Chapter Text
The last thing Percy expects, the night after the Briarwoods’ welcome feast, is to be woken by his tutor, a candle in one hand and her other over his mouth.
“Percy,” she says quietly. “If you wish to live, listen to me.”
She leads him quickly through the halls giving him barely enough time to pull a robe on, candle flickering with her speed. None of the torches are lit, the rushlights likewise. It’s pitch-dark and if Doctor Ripley’s hurried whisper hadn’t told him already he’d know something was wrong. The castle is never so dark, never so silent never so-
They arrive at Ripley’s rooms and she tugs him inside quickly before locking the door. The candle she sets down on the arm of a chair, barely even looking. It’s only now Percy sees how disarrayed she is, curls of hair loose from a plait, dark eyes darting.
“Percy,” she says. “There are- there are terrible things happening. There are terrible things happening and I could only save one of you and you have the best chance of saving the others-”
“W-what?”
He doesn’t mean to interrupt. One of his first lessons with Doctor Ripley had been not to interrupt - to listen and wait because she would always tell him what he needed to know. He hasn’t interrupted her in three years, since he was fifteen and a half and she first started teaching him.
“Percy.” Her voice is even and steady; for all her hair is in disarray, her eyes are fixed on him now, dark and piercing. “The Briarwoods are rounding up your family. They are going to kill your cousins and the guards and any servants who get in the way. Your family will be taken to the cells and interrogated.”
“But-” He cuts himself off. Don’t interrupt. Wait. But he can’t understand it, how Lord and Lady Briarwood, so charming and polite, could- his family- “Why?”
“Because the Briarwoods want answers,” Ripley says. Like it’s the simplest thing. But- but answers to what? Why attack? Why- why befriend them first?
“I don’t-”
“Percy.” Her voice is hard, patience expended. “Will you work with me? If your family doesn’t provide the information the Briarwoods need they will all die.” She glances away, off at a table, papers scattered over it.
“Doctor Ripley-” He swallows, his mouth dry, so dry, but- “They’re killing them.” She nods, harsh and jerky. “How-”
“I was going to the kitchens to fetch more coffee and I saw them.”
That- that makes sense; Ripley is as prone to late hours as he is, of course she’d be up late, of course she’d run out of coffee grounds.
“But-”
She glances back to him, then sideways again, chin lifting. “Sylas Briarwood saw me,” she says and Percy doesn’t think he’s ever seen his tutor look so shaken in his life. “As I was trying to get away.” She barks a swift, hollow laugh. “And he asked if I wanted a new job.”
“Doctor-”
“Your family will talk to you,” she says. “Your family will listen to you. I couldn’t- I had to make a snap judgement. Your parents wouldn’t be allowed to work with me, nor Julius, nor Vesper. The twins wouldn’t listen, nor Ludwig, nor Cassandra. And I did not have the time to explain. Only you would listen long enough I could get you here and explain it. And only then could anything be done.”
Her eyes are dark, dark in a dark room, ember-light glinting just barely off them.
“Percy,” she says. “Do you trust me? Do you trust me to try to help you to save your family?”
What can he say but yes?
The Briarwoods-
The grand hall-
The Briarwoods.
They’re untouched by the blood, sitting in his parents’ seats, at the very head of the table, bodies around them, slumped around the tables. Servants mostly, a few-
Percy recognises a dark head of hair, smashed golden rimmed glasses, a particular flourish of embroidery and swallows.
Servants under the protection of his family. Cousins visiting family.
Dead.
“Ah,” Lady Delilah Briarwood says, turning from her husband as Ripley leads him into the room. “You brought him. You’re sure he’ll be useful?”
From where he stands behind her, Percy cannot see Doctor Ripley’s expression. He can still hear the calm confidence in her voice though, and it gives him strength. “Yes,” she says. “Family speaks more honestly to family, after all.”
The laugh Lady Briarwood gives is the same fluttering thing she’d had at dinner. Then it had seemed polite but genuine, the laugh of a cultured courtier but with something real behind it. Now Percy can only think it affected.
“Of course you’d say that,” Lady Briarwood says, and looks past Doctor Ripley, directly to him. “Percival,” she says. “Hm. Will you be useful?”
He doesn’t have to look at Anna to know what her expression will be - usefulness is the only way he can survive, the only way Anna can keep him safe.
“I will endeavour to be,” he says and barely keeps the tremble from his voice.
“Good lad,” Lord Sylas Briarwood says. “Go with the good doctor now, won’t you? And- do get us answers.”
It’s all he can do to bow his head and follow Anna. He has no idea where she’s leading him.
When he gets back to his room it’s a mess. Chairs overturned, bed linens ripped, books thrown from the shelves. Someone’s kicked at the hearth, knocking over the iron fireguard and scattering embers across the flagstone floor. He’s lucky the rug is only scorched, that it’s only some of his experimental glassware that’s shattered.
It’s nothing compared to the blood and gore in the halls.
He doesn’t know how to process it. He doesn’t even know if he can. He’s not unaware of the horrors of the world - his parents are the Lord and Lady of Whitestone, they made sure he knew just as much as Julius and Vesper about the threats and horrors of the world, that he would be able to help his elder siblings protect them from it. Doctor Ripley had taught him, taken care to teach him the worst horrors of history alongside the greatest wonders of nature. He knew-
He thought he knew. Knowing is not the same thing as experiencing.
“Percival.” Doctor Ripley’s voice is quick and calm from where she stands in the doorway. “Gather what you need. We’re required in the cells.”
The cells. Is that where whatever remains of his family now resides?
The cells are-
Percy has been down to the cells only a few times in his life and never anything like this. He went once to know where they were and how they worked. Once to avoid people during a party. Once because Cassandra was down there, searching out secret passages. A scattered other handful for- all kinds of reasons, mostly curiosity-based.
But never when there were prisoners, let alone prisoners that were family. Never like this.
His parents are in cells beside each other, Julius and Vesper opposite each other, Whitney and Oliver crammed into a cell together and Ludwig in the last. There is no sign of Cassandra. He’d almost want to hope but - he’s seen the dead bodies. Servants, yes, and some of the administrative staff but the cousins too. If Cass had wandered off, had gone exploring as she was so wont to do-
He has no idea where she might be. He doesn’t dare think she’d have been recognised by one of the Briarwoods seeming mercenaries; if she’d been recognised she’d have been in the cells with the rest. He knows she wasn’t. She’s as likely dead as the various cousins all are.
“Percy,” his father says when he comes into view, and the relief on his face almost makes Percy break. “At least you’re safe. At least one of us is safe.”
He doesn’t have to say that none of the rest of them are. The tears on their clothes, the marks on their skin - that makes it as clear as the cells do.
He is too stunned that first day to do much. He parrots the questions Doctor Ripley has him ask and his family shakes their heads, expressions either confused or stubborn in response to every one. He tries when he can - he pleads, he begs, he tries to eke out what answers he can with what little sense he has left but he thinks really, that none of them have much sense, not in so immediate an aftermath of so terrible an event. They are being stubborn out of terrified fear, they are confused in the wake of it - confused that they’re left alive, held prisoner in their own home, questioned by their own family.
“Go,” Doctor Ripley says with a long sigh after all his questions have garnered no response. “Percival. Clearly they will not answer. Better you find more productive work. You might as well gather reference texts for our other tasks.” When he stands there, too confused and scared to really do anything she sighs again. “Mineralogy, local geology and properties of whitestone if you would, Percival.”
He flees at her direction. He does not dare ask why it is that she remains. She has saved his life, she works to save his family’s, she is giving him work that they might all survive.
He does not dare to question the familiarity with which she had spoken to Delilah - not Sylas, whom she’d said she’d seen. Perhaps there was more conversation she had not seen fit to mention, perhaps- she had come from Wildemount before, had worked and studied there for years, perhaps she had known the Briarwoods some time, perhaps even she had known them well enough to trust them. He cannot think she would take their word at face value after such a betrayal without some basis to work from.
So he flees, first to Ripley’s office and then to the library.
Books have always been his refuge from the world. It is perhaps no wonder that he takes not just the books Anna had asked for but every one he could possibly find.
He avoids the cells and visits them in equal measure. Avoids them in fear of what he might see, every injury done to his family in the goal of eking out what secrets his questioning could not find. Visits them because how can he not? The cousins are dead. Aunts and uncles he’s known since he was small. Cassandra is most likely dead. If he can save but one-
But they do not answer the questions. They do not tell them what they need to know. Some of them… Percy knows Ludwig is too young to know anything useful of Emon, that Oliver and Whitney had only begun to learn the make-up of the Tal’Dorei council the year before. He knows too that all this terror will have sent what information they have fleeing from their minds; sense is not well retained when fear is everything. Julius and Vesper know - know far more than him, large portions of politics forgotten in favour of science - but they refuse to say, following the example set by their parents.
And while they are stubborn and the younger ones ignorant, the horror continues.
So he visits. So he avoids. He wants to see them, wants to try to help, to comfort, to do what he can, to try his best to plea them free but over the first week he sees no hope for it at all. He avoids, if only so he can pretend - but he knows too how useless it is to do that. Pretending won’t save them anymore than his failure will.
“You’re not going to save us,” Vesper tells him one day when he visits, and it sticks in his mind for the simple clarity of her words. “You’re going to save yourself. That has to be enough.”
He wants to save them, he wishes he knew what to do-
“You save yourself,” Julius says from his cell. “Percy. They won’t let you save us. But they’ve let Doctor Ripley save you. Keep yourself saved.”
His parents die before the week is out. With his elder siblings looking at him, so simply certain, deep desperation in their gaze, what can he do but agree?
There are days he doesn’t remember. He knows they pass only from the dates on the reports, knows he worked only from his handwriting on them.
But he doesn’t remember them. Doesn’t remember working. Doesn’t even remember writing, some days.
“Trauma,” Anna says dismissively when he confesses it to her. “Severe negative events impact memory. Usually one remembers as a warning for the future, but when severe enough the event is remembered but events immediately afterwards are forgotten. A survival mechanism I think. To prevent one being overwhelmed.”
“But I don’t remember,” he says. “I don’t-”
The other day he’d gone to the cells to see his family. He hadn’t known to expect Julius’ two-day old corpse on a table.
“It’s normal,” she assures him. “And certainly, I haven’t noticed anything worrisome.”
“Anna-” he says and he’s not even sure when she became Anna to him; all the years she’s taught him she’s always been Doctor Ripley, her hard-earned title and the formality of her surname. For all he knows her forename they’ve never been close enough she’d allow him its use - but these days it trips so easily from his tongue, and she never reproaches him for it. He watches up at her, pleading and waiting and she sighs, her expression softening from its severity. Her hand is firm on his shoulder.
“I will keep you safe,” she reminds him. “If nothing else, cling to that. Stay useful. Keep working. We’ll make it through this.”
Of course he believes her. What else has he to believe?
He’s scared. He’s scared more than anything, more than ever and he clings to Anna whenever he can, clinging to her hand and the comfort of her presence, the security of her rooms. He rarely dares venture outside her rooms without company or the confidence of purpose; he doesn’t know what he’d do if he was stopped or challenged without Anna or one of her commands to comfort him, to counter their challenge.
“I cannot order you in everything,” Anna comments, half-scolding. “Percival, you need to at least send yourself to bed. You are my assistant; thus far you have been very helpful. They are not going to attack you unless they want to cause trouble with me.”
But why wouldn’t they be willing to cause trouble with her; her interrogations garnered no answers, their research has been only piecemeal as Lord Briarwod and his men excavate down to whatever it is they’re so sure they’ve found in the tunnels beyond the crypts. At this stage, he’s surplus to requirements and he knows she knows this. He knows too how people like the Briarwoods and their men get answers: they push. They challenge. They cause trouble and keep a person on edge so they know the only relief comes from obedience. She knows this too; she taught him this.
“Percival,” she says, half-scolding once again, stepping closer to lift his chin so he has to meet her eyes.
“Anna,” he says. “Please.”
Her hand is firm on his cheek, comforting and grounding. Her gaze is clear and piercing.
“Percy,” she says, steady and calm. “I will keep you safe.”
He wants - oh how he wants - to kiss her.
The work is hard. The days are long. He is Anna’s only assistant and so it is he who hauls heavy buckets of whitestone up to their labs, or barrels of acid, or boxes of gently-clinking glassware. It is he who helps her set up test flask after test flask, trying to find the acid that will break whitestone down into purified residuum.
“It has to be an acid,” Anna says, pacing in a lab one evening as they wait for the preliminary tests to return results. “Whitestone is a calcite alabaster so it’s a limestone, so acid will remove the carbonate and leave only the magically infused components.”
“The magic is in all of it though,” Percy says and Anna looks at him sharply. “It protects it,” he says simply. “Anna, Eyvril Carver uses whitestone as his etching countertop because regular acid doesn’t damage it. The only thing that ever scratched that worktable was a wizard’s spell when he was late on a commission.”
Anna pauses her pacing and stares at him.
“It was a green bolt,” he adds, and wracks his brain for everything Eyvril told him. “Sizzled on the stone. He’s pretty sure it was some kind of acid he just didn’t know what kind and he couldn’t test it because it vanished in a few seconds-”
“Melf’s,” Anna says. “Melf’s Acid Arrow, most likely.”
“Can-” He pauses, unsure if he should ask. “Can you cast that?”
Anna’s mouth twists. “No,” she says. “And even if I could, I doubt spellcasting alone would provide us what we need. We’d need to obtain a magical acid and I doubt Delilah would give us the funds for that if we can’t prove we need it.”
Percy glances back at the flasks laid out in a neat row along the worktop. “We need the results from this then,” he says. “To prove whether or not non-magical acid would work.”
“Yes,” Anna says, but she’s looking past him, staring at the wall. “Percy, the books you saved from the library - did you save some of those spellbooks your sister would peruse?”
The memory hits him like a hammerblow, Vesper standing in a shaft of sunlight between the bookshelves, the light catching a reddish tint in the dark brown of her hair that came from their mother’s family, that only showed in her and in Ludwig, as she held a book of spells in one hand looking for new things to add to her notebook of cantrips.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I saved all of them.”
Anna’s smile is wide and warm and wonderful. “Good boy,” she says and it sends a thrill through him, the ready reassurance. “Show me where you put them?”
Percy checks on the flasks for the next three weeks - then three more as Anna’s still buried in the books she’s liberated from the stacked-close piles in his rooms. He prepares a preliminary report, just enough to show Delilah that nothing is showing anything workable yet except perhaps the sulphuric which is both far too dangerous to easily use in large quantities and far too slow if they want to refine as much whitestone as they say, and leaves it on Anna’s desk.
“I’ll check it in the morning,” she says, not looking up from her book and he can’t help but worry. “Go on to bed, Percival, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sleep well,” he says, paused by the door, and is rewarded by her startled face when she glances up at him. “We can’t be useless,” he says, just as she’s told him so many times and she smiles to hear him repeat it. “You need to rest too.”
“I will,” she says. “Good night, Percy.”
He wishes he could stay, could sit with her in the safety of her rooms, could listen to her say good night, Percy with that smile on her face, clear enough that he can hear it in her voice. He knows he’s safe with how she protects him, that she won’t let him come to harm, but he can’t help but seek that reminder that she cares too.
“As you see,” Anna says, presenting the final report three weeks later. “None of the mundane acids had adequate effect, not in any reasonable time frame. The sulphuric can work but not by any means fast enough - and not without significant risk in large quantities. I did take the liberty of obtaining a small quantity of Melf’s Acid to test the effects, which was much more effective but is sadly quite destructive. Between these two most effective results, it looks like we’ll be needing Mersvaal’s Muriatic or a similar alchemical acid if we want to refine the whitestone.”
“That won’t be cheap,” Delilah says, looking over the papers one by one. “And Mersvaal’s can only be bought through official channels these days. The Pansophical keeps a close leash on its production.”
“Perhaps,” Anna says but Percy can see the smile she’s hiding, “But there are always ways of getting things other ways. You know I came here from Wildemount; unlike you I didn’t have the means to simply teleport over. What do you know of Stilben?”
“I don’t want you to go,” Percy says and it’s late at night and they’re safe in Anna’s rooms but it still feels like a risk, to admit this to her. Tylieri and Stonefell have been absent the castle lately; from what he understands they’ve been managing the Houses given to them as reward for all the harm they’ve wrought, but he hardly feels safe with Lord and Lady Briarwood living in the rooms once his parents’. “Anna-”
“Someone must go,” she says. “And while certainly Anders could, I don’t trust him not to try to sabotage us. You know what he thinks of me.”
He does, of course he does, Anna the strident atheist, calmly clear that if the gods exist then they hardly need her belief, and Anders the absolute dedicant to his secret god, hating anyone who won’t give the gods what respect he believes they’re due. Percy’s almost an atheist himself these days, after Pelor did nothing for his family, but he still knows the faith and shows respect to the god his family has served since they settled here. Anna has never cared for those who might try to lord power and authority over her, least of all intangible figures who don’t so much as show their face.
He knows why Anna must go. He knows why he’s not allowed to go with her too - why would the Briarwoods give him a chance to flee them when his presence allows them some semblance of respectability, claiming regency if not true rulership while he cowers and grieves?
He still hates that he’s being left alone in Whitestone without her, though, being left far more easy prey than he’s been since his family was first attacked. He knows he shouldn’t be attacked, he knows he should be safe - he knows all that Anna’s done to provide him work and safety and there’s a reason he turns into the comfort of her hand when it presses to his cheek these days, not just fanciful wishes but the knowledge that Anna will fight to keep him safe.
“I just wish you weren’t,” he says quietly. “I know you have to. I know-” He waves his hand, too tired after all the day’s work to reiterate all the reasons they need to do this to survive. “But you saved my life. You’re the reason I’m still alive at all-”
“Percy,” Anna says, soft as a sigh, and her thumb smoothes over his cheek. “Someone needs to manage the work while I’m gone,” she reminds him. “Someone needs to set up the distillation stills and the processing laboratories. Someone needs to see just how long it would take us to refine whitestone using only hydrochloric - or whatever useless replacement we might be able to make - if worst comes to worst.”
He leans into her touch so easily, more so when her fingers stroke over his cheek and he can’t help his sigh. He doesn’t know what to make of the look in her eyes: he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Anna Ripley look so… so soft. So fond.
“There’s no one else I’d trust with that but you,” she says and he can’t help the warmth he feels at such a clear statement of faith. “You know where I’m going. You know the itinerary - heck, you helped me to plan it, Percival. I should be back in under a fortnight, all things going well.”
“Yes,” he says, because it’s true, he doesn’t just know the itinerary, he’s got it memorised. “I’ll be here,” he says, because of course he will, the Briarwoods won’t let him leave lest he reveals to any authorities what they did to take command of Whitestone, but also because of course he’ll stay, of course he’ll do as Anna’s asked. After how well she’s used all the trust he’s given her before he doesn’t dare betray what trust she places in him. “Please-”
“It is going to be fine, Percy.” Her thumb grazes over his cheek and there’s some part of him that desperately wants to kiss the pad of it. “You’re going to be safe. I promised you that.”
She has. She hasn’t broken that promise. There’s no one he feels safer with than her.
“I’ll return,” Anna says. “I’ve told you before. I won’t let you be taken from me.”
There’s an utter confidence in her words, a perfect calm in how steady her hand is against his cheek and he knows he shouldn’t, knows he should trust and trust alone because Anna has never failed him, Anna saved his life but there is too much - too much fear and dread and worry and love because he does not know what else to call the emotion that fills him when he watches her and knows he’s safe with her as he isn’t anywhere else.
So he kisses her.
Shock of all shocks, she kisses back.