abraxaslogs | [ CLOSED ] death is no man, death is no wraith

[ She can tell he's working up to something, taking his time before the words he's decided to say make it out. It's a topic she's suspected must be coming at some point, whenever he was ready, since he asked so very few questions after the memories came to him and Jaskier in their dreams some days ago. He's asked very few questions all this time in general.

Ciri will hear him out. She would have any time, even if she's shown herself unwilling to be the one to bring it up.

She sits down more comfortably, crossing her legs with her elbows on her knees. ]

What is it?

[ Once the subject is laid out, Geralt doesn't hesitate to say what he means. ]

What happened? After we were separated. I thought Nilfgaard had captured you.

[ Ciri said they never had her. So who did they have? Someone that gave them the confidence to write that letter, to be sure. And where was she instead after Tor Lara crumbled?

He wants to understand what passed in those months. Years? It doesn't feel like he can avoid the same mistakes unless he knows what they are. ]

[ Ciri is quiet a moment. Not hesitating, just-- considering. How to say it, and how much. How to keep from hurting him with what had happened, even if it never was his fault. ]

...I portalled. In Tor Lara. In a panic. I couldn't control it.

I ended up in the Korath.

[ Of course she did. She often would portal when she could do nothing else. The Korath desert would not take her off the sphere, which is a relief, but... ]

And after? [ He's trying not to press. It's just, he can't shake the way they met. Here. In Abraxas. The question has stayed with him ever since. Each time these memories surface, he finds himself returning to that moment. ]

When you found me in Thorne, it was as though you hadn't seen me in ages.

[ Perhaps she was just frightened from being stolen away abruptly, but it feels like more than that. ]

After...

[ It's a lot, what he's asking. More than a question. More than that moment.

She still remembers it: seeing him in the prison yard for the first time in years, having searched for him, saved him, lost him again. She remembers, too, the look on his face. It had taken a very long time for that ache to fade. ]

A lot happened after, Geralt.

I was alone for a very long time. I wanted to find you. And Yennefer. And Jaskier, all of you.

I did whatever I had to, so that we could meet again. But we did. I promise you that. We always find each other, just like we did here.

[ Gently, he takes her hand. For a moment, he searches her face, trying to pull the pieces together. When he told her his last memory was of Brokilon, she seemed to recognize what he meant. So he must've found her back home before they met here.

That's the gap he can't fill. The gap he'd been afraid to fill, for himself and because of Ciri. Deep down, he thinks he knows.

For the first time, he asks. He no longer doesn't want to hear the answer. Now he needs to hear it. He needs to know what happened—however painful. ]

Ciri...did I lose you again? [ How many years? ] After Korath?

[ Her fingers lace through his. She scoots a little closer, without looking up. ]

After Korath... I told you. I looked for you. And you looked for me. [ She is repeating herself. She knows it too, and doesn't know what more to say, or how to say it.

Geralt can hear her heartbeat quicken anxiously. He doesn't need his Witcher senses to know she's getting upset. ]

How much... [ She swallows. If he asks, sincerely, if he needs the answers, Ciri knows she can't deny him. But she can give him a choice. ]

...do you really want to know?

[ It would be simple to back off. The temptation to do so lurks in the back of his throat. This isn't only about him; he doesn't want to upset Ciri, either.

He reflects back on that night in Nocwich. With Yen, with Dean. How Dean had told him it was impossible to move on because he would not tell Yennefer what laid ahead in their future. What he saw her do. The sacrifice she made.

How close he came to losing her.

He wonders if perhaps this secret of Ciri's is keeping her from moving on, too. Early on, they'd been...less familiar. She knew him intimately, but he didn't know her. Now he does—with a fierceness he would never trade for anything—and he thinks he understands her better than he once did. ]

As much as you'll tell me. I need to hear it.

[ Ciri nods. Her following silence is to organize her thoughts, a resigned determination in her eyes, not hesitation this time. All this time, she'd kept it to herself, but he keeps waking up and remembering things in his dreams. Reality given to him in bits and pieces, experienced in a way that should be impossible (but the word has lost most of its meaning already). Eventually, he'll learn it all. Eventually, he won't be asking her to tell him; he'll be asking her why she didn't. Is it kinder, or is it just more selfish, to decide to take control of the truth on their own terms now?

Ciri glances once at the door to make sure it's closed. She keeps her voice quiet, and as steady as she can make it.

He doesn't need to know all the details. She skims over some parts, omits others that are more personal, that he doesn't need to know. Ciri knows what he is asking, exactly, but if she's going to tell him, she decides it must not be without context. It cannot be just the story of how little time they had together, after all.

There is the part about the desert; she keeps it short, and the part about joining up with the Rats even shorter. He need only know she had friends, if briefly, if imperfectly. There is no reason to grant even the memory of Bonhart any more time or thought than she'd already wasted on that piece of refuse. Geralt knows all Ciri wants him to about the Wild Hunt; she wants only to live her life free of them, and doesn't spend time dwelling further. The Lodge of Sorceresses is omitted too. Ciri has no interest in wasting any more of her own grief or worrying Geralt with all those whose plots would have treated her as an object to be captured and used. None of them matter anymore.

So she tells him her friends were killed, and she avenged them. That she wandered, ending up in different worlds and times, too many and too strange to recount. She tells him in broad strokes about Stygga Castle, about Vilgefortz capturing her and Yennefer, and Geralt saving them. Their reunion. The brief detour to Nilfgaard before the Emperor had a change of heart she spends very little time on, focusing almost entirely on the fact that she, Geralt and Yennefer were together at the end of that, free to be with one another again. Jaskier joins them too. A neat little happy ending.

And another, long pause. ]

What happened after that...

I wish I could tell you we made a home together. That the war was over, and we went back to Kaer Morhen or somewhere else, and had adventures together for many years.

[ Ciri blinks, staring at the spots on the knees of her trousers where she sits beside him. Realizing she's not sure when the tears started to fall. ]

I could tell you that, if you wanted. Leave it there.

Edited 2023-10-31 01:43 (UTC)

[ She speaks, and he listens. And it's not that the details she gives aren't important. They are. He wants to know them, too, but he senses she's ascending a peak she doesn't want to reach. The names she tells him are only partially recognizable—friends who met their fate before he ever knew who they were. Places he reached that he doesn't remember setting foot in for years.

So it's the four of them once more. As it's always been. That is a tidy end. Geralt wishes it could be true, not for his sake, but for hers. He wishes she could tell him the world gave her everything she deserved when the dust settled.

Their lives are not built on wishes. He's learned that lesson many times over.

He squeezes her hand. A weight climbs from his chest to his throat. His voice is gentle. ] You can tell me the truth, Ciri.

[ It's a truth he already knows by now. He still needs to hear it. More than that, he thinks Ciri needs to say it to him. It can't sit between them any longer, filling the air with its leadened weight. ]

[ She knows what he'll say before the words leave his mouth. He deserves to hear it. No more secrets. ]

It was in a marketplace in Rivia. Fighting broke out. Humans against non-humans. No reason I know, save hatred and chaos.

[ Her words are clipped, a little breathless. She squeezes his fingers. ]

You got hurt. Very badly. Yennefer and I made it to you too late. She did everything she could. Too much.

Not enough.

[ Ciri inhales sharply. Her voice quivers. ]

We'd only just found each other again. I couldn't bear to lose you. I refused.

So I opened a door, and I sent you through it. The two of you, together. Somewhere I could not follow.

[ Rivia. The irony is almost too much. In a way, it's fitting that this is what it came down to. More hatred. And he thinks, did he and Yennefer ever do it? Create a safer world for Ciri like they wanted? It doesn't sound as if they did. Or that it lasted. He can't say he's surprised. The Continent is too shattered to put back together.

The last to fall. Maybe they were.

He doesn't understand, though. Where did she send them? What does that mean? How did she know what would happen to them there?

Perhaps the point is that she didn't. ]

And... [ He hesitates. ] You? And Jaskier?

[ Were they all right? His demise is something he can confront. He and Yen, they made a choice together. He just wants to know, if he has to leave her behind at all, it at least kept her and Jaskier safe. The people who mattered most to them. ]

[ Destiny just fucking with him again, perhaps.

Ciri wipes the knuckles of her free hand at the corners of her eyes. ]

I don't know the details. [ When it comes to Jaskier, she means. ] I fled after that. I didn't want the Wild Hunt to find any of you.

[ She shakes her head. ]

For years, I succeeded.

[ Unfortunately, there is more. ]

[ That's the thing, isn't it? Even if all on the Continent resolved as tidily as she offered, the Wild Hunt remains. They're the first threat she told him of, and he knows for as long as they're out there, it means he left her while she still needed him. And he knows he couldn't have expected to protect her forever, but—

He studies her carefully, his hand covering hers, gauging how much more he should ask. Now that it's out, though, the words seem to flow, and so he lets her continue. ]

You said they were chasing you when you were summoned here.

[ Was it because she sent him and Yennefer away? Was that the opened door that called them down on her again? ]

[ She nods. ]

They changed tactics. Maybe I ran too far, or they got tired of chasing me. Every time I went somewhere new, they would find me again--

Until, instead, they found you.

[ Ciri scrubs her hand over her eyes again, shoulders slumping. She isn't crying anymore. She just looks... exhausted, like the memory alone of all that running, hiding, all that loneliness from the past has reemerged to weigh on her again. ]

I hoped you and Yennefer could be safe where I sent you. Somewhere just for the two of you to rest and be happy and be together. [ The anger creeps back into her voice now, a flicker of a spark beneath the tired hopelessness of the rest of it. ] But they found you and took you, I suppose to draw me out. It worked. They did the one thing I could not ignore.

[ If it all sounds hurried and complicated, that's because it is. She doesn't know what else to say about it. The story has no happy ending, after all. ]

I managed to free you, portal us away.

But I lost you again in the process, and I do not know what happened to Yennefer after she was freed from the Hunt as well. Somewhere on the Continent, I suppose. She's always found her own way.

But all I could do was keep running, and try not to get caught again.

...I'm sorry. [ Ciri lets her head drop with a sigh, closing her eyes. ] I failed you both.

[ A long moment passes where Geralt appears to be stuck simply processing. He can't tell if he died or lived or what part of him survived. Maybe the reality isn't important. Ciri thinks he lived and was taken, and it's weighed on her since.

He cups her cheek, wiping the dampness away with his thumb. ]

You didn't. [ Did he know? Was he aware she was on the run, where he was? He cannot imagine a version of him or Yennefer that'd have abandoned her to fend for herself. If he was trapped in another realm, he'd have tried to find his way back to her. No matter the cost. ] Ciri—if what you say is true, then you saved us both. You're the reason we have a chance of finding each other again.

[ On the Continent. Here. That means something. Doesn't it? If he was taken, then that isn't the end of it. He might yet find her once more. He has to believe they will. They've done so in Abraxas. Destiny has fucked with them enough; the least it could do is bring them together each time life sees fit to tear them apart. ]

[ She closes her eyes a moment, leaning into the rough warmth of his hand on her face.

She may never know what actually happened to him or Yennefer. They may be out there still, in another time and place, as real as they are here. Is there a version of her there too, or do her abilities mean that -- just as she's never had these dream-memories -- she is somehow apart from the rigid way time passes for most other people? It's dizzying to think about. And nobody else knows the answers anymore than she does. Not even those who seek to use her power seem to actually understand it.

Maybe Ciri could find out. Maybe, if she really tried, she could learn to actually bend space and time to her will the way others have told her she can. But the truth is, all she actually wanted was a home. A family. Somewhere to belong.

And here, she has exactly that. Maybe it's selfish. Maybe that naïve little girl she'd been, the one who wanted to be a Witcher and a queen, would consider this giving up, would be appalled (would be more appalled to know what happened in between). But Ciri knows better these days.

She cannot change the past, and the past is where the Cintra of her memories remains, along with the rest of the Continent. She's made her peace with leaving that world long ago. ]

Before, [ she says finally, pulling his hand into hers between them. ] I was always running from something.

They didn't realize what they did. Giving me someone to run toward instead.

I found you, even here.

[ The more he remembers the girl from his visions, the more he sees how much she's grown. Changed. Not merely in age, but all of her. It mirrors so much of his own journey, shedding the scraps of dreams and wishes until what's left is this. Clinging onto what you have.

He'd wanted better for her. Perhaps he had lessons of his own to learn. Perhaps he's meant to realize he can't give her everything he hoped to, but that doesn't mean he failed her. She's still here, surviving and living—trying to make a home. And maybe that's enough. It's enough to know she made it through the horrors even without him there. That years later, she continues to want nothing more than her family together. That she doesn't regret the life she chose with them.

He can grant her that. A family and a home. It's not too late.

For the first time, he does not assure her that she will be found no matter what. That is, he understands now, a relic of the girl she once was. It's no longer what she needs to hear. ]

You'll always find me. I promise.

[ CLOSED ] death is no man, death is no wraith

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