abraxaslogs | [ CLOSED ] you had faith

[ They end up on the couches by the window, or maybe on some crates that've yet to be unpacked. He's exhausted as fuck, but Castiel's little touch of magic at least means he isn't nursing any lingering injuries. Just a headache that's persisted since the toxicity left his system a couple days ago.

He supposes it's been a while since...his body had been through that. It's not used to it anymore. (And he isn't even certain how it came about or when it'll happen again.)

As a plume of smoke fills the air, he glances over. His head tilts. ]

What do you mean?

Demons. Evil entities, whatever you want to call them.

[Nadine waves the had holding her smoke in a vague sort of gesture. Geralt is someone within her inner circle, she's comfortable - as much as she can be - talking about this with him.]

Flagg was one thing, that was all predestined bullcrap. But Dean...I was just a choice he made. I don't know if it's because we'd been fooling around a while before this all happened, or if there really is something in me that has the potential to be terrible and an equal to....that. But the big baddies sure think there is.

[And it's uncomfortable because she knows she has the capacity within her to be a bad person. How bad, she isn't sure. Acts of terrorism were pretty damn bad, but even then she'd gone out of her way to keep the kids safe. She'd had lines, even in the depths of her darkest times.

But she's made a choice, too. The choice to try and be good, to not give in to that, not let it get hold.

Then again, maybe Dean had just smelled that little sliver of Flagg left within her.]

[ Only when Nadine clarifies does it strike Geralt that when Jaskier said Nadine had bedded Dean, Jaskier may not have meant during the demon's presence. In retrospect, Geralt should've realized she and Dean were sleeping together—probably would have if he'd had any reason to puzzle over Nadine's activities. He just hadn't given things much thought when it came to Nadine. She tends to prefer her privacy.

He studies her for a moment. She's voiced a similar sentiment in the past. He remembers their conversation in the desert during one of the Singularity's outbursts. Then before, when she told him of Flagg. ]

Demons prey on fear. Our deepest doubts. You haven't got the potential to be any darker than the rest of us. People...we just are. We fuck up and do better in equal measure.

[ Does it tip the scales? Do your deeds exchange one to one? He doesn't know. He isn't even sure there is a scale. Who is there to keep count? The gods? Destiny? If the demon were drawn to anything, he thinks it's her uncertainties more than any real aura of darkness. ]

Yeah, plenty of people have those doubts and fears about themselves. I don't know anybody else who's had more than one demon want her for their dark queen. That's not the sort of thing that should happen more than once and I'm the common denominator.

[It's the kind of thing that makes a person think. How can it not? Nadine's mind keeps going back to when Flagg told her she was 'promised to him'. Why her? It wasn't some random thing. Neither, she thinks, was the most recent incident. Dean had sought her out, had set a stage for her.

That hadn't been some sudden impulse.]

It's not like I'm a mess over it or anything, it just...What am I supposed to think, you know?

[There's no real conclusion to draw. Logically, she knows Geralt is mostly right. People are people, and everyone has the capacity to be good or bad. She knows full well she has the capacity for both, she just has to look at her life here. Part of why she's gone into medicine is proving that to herself.

But still.]

[ There's a beat—as though he's understood what she really means. He hasn't spoken of this to many, but Nadine is as much a part of their family as anyone. And something tells him Nadine has realized for a while that Geralt has not said all there is to say about Ciri.

These past few days have only proven he made the right call. That it's more dangerous than ever, even amongst the Summoned themselves. ]

Dark forces have pursued Ciri for a long time. As a saviour or a prize. But she chose to be a Witcher. It's what she wants. So that's what she is.

[ Maybe Nadine is different, in the same way that Ciri is different. Maybe there is a quality to her that draws these creatures in, through no fault of her own. It doesn't mean her end is written in stone. Prophecies and fate weave a strange tapestry. He no longer scoffs at the notion, but he doesn't believe it paves their path, either. That any of them are destined for one purpose or another. It's just one more obstacle to navigate.

He glances over. ] Forget what they think or want from you. What do you want from yourself?

Edited 2023-06-19 19:43 (UTC)

[Nadine's never asked. Whatever the details are, they aren't her business. She suspects there's a great deal she doesn't know, but she doesn't need to. If she ever does, she imagines she'll be told.

And even now, with something along the lines of confirmation, she doesn't press. It's not as if it's Geralt's story to tell, not entirely.]

Good for her.

[Said in earnest.

Then she shrugs.]

I'm pretty good with how things are now, honestly. I'm not trying to balance any scales or make up for anything, but I want to help people. I just...I do know some of the things I'm capable of.

[So does Geralt, so she's comfortable enough mentioning it directly.]

I know what I've done and made the choice to do, because there were times I made the choice not to. I can't just blame it all on dark magic influence.

Geralt shrugs, too. Not dismissive, just an understanding.

"No," he agrees. Her decisions are hers and hers alone. "But you're amongst people who aren't so different."

Should it weigh on him more? Perhaps. The path he walks has been steeped in blood and violence since he was a child. He supposes it's not the same when that isn't how you were raised, but though he understands this in concept, he simply cannot grasp what it means. He doesn't know what it's like to grow up without being taught not if you should kill, but when.

In the end, Nadine is here. With him, with Julie, with Ciri. They have all done things. Or accepted that it's the nature of their world, as Jaskier does. He doesn't think it's a terrible thing, to understand the depths you're capable of. He's old enough to have learnt that about himself long ago. It's the only way you can make your choices.

"Yeah, I can't argue with that."

It's hardly as though these are Nadine's unique struggles. She knows enough about the people in her life to know that. Certainly enough about Geralt to know that surely he does - even if, perhaps, he doesn't exactly struggle.

"Sometimes it feels like all that stuff, everything before...like it happened to some other woman. Some stranger with my face and my life. I don't know if that's some kind of self-defense mechanism, separating oneself from one's past actions. It'd make sense, but...sometimes it's so far away, and sometimes it's so close, sometimes I feel so bad about it and sometimes I just...I don't know."

She shakes her head. It's so hard to put these thoughts and ideas into words. They're formless feelings, vaguely outlined concepts that seem so sure and certain in the unbound theater of her mind but defy any attempts to be corralled by language. The strange sense of unreality that comes on her sometimes, as though her own past was a movie or a storybook. Looking at her memories as though they were photos in someone else's album. The flux and shift between guilt and shame and just plain not caring. There are days when her past is so near to her and weighs on her like an anchor in her gut, and days when she shrugs it off as though all of it had meant nothing.

It can't have ever meant nothing.

Maybe this is just what that oft-referenced idea of 'finding yourself' really is. Trying to make the old pieces and the now pieces fit together and make sense.

"I just know I'm sick and tired of demons."

"I had a different life. For a brief window when I was a child. I remember helping my mother gather herbs in the woods. She read me stories about knights." He hesitates. "Those memories, they belong to another boy. I don't feel like that life was stolen from me. It feels like it was never mine."

So maybe he understands what she means, though the circumstances are different. That separation your mind develops for reasons he can't explain. Like her, sometimes he feels that loss, a curl of bitterness that will always lurk. Other times it's a distant memory that he brushes past because it doesn't matter when he's long become someone else.

He's truthfully never learned to reconcile the two childhoods he'd had. He's not sure he wants to try. They've remained separate to this day—not quite left behind, but not wholly a part of him. That's the way he's moved on. Perhaps that's what she'll find she does, too.

He huffs. "Aren't we fucking all."

Nadine nods. Geralt understands. So often he understands. It makes it so much easier to talk about these things with him - she never has to explain or offer more than she intends to. He simply understands.

Even this. That strange divide between who one was and who one is. She wonders what it's like to not feel that way, to look back at one's life and follow that thread unbroken back to earliest memories. To be satisfied and whole. It's like some sort of dream, just an idea she's aware of. Maybe when she was very young, but her early childhood is mostly just an idea, too. She remembers the faces of her first parents, though they're hazy and blurred. Her mother's voice. The presence of her brother, two years older, the shape of him but not his name.

She takes another long drag, tilting her head back to exhale the smoke upwards, watching it as it catches the light. Another life. Lives. Her history cut in pieces and stored in separate boxes in the palace of the mind. But she meant what she'd said. She's happy with what her life is now. Here and in this place.

"Here's to no more demons. And better days ahead than behind."

He doesn't know, either. Nearly everybody who enters his life have had theirs splintered in some way. He isn't even sure he would consider Jaskier the exception. Once war tears through a continent, none are left unscathed. Not even the kings who claim victory.

He's not unsatisfied with what he has. He found a place to belong with Vesemir. He has a family with Ciri. He would not trade them for anything else. There's just—a hollow. Bits and pieces that don't altogether fit. An uncertainty as to how much he's defined by a childhood that doesn't feel like his.

He wonders how she's doing. His mother. If she even knows or cares about his absence.

He studies the cup in his hand, contemplative. They've often had an understanding, he and Nadine. And he's glad she's discovered her own peace here.

"To better days."

Edited 2023-07-01 19:57 (UTC)

[ CLOSED ] you had faith

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wrapping!