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She starts awake, heart hammering in her chest. The walls press around her, looming and dark, and she cannot catch her breath; she gasps for air, sitting upright in bed, the sheets tangled around her legs. Her nightdress sticks uncomfortably to her sweat-slicked back, and her hair lies heavy against her neck, a tangled mess. She trembles in the dark, staring blankly at the walls, trying to calm herself.
“It was a dream,” she tells the empty room, voice shaking.
The empty room does not reply.
She considers lying back down, trying to sleep again, but when she closes her eyes she sees flashes of her dream. What was so clear moments ago has already begun to fade, crumbling into a collection of half-formed images and impressions: vines that bind her in thorns, flowers that grow in her throat and pour forth from her mouth and suffocate her, trees with eyes that watch her every move and wait for her to turn her back. She shudders, fingers digging into the blankets, searching for an anchor. It is not real, not real, not real. She is not in the Feywilds. They have left that plane, have survived. And yet, the trip has left her beset by dreams, nightmares in which nature itself turns on her and drives her mad, and it’s unfair, unfair to dream of her own domain turning against her. It is nature, it is what she knows.
She fights enough in her waking hours, she should not have to fight in her dreams too. Not against the wilds. Not against her home. But she cannot escape this newfound wariness, this fear of her own domain that creeps up on her when she sleeps, when she is vulnerable, and she hates it.
Keyleth stares at square of muted moonlight that falls through square of her window, mind buzzing with white noise, the sound of fear and exhaustion and loneliness.
She’s tired of being alone.
A thought comes to her, a faint, shimmering thing, and she purses her lips as she considers it, turning it this way and that in her mind, examining its facets. When she has considered it fully, and then some, she sets it down, bites her lip, and squares her shoulders, decision made.
She slips out of bed, feather-light, leaving her sweat-soaked sheets in a tangled pile. The night air drifts across her skin, raising goosebumps along her arms. She shivers, trying to ignore the way her nightdress sticks to her skin, and crosses the room. Her door opens with a slight creak, opening onto a long, dark hall. Her bare soles press against the cold floor underfoot; she misses the carpets and the familiar, lived-in feel of Greyskull Keep.
She misses Greyskull in general, misses home and safety, but that is another story.
She slips down the hall, feet light and quiet, until she reaches his door, closed tight for the evening. She hovers there, uncertain, and pulls her thought out again, thinking and overthinking it. This… them, the thing between them, it is messy and brimming with uncertainties and fear, and they dance around it, catch sweet moments when the world allows and spend far longer mired in not-quites and almosts. She feels off-balance, as if she is standing on a rusting stairway high above a chasm, and if she steps on the wrong step it will all crumble beneath her and send her tumbling into the abyss.
Everyone tells her to let go, to relax, to set aside her uncertainties and try. They do not understand: she has been falling for a long time now; she longs for solid ground beneath her feet.
But gods, she is tired of being alone.
So she steels herself, and takes a deep breath, and knocks.
Nothing happens. No response. As she stands there she feels embarrassment well up in her, mixed with regret and helplessness, her shimmering thought turning ashen. Of course he will not wake, he is sleeping, he has better things to do than worry about her nightmares, he––
He opens the door.
He cracks it open a few inches, scrubbing one hand down his face, hair sleep-tousled and eyes half-lidded in exhaustion. He peers at her for a moment, hand falling away.
“Keyleth?”
“Hi, Vax. Um, I’m sorry I woke you.”
“No, no, ‘s fine.” He stares for a moment, and she wraps her arms around herself, tries to ignore her shimmering-ashen thought. “Do you want to come in?”
No, she should go back to her own room.
“Yes,” she nods.
He moves back to let her in, and she steps across his threshold. He closes the door behind her.
The room looks exactly like her own; she isn’t sure if that’s a feat of Scanlan’s mansion or simply the gnome’s standard bedroom. Somehow, she imagines Pike’s room looks different.
“Is everything okay?” asks Vax, sitting down on his bed. He tilts his head towards the space next to him, and Keyleth sinks down, chilled from the cool air and glad for the warmth.
“Yeah,” she assures him. “I’m okay I just… I had a nightmare.” It sounds silly now that she says it aloud, like she’s a little girl seeking comfort.
Vax doesn’t look at her like she’s being silly. Vax looks at her solemnly, face soft in that way it gets when he doesn’t know how to put his care into words, and it loosens something in her chest.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. Keyleth hesitates, considering.
No, she does not, she wants to be free of it, she wants to forget it ever happened.
And yet. Her shimmering-ashen thought returns, a thought of comfort, of companionship. A not-alone thought, despite her uncertainties, despite the tangled mess between them.
Things don’t have to be perfect to be good, right? They don’t have to last forever. Right now can be good enough.
“It’s the Feywild,” she says, voice small. “I keep dreaming I’m trapped. And, I try to escape, but the plants–– I mean nature, the world, it doesn’t–– It won’t––” She can’t find the words. She doesn’t know if he’ll understand anyways. He’s at home anywhere he can wield a dagger or slip into the shadows. She is bound to the world, to the trees and the valleys and the mountains and the rivers. It is the source of her power, it is her reason for being. For it to ignore her, to hurt her, it is an anathema, it is impossible, it is wrong, it is––
She feels her pulse spike, feels her chest constrict and the world tilt and she remembers a tavern, and Percy’s impatience, Vex’s laughing face as she stumbled outside, and she cannot panic, not here, not in front of Vax, but she cannot catch her breath, cannot see through the sudden tears in her eyes, cannot focus on anything, cannot, cannot, she is worthless, useless, terrible,alone––
“Kiki.”
Vax’s face swims into focus, his hair long and loose, his eyes dark and worried. “Kiki, look at me. You’re okay. You’re okay. Just breathe. Breathe with me, okay?”
She tries, pulling in great gasping breaths, Vax’s voice small and far away, but slowly it filters through her panic, low and soothing and steady, and she falls into the pattern he counts for her. In, out. In, out. Her heartbeat begins to slow.
“I’m sorry,” she says, when she can. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” says Vax, kneeling on the floor before her. One of his hands rests on her knee, the other is clutched tight in her hand, a lifeline. She doesn’t remember grabbing him. “You’re okay, Keyleth.”
She nods, and tries to believe it.
“Can I stay?” she asks him, quiet and afraid. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“Course,” he says, as if it’s that easy, as if there isn’t this tangled mess of… ofwhatever caught between them. As if she hasn’t just had a panic attack in his bed, in the middle of the night. He stares at her brows tilted in concern, face soft. “Yeah, course you can.”
“Are you sure?” She feels like an intruder, like a burden, wonders if he is putting on a show for her sake, but his fingers tighten around hers and he catches her eyes.
“Yes,” he says, quiet and certain. “Yes, I’m sure.” He opens his mouth again, as if he has more to say, but he holds onto his words with a crooked smile and squeezes her hand again, and the tight band of anxiety around her chest eases somewhat.
Her shimmering thought slips through her mind again, clear and bright and free of ash, and she lets it drift by, unfettered, and fade away. She does not need to examine it. Not now.
She pulls Vax up off the ground. He smiles at her, fond and safe, and lets her tug him into bed. He lies next to her, gathers her in his arms, and she curls into him, lets him press a kiss to the crown of her head.
“I’m here,” he promises, and Keyleth allows herself to relax into him, into the comfort of another body, into the knowledge of companionship, of care. She closes her eyes, and no creeping dangers come for her in the dark; they cannot reach her in the circle of his arms, cannot whisper to her with the quiet huff of his breath brushing her hair.
She drifts off, eventually, sinks into the tattered remains of sleep, and dreams of light, and warmth, and a rock weathering the storm, a strong and safe haven where she might rest her tired wings.
She wakes in the morning tucked against him, the quiet huff of his breath at her ear, one arm draped over her. She wakes well rested, the nightmares like shadows burned away by morning light.
She wakes with him, not alone, and the world feels solid beneath her.