He sits for a while in the workshop he used as a boy, head tilted toward the faint drumming of rain on the stonework outside. He should by rights be working, should be feverishly assembling new projects, new ideas. New weapons. Instead he sits cross-legged on the soot-stained floor, workbench looming above him like a monolith, and lets his thoughts spool out from their tangled wad of thread.
He fought a war, once. That is to say, he's nearly certain it was a war he fought for all those years when he was sinking alone in the shadows. He says softly, to the air, "To engage in war is the last refuge of someone who knows they have already lost the battle," and, "War is a shift in perspective that places defeat at the head of a long line of future victories," and, "Make no mistake, a war is an illusion we all maintain to keep from losing hope at the things we've already surrendered."
"Fear," he says, finally, "is the shield we prop up against the atrocities we commit."
He smiles, then, and presses a gasping laugh into the palm of his hand, face flushing and eyes watering with the force of it. He remembers Anders, fussing fastidiously with the parchment and books laid out on his desk, speaking those words with a flippant wave of his hand, remembers leaning into his own scroll and scribbling determinedly, as though siphoning the knowledge from the air around him would make it relevant, would make it matter to a boy whose greater destiny was only ever going to be the wasteful personification of the Idle Rich. Remembers the kick of the List in his hand, the snap of a gunshot fading into the rustling clamor of shadow.
The rains tapers off, eventually, and he pulls off his glasses to rub at his eyes with the blackened, frayed edge of one sleeve. He stands. Goes to find the others.
Pike knows, now.
He finds her perched up on one of the ramparts, hair hanging in soaked curls, burnished plate gleaming with a thin patina of rainwater, and he knows the distance in her stare, finds himself envying the set of her jaw. He wonders who told her, who said the words, who saw that wall in her eyes built steadily and slowly against a siege of emotion. She doesn't turn, doesn't acknowledge him, and he's too frightened to speak, too frightened of the way her face will change when he does.
He stands and watches the small movements of her shoulders, watches her watching the sun peek out from behind a billowing blanket of cloud, measures out her steady breathing until they're both shivering in the post-storm chill. Steps back, muscles protesting the enforced stillness, boots creaking audibly.
"Percy?"
He doesn't look at her, only steps up beside her and stares out over the fog-veiled shade of his home. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when they told you," he says. "I was afraid."
"Oh," she says, and in the steadiness of her voice he can hear that wall rising, stone by stone. "It's okay to be frightened. We haven't, we haven't experienced this yet. Not really. I think this is something new."
"Oh, no," he says, and smiles. "This is something very, very old."
The nudge at his side startles him into looking down, into meeting wide, worried eyes. "Percy," she says. "I know that look. What are you going to do?"
For a moment, the spires of the buildings below, jutting from the fog, look like cruel spikes piercing up through the snow. He turns away. "I have no idea," he says. "Something terrible, I expect."
He finds Grog and Keyleth at the Sun Tree, which is to say that he finds Grog sprawled on his back, staring up at the patches of sky visible between the reaching branches and obscuring fog, with his head cushioned on the flank of a sabre-toothed tiger.
Grog hears him approach, half-turns with a languid stretch. "Hey, Percy," he says. "Me and Minxie were just watching the storm."
"It was a good one," Percy says, and surrenders himself to the likelihood of grass stains on his good trousers in order to crouch down and scratch Keyleth behind the ears. Without shifting Grog from his comfortable rest, she turns to press her muzzle into his hand, huffing a heavy breath between protruding teeth that warms the aching chill in his fingers, brings to mind the ease of her arms around him, the hard edge of her chin against his shoulder. The tightness in his chest vents, unexpectedly, to a sigh that hangs in the air like a sob.
"We're gonna kill the fuckers," Grog says. "Shred 'em piece by piece. And then we're gonna, like, sell all those pieces and get wasted with the money." One of his hands is tracing, distractedly, along the length of the shredded scar tissue across his chest. "It'll be a glorious fight."
Percy spreads his fingers, presses them into the muddy cold of the ground like claws, like talons, and sits a while in the lengthening shadows of the heart of his home.
He passes Vax walking the other way, catches sight of him by chance before he has the opportunity to melt into an alley. Calls out to him, instinctively, "Vax?" before he has a moment to reconsider.
There's always been an openness to Vax's face that Percy has, on occasion, found to be almost appallingly embarrassing in its honesty, and this glimpse by dusklight under the hood of his cloak is no exception: pain, doubt, self-loathing, fear, rage, grief, all writ large enough for anyone to see. "Percival," he says, coolly.
Percy clears his throat against the lingering heaviness of the fog in the air. "Can I walk with you a while?"
"I'd rather be alone."
"As would I."
Confusion and frustration give way, in the furrow of Vax's brow, to something approaching understanding. "All right," he says, and starts to say something else. "All right."
They walk, and after a time Vax takes an unexpected turn back toward the heart of the city, back toward the murmur of crowds of people going about their evening activities, back toward a rumble that's equal parts terror and relief in the wake of the near-disaster the previous day. Percy feels an itch at the base of his skull that persists like the distant flutter of wings, remembers the way his own voice broke with the fearful certainty that if Whitestone was lost, it would be because he had lost it.
"I never wanted this," Percy says. "Any of it. I knew I couldn't escape the title, but as long as my family lived at least I could escape the responsibility. I only wanted to fix things that were broken. I've always been very good at fixing things that were broken."
They walk in silence a while longer, meandering aimlessly through the city streets, but Vax leans in a little closer, bumps his shoulder against Percy's, and when Percy looks over his face is unreadable as stone.
Vex knocks at his bedroom door just as he's beginning to contemplate the long, sleepless night ahead of him. She's leaning in the doorframe, arms crossed tight against her midsection, and when he opens the door she backs up a step to catch her balance and smiles lopsidedly. "Hi."
He says, "I think you'd better come in."
"Lockheed's gone," she says, all in one breath, and pushes past him to perch, awkwardly, on the edge of his bed. There's a defiance in her eyes, a don't-you-dare-laugh-at-me. "I know it's stupid and it's really the least of our concerns right now, but I was feeding him and he just launched out the window and flew away."
"I... I'm sorry," Percy says, fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve. "I didn't realize you'd brought him back, honestly." Her expression doesn't change, but he sees her jaw clench. "If it's any consolation, this is a much safer place for him, at least for now. A city is full of everything he needs. I'm sure he'll find a way to survive."
"He shouldn't have to," Vex bites out. "He was a small thing, and he was lost and dying, and the one person who bothered to care for him in this world was gone. He didn't want to leave him. He wanted to stay, even if it meant dying with him when the dragon attacked. He wanted to stay where he belonged. He didn't want to leave—" She inhales once, sharply, and raises a hand to cover her mouth.
It takes a moment for the full realization to hit Percy, the memories of Syngorn still a little jumbled in his mind. When it does, he takes a step forward. Freezes. "Vex..."
"No," she says, and pushes away tears with the back of her hand. "No, I'm all right, I know he'll be all right. Vax and I will be all right, in the end. I just. I thought I could make it better, this time."
"You make everything better," Percy says, softly. "Everything. It's really quite a remarkable talent."
She sighs, but her smile is the glint of sun behind cloud. "I learned how to fix things from the best."
The morning dawns clear and cold, and Percy has, against all expectation, found enough rest that things don't seem quite as insurmountable as they did the night before. He takes a walk along the ramparts, watches the sun rise in silence, the long shade of the night's shadows slowly curling back and giving way to a sky made bluer by the shimmer of magic in the air. Safety, for now. New magic.
After a time, he starts down to his workshop—there is, after all, a sheer impossible breadth of work to be done—and is startled to find Scanlan leaning in the corridor outside the door. His hair, which typically exhibits the kind of annoying perfection found only in wizards and arcanists, is tangled and matted at the side of his head, and his eyes are sunken in their sockets with evidence of a poor night's sleep. When he sees Percy, he smiles. "Oi."
"Scanlan," Percy says, warily. "Waiting to break into my workshop?"
"Yep," Scanlan says, "you caught me. I need ten minutes of your time."
When no further information seems forthcoming, Percy moves past him to unlock the door, and waits with a sigh for Scanlan to follow him in before closing it. "What's going on, Scanlan? I have important work to attend to—"
"And I don't want to interrupt, believe me," Scanlan says. "I know what happens to people who mess with your things. Grog's still not a fan of water."
Even his voice is reedy, unfamiliar, soft and hesitant. Percy frowns, digs through a drawer looking for a set of clamps. "You look terrible."
"Thanks," Scanlan says, and in the same breath adds, "Percy, you have bad thoughts, right?"
Percy pauses mid-rummage. "I'm sorry?"
Scanlan hops up onto a stool with an effort, repositions so he's perched on the edge of the workbench, legs swinging. "You say it constantly, with an air of great portent. 'I've just had a terrible thought.'"
"That's an appalling impression of me."
"But it's your thing, right? You come up with the shitty thoughts none of the rest of us want to voice."
"I suppose that's as glowing an encomium as I'm likely to receive," Percy says. "Scanlan, I really have to—"
Scanlan takes a breath, releases it in a sigh. "I've had a terrible thought, Percy."
Percy straightens, peering suspiciously at Scanlan, but there's no trace of humor in his face; his jaw is set and his lips are pressed together tightly. "All right," Percy says. "What's this terrible thought?"
"We can't win this war." Scanlan holds up a hand when Percy draws breath to formulate an argument. "It's all right. I know how this works. When you lose a battle, no matter how terrible it may be, you tell yourself it's just one skirmish, one little stepping-stone, toward what will eventually, with hindsight, be seen as a victory. Lose the battle to win the war. Believe me, I understand."
"We can win this," Percy says. "I know things seem difficult now—"
"That's not what I'm saying." Scanlan reaches up to pick through the knots in his hair, grimacing, his voice picking up in speed and urgency. "What I'm saying, Percival de Whatever de Frankincense, is that things are better now. We're all together, and things were worse for me, then. They had to be. You change what you remember. You look back at the things that almost killed you and you transform them into monsters so you can step back, later, and say hey, at least it's not as bad as what happened then, at least it's not the one battle I lost against impossible odds, so why shouldn't I be able to win today? You lose the battle to win the war. You change what you remember."
Percy says nothing, but there's a sensation in his gut like free-fall, like solid ground slowly crumbling away beneath his feet.
"Listen to me," Scanlan says, leaning forward, hands settling down, clasped in front of him. "It's not better. Nothing is better. I lost my family, and now I'm losing my family again. But I have to remember it differently so this seems like a forward march away from that single solitary loss. If we start thinking about how this is the worst thing that's ever happened, how this is the most terrible that things have ever been, we cannot win this war."
"You don't seem well," Percy says, into the silence that slams like a door across the end of Scanlan's sentence. "You need some rest."
Scanlan smiles, sadly, eyes bright. "Ask me what I'm saying, Percy. Ask me my terrible thought."
Percy huffs a sigh. "What are you saying, Scanlan?"
"I'm saying that the next time this happens—and I've lived too long not to know it's going to happen again—I could change it. I could change what we remember. I can do that, you know." He raises a hand, twists his fingers in the first half of an arc, repeats the motion again and again like the first half-swing of a sword, like the first half-nock of an arrow. "I could do it so we could keep moving forward, so we could stop losing battles. So we could win the war. We cannot survive any more fallen friends, and this could be the last. I'm a very accomplished liar, you know. If I do it within seven days, if I immobilize us and cast the spell on us all one by one, then for all we know, the missing person will have left indefinitely to pursue some greater good. Something noble. And I'm telling you this because it's a terrible thought, and you deal in terrible thoughts. Call it a confession. Tiberius will be the last."
Percy slumps back against the wall. His heart is thundering in his chest like the steady beat of rain on the roof, like the steady beat of wings in the distance. "Scanlan," he says. "I don't think—"
The arc of his hand finishes, the sword swings, the arrow flies true.
Percy pauses mid-way through rummaging in his drawer, frowns, and tilts his head to one side. There's a disturbance to the currents of air in the room, like someone's left a door open, and he glances up to see that the door is indeed slightly ajar. "Careless," he murmurs, and pads quietly across the room to shut it, then stares out across his workshop, blinking. What in the world was he—
The rain clattering on the roof, a fresh storm moving through, jolts him from his reverie. The workshop is small, familiar, a solid point in the free-fall of the world outside these walls. This will be the last. This must be the last.
Percy sighs, wipes a smudge from the corner of his glasses, and sets to work winning the war.