But if I saw them, then... maybe I'm not so lost as I thought." There was a look in his eyes, the look of a child who has seen something unexpected and wonderful. "They turned me around and sent me back. Back here. And told me they'd see me again."

"Your family sent you back?"

"I... think so." He blinked, frustration evident in his expression. "It's fading too, now. But if I really saw them, and they said..."

"Maybe there's hope." It was a dangerous thing to say and she knew it. Hope was dangerous in the wrong hands. Hope was magic in the right hands.

"Yes. Maybe there is. Despite everything."

"Maybe you'll get to be that different person you were hoping to become."

"I hope so. If only to see them again, in the end." A smile crossed his face, a still face damp with tears but now, at least, content. "But as much as I dearly miss them, I hope it's not for a while yet."