i.

Vax walks into a tavern.

He's still new to traveling with a party, still prone to wandering off on his own at every opportunity, but the tavern is a warm spot of light and noise in the quiet chill of the city, and tonight he craves the anonymity of a crowd. Ignoring the yelling of the rowdier patrons up toward the bar, he sidles into a dark corner, propping up the wall with arms crossed, listening to the faint rattle of rain on the windows, watching the ebb and flow of the tavern's patrons—

"Why'd you pick that guy's pocket?"

The only reason Vax doesn't yelp at the voice directly in his ear is because his brain is already busy trying to figure out how likely it is for half-elves to have a heart attack at the ripe old age of twenty-six. He does, however, whip around so quickly that Grog has to duck out of the way of his hair. "Grog, what the fuck? Are you following me?"

Grog shrugs. "You seemed, like, distracted. Wanted to know where you go when you fuck off like that. If you needed coin, you could've asked. I would've bought the first round." He pauses as though taken aback by his own generosity. "Uh. Wait. Maybe. If I have coin. Pike says I gotta be nicer to people I meet because I'm so big, you know, and you really don't gotta be stealing if you don't need to—"

"Uh," says Vax, because Grog's voice is carrying more than a little, and to be perfectly honest, he's not exactly sure which of the people currently side-eyeing him is the one whose coin purse he snatched without thinking. "Just, ah, honing my skills. But that doesn't explain how you—"

"Tiberius did some sort of magic to help me be sneakier. Said he'd do it just this once because he wanted to practice the spell."

"Listen," Vax says, watching a particularly rough-looking half-orc reach for his absent coin purse with a growing expression of concern. "That sounds like an incredible adventure of a story, and I'd love to hear all about it, big guy, so what do you say we get back to the group and call it a night?"

"Well, now that you have money, I figure maybe you're up to buy the next round."

Vax grins desperately at the now-scowling half-orc stomping in their direction. "Are you fucking with me, Grog?"

Grog laughs. "Maybe a little."

Vax mentally goes through his you-got-caught checklist: keep your hands open, look contrite and friendly, resist the urge to hide behind Grog's hamhock thigh... "Um. Hello, sir. Can I help you?"

In response, the half-orc draws a wicked-looking cudgel from his side, which, perhaps not the best way negotiations could've gone. Cursing his choice of artfully dark corners—this one's too far from the doors and the windows to make a hasty escape—Vax squares his shoulders.

Grog grabs the back of Vax's cloak, lifts him clear off the ground, and shoves him behind his back. "All right, all right. If we're gonna play, let's do this right." The half-orc, apparently undeterred by his change in dance partners, swings a haymaker that cuts through the air like a particularly massive crossbow bolt. Grog takes the hit to the side of his chest, sniffing disdainfully. "If I knew you were sneaking off to get in fights, I would've started following you a lot sooner."

"Well," says Vax, backing up into the wall. "This isn't normally how these things go."

"Uh-huh," Grog says, and grabs the half-orc's cudgel out of his hand. "You gonna circle around and knock this guy out or what?"

Vax, two steps into his plan to do just that, freezes as the half-orc's attention rivets instantly on him. "Well, it gets a lot harder when you tell them ahead of time!"

"Sure," says Grog, with a laugh that's way more contagious than it has any right to be. "Where's the fun in it if it's easy? C'mon, Vax, show me what you've got."

It's an absolute fucking disaster of a bar brawl—the half-orc calls in a few friends, Vax gets his nose broken by an errant bottle, Grog accidentally destroys half the furniture in the place—but Vax can't help grinning as they stumble back to camp, and the next time he sets off on his own he makes a conscious effort to ignore the loud clomping of footsteps behind him.

ii.

Vax walks into a tavern.

The rest of the party's already taken up their usual raucous stance at the long center table, but the new kid, the one they'd dragged out of the cell a week earlier, is sitting a couple tables away from the rest, contemplating a mostly-full mug of ale. Alone.

With a cursory wave to his sister, confirming the acquisition of travel rations for the next week, Vax settles into the seat across from Percival.

"Oh," Percy says, finally glancing up over his glasses around the time Vax is seriously considering getting up and going back to the other table out of sheer awkwardness. "I'm sorry. I didn't hear you sit down."

"Stealthy is sort of what I do," Vax says, and rests his chin in the palm of his hand. "You're very polite, you know. Exceedingly polite."

"Why does that sound like an insult, coming from you?"

"I'm just saying. Your clothes were a fucking mess when we found you, but they're finely made. I'm not— Vex'ahlia and I are by no means royalty—"

Percy mutters something under his breath that sounds like, "clearly," which Vax chooses to ignore for the sake of diplomacy.

"—but we do know a thing or two about how to recognize someone accustomed to wealth. Money breeds trouble, I know, and I'm not trying to pry." Vax cocks his head to one side; Percy dodges his eye contact as capably as he's been dodging conversation all week. "I just want you to know that some of us have very good reason to distrust money and power."

Percy hums under his breath, takes a long swig of ale, and finally looks up, meeting Vax's eyes. "Are you threatening or reassuring me?"

Vax shrugs. "Call it a bit of both."

Percy stares at him, brow furrowed like he's trying to work out a puzzle of some sort. "Well, you're in luck. I haven't any power left to speak of, and I gave your sister all of the material wealth I possess."

"You've been avoiding the rest of group. You're making it very difficult to trust you."

Percy blows out an exasperated breath, takes another drink of ale, then pauses, his voice still echoing in his mug. "I don't know any of you. Let's just say that I have my own suspicions."

Waving off his sister's concerned looks in their direction, Vax says, "Being suspicious of a bunch of shitheads is a pretty reasonable approach to life."

"Not... not that. That I can deal with. It's the—" Percy's voice fades into another drink, a heavy swallow. For the second time that evening—quite possibly the second time since they met—he meets Vax's eyes. "I have very good reason not to trust kindness."

"Oh," Vax says. They're quiet a moment longer, but even the hum of conversation from the rest of the group is starting to die down in eavesdropping fascination. Vax taps the table in front of him, then smiles. "Okay. You're in luck. We haven't got a whole lot of kindness to speak of, and you just about used up the last of it. If I promise we'll all be terrible assholes to you from now unto eternity, will you at least come sit at the table with the rest?"

That startles a smile out of Percy. "How exactly is that any different from how you usually act?"

"Exactly," Vax says, sagely. "Just the point I'm trying to make. Besides, I used to hide away from the group sometimes, back when we first got started. I still try to keep Grog downwind as much as possible. If you need some time to yourself, go ahead and take it. I can recommend some ways to disappear. But sitting two tables away speaks of half-measures, like you're not really sure one way or the other if you want to be a part of this, and that's where the trouble comes in. Speaking from experience, here. You have to decide if this is something you want to be a part of, because eventually even we'll get tired of having to put in the effort."

Percy narrows his eyes, then glances over to the other table, where Keyleth and Grog seem to be engaged in some sort of bizarre parody of an arm-wrestling match. "I can't believe I'm saying it, but... yes, I believe I really do want to be a part of it."

"Then be a part of it." Vax raises his hands palm-up, reassuringly. "I'm sorry you had something bad happen, some betrayal, but you have to start trusting people sometime."

"I really, really don't have to," Percy says, but he's already gathering up his mug, swiping a napkin over the ring of condensation on the table. "But I suppose it couldn't hurt to start."

iii.

Vax walks into a tavern.

He's clutching the wound in his belly, a deep longsword slash that hasn't stopped bleeding since he began his slow stagger away from the battlefield at the edge of town, but the fucking tavern's deserted, because of course it is, there's a bunch of magic-slinging weirdoes fighting off bandits at the city's gate, everyone's gotta be hunkering down, and maybe he should've stuck around and waited for someone to heal him, but he didn't want to be more of a liability than he had to, and surely the fucking tavern would have some form of first aid—

His steady patter of thought stalls as he walks into a table, curses softly, and decides to have a nice, quiet lie-down on the floor while this particular wave of agony in his gut flares to life. Only getting to the floor's a bit of a tall order, given how much it hurts every time he takes a step. Hitting the ground's gonna hurt a whole fuckload more. He reaches back to steady himself against a barstool, instead, leaving a handprint smear of blood on the wool cushion.

"Hey," he calls, on the off-chance everyone's just hiding behind the bar or something. "Hey, little help here?"

No reply. His heart's hammering pretty hard, now, and the blood's soaking down his tunic and trousers under his armor. Should've just fucking stuck around the battlefield. Had to go for help. Not thinking clearly, not thinking—

"There you are— oh, hells."

He grins at Pike, feeling a stickiness of blood at the corner of his mouth, and says, "I think I fucked up."

"Yeah," Pike says, swiping blood away from a cut on her own forehead. "Yeah, I think so. Okay. Sit down, Vax."

He blinks at her, because surely he thought of that already, and surely there's a very good reason he hasn't... "Pike, they need you out there."

"Grog was playing mop-up when I figured out you were missing. It's fine. You need me in here. Sit down."

Vax tries to communicate his trepidation, but all that comes out is a whimper, so he lets his knees buckle and slumps into a chair, and everything very considerately goes white for a few moments.

When he opens his eyes, his forehead's resting against the table. Turning his head to one side, with an effort, he sees Pike gripping her holy symbol with one hand, the other pressed firmly to his side. There's a strange warmth warring with the numbness that's creeping up his chest, and he swallows the urge to push her away, to tell her not to waste literal divine power on some shithead who couldn't hold his own in a brawl.

"Oh, stop that. You're not some shithead who couldn't hold his own in a brawl," Pike says, alerting him to the fact that he might have just possibly spoken his thoughts aloud. "You're my friend, okay? And even if you weren't, it's not a question of waste. Saving a life is never a waste."

"Okay," Vax tells the table, thickly. With the warmth comes an enticing heaviness, a weight like a blanket over his shoulders.

"There," says Pike. "That'll hold you together until we can get something a little stronger in you."

In defiance of all the go-to-sleep messages his brain's sending to the rest of his body, Vax sucks in a deep breath and straightens in his chair, then hunches over at a twinge from his gut. "Thanks, Pike. That's... that's amazing, what you can do."

"Yeah, well." Pike grins. "It's nice to be appreciated. Spent a lot of time curing warts and hangovers back in Westruun. It's been... sort of fun to be in the middle of the really intense stuff. You know, not that it's fun to see all of you with your guts out and whatever."

"Taste for adventure," Vax says.

Pike's grin goes a little shy. "I guess. Always thought Grog was the one who cared about all that stuff. But for all the bad stuff we've seen, amazing things keep happening, right? That's kind of how it goes. I couldn't have dreamed of this kind of stuff if I'd just stayed home with Wilhand. So it's worth the pain, maybe."

Vax smiles back at her. "Definitely worth the pain."

iv.

Vax walks into a tavern.

Scanlan's been humming under his breath from the moment they all arrived, a jaunty little tune with an inexplicable series of off-key notes at the end. Once round sixteen comes around, Vex starts kicking him under the table—which Vax is pretty sure requires some impressive contortions, given how far off the ground Scanlan's legs are. Scanlan, ignoring her in favor of another mug of ale, continues his humming unabated.

It's been a busy few days, as the group has started to talk in earnest about what comes next, trying to reconcile their million different plans and ambitions in the wake of foiling the Dread Emperor's plot. Vax is pretty sure they need this evening of relaxation, but they've also been surly and snappish any time they've been in tight quarters as a group—and gods know he's been doing his part of that, too, purposely antagonizing Grog with childish pranks.

After so long under a pressure that's suddenly been lifted, he feels all twitchy, like there's something crawling under his skin every time he thinks about everything the group still has to do, everything they want to do, stretching out in all different directions. No family stays together forever, but he'd hoped this one might weather the strain...

Tiberius blows up early in the evening, snarling some incoherent insult at Grog, which Pike takes personally, and so the entire tavern is treated to the sight of a tiny gnome yelling at a very flustered red dragonborn while a startled goliath looks on. Percy of all people manages to patch things up with a drink for all parties involved, but the silence after the shouting is uncomfortable and wary.

And fucking Scanlan is still humming.

"Don't you know any other songs?" Vax snarls, finally. "If it were your damn shawm, I'd just grab it out of your hands, but I haven't worked out yet how to stop you singing."

"I could cast Silence," Tiberius says.

Vex groans, leaning back in her chair so it balances on two legs. "Would you?"

"I'm... a little tapped out for the day."

"Thank you for the update," Percy says.

"Don't yell at Scanlan," Grog says. "Just because he's the only one who isn't all fucked up and grumpy—"

"Hey!" Pike says.

"You did yell at Tiberius," says Keyleth. "That's kind of fucked up and grumpy."

"Hey!" Pike says, more quietly this time.

Scanlan hums the song again, and when he gets to the same sequence of off-key notes, the entire table groans in disgust.

"It's like I keep expecting it to change, but it never does," Vex says, staring dully at the ceiling.

But Vax is watching Scanlan, because he could swear he just saw a wink. Deep breath. Heavy sigh. "You're trying to make a point, aren't you? And this is your way of being passive-aggressive and awful like the rest of us."

"Sure," says Scanlan, and sets right back to humming.

"Ooh," says Keyleth, temporarily shaken from her funk. "Is it a mystery?"

That actually makes Scanlan stop humming for a moment in confusion. "Uh. Not really? It's just super obvious. And also the passive-aggressive thing, like Vax said. We're falling apart, here."

"We've got too much to do," Vex says. "Too much going on. We need to go our separate ways for a bit."

"Yeah," Grog says. "But it's never just for a bit, is it? We'll all go off, and then we'll never see each other again."

Scanlan hums the off-key notes. "Kind of fucked up, right?"

"Oh, damn it," Percy mutters. "Fine. I'll get in on this. You're trying to make a point about perspective, right? Go ahead and shift those notes up a little bit, and I think you'll find the song sounds considerably better."

"Down," Grog corrects him. "Just a bit down, I think. Like this." And he sings two notes, basso profundo, that ring out shockingly clear and precise.

Everyone blinks at him. He shrugs. "Got perfect pitch. Never came up."

"Well, be that as it may," says Scanlan, "he's right. Shift the pitch a little, and—" He sings the song one more time, and this time the final notes, while still recognizable as the sequence from before, slot effortlessly into the rest of the melody.

"That does sound better," Vex says. "The point being?"

"The point being, we're looking at this from the wrong angle. We all have shit to do, we're worried we won't come back together at the end of it. So give us something to come back to."

Vax catches the shape of the idea a moment before his sister does, judging by her sharp, indrawn breath a second later. "A home," he says, softly.

"Right. You think Uriel's gonna begrudge us, like, a keep? We just saved the fuck out of everything here! Let's have the keep built while we're gone, tending to all our other business, and then it'll be here waiting for us when we get back."

Into the stunned silence, Grog says, "That is an amazing idea, but I still don't really know why you were singing the song."

"It's a metaphor, Grog," Percy whispers.

Grog snorts. "I'm not falling for that one. Pike used to do that all the time. 'It's a buttfor.' 'Pike, what's a buttfor?' 'For pooping!" Nope, fool me once-"

"No, a metaphor. Meta— I—" says Percy, with the air of a man slowly sinking into oblivion. "Never mind. Well-caught, Grog."

"Damn straight."

Vax grins. "A home," he says again, louder this time. "For all of us."

Scanlan catches his eye, winks, and smiles.

v.

Vax walks into a tavern.

He really hasn't given Keyleth all that much thought, which is sort of a terrible thing to think, but there's so many of them, now, making up this band of fuck-ups, and she tends to be right up front in the fray while he's sneaking around back, and she's quiet and mainly hangs around with Percy and Tibs to talk about the burdens of leadership or whatever, while Vax is just... well, his conversations with the rest of the party lately have seemed to involve a lot in the way of bodily functions.

But he's been giving Keyleth more thought, recently, in the sense that he's wondering what in the hells it must feel like to become a bird.

He's seen the big, unwieldy skyships growling over Emon, but he's never, you know, actually done the whole flying thing, and it's something that happens in dreams a lot, isn't it, flying? And it seems like feathers would be an interesting sensation. Or fur, fangs, claws. Wild animals have always been so much more in Vex's wheelhouse that his experience has been limited to, well, large and inexplicably domesticated brown bears. Would some sort of behavior or mentality translate over?

"You're starting to freak me out a little, Vax," Keyleth says, and Vax blinks, shaking himself from his reverie to realize that Percy and Tibs have wandered off to pick up the next round of drinks, leaving their side of the table uncharacteristically quiet.

"Sorry," Vax says, feeling the full weight of the day's travels settle on his shoulders alongside a substantial haze of alcohol. "I'm tired, I guess I'm sort of zoning out."

Keyleth stares at him and slowly raises an eyebrow. "Okay. I do that sometimes, too."

"No, I—" Vax scratches at his forehead, winces, and leans forward, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "This is gonna sound so weird, but I'm just really really curious—" And oh hells, her face is going a strange shade of red, finish the fucking sentence already. "—about how the whole beast-shaping thing works."

"Oh," she says, and then, with a too-wide grin, "Oh! That! Yeah, it's pretty cool, right?"

Relieved, Vax settles back in his chair. "Extremely cool. What's it like to fly?"

"Kind of scary?" Apparently encouraged by his rapt attention, Keyleth beams, and starts talking with her hands. He's not sure he's ever noticed that she does that. "I mean, you always know—from the bird's mind and instincts and whatever—how to fly, but you also still have that stupid half-elf brain going, no, this is a bad idea, crashing into the ground would work just as well. So you have to find that balance, because the bird's instincts probably aren't gonna be too helpful in battle, and that's where you want the half-elf part to come in."

"Kind of like doing something when you're a little scared, right? Just sort of pretend you're someone else for a bit. Only the someone-else has wings."

"Exactly!" Keyleth actually points at him, which doesn't make a lot of sense until Vax remembers that she's already had a drink tonight and doesn't have a particularly high tolerance for the stuff. "Yes, that! It's part of why I was so good at it as a kid, I think. It was a good escape. But no, it's amazing. You escape in your mind and you escape in your body at the same time."

"That really is amazing."

He watches her face shift through a few emotions, settling on suspicion. "You're not making fun of me, are you? Because people usually do, when I'm drunk or... or happy, or whatever."

Vax laughs. "I realize it can be hard to tell because I'm such a shit most of the time, but trust me, I am being sincere. That's fucking amazing. I'm glad you get to do something that makes you so happy."

She blinks, and the grin creeps back. "Thanks, Vax."

Percy and Tibs come back, then, having apparently forgotten their mission in favor of discussing the finer points of some needlessly complex philosophical conversation on the relative merits of science and magic, and Vax settles back to watch Keyleth hesitantly introduce herself to the debate.

It's safe and comfortable, and as he starts to doze off at the table he catches her glancing in his direction with a warm smile, and he thinks, Oh, but even that thought is lost to a slow, twisting dream of wings and black feathers.

vi.

Vax walks into a tavern.

There's a haziness to everything he touches, now, a chill clutch at the heart of each breath, a pressure like talons in his shoulder, and his feet are light with the terrible weightlessness of prey being lifted aloft.

It's only been a handful of days since Vex died.

"Hey," says Vex, grinning at him from a table next to the bar. "You look like shit, brother."

He sees her dying. He sees her dying. He sees her smiling at him, and smiles back a moment too late. "Didn't think you'd still be up."

"I wanted to catch you, if I could. You've been hard to reach, lately." The smile crumples, and something twists sympathetically in his chest. "That's an understatement. Sit down."

"I should go to bed."

Vex stands, instead, and in the motion he sees the limp sprawl of her limbs, feels her resting too-heavy in his arms. She reaches out, stops just short of touching his arm. "Were you out in the storm?"

It's cold. Warmer here. He shivers at the specter of darkness in the corner of the room, a shadow concealing motion. A figure, watching. "I'm all right. It got cold out there quicker than I expected."

Vex leans back, away from him. "You're scaring me, Vax."

"I know. I'm sorry." You too. "I should get some rest."

"Yeah," says Vex, and sits on the edge of the table. "You know I came back, right? It's just like with Pike, and she's okay. Right?"

Fear thrums in his chest, a long finger beckoning, threads spiderwebbing around him. A tangle around her. Pull in just the right place, and it all unravels.

"Sometimes," Vex says, when he doesn't reply, "I think you're looking at me and seeing a stranger."

"I know. I'm sorry." You too.

Vex slams an open palm down on the table, then drags him into a hug, all warmth and strength and certainty. "We're still here," she says, hoarse in his ear. "We belong here. Fuck anyone who says otherwise. That's always been the rule. We belong here."

He sighs, heavily, rests his chin on her shoulder, and listens to her breathing.

...

Vax walks into a tavern, hair sodden and tangled across his face.

At the bar, a goddess waits.