abraxaslogs | [ CLOSED ] if i say your name

[ Someone was bound to tell him, weren't they?

Of course, they were. Jo wrestles briefly with the whole idea of it being Sam. Sam, who had managed even less well in the same space with Geralt. Metaphorically she reaches around in the dark cottony empty of the space around her, inside her, for responsibility—or guilt?—that she hadn't considered doing it herself.

She doesn't find much. The problem being it's how it's supposed to be.
It's the demand that's keeping her upright, walking, talking.
Leaving the house. Doing things like this. ]

That was good of him.

[ He'd thought if he would learn it from anyone, it would be Castiel, but when Sam arrived, it'd fit. He has the most impersonal relationship with Sam—or that's how he sees it, at least. He doesn't know how Sam feels in return, hasn't bothered contemplating. ]

Sure. [ Basic courtesy, he supposes. He'd anticipated not even that much, but he hasn't given the gesture much thought, either. When he'd lost Eskel, there was still Ciri to look after; it's the same now. Dean is gone, Ciri is here, and he has learned not to forsake the living for the dead.

A long stretch of silence passes. Should he have more to say to Jo? Perhaps, but the stark reality is that he does not. Apologies feel hollow. He has no desire to sit and commiserate. Instead, he pauses, considers, and eventually says: ]

And Castiel? [ In the absence of Dean, their mutual connection now lies through Castiel—the only one with whom Geralt has what he would term a friendship, separate from anything to do with Dean. ]

[ They don't have a middle ground. They never did. Not their own. What they had of one was made up of Dean Winchester and a room in the bunker, and those words Dean had said the first day.

(If I stay, he stays.)
It'd all mattered so much at the time, but it seems...stupider now, and Geralt is the one still in this room. Alive. With her; also, alive. The first person who showed her her own death in the maze. The one she died, saving Dean. That she'd carried all this time silently. Unspoken. Unshared. Unregretted.

She's been surrounded by death's hunters since she was born, more men and women than she could count, and that exponential number only grew each year for over two decades.

Jo blinked at the note of the question, stuttering from the thought that circled back and back and back, reminding her when any part of her slipped. Her gaze sharpened, and her head moved a little, but it didn't reach a nod or a shake of her head entirely. ] He's getting better. Still a wreck after everything he went through, but slowly better.

[ A nod—accepting the expected answer. He imagines it's not the first time Castiel has pieced himself together; it isn't Geralt's, either, and though it never gets easier, over time it becomes embedded in the path you walk. Something you're bound to traverse sooner or later, like a river, a mountain pass.

And the longer your life spans, the more often you come across it.

Finally, he veers towards the topic sinking through the air between them. ] You?

[ It would be inaccurate to claim he cares, but nor is it true to say that he doesn't. Maybe it's the uneven footing of her thoughts he can sense, something he seldom sees—if ever—which pulls the question from him. Or perhaps it isn't anything that can be put into words. He asks because he asks, and that's all there is to it. He knows it must be...how would you even anticipate it? To find yourself outliving the person who once outlived you? ]

[ There's a look back to him, the vaguest pass of something—surprise, uncertainty, confusion, doubt; it's hard to say, the flicker so faint and brief—before it, too, passes. With what might have been, even two weeks ago, three weeks ago, the snap-back response of Do you even care? rather than anything that contended with an answer to the question itself.

Or maybe it's the relation of the whole knot. That he's the one asking her. That he's the one related person not living under a roof where no moment escapes it. But more than that, that he's the one Dean chose the longest here. Unflagging from however far back it went. Kept bringing him back in. Who had to feel...even more outside of that house, then, without him?

That's. She doesn't want to have the room to feel how that pinches.
Where there's some hazy unshaped responsibility she hasn't met.

And yet he was asking her how

Some part of her head meant to roll a shrug into it before the words fell out, but there's no artistry in her anymore, and her shoulders don't move, nor does she seem to have had it in her vision past the thoughts of it. ] One foot in front of the other.

[ It's both more honest and more esoteric than she'd answer at home.
Was a hunter's house truly a home before it was somehow bathed in blood?
Jo blinked, trying to shove that into whatever black it came from.

Her lips pressed, and she added the other vein of it. ]

And taking care of them.

[ It's true he only ever set foot in that house—metaphorically and literally—at Dean's behest. He'd told Sam once that he was only present because Dean had asked him to be. Now Dean is no longer here to ask, and that is that. It's just how the world unfolds around him. Ciri is his daughter, and neither Calanthe nor Cintra would have approved. Triss is a good friend of decades, but the Brotherhood she belongs to is nothing he trusts, and they would not trust a Witcher in return.

He takes the people who choose him in spite of their ties elsewhere. No more, no less. In some ways, it gives the bonds he forms especial significance. Maybe that's why the loss stings so much.

He's largely focused on looking after Ciri, too. For different reasons, and yet—it's always easier than looking inward. ]

Nothing we aren't used to, I suppose.

[ Most of his kind are dead; he's lost countless friends. He imagines it's the same for everyone in this sort of life. ]

[ The skin around the edges of her eyes tightens with his words and how they quite eerily match the continued loop her mind has been in for days now. It's hard to say she even fully thinks out what she's saying and to whom she's saying it. There's something so very, like a little bit of air just sliding out that's been trapped and throbbing so long. ]

More than you could know.

[ She's living in a house where people have repeatedly fucked with the dead or not-dead line a lot. But in a very small petree dish of themselves and only themselves. They don't understand what she's come from, and to be fair, she hasn't tried to bludgeon it into any of their heads. They're all hurting. That she was raised in what amounts to a graveyard, as well as so many other truly good and important things, didn't make her pain any more real or important than theirs.

But it didn't make it not unique either.

She'd always stood apart among hunters. Different. ]

[ His expression flickers. He doesn't know if she's saying it because he happens to be here in this moment or if it's because he isn't them. Family. He's someone she does not need to concern herself over when it comes to burden and weight.

He understands that. He only ever spoke of Yennefer's death—what he believed to be at the time—with one person. Nivellen. A friend, sure. But still a man he had not seen in 13 winters. The distance makes a difference.

For him, too. ]

I used to think, after the tenth, twentieth, more, it would become easier. [ Each one feels freshly torn away. ] It never does.

[ So here they are. Struggling to heal the same wound over and over. And it does heal, but as certain as there's another monster, there will be another loss. ]

[ She wasn't ever forged to be that. Burden. Weight. She wouldn't recognize how to go along with all the first steps of it. She was built to be ballast. (How a few days ago was Dean crying into her shoulder, wrapped in the circle of her arms, only hours after shattering a good half of her face, because she knew better than anyone she couldn't be anywhere else—any-thing else—and still keep what little balance on the head of a pin was left.)

There's a small snort. It's not a laugh. Not light.
There's a stillness in her bones so solid it shakes. ]

I don't even know how far back into the beginning of my childhood I'd have to go for those kinds of numbers. [ There's no derision or dismissal in it. Not judgment, oneupmanship, or comparison. It's a fact. As basic as her hair being the blonde of her father's. Every person came in carrying their first and worst, and she held it for them. Understood. And the ones they carried after, if they were lucky enough to find them, too, out here. And them, too, if it happened.

It's what they did. It was part of who they were. Who she'd been before she walked out. Before the bar blew up. (Before Dean Winchester pulled it here, pristine and perfect, before she was. Before Dean Winchester—) Jo looked up at the ceiling, blinking against that faintest striking that would let out that forbidden burn, and pulled a slow breath in her nose. ]

It's not supposed to get easier.

When it gets easy, you're in the wrong line of work.

[ When this gets easy is when you get more people dead beside you. ]

[ He hums, acknowledging what she means. He gets it. There would be many, for her. Human hunters, adding up. It's different for him solely because he grew up with only the few who survived the ashes, with the understanding there could never be more like them. A handful that's dwindled further over the years—from a few dozen to twenty to six.

It's a loss of another kind; like her, he isn't really thinking of numbers. It's complicated. The ones lost to the massacre—they weren't family to him when they burned. His early years at the keep were unforgiving in their hands.

But they were still Witchers. And to this day, he has not decided if he mourns them or just the violence. ]

Work can be left behind.

[ This is more than a job. For his kind, but for her, too, he suspects. They can turn down another road, but they never truly leave the Path.

He doesn't add anything further. The rest is left to ambiguity; he's rare to say much, and the truth is, this is more than he's spoken of Dean's death in weeks. To a few others, he's mentioned it in passing—if that. It's been easier to sink into looking after Ciri and the house and all else. ]

Edited 2023-05-16 04:17 (UTC)

[ There's the first wrinkle of something that might almost be familiar in her expression at those words. It's nothing near annoyance, but there's a flavor of deeper-than-marrow loyalty to that life, those people, all those deaths in the dark no one would ever know about, that were earned, making a world they didn't know was deep in blood and monsters safer for those unknowing sheep. She doesn't know how not to be the shield, sword, and translator of that life, legacy, those people.

There's none of her familiar fury at anything Jo could have ever perceived (even unmeant) as an insult to her, her life, and her people so many months ago. She's threadbare and still standing as an act of pure will, of not knowing or allowing any other option to exist. After what they've done for Dean. For Cas. After Geralt's own being that close to Dean. After seeing how they never shirked throwing into each of these insane events. After Dean dying in the middle of rescuing far more than just Cas. ]

After all you've seen of us, do you actually think that's true?

[ She could no more leave this behind than just stop breathing.
It was every single bit of what and who she was. ]

[ He glances up, a little surprised at how she's taken his words. ]

I'm saying it's a life.

[ Work can be left behind, but what they do cannot. She calls it a job, and so does he, and the truth is, that's not really what it is. They don't walk away from it in the same way a stable hand can leave his horses or a blacksmith can hang up his tools.

It's something he's thought about more here. This world has not defined what it means to be a Witcher. And each time, he does not know what else he would do.

But whether she understands where he's coming from is not his main concern, and so that's all the explanation he offers. He doesn't align himself with human hunters at the end of the day. The life he's forged out of what's been given to him is something else altogether. ]

[ She can see her mistake the second he looks up. She missed it entirely. What he'd meant under the words. The actual full understanding of that fact.

She's so used to jumping at shadows, at being so entirely off foot with him, of just not being willing to take an ounce of that faith Dean had well and truly jumped beyond. She doesn't know if she has that in her. Anywhere. Of any kind. Still. But what she knows right now?

Is that it's too heavy to carry that wall of spikes, too, right now.
Not any part of it. Not even a brick. Not the mask of normal.
Not while she's straining to carry everything else.

Her lips press, and it's quiet. ] Sorry.

[ Jo shakes her head, as though there's too much (or too little) in there. ] I'm--

Everything's all-- [ Jo shrugs, a little rudderless, because he knows that, too. ]

[ Maybe it's the same with him, that uneven footing they've had around each other. He doesn't expect an apology, and it shows.

A long moment passes. He had not anticipated sharing their grief, but whether or not they intended for it to happen, he realizes that is what they've found themselves doing. Hard to say how he feels about it. It isn't anything to do with Jo. Not for this. More...he's used to being alone. Going through the steps alone. ]

I know. [ Yeah. He understands. She needn't explain.

There isn't much more to add; he's aware she's here to work, not linger, and Geralt is not one to extend a conversation once all has been said. When another doctor shows up behind her, waiting to enter the room, he gives Jo a short nod goodbye. ]

[ CLOSED ] if i say your name

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