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waltwhitmansbeard · 1 year

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turned my water into wine #16

read these first. this takes place before my fair lady. inspired by @romeoandjulietyouwish's medieval au.

Keyleth hasn't been able to sit still all day. She inhaled her breakfast, hardly hearing a word her father said, and has been bouncing from room to room ever since. She knows what she's looking for—something, anything to make sense of last night—but as vast and well-resourced as this castle is, such a magical solution is not stocked neatly among the cutlery or decorative vases.

Through it all, she knows she must be driving Kerrek crazy. It is his duty to follow her everywhere, but he cannot have imagined that that would have entailed going from the library to the empty ballroom to the observatory to her chambers and back again. A war hero turned dog yanked about by a leash—surely this is not the promotion he'd expected.

She wanders out to the gardens under the guise of checking on her petunias, but truly she just cannot bear to be within those castle walls for a moment longer. She trails along, letting her fingers dance across petals and leaves, before finally needing to say something. "I must apologize for my restlessness, Kerrek. I know it must be exhausting, chasing my aimlessness all day."

Kerrek's beard twitches as he fights a smile. "I...was wondering if you were going to say anything, Your Highness."

She sighs and drops down to sit on the grass, decency be damned. "Oh Kerrek...I rather think I've made a mess of things."

One hand on his sword, Kerrek looks around, and when he seems satisfied, he settles down on the ground beside her, moving a tad more slowly than she had. "Why don't you tell me about it?"

She chews on her lip. The issue is that she can't tell Kerrek about it, can't tell a soul about the way Vax came into her chambers last night, believing her to be under attack, and instead finding her wild-eyed and breathless. She cannot speak about how he held her, kept her head under his chin and whispered to her until her breathing had returned to normal and the terror of her nightmare had given way to a more curious, indefinable feeling. She cannot say, even to herself, the thoughts that consumed her once Vax had resumed his post, the quiet desires, the looping memories of his hand running up and down her back, the lingering scent of him in her hair.

No. She cannot speak any of it aloud. She plucks nervously at the grass. "I...hmm. Kerrek, have you ever..." Has he ever what? What possible analogue for this situation could he have experienced? He is waiting so patiently for her to collect her thoughts, and she rather wishes he could shake them out of her, make them tumble from her mind and sort through them on his own, so she does not have to. "There is...a person."

"Alright. A person."

"A person. This person...well. I knew him in one capacity, and now I find myself considering him in...a different...capacity." Her entire face is so warm she thinks she might start sweating. "That is to say...I am seeing this person in a new light, and that is...not ideal."

Kerrek nods slowly as she stumbles her way through these barely-intelligible sentences. "I see. And this is not ideal because..."

Oh gods. Oh gods, she never should have opened her mouth. "Well...I am me, of course. And being me—rather, being a princess—it poses...challenges. To all sorts of things, if I'm being honest. And in this particular case....Well then of course, I have no reason at all to think that this person considers me in any sort of capacity. It is presumptuous of me to be so..." She flutters her hands in the air. "...when I am surely having an entirely singular experience. I cannot be placing any kind of...I don't know, feeling on this person when they have done nothing to suggest..."

She trails off, because Vax has not done nothing to make her think that, perhaps, maybe, he harbors some small affection for her. When he held her, kept her close to his chest to ward off the lingering fright of her nightmare, she swears she remembers him pressing the briefest kiss to the crown of her head.

But who is to say such a gesture meant anything? Vax has a sister, whom she knows he loves dearly, and surely he has comforted her at some time or another. It would be foolish to ascribe any sort of significance, not when it is his job to take care of her.

(To take care of her physical safety. Not her emotions. Not her racing heart. It is nowhere among his duties to pull her in and whisper his assurance that she is safe, that he is there, that he has her and will not let any harm come to her.)

Kerrek waits for her to continue, and when she doesn't, says slowly, "Well, Your Highness..." He plucks a daisy from the flowerbed behind them and tucks it behind her ear. "You will only see a bloom when you tend to the soil. A flower requires sunlight and water and nutrients, and when it receives those things, you receive, in return, the beauty of its petals. Sometimes, it's true, you can sun and water and feed the flower, and the flower will wither anyway, and while sad, that is a risk we take when we attempt to sow beauty into the world. But I think you'll find that that beauty is worth the buds we lose along the way."

Keyleth's fingers come up to brush the daisy. She understands what she's saying, but that still doesn't stop the panicked aching in her chest. "And what if it is unwise," she whispers, "so plant this particular seed? What if the thing that grows is not beautiful, but...something else?"

Kerrek sighs. "I don't think it's ever unwise to grow things from a place of hope. None of us are fate-weavers, Your Highness. We can only make choices, and follow the paths where they lead. All I can say is that in all my years—and I have had quite a few more than you, if I may say—I have never come to regret the growing. Only the vines I allowed to die because doing so felt easier than tilling the soil."

She takes the flower from her ear and presses her nose to it. She wonders if Kerrek would be giving her this advice if he knew Vax were the one she was all aflutter over. She tips her head onto Kerrek's shoulder. "I don't want to hurt anyone." She doesn't even know to whom she's referring. Vax. Her father. Her people. Herself.

"I know you don't. It's what makes you an excellent leader. It'll be what makes you an excellent partner to someone very lucky someday."

Keyleth smiles at that. "Thank you, Kerrek. For everything."

"Of course, Your Highness. Now, not to change the subject, but might we stand now? These knees aren't what they used to be, you know."

Laughing, Keyleth lifts her head and helps Kerrek to his feet. She has not yet sorted through the tangled vines of her feelings about last night, but at the very least, the snarl in her chest feels less overwhelming, less terrifying. She and Kerrek walk back to the castle, and she thinks that maybe, after the unrest she's endured all morning, she's finally ready to take a nap.

#this is a kerrek stan account just so we're clear #critical role #critical role fic #cr fic #vaxleth #vaxleth fic #vaxleth au #vox machina #vox machina fic #vox machina au #tlovm #tlovm fic #my fic #my fair lady #turned my water into wine

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