[ CLOSED ] though my feet my rest

[gynvael]

Who: Geralt + Various
When: August
Where: Cadens, Horizon
What: August catch-all
Warnings: General Witcher canon stuff.


(( starters below. plot with me discontinued. ))

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[righteously]

( Until you're there, you can't ever really know. That one earns a breath, small, short — a laugh, if a bit on the bitter side. )

Oh, I know. I know exactly how far I would go. I mean, I sold my soul to hell to bring my brother back to life. I stopped-

( -Sam from closing the gates of Hell in order to keep him. Damning the world to more years of demon crap. Innocent lives lost because he wasn't willing to sacrifice Sam in exchange.

He's not proud of that. He's got enough shame about it to clamp down, to withhold it from Geralt, because Dean actually respects his opinion. He's already screwed his reputation up plenty good on his own here in these last few months without throwing any more fuel on top. )

To tell you the truth, I think... when you live the kind of life we do, every other week the world's ending. People are always dying. Everything's going to shit, all the time. The next monster, the next battle, it's always bigger, and harder, and heavier. If you don't find something to hold onto... I mean, really hold onto, with everything you've got... it's real easy to lose sight of why you're still going on.

( He stares at nothing as he talks, his gaze distant, unfocused. Contemplative. )

When the only thing that gets you out of bed in the morning is other people, it's easy to get carried away. To let the lines get blurry. It's not healthy, or good, it just... is.

[gynvael]

[ His gaze flicks over. Dean does not expand, and so Geralt simply thinks: paying with one's life—or one's soul—is only natural. He would give the same for Ciri.

It's the cost of others that becomes the real question. (He's paid that, too.)

He's quiet while he listens. In some things they differ, and this is one of them. Dean is right. Everything is shit. Death dogs his footsteps with unrelenting fervour. And where Dean held on, Geralt pushed aside anything that could matter. Or tried to. ]

I spent the better part of my years alone. Wanting no one. I thought, at the time, it was better that way. The world can't take what I never had. [ He slides his thumb along the side of the glass jar. ] Then people came along, anyhow. They became important. And now...

[ Now he understands. If one were to ask what once got him up in the morning if not for someone, he couldn't answer. It's not a conscious thought. He rises because that's what he does, in the same way a wolf awakens and goes about its day on instinct. There's always a horse to tend to, a contract to find, a town to journey towards. Small things. A cadence to follow.

But he's discovered what it means to have more. To redefine his purpose beyond the bare simplicity of living merely to live. To accept the fear he may fail in exchange for something immeasurably precious. He avoided it for so fucking long only to find himself here in the end. Maybe that's what they mean by Destiny. ]

[righteously]

( He can imagine it. Spending years alone, wanting nobody. He's tried to walk that path, tried pushing people away. Gone through stints where he told himself he didn't need anybody, he didn't even need Sam, he was fine. Except fine meant denial, and spiraling mental health, and depression, never managing it for more than a couple months or years at a time, because unlike Geralt, there is a need inside of Dean.

There's a massive, consuming void, a black hole pulling in all light and matter in a desperate search for something to fill it. A void probably meant for an archangel, but that Dean has instead redirected to be a longing for family. However it's labelled, whatever the source, he has always had a soul-deep longing for someone to fill the cavity in his chest with.

Then people came along...

Dean offers him a wry, knowing smile. Raises the jar of moonshine in a soft cheers. )

Welcome to family, where everything's screwed up, and the points don't matter. You're gonna spend the rest of your life trying not to lose them, then break your own heart watching 'em die anyway. The only consolation you get? Is whether or not you can honestly tell yourself you did everything you could.

( But that... that's where it gets dangerous. What they're capable of compared to the average Joe gives everything he could a completely different context.

But things are different for Dean than they are for Geralt, probably. Presumably, Geralt has the ability to let go. Dean does not. )

[gynvael]

[ He gives a soft huff, plucking the jar out of Dean's hands when he raises it. A casual gesture he exhibits with very few. He takes a sip, then returns it.

They've both been there. Losing the ones that mean the most to you. ]

It was different with my brothers. The world determined our fate long ago. [ Though Eskel was painful in a way the other losses were not. Only four of them were children when Kaer Morhen fell. Eskel was one.

Even so, Geralt grew up understanding they were destined to die on the Path. There was never a question of if, only when. Death clung to them like a shadow. Reminders lay scattered over every inch of their home, from the bones buried in the snow to the medallions on the tree. They would ride and kill and eventually fall. That is all they were meant for. ] But Ciri is more. She has more waiting for her.

[ A future he was never afforded. He wants to make sure she sees it. It's not merely about protecting her or keeping her safe. He knows what it is to survive and never truly live. That's not a place he ever wants Ciri to find herself.

So he doesn't know, in the end, what lengths he will reach to grant her the future she deserves. He's not afraid of the answer, exactly. (Or is he?) He just hasn't got one. ]

[righteously]

( They don't have medallions in Dean's community. There are no bones to burry — if there's a body at all, it's salted and burned until nothing remains. Otherwise, he can relate to bits of it. The way death hangs over hunters not as a possibility but rather an inevitability, the way reunions and parties often start with a tally of who died between the last and now. Rather than a tree, they have numbers in journals and phone books, its branches just the crossed out lines of the ones no longer in service.

He's no stranger to loss, but when it comes to his family, he'd rather cross off a dozen other numbers than one of theirs.

But that's a him problem, and so he swallows that down and instead offers an empty, humorless smile.

Ciri is more. She has more waiting for her.

With gravity , with weight: )

Well, then I guess you better do everything you can.