Chapter Text
After everything he’s been through lately, Percy almost wants to laugh. He’s sitting here shackled in a jail cell, having lost—through his own imprudence, he readily admits that—his gun, his family crest, his freedom, and his first significant chance at vengeance. He’s been in this cell for days, slowly recovering from the aches and bruises of his beating while acquiring new ones in the form of sores from sitting too long and abrasions from the shackles.
He’s also been getting reacquainted with hunger—and thirst, to the point of dizziness, an incessant headache, and minor hallucinations. Possibly major hallucinations by now, given the odd trio that has just shown up at his cell: a lanky red-haired druid and two gnomes, one of whom is a charlatan with a fake mustache and a lute bigger than his own head.
The other gnome’s an earnest little cleric who is trying so very hard to fiercely interrogate him.
With a phantom ache across his chest and the side of his neck—the wounds long healed by magic but the scars never forgotten—Percy smiles, broadly. At least the visitors (real or imagined) are a mix of pleasant and amusing, a far cry from… well, pretty much every person he’s had the displeasure of encountering in the past few years. And they’re so charmingly naive, completely flummoxed by the concept of officials who might lie.
Which is extra amusing, given that the charlatan is lying, and seems to be rather practiced in it. How one learns to lie without learning to pick up on the lies of others, Percy can’t imagine.
Then they mention the gun, and Percy’s heart clenches, burning away the levity and replacing it with sudden desperation. Even as he demands it—bolting forward enough to tug against the chains—he knows he’s scaring them, lending credence to their worst suspicions about him, he knows he might be driving them away, but the thought of losing the List drives every other impulse from his mind. The weeks of meticulous design, the humiliating and back-breaking labor he’d traded for access to a workshop and the necessary resources, the long months of forging components, of endlessly frustrating experimentation, and then—finally—to have a working model that (at least nine times out of ten) actually fires a shot—
Given his raving, he’s almost surprised when they still decide to bargain with him, their quest apparently too crucial to balk at a potential ally, no matter how dubious.
Before they leave, the cleric pulls a waterskin from her belt and holds it out through the bars. He blinks down at her, momentarily thrown; is his condition so obvious? But at her encouraging look he takes it, and nods his appreciation, touched by her attentiveness.
He allows himself two good swallows—barely enough to soothe his discomfort and hardly enough to quench his thirst—before handing it back. Should the night’s enterprise succeed, he’ll be free to seek more supplies, and if not… well, the water would only prolong his misery.
Once his visitors have left, Percy settles back into place, rearranging his sore limbs and leaning his head back against the stone wall, feeling light-headed from the act of standing so suddenly. With his growing weakness and the way his senses have begun playing tricks on him, he’s… not going to last much longer in here. His only real chance is that little group of oddities.
And the chance of them returning for him… hmm. One in four, perhaps. Half a chance that they’re real; the water felt real, but he’s dreamt about water before, and by now his mouth’s just as sore and gummy as it had been ten minutes ago. And even if they are real, there’s half a chance that they’ll come to their senses before deciding to trust a man in his position—and that’s without factoring in the unusual (thus potentially alarming) choice of weapon.
Ah well. At least he got a smile before the end.
It’s only once the shackles are off, once he’s rubbing his wrists and relishing the pain, that he allows himself to accept the proposition that these people are in fact real and that he is in fact standing outside the jail cell (his former captor locked inside) and being handed his actual gun. There’s still a chance that he’s dreaming all this, that the thirst or the hunger or the solitude has finally broken him, accomplished what even his trauma could not, but it certainly feels real. The pain of his wrists feels like actual pain. The weight of the gun in his hands feels… solid enough.
Maybe he can believe this. For now.
Honestly, could he ever dream up a group this naive? They bust him out of a jail cell and hand him an unpredictable weapon and don’t even seem to consider the possibility that he might turn on them. In a couple of hours and a single conversation, with no proof whatsoever, they’ve gone from accusing him of human sacrifice to simply asking if he’ll keep his word.
He’s not sure how to meet that trust if not with sincerity—the type of sincerity he hasn’t had occasion to use in far too long. But of all the principles his father left him with, there is one that forms the backbone for most of the rest: “My word is as good as my name.”
“About that,” the druid says. “We never actually got your name.”
It’s the decision of a moment, laden with the awareness of the past five years. Since waking up on that fishing boat, he’s been afraid to acknowledge himself, afraid of how easily the name could be used to hurt him, hunt him down. He’s gone by whatever people care to call him, and when he needs a name to hand someone it’s been a borrowed one, sometimes Julius but most commonly Oliver. Bearing his brothers with him and learning to distance himself from the worst of the memories a little at a time.
But he’s not a child anymore—no longer on the run, but on the hunt. He needn’t hide himself any longer, and if word gets out that a de Rolo is still alive, it might actually lead him to his quarry that much the sooner.
And there’s something about this little group that makes lies feel… unbecoming. So in that moment, he decides to give them a gift of trust, and lets his true name cross his lips for the first time in five long, harrowing years.
“Or Percy for short,” he adds, to the relief of the charlatan, and snaps the barrel of his gun back into place. “Time for a little revenge… and your noble quest, of course.”
They waste no time heading out toward the cultists’ meeting place; Percy’s still pulling his coat on as they pass the edge of the quiet little town. His head’s still pounding, and his gear feels unusually heavy, but he can deal; he’s borne up under worse.
Partly to distract himself, he asks them for more information on the night’s quarry. For his part, he’s just going to stand somewhere and shoot at it, so the precise nature doesn’t really matter—not unless it’s immune to bullets, and, in his experience, few things are.
“It’s a big horse?” the druid offers, uncertainly. “That’s on fire?”
“And we need its skull,” the cleric adds.
“Grim,” Percy says, straightening his collar. “I like it.”
Still, it seems odd for a cleric to get wrapped up in such an task, and he can’t help but question her involvement.
“It’s to save a friend,” she says, a combination of warmth and worry to her tone. “My best friend, actually, since I was very young.”
“Charming,” he replies, not knowing what else to say to that. An earnest little cleric on a quest to save a friend, by facing up against a horrifying demonic beast, with nothing but a handful of questionable allies and whatever powers her gods might provide. It’s a folk tale, a children’s story, where love and faith and pure hearts win the day and the unassuming heroes make it back to their quaint little homes just in time to help with the harvest. Not the pattern by which real people ought to live their lives.
Pensive, he leads them in silence back to the cult’s summoning circle—the place of his capture after his failed attack on Ripley. The reminder of what he intends to do with what’s left of his life. Because Percy has had a thorough education in how dark the real world gets. He’s lost everyone he’s ever loved, he has no use for the gods who let it happen, and the only purity left in his heart is the pure, cold pulse of vengeance.