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Funny thing about death: Once you had worked through the whole aspect of dying and made sure the insatiable shadow fiend who you had previously sold your soul to wasn’t around to devour it anymore, it actually worked to make you less afraid.
Percy had readily and willingly faced death before, and now that Orthax had lost all contact to his soul again, he knew he had nothing to fear about returning there. Things to finish, people to keep save, yes, but in general? Not that big a deal anymore. And there was nothing like a near miss with an ancient white dragon to just hammer this point home.
Of course he couldn’t tell that to his friends, they’d just be freaked out by it and probably assign someone to watch him at all times, which really wasn’t necessary. He didn’t exactly look forward to dying again, and was in absolutely no rush to. It just didn’t loom over him anymore. Which meant he now could get shit done.
Or at least that’s how he justified why confronting Raishan the second time was so much easier than it had been before they'd felled Vorugal. The alternative would be to consider whether there were just hormones messing with his brain, a prospect too humiliating and downright cheesy for him to even think about.
That would, however, explain the sudden and intense jolt of fear he felt when catching Vex’s eye as they were leaving Castle Whitestone’s basement. She looked positively livid.
Without a word, she grabbed him by the elbow at the first corridor crossing away from the stairs to the castle’s first floor and dragged him off around a corner, away from their fellow party members. He knew better than to make a sound or fight her off - she could probably take him, anyway. Also, she had a bear and looked like she wasn’t afraid to use it on him right now.
Vex pushed him into an alcove, pinning him against the wall, not unlike she had done so many months ago and several floors higher. Only now he was in a state of mind to actually notice how close this put them together, and that he could just almost feel the curves of her body pressing against him, and would have heard her every breath if not for his heart beating in his ears.
“Two hours, Percival,” she finally hissed at him through grit teeth, after they’d heard the heavy door to the basement floor close shut. “You couldn’t just let me be happy for two fucking hours, could you?”
“…Excuse me?”
“Explain to me how exactly we’re going to talk later if you plan on going all Princess Stabbity on the first threat you see?” She elaborated, positively vibrating with anger, causing the arm that was pressing him against the wall to shake.
“That’s not quite –, “ he attempted to speak, but the arm pinning him against the wall pressed down harder to cut him off.
“That is exactly what you were trying to do, don’t even attempt any of that ‘no tricks’ bullshit on me,” she snarled, her face getting closer to his now as she got on her tiptoes. “I saw your face when the blade passed through her form. You were attempting to stab her for real, then and there. What the hell, Percival?! Your sister was in that room!”
“As were Gilmore, Allura, and her friend Drake,” he managed to say, out of breath as he was. Now he even felt her breath on his face and neck and it was distracting. “A-and you saw her form, she is much smaller and less powerful than the other dragons. We could have taken her. And I did tell Cass to prepare for anything.”
“Oh, yes, that little girl on the verge of a mental breakdown telling you she just can’t handle this seemed so prepared,” Vex snorted and pulled him towards her, just to shove him against the wall again. “And a small dragon is still a fucking dragon, Percival. We didn’t even have a hero’s feast in preparation! No protection against her breath weapon at all! Are you so eager to die again, huh?”
Her voice broke a little on that last point, and it suddenly dawned on Percy that Vex wasn’t even that angry. She was scared. Or had been, at least. For him. And was now lashing out at him because of it. That in and of itself was almost as touching as their conversation before the, ah, kiss had been. And didn’t help his pulse at all.
“No, actually, I’m quite alright with being alive for the time being,” he assured her, his voice slowly returning to him. “And Raishan wouldn’t have attacked either way. She needs us, and she knew she was outnumbered. There’s a reason she wasn’t physically in the room, you know?”
“Which you didn’t know about!” Vex reminded him, and shoved him one last time before she let go of him and crossed her arms. “What happened to saying Jenga and counting to ten before doing something stupid? I could have sworn we’ve had conversations about that before. Conversations you spearheaded, after your sister got hurt last time, does that ring a bell?”
“Who says I didn’t?” He managed a half-hearted smile. “Every time someone brought something up that could have been resolved with Raishan being honest I did, in fact, count to ten in my mind. I just figured shouting Jenga would have been too much of a give-away.”
“Oh, you fucking…” Any anger that had previously begun to fade from her face was now back with a vengeance, her eyes shining with fury. But when had just started bracing himself for another shove or one of those punches her brother was so font of, she managed to completely catch him off-guard by grabbing him by the lapels, pulling him down towards her an pressing her lips against his.
The kiss was basically the polar opposite of the one they had shared back in the woods, though he probably was as surprised by it as she had been. Where the previous kiss had been gentle and brief, this one was forceful, and lasted just long enough for him to relax into it and get just the faintest taste of her tongue, before she broke away again and shoved him back against the wall for good measure.
“I... Am getting some mixed signals here,” he quipped while trying to catch his breath.
“You’re sexy when you’re being smug,” she explained briefly. She, too, was now out of breath, and had just the slightest hint of a blush on her face. “Which is annoying, because I’m mad at you right now.”
“…Quite the conundrum, then.” He didn’t even have to try to smile now, his adrenaline rush getting second wind or something, and making him feel positively giddy. Huh. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d felt as light-headed. The fact that this just seemed to make Vex even more angry at him didn’t help, actually. Apparently, her anger at him came with some benefits.
“Don’t, Percival,” she warned him, hand raised defensively in front of her, and still glaring. “Don’t ever pull shit like this without a warning, you hear me? Or without a plan or preparation. And definitely not with civilians in the general vicinity.”
“I wasn’t planning to make a habit of it,” he assured her, trying to sound serious, but dammit, his giddiness wouldn’t go away. And his lips still tingled.
“Whatever.” She turned to walk away, but stopped after the first few steps to glare at him some more, but with a kind of apprehension in her eyes now as she bit her lips. “Also, what was all that crap about you only being alive because of some greater purpose?”
Oh, dear.
“Well, as I mentioned earlier,” he started, feeling evasive for some reason. “It feels right to be here and do the things we do. And after witnessing a goddess punching a dragon for us, is it really so wrong to believe in some kind of higher purpose?”
She looked him right in the eye for a while, then bit her lips again and shook her head.
“Fair enough,” she admitted. “But you, specifically, are only alive right now because we dragged your soul back here from eternal damnation, remember? We did that. Our actions have ensured that you’re here to be a smug bastard, and I’m here to suffer from it. We’re here because our family wants us here, and believing anything less just feels… Feels like you’re diminishing our part in that. And stabbing the first dragon you came across today feels like you are just a bit too eager to render our efforts meaningless.”
“That is far from my intentions, and I apologize,” he said, momentarily sobered by the earnestness in her tone. “But in the interest of fairness, it all did work out to our advantage, ultimately, didn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that just yet,” she snarled, now glaring again. “And that’s also no reason, at all, to do it again, you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” he assured her, and smiled again in an attempt to lighten the mood. She just rolled her eyes, glared at him, then suddenly avoided her gaze, before she bit her lips and shook her head, the blush creeping back into her face – demeanor eerily reminiscent of how she had acted after their talk in the woods earlier.
“You know,” Vex said reluctantly after this display. “I was going to tell you something more. Sort of related to your resurrection. But you’re just impossible to deal with right now, and I’m way too mad, so no.”
“Alright,” he said, raising his eyebrows in interest as she turned and stormed off. “Later, then?”
She stopped dead in her tracks, turned around, and gave him her most poisonous glare yet, which for some reason just made him laugh.
“Go fuck yourself, Percival!” She shouted indignantly from across the hallway, before turning around the corner and vanishing from his field of vision, only to poke her head back around again. “And go give your sister a fucking hug, you ass.”
She stalked away after that, leaving the basement and slamming the heavy, iron-clad door behind her to signal her disappearance.
Percy stayed behind, both to give her a head start, and to calm himself down from this giddiness that had taken hold of him. And also wondering, for about the third time that day, what in the name of all that was holy he had gotten himself into.