abraxaslogs | [ OPEN / CLOSED ] i think i found a way to kill the sun

Entry tags:

[ OPEN / CLOSED ] i think i found a way to kill the sun

Who: Geralt + Various
When: December
Where: Cadens, Horizon
What: Some catching up now that he's home
Warnings: Discussion of trauma; nsfw marked

(( placing starters in the comments below. find me at

discontinued or at Noa#1979 to plot stuff! ))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ There's one person Geralt has not reached out to since his return a few days ago. He should. He should. It's complicated, always, between them. More so lately than usual. And Yennefer is many things, has been angry at him for a lot, probably at many points wished to never see him again, but he holds no illusion that she would not care to learn if he's safe. Not after something like this.

He doesn't know how he feels. Too much. More than he wants. He isn't angry. It would be easier if he were. But it isn't so simple, either, as saying he understands, that he knows what happened was not her intention, and leave it at that. It was still by her hand, and he's—it's hard to swallow the bitter taste left behind, the sense that he never wanted any part of this, was dragged into it by her bullshit scheming. It's both childish and unfair. He made his choices, same as she. He knows what he chose when he left her behind in Thorne and asked her to do what it took to protect Ciri. When he stayed with her in the Horizon. When he did not seek her out afterwards. He is not looking for an apology. He does not want her regrets or what guilt she may hold.

Maybe, deep down, all he does want is to hear her say she hadn't meant to do...that. Maybe it will quell the part of him that remains uncertain, the part he's been trying to ignore, that he doesn't want to admit is there. He hates doubting her. He's always understood every one of her sharp edges, the softness they hide, whether they frustrate the fuck out of him or not. He wants to believe he still does.

Thoughts of contacting Yennefer don't leave him. The night is dark when he sits in bed, unable to sleep, thinking about what he can say. What he wants to say, if he wants to say anything. A few haphazard letters slip loose—incomplete, without a signature. ]

We ne—Yen

—fuc

[ Fuck.

He lays back down. Forget it. She'll reach out to him when it's safe. Knowing what the mages are capable of, what the queen must've suspected if not outright known is between them, he can't blame her for avoiding scrutiny. ]

Edited 2021-12-09 17:47 (UTC)

[ yes, it probably would have helped matters if geralt had chosen to reach out in any capacity over the course of the last few weeks. or, really, if anyone had been able to tell her anything. she doesn't fault him for the silence, because in truth it was probably for the best - she's still not entirely sure how closely she's being watched and monitored, how closely the queens and her eyes have followed. it's why she's made no further move, even after the whispers of another escape from the dungeon, even after she'd gotten confirmation geralt was no longer within those walls, or any others of thorne's making.

( it's relief, that she grapples with most. fear, that it had been something worse, and then relief that had replaced it - that had nearly broken her façade, that had just about broken through. it's by the skin of her teeth that she manages to keep any reaction under check, a close thing that keeps her lips tight. it's only a rumor she had reminded herself, but it had been something. )

as it stood, yennefer heard nothing beyond that initial rumor. no messages, no letters, not even a whisper from the other courtiers - and so she carried on as nothing had changed. she went to her sessions of studying, with the younger mages. she spent some time in the library, researching the queen's family history. she attended court, and sometimes did not, took her walks through the gardens, and held together the façade.

it did not matter, what had gone down behind those closed doors. it had not affected her, and would not shake her resolve.

( except that it is in her room, late at night, when sleep escapes her too. when she lies awake and thinks of what it was she found, what it had been down that thread she had pulled. it had been excruciating, watching that come to light. watching geralt see it, watching geralt live through it, knowing. knowing.

made for a magical childhood

it eats away at her, the memories. the flashes of geralt, younger. geralt, in trials. geralt, forced through with a kind of magic that shouldn't have been possible to survive. each night for weeks, that is what yennefer finds in her bedroom waiting for her, memories that are not even her own, and the vision of geralt, bloodied and exhausted, who had turned to her, living through them all again. )

it is weeks later, though in all honesty she has lost count somewhere along the way of how many days, before her nightly ritual is interrupted. scrollwork in haphazard, scratchy lines appear across her eyes. she recognizes it, even before she realizes she does, sitting up so suddenly from where she lay that she feels a bit dizzy with it. but too soon, the letters fade, too soon she'd left alone again in her room, candles flickering, the cool night air fogging her window.

the urge is of course there to respond, the words almost appearing behind her very own eyes - tell me you're out of thorn. tell me you made it back to the free cities. what is that even supposed to mean? but she catches herself before the words form. as silly as it feels, her eyes go to the door. to the quiet sounds of empty halls. had anyone noticed the message? could the messages even be tracked? would they know she was communicating with him, now that he was free of the borders? (was she putting him in danger again?) a part of her aches with it - the need to reach out, to bridge this gap, to stand up and create a portal and just let the rest of the summoned deal with whatever thorne's royal family had plans for - but a quiet voice stops her.

it is a trap. do not fall for someone else's.

it takes her a few hours of pacing and errant frustrated uses of magic (the chair never stood a chance, but she can always fix it again) before the idea comes to her, before she settles back on her bed and calms the raging storm of panic and uncertainty and the need to act from her mind. once in the horizon, she moves quickly - it takes less than five minutes, perhaps barely even two - for her to arrive in the horizon, to portal to where it is she plans to go. the door is open, when she tries it (and there is a part of her surprised by even that) but she goes in all the same. leaves it, right where she left the last bit of her, and disappears before he can notice.

the next time geralt chooses to go to his room, he will find a small, tightly woven scroll under the candle stick on his bedside table. maybe he will search for it, or maybe he will just know, and upon unrolling the parchment there will be - in elder, though even in elder the script will seem familiar - a single line of text with a date attached. the parchment will smell like her, though - of lilac and gooseberries - with a familiar image on the back. one he might find the mirror of, on the pendant he wears. ]

The Mountainside.

[ The first time he enters the Horizon, he does not visit that room. The stairs that Jaskier and Amos found leading to nowhere have returned to their form now that he's back, opening the upper floor to the rooms that have been there. The second time, he passes by and hesitates. It feels like the scent of her is—

Stronger. Newer. His imagination, perhaps. He goes inside, anyhow. Studies the candle placed askew. He remembers Ciri found the token here and Geralt had placed it back without taking it, not wanting to think of it. He reaches for it now—lifting up the candlestick to find. There. His chest twists. He picks up the parchment. For a moment, he isn't sure he wants to open it. What he might find written there. So much of him feels unsteady and it isn't only to do with her. It's what her reaching out to him means, what it reminds him of. He's spent hours and days since his return burying it again. He doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't want to dream about it. And it's not as though he hasn't before—it will always shadow the darkest corners of his mind—but after so many decades, the memories had faded. The edges had dulled. Now they are sharpened once more, bright and ugly and too much.

The mountainside.

He slips the note in a drawer. This time, when he leaves, he takes the small silver token with him, with its engraving on the back.

The date comes, and he returns. Her silver charm has joined his medallion, tucked underneath the snarling wolf on the same chain. He's not certain what to expect, what he might find or hear out of her. He only knows he can't not see her.

He walks until he finds the mountainside she speaks of erected in the Horizon. A tent alongside it. It's a familiar scene, a familiar memory. He doesn't know why she's recalled this particular moment, but...it was the last time things were simpler. As far as anything is ever simple with them. He ducks inside the tent, finds himself surrounded by the smell of her. She's there, of course, and another time he'd have moved towards her.

Here, he does not. He stays by the edge of it, more guarded than he's ever been with her before. It isn't that he's wary of her, not like that. More that he feels inexplicably fragile. He's shown her parts of himself he's revealed to no one else, but it's always been by choice. This is different. This is something absolutely no one outside the walls of Kaer Morhen has ever known.

He's quiet, fingers pressed into his palm. ] Yen.

[ it does say something to her focus that she does not notice the changes that have been made to the keep, though she would argue that it is her own self protection. he'd built his domain around the same kaer morhen of his memories, and she is not sure she wants to know what lies beneath it. if it is something she should be thinking about at all. instead, she goes directly to the room (the room she still catches herself thinking about, the bed they'd laid on together, facing each other, a room that still feels like a version of her might have belonged, at one time, even when she knows - knows - very differently).

she does not know why she offers this place, does not know why this is what she created, as a space to find him again. perhaps it is too because she remembers this as the last time things were simple - before she'd put the pieces together about the wish, before sodden, before thorne. yennefer could easily claim that it was neutral ground, some place where things had been decently good, between them. even if she knows the truth to be different, even if she refuses to admit it is because a part of her is attempting to ease into this conversation at all.

she follows kylo and the others into the horizon. she does her part - as a mentor, as a guide. shows the new summoneds what they can accomplish, lays the groundwork for trust, between them all. and then, after an appropriate enough time passes, she disappears to her own domain - a place of shifting landscapes, of various locations around the continent, with no real effort or need to settle in any one place. it's why this mountainside could be easily hidden, why there is nothing - from an outside eye - out of the ordinary about it all.

why she makes the tent this way, the room this way, well. that is between her - her, and geralt.

she senses him entering her domain before he makes it to the tent itself, and she follows him with each step. each pause he makes. each moment that he could choose to turn around, if he'd wanted to (she hopes - desperately - he doesn't). it is with similar relief that she exhales when he steps inside, that she slows in where she'd certainly not been pacing, meeting his eyes across the space.

it is of her own doing, that she's caught by the memory of him moving towards her across this very same space. her own doing, that she stills across the room and sees him do the same, each mirror sides of the same coin. feeling fragile, feeling unsure, knowing what they both know. but it is geralt's secret that is heavy in the air, geralt's life that they both let go unsaid, and yennefer is suddenly at a loss at what to do.

he had been the one to reach out to her first, had been the one to try to make contact, but she had wanted to see him. and that want had very nearly driven her mad, but now that they were here, yennefer found herself holding her jaw tight. catching each hesitation in him, each uncertain pause.

is he scared of her? wary of her presence? does he believe she is still siding with the queen even after all of that?

yennefer pulls her eyes away from him, if only because she believes he needs the break in contact as much as she might as well, stepping forward to set down a pair of gloves she'd created simply so she could have something to wring between her palms. ] I did receive your message. [ errant letters, half-words, her name - the name only he calls her by. yen. but she hadn't responded - part of her hopes that he understands what she means by that, that she hadn't ignored him. hadn't been intentionally cutting things off in the after. ] This felt... [ she lets her eyes wander upwards, first. around the tent itself, the space she made for herself with her magic. her eyes roam across its ceiling and beams, before they finally do fall back on him. on his tightened fists. ] More discrete. [ safer she doesn't say. untraced by eyes in thorne.

the next few moments are filled with yennefer simply watching him - trying to gauged as much as she can about his wellbeing, his stance, his levels of pain, his general state, as she can from him. she'd seen what the queen had done to him first hand, had watched his skin and muscle split open.

without thinking, she steps towards him. just once, before she pulls herself to another stop - uncertain, and then hating herself for that uncertainty, making it out that she'd been moving towards the table, instead. ] A seat? Or do you plan to stand in the doorway the whole time?

[ It's funny. He'd laid eyes on her in Thorne that day, but in this place, now: this is where it feels like the first time he's actually seen her since they last parted in the Horizon. Standing there with an air of uncertainty that isn't often around her, but which is her. He misses her. He wishes he didn't, but he does.

He uncurls his fingers. There are heavy shadows under his eyes that speak of sleepless nights, faint marks remaining around his arms. The splint is off his finger, though it's still slightly swollen where the break is finishing healing. What remains of his injuries are beneath his clothes: the gaping lesion on his back sewn up, the rest of the lashes beginning to turn pink, a few deeper ones scarring. Fading bruises up the side of his torso. When he moves, he moves well enough—but he sits with more care than he normally would and distinctly does not rest back against the chair.

He could do away with the wounds, if he wanted. The concept of returning to feel them all over again is unappealing, though. Besides, his body is a part of him, whether it's whole or not. (And maybe he doesn't want to pretend he is fine, fully healed when he is not. Not here, not with her.)

His gaze fixes on Yennefer, taking her in. Right. The message. He had not meant for her to receive it in that half-formed state, but it happened. Even in this moment, he can't think of what to say. Especially in this moment. He'd wanted to see her and he is seeing her, and all he can think is, what the fuck does he do now? He's almost never at a loss. He often knows when he doesn't want to say something and then he simply won't, but rarely does he struggle to find the words altogether. Feels like this only ever happens around her, with her. He wants to hate her for it. He hates that he cannot. ]

Why are we here? [ It's not meant to be accusatory; it's not meant to be anything. He's tired, he wants to sleep and he hasn't been able to and being so close to her makes him feel like he will come apart at any second.

She's asked to meet because she has something to tell him. He's not certain he's ready to hear it, whatever it may be. He'd thought he needed to hear it, but he sees it now in her body language, her face: the regret and hesitation and heaviness. It reminds him all over again of why this is so when he's done nothing except try to forget it this entire time. ]

[ the way he carries himself says very little about his actual state of pain. the way he steps across the room and then finds his place in one of the chairs. it must be easy to hide, which means he’s either healed enough that he can ignore it, or - though she doubts it seriously - he’s healed himself in the horizon. it’s not until he sits, with a stiffness and care he does not normally have - when he refuses to lean back against the wood - that yennefer’s eyes flash. there, the hint of his wounds, the echo of his healing. guilt curls at her gut at the numbers that come to mind, the number of miles, the number of days. that guilt does not make it to her face, the only acknowledgement she gives a kind of tension through her shoulders as she steps around the table, moves to stand next to the only other chair.

( she wants to reach for him, she’s not so far that she couldn’t, and it just nearly hurts how much she wants to. to touch him, even in this imaginary space. just to be certain. )

yennefer settles in the chair, her fingers twitching with a kind of subconscious want where she sets them on the tabletop. she will not. she will not. she will not reach.

why are we here? and her violet eyes jerk to him, almost angry, almost defensive, preparing for an argument that takes her half a breath to realize isn’t there. he is not accusing her, not really, but still she feels tested. like there is a right answer, here, and she wasn’t sure what it was. there are so many things she could say; about how he’d been the one to reach out to her first, about how she needed to see his grand escape for herself, about how this wasn’t what she’d planned, this wasn’t how this was supposed to go, this wasn’t-

yennefer takes a breath, though it leaves her as a sigh, a voice inside her screaming to get it together. to straighten up her spine and pull up her chin. ]

I was afraid you wouldn’t make it out of the castle. [ the tent is too similar, the feeling too close. i was afraid that mountain would take you from me. it has been years, their lives having veered off on entirely separate paths, and yet she finds herself circling back. to this, to them, to this feeling that she knows is the wish - keeping them together, keeping these feelings inside. it isn’t real, it isn’t real, and yet here she is.

yennefer left that piece of parchment for a reason, had risked returning to the horizon, had chanced this meeting, for what? just so she could see him again? and say what? it wasn’t just to make sure he was alive- she could tell that much by his fragmented messages, by the fact his keep still stands. she had needed to see him, needed to know that if he’d been given a choice, that he would choose to see her too.

and now that she had that confirmation…what was she to do?

she lifted her eyes to him again, though she’s uncertain of how long she’d been avoiding them. a part of her knew exactly what she’d come here to say, what she’d wanted him here to hear, but she still wasn’t certain she could form the words.

( yet ). ]

And I’m still not sure if I trust the privacy of those messages. If someone in the castle was able to catch word that we were still in contact- [ it is not, entirely, that she is stalking. this is important enough to be said, and he should know it too. but even as the words fall from her lips, she knows it is not what she means to say, and after a moment she cuts herself off, lips pressed into a thin line. ] They are not still searching for you- not actively, anyway. Attention has shifted to the upcoming festival- something they call The Dimming.

[ The air is thick between them. He makes a faint noise. Yeah. So was he. What would she have done, if they had hauled him back out in front of her? What would he have done? He wants to tell her she should've come with him, that she should come now—but he knows, whatever may be going on in Thorne, they need her there. Any of these states can fall at any moment. He wants Ciri nowhere near Thorne if they can help it, but he can see a time when with Yennefer, hidden in plain sight, is where the girl might be safest instead.

These are all things they're both aware of. She needn't tell him and he suspects she knows that: how the messages are difficult to trust, that they can't be seen together, that he's been allowed to slip free for now. He knows he's still marked, that likely he will always be marked by that magic signature, and if Thorne has truly wanted him, they could've rode after him through the mountains. The only new piece of information is The Dimming. Not that it matters to him. What does he care of a festival held across the world? She has not summoned him here to tell him of the local chatter and idle warnings.

Without thinking, his hand rises to the medallion at his chest, the pendant behind it. His fingers are still rough, with broken half-grown nails. He doesn't recall what happened in that room. Not all of it. He knows what happened, knows what he felt (knows what she did), but he hasn't a fucking idea how long he was there afterwards, what else they did to him, if he were even conscious. He'd woken up in the dungeons with blood in his mouth, his head full of crushed glass, full of jagged visions he does not want, and that's the only thing he remembers. ]

Yen. [ He's quiet, but there's a firmness to it. He will not indulge a bullshit conversation around the real reason they are sitting together. He tries again, almost the same question but not quite. ] Why am I here?

[ what would she have done? that is a question that yennefer should be asking herself, and yet she finds herself artfully avoiding it at any moment it appears, refusing to let herself think about that possibility for any actual length of time. because the truth of the matter is that if he had been brought out in front of her again, if he hadn't been able to make his escape and was still down in those dungeons, what she would have done would have been stupid and rash and would have ruined everything she'd worked so hard for over these last few months. it would have put them all at risk, most likely would have landed she or geralt with a death sentence, or would put them all down into those dungeons that she would be so useless in, and it would have exposed ciri.

because as much as she wants to ignore the truth of it, as much as she wants to deny what she knows to be true, she would not listen to him scream again.

it does not matter, in the end. he'd gotten out, gotten to safety, made it somehow across this excuse of a continent and back to a place he felt safe enough to head into the horizon and now he was here, with her. it has been months since they've had this time together, months since she actually exchanged words and time and space. she does not regard their last conversation as one at all, no matter what it was that was said. no matter how well, even now, she can picture the inside walls of his room. but why does it matter? before, they'd gone years without ever crossing paths. years, where she'd avoided thoughts of him. and now?

yennefer's fingers curl in on themselves, fighting the urge to reach for him. to touch him, as if to check if he were real, even when she knows he's not. when he speaks, his voice is still quiet, but firm. tight. she hates how easily she can read it, hates how easily he can read her. ]

I- [ it is not that she stutters, because yennefer does not stutter. rather, it's yennefer who cuts herself off. who takes a moment to breathe, to close her eyes - except that when she does, she sees the same image as she has for these past few weeks. geralt, curled over himself on the marble floor. red streaks, splayed out from his hands. that sound. she takes another breath, another half-moment, and then her eyes are open. hardened, as if in direct opposition to the curl that drags at her stomach. the trials. the children. the screams. geralt.

this was the reason she'd called him here, this was the thing she couldn't say in written words. even if she hadn't wanted to say it to herself, she knows, now, she has to. and when she catches his eyes again, holds them, even as her fists tighten where they sit in her lap. ] I did not mean to pull that memory, in the throne room. [ she doesn't need to specify, she knows he will know exactly what she is talking about. but something in her needs it to be said. ]

I reached for the closest thing that would cut off Grigory's search and that was what I found. [ i'm sorry goes unsaid, for now, as her nails dig into her palms. if he needed more explanation, she could probably give it to him - how she needed something strong enough to divert his attention, how she knew the chances of it being something traumatic, but hadn't taken the time to consider what. she'd reached into his mind in a panic, in a rush, hearing a figure and needing it to be over. yennefer doesn't know why this is so important, why it feels like her chest is tightening around her lungs as she says the words, but she doesn't turn from him. refuses to. ] I did not go searching for it.

[ Since he's sat down, Geralt has been watching her, steady. Then she falters, her eyes falling shut, and he finds himself looking away. He doesn't want to see it, how much it's affected her, because it tells him how much she saw. It's not a secret, the Trial of the Grasses. Plenty know the story of young boys being mutated into Witchers with magic and herbs, as much as there are those who believe them born of evil or birthed from some monstrous creature. But there is no one left alive, walking this earth, who has witnessed it without having gone through it themselves. And there is absolutely fucking no one outside the walls of Kaer Morhen who has witnessed him enduring it. Until her.

He knows she didn't mean it. He knows she panicked. He does. But hearing her say it, it makes him realize it changes nothing. She's done something that cannot be undone. And isn't he used to that? Isn't that what his entire life has been comprised of, things being done to him, things he's done to others, that cannot be undone?

Months have passed since they met in the Horizon, a full year went by since that day on the mountain before he landed in this sphere. And each time they've been apart, Geralt has done his best to put her out of his mind. She's not in his life anymore. She made that decision, made it plain and clear, and he has no desire to reach out only to be pushed away again and again. Except now it feels like she's inserted herself inextricably into a memory that will never leave him. That, in that moment, she became the one who bound herself to him, not only to a shard of his past, but to the one aspect that has shaped everything he's become. A piece of him she was never a part of and was never meant to be a part of. He does not want to look at her and remember his blood staining the floors, the blood of other boys soaking into the ground, and now that's all he sees.

His gaze shifts back to Yennefer. To her curled hands in her lap. His throat is tight. What does she want to hear? That he forgives her? There's nothing to forgive. There isn't, because if she were to have given him cause to believe there is, over this, he knows he would not forgive her. Could not. But neither is he...he doesn't know how to say that he isn't angry but he is, that he isn't betrayed but he is. There's nowhere for him to direct how he's feeling. Perhaps that's the whole fucking problem.

He thinks of reaching out to her. He does not. ] If the girl is safe, then nothing else matters.

[ It's what he's been telling himself. Whether it's true or not is another story, but he's held onto it. If Ciri is protected, that's what's important. And what happened to him, what Yennefer has done, it's...fuck. He doesn't mean to be closed off, but this is all he learned how to be. Because the other option is to fall apart entirely and he can't afford that. He might've crawled home, but everything that's going on, this world, its brewing storm—none of it is over. If anything, it's just the beginning. ]

[ she's not entirely sure what she was expecting by that confession - because it was a confession, no matter how she might want to reframe it. to herself as much as it was to him. she hadn't meant to see that, she hadn't wanted that part of him that he hadn't wanted to show. she hadn't wanted anything at all from him (that's not true) and yet that decision they made, at how she wasn't able to hold herself back, wasn't able to control herself around him, now where did that leave them?

geralt turns away from her, turns away from the moment she takes to process his trauma, and that sticks with her. for whatever reason, above all the rest of it, it is that that catches her attention. because it is his, isn't it? a secret that was very obviously meant to be kept between him and the others like him. atrocities done to him and perpetuated by the continent at large. they were made by magic, by her magic, and she feels a kind of crawling in her skin. a kind of crawling she's never felt associated with her chaos before - because she? she chose this. she chose to be reborn. to have this power. and geralt?

his gaze does finally shift back to her - once her words are out and heard. she does not know what she wants to hear, doesn't know if there's anything specific she wants to hear at all. because she does not want to be forgiven, does not want to be coddled, does not want to hear him say it was nothing or it was fine when it so obviously wasn't.

she wonders, briefly, if he is going to reach for her. he doesn't.

if the girl is safe, then nothing else matters.

that is not what she wants to hear, either, and very suddenly yennefer pushes to her feet - walking across the tent space, so that her back is to him and her eyes are on the tent flap. she's not angry, not upset that the only words he has to say are about ciri. if yennefer was being honest with herself, it's the only thing she really cares about through this, too. that she is safe. that this girl, this princess, who had looked at her like she meant something and came to her with stubborn anger and fear about her magic and who said she trained her. yennefer's eyes go from the tent flaps before her down to her wrists, where she starts to fidget, starts to run her fingers over the scars. if the girl is safe. ]

She is safe, for now. [ her voice is a bit louder than it had been before, a bit more projected, a bit more firm. ] If anything, it's the other Summoned who escaped with you that you should be concerned about. The Queen is keeping some kind of list of all the names they could pull from you who arrived at the capital of the Free Cities. If they have learned of Ciri, she has not stood out from the others. Not yet.

[ yennefer's thumb had spent the course of her words running back and forth over the scars, something to do, something to ground her, as she considers what it was she wanted to say. it was always so difficult, to be around geralt like this - so much of what she'd worked tirelessly to tamper down, to control, always felt like it was inches from the surface.

she wonders if he'll leave (again), or if it will be her, who will make the first move. she wants to turn back to him again, but worries what it will do if she does, so instead she pulls her eyes away from her wrists. sets them on the wooden beams above her, holding up this imaginary tent. let's them wander along the imaginary canvas. ]

Before you disappeared, I had been working with her on her control of her chaos. Did you know that? [ a slight pause, but not enough for him to actually respond. ] She came to me, because I had apparently taught her, before.

Edited 2021-12-14 03:05 (UTC)

[ When Yennefer abruptly leaves the table, Geralt does not blink. He's seen it coming, knows her all too well, that she will not be able to sit here and look at him. His gaze tracks her across the room. He's otherwise still, fingers curling where they rest on the table. Ciri is not much of a better topic, but at least it takes the attention off him. Takes the weight of it off him, the suffocating tension he can sense on Yennefer.

The other summoned. His expression shifts. His concern has been focused on Ciri. That's the only thing he recalls them mentioning. A shadowed figure. What other pieces of him the mage drew out, he doesn't know, doesn't remember. It's only now he realizes there may be others under threat. Because of him. What else did they see? Just names, Yennefer said, and he believes her. She'd flooded him with that memory so quickly he doesn't think there was time for anything else to be seen.

Still.

He exhales, sharper than he means to. Before you disappeared. What a quaint manner of phrasing it. Like he stepped into nothingness and then reappeared some weeks later. He bites his tongue and makes no comment. He's too fucking tired to pick a fight. Too tired to lash out. He wants this conversation over with but here they are, speaking further, and he can't bring himself to walk away. Everything just feels like too much effort.

So he sits and listens. Apparently. Yeah. At some point in the future, Ciri had either been sent to Yennefer or had sought her out on her own. ]

I was the one who asked her if she'd spoken to you about it. [ He has not kept Ciri from Yennefer, is what he's saying, has not interfered. That Ciri did not, could not reach the sorceress sooner was Yennefer's doing and hers alone. And it's not a subject he wants to get into. Ciri has found her, seems to have forgiven Yennefer for her silence, so how he feels about it is irrelevant. ] She has not told me details about you or me. You'll have to ask her yourself.

[ Geralt has not asked. He's sensed Ciri is concerned about saying too much. He can understand that. He doesn't want to know, either, what the future holds. If it even matters. They're making their own future here, in this damn world. It's enough to know he found her, taught her. That whatever he has done, she...trusts him. ]

Edited 2021-12-14 05:23 (UTC)

[ it's frustration, she realizes, that is pooling in her gut. she'd crossed this room to get away from him because the more she looked and he did not react, the longer they sat here in silence - with geralt so close, close enough to reach out and grab, and yet he felt so far away - the stronger it grew. she stands and crosses the space because she has to move, she has to gain control back over the wave that fills her. the disgust in herself, how much she built up this meeting to be. the anger at the queen, for what she plans, what she wants to do. the fact that yennefer had no idea they had found geralt at all, no idea that they'd gone through such preparations, that make her question what she's been doing all this time. she takes a long breath as she stops in front of the tent wall, uses that breath to shove it all back down again. controlling the wave, controlling herself.

control. control. tissaia, telling her not to be controlled by her emotions, but to control them in turn.

geralt exhales, and yennefer waits for what follows that sound - a tension shooting through her in that anticipation. that sound- that is what she'd wanted. a reaction, a fight, him, rising to meet her, like he had always done. it's a kind of distant realization that she has, when she notices how much of her hedges on that breath and then feels unmoored when nothing follows. for all the time they'd spent together, it had always felt like too much. emotion, anger, lust, desperation. even when she'd left him on that mountainside, angry and betrayed and hurt at the realization of his wish, at how he'd bound her to him, it had been in a fight. it had been both sides, upset and loud. but this? this calm response to her barbs, this lack of reaction to her actions? she'd always heard that witchers did not feel human emotion, that it had been burned out of them through magic, through chaos. geralt had told her that they'll say whatever justifies despising our kind, and yennefer had believed it - wholly and fully - too. because for all she'd known him, for all they'd known each other, she had only known geralt to feel.

but now?

she wants him to scream at her. wants him to push up and crowd against her, that fire in his eyes threatening danger, threatening violence. he would never hurt her, she knows, but the threat - the anger - is what she chases after now. she wants anything from him that will let her know that hadn't cut everything out while she'd sat and watched. tell me i wasn't too late a small voice in her screams. because she could leave, now. or he could. they could go back to not talking, not mentioning, not seeing each other just as they had before. he was whole, he had come into the horizon to meet her, and that should be enough. she could live with that, she could, as long as she knew this.

there are so many questions yennefer wants to ask him, about ciri. about why he sent her to yennefer now, why he would have done it back on their own paths, or how this girl would have known about her at all. why this girl, this princess, could be so wholly intertwined with them both. she wants to ask where geralt found her, why geralt would be teaching her to be a witcher, how, given everything, it could be her who brings them together. but as yennefer turns back to face him - questions on her tongue and anger simmering under her skin - they all fall silent. ]

The Singularity has affected her magic. [ she says, some of that tension from before easing out with each word. part of her assumes ciri would have kept him abreast of their conversations, assumes that geralt knows all of this already - but yennefer, suddenly, can't stand the idea that they are both working alongside each other, for the same goal, and this information has to come second hand. she knows that had been her own doing, yes. the distance had been her own decision. but as they stand here, in this tent, it seems ridiculous. ] Anything she might have learned before is now useless- we've started over with the basics, but it will take time before she's able to control any of it again.

[ time. she says it like it could be disappointing news to hear, like it's something neither of them have, but will have to make. but at the same time, what geralt can probably hear most in her voice, is that this isn't what she wants to talk about. that there is so much more, so much else, on her mind. and it's the truth - because she turns to look at him still sitting in that chair, still barely holding himself together - and it hurts.

there is a pause, initially, after her words. silence she doesn't exactly expect him to fill, so she lets it hang between them. she wants so much, in those following moments - she wants to scream, wants to throw something at him, wants to turn and leave and let him continue to sit in silence for as long as he wants. she wants to give up on this, on this pull, on him, but she also doesn't want to think about leaving at all. she wants him to stand and to do it for her - either leave, or close the distance - and she also doesn't want him to be the one who has to.

what yennefer does, in the end, is take a step. it is not hesitant, it is not unsure. whether her mind is reeling or if she's finally made her decision, her steps don't betray any of the earliest uncertainty. she walks until she closes the rest of the distance, until she is standing before him, and then she takes another until she is all but completely in his space. it feels a bit like she crosses a barrier, in part to see if he will push her away, and in part because she needs to be here.

she doesn't say anything, even as she hovers. doesn't say anything, as her eyes search his. doesn't say anything, even as her hand lifts - slow, but deliberate - to his cheek. there's a chance he might not notice, the way that it is her hand itself that betrays her, her palm that pauses for the briefest moment (unsure) before she brushes her fingers across his cheek. but she does it, almost in spite of it all. touches him, because that is what she wants - not to talk, necessarily. not to speak of ciri, or the queen, or his escape, or the wounds on his back.

just him. ]

Edited (typos and weird fragments everywhere.... also adds a bit more to the end cause why not) 2021-12-14 20:12 (UTC)

[ No. This is not the conversation Geralt wants to have, either. He isn't sure what conversation he wants to have. Too much is often what's between them. He's tired of feeling too much, he's tired of feeling everything. He keeps thinking if he lets himself do so, if he lets up a hair's breadth, he will feel all of it, every bit that's been simmering for days, weeks now, and it will drown him. It will drown him.

Why are we here? The urge to ask it again sits heavy on his tongue, like if he asks her enough times, something will shake loose from her that makes everything fall back into place. His eyes flick towards the bed, the tent's entryway. He wants to leave, he wants to remember her hands on him, he wants a time when he'd never met her at all, had not heard the name Yennefer of Vengerberg. (That's not true.) He thinks of her laid out beside him, the shine of her eyes when she would tease him with a question she already knew the answer to. He's always been so completely undone by her. He'd let it happen, of course. Wanted it. From the moment he'd met her, he'd wanted to know what it was to bare himself in front of another and not be afraid, and he'd thought together they could both have what they'd not allowed themselves before. But it was never...like this. Never because he—

—He blinks and then she's in front of him. Reaching for him. His fingers twitch, like he wants to reach back or push her away and can't decide which. Her scent fills the air: light, soft, gentle; all the things he knows she can be, all the things she's let him see her be (has undoubtedly regretted letting him see her be). She's never hesitated to touch him before. He sees her hesitate now, the barest hint. In the end, that's all it takes. Her hesitation. And he realizes they are not here on account of the heavy weight that hangs over her, the images that now haunt them both. They are not here for apologies he doesn't want to hear, or to talk about Ciri or his safety or how many fucking pieces of him were picked apart. They are here because, despite everything, despite how uncertain she is, how much it hurts for her to be the one to close the distance and open herself up to him, she has done it simply because she needs (wants) to see him.

Perhaps to another, this would mean little. After what happened, it should only be expected that she would want to see him, want to speak to him. That it is callous, cruel, to even consider otherwise. But he's spent decades pushing people away, alone, walling himself off to hide the cracks within, and he knows. He knows that for her, for him—for those like them—it is painfully hard in a way few can ever understand. His decision to meet her was not made lightly, either. He'd thought of turning around with every step. Even now, every instinct inside him screams to brush her aside, to not look back, that he will regret doing anything else.

He stays. Her fingers are feather-light. Something inside him gives way, crumbling. He curves forward, until his forehead brushes her hip, resting there where she stands. His eyes fall shut. He swallows down the hitch in his breath, the tightness in his throat. Every part of him aches, but mostly it's his heart that constricts inside. His heart that will not stop pounding until the sound of it threatens to overwhelm him. ]

Edited 2021-12-15 19:14 (UTC)

[ she makes her decision.

yennefer stands before geralt for less than a breath, her hand hovers for even less than that, but she - in that movement - has made her decision. it's terrifying, feeling like she's splitting herself open, fear and pain and echoes of voices telling her to leave, to leave, that this won't be worth it when he pulls away from her. yennefer has been betrayed, before him. betrayed by her family, betrayed by her emotions, betrayed by istredd himself. and she knows what happens, when she returns to those betrayals. when she reaches out and hopes for something else, retracing old wounds, desperate for something, for anything. she knows what happens, returning to someone who holds so much of you. knows what happens when they reject it, when they leave it behind. and that is what hangs in the balance here, too, she realizes - that panic, that tension, wrapping around her neck and tightening.

geralt owes her nothing, she knows that. it had been yennefer's words that had cut this fissure and yennefer's back who had turned and yennefer - angry, upset - who had spent those months after reminding herself it wasn't real. none of it was real. these things she felt...

and yet she reaches for him now, fingertips barely brushing at the line of his cheekbone, brushing back the hair from his face. she means to cup his cheek, means to touch him (as much as it can be considered a touch, in this prison of the mind) in a way that she hasn't since that night, in this very tent. she does not want to grip at his tunic, does not want to drag him to her in a last moment kiss in front of the portals, does not want to push him away. gods, that's the worst of it, isn't it? how very much she doesn't wish to push him away, right now. how much she isn't sure she could, even if she wanted to.

( and in that half-moment, that barest of a second, she fears she made a mistake. another mistake. another- )

she is not gentle - even at her softest, her edges are still present, albeit adjusted out of the way. she is not warm - but rather a suffocating and unforgiving heat. she is not kind - for the world had carved that from her before she knew had the power to fight back. she cannot be these things for herself, let alone anyone else, and yet geralt crumples towards her. scarred, tortured, healing - he is an animal hiding a wounded limb, and yet his weight pushes against her, and yennefer cannot pretend it's not what she wanted. cannot pretend, in all the layers they build around themselves, that she hadn't reached through her own and hoped to find his hand.

geralt falls forward until his forehead is pressed to her hip, his shoulders falling towards her. she'd been so caught up (fearful) that he would draw back away from her that the lean catches her off her guard. but at the very same time, feels like a grounding agent. like she is standing, firmly, for the first time that day. he's close enough that she can feel him swallow, close enough that she can tell just how hard his heart is pounding, a cacophony of beats in comparison to his unusually slow heart. (since when had she memorized its rhythm? since when had it been so engrained in her, how his body lives? how he breathes? and what use is it now?)

she is not gentle. without much thought, but with a kind of care that she doesn't bother focusing on for how it might haunt her, yennefer's arms lift, her arms circling around him. she is not warm. she feels herself curl down around him, pulling him more firmly to her hip, to her body, and tucking her face into the top of his hair. she breathes him in, and the smell is familiar - better, than it has been before, but it is still geralt. she is not kind. she does not crumple, not like he had, but she does envelop him in every way she can, her feet firmly planted, holding them both up in that breath. her movements are quite deliberate here, as well, any trace of that hesitation falling away from her with whatever it was in him that gave way.

because she did make her decision - to be here with him. to put them both at risk to see him again. it is not pity, at the boy she'd seen so broken in those memories. it is not pain, at the now fairly detailed knowledge of how he'd been so split apart before being stitched back again. it is not the need to coddle him, to protect him, to fix him back so that he might forgive her misgivings.

no - this decision she makes is to want him, and to offer that part of her back to him, again. ]

[ Only when she bends down, wraps her arms around him, does it occur to him he's been waiting for her to make him feel something, to provoke that part of him that will finally allow himself to feel. To feel more than the weariness, the unsteadiness, that's plagued his days. The blankness that he's been retreating to, even knowing he shouldn't, that he can't hide there forever. She's always been so fucking good at that, has she not? Dragging his walls down. Making the anger and frustration and care and (love) rise inside him: blinding, sharp, all-consuming. Impossible to ignore.

But he has not expected this. The unbearable nakedness in her gaze, the unfettered tenderness of her touch. She's been tender before, and so has he, but not like this. Not without an inch held back. It makes him respond in kind. He lets it happen. Lets it wash over him, lets himself sink into it, into her. She is offering, and he takes it. They've been here before and yet it's different. Different from when they would weave in and out of each other's lives over years, different from when she showed up in his Kaer Morhen uninvited without a past and somehow knowing him, anyway. Different because they have not simply crossed paths. She has come to him and he to her.

For a long while, he doesn't move. He isn't sure how long, isn't sure if she has sat down with him or knelt alongside him or if she is just standing there, holding him. But he stays and he breathes and for the first time, he can. He can breathe, he can afford to unspool a bit of himself.

He does not need her to put him back together. Does not want her to try. He can do it himself, he's been doing it since he was a child, he will do it again and again. It's just that, as difficult as it is to admit, he doesn't want to be without her while he does so. Her or...any who've become important to him. He'll pick up the pieces, move on. He could say it's for Ciri's sake and it'd be the truth only in part. The reality is simpler—is nothing especially meaningful beyond the fact that he knows nothing else except to keep going. It's all he's ever done; it's all he's ever been taught. But it's less...it's better, maybe, when he is not altogether alone. For all that he wishes Yennefer had not tied herself to his memories, hadn't inserted herself into old scars, he knows she had not meant to. (They would not be here if he'd thought she meant any of this to happen.) And it can't be changed now. It means something, perhaps, that she has not hidden behind her guilt or shame or what other reasons she may have thought of pulling on to keep her back turned. ]

Edited 2021-12-18 05:09 (UTC)

[ it is different, and yennefer feels it too. feels it in the way she opens up for him and feels it how he seems to respond in kind. she is not sure what it is about this place that has them both able to be here. not sure what it is about it - if it's thorne, if it's the horizon, if it's ciri - holding them together. she doesn't know, and frankly, she's not sure she cares. not sure she wants to care. because geralt leans against her, fills the space she's realizing how she had been holding onto for him and him alone, and it's. gods, it's almost too much - but then again, yennefer has to think back to a time when geralt wasn't too much. when this feeling between them didn't feel like it was threatening to drown her.

there were times where she despised this feeling - after the wish, after the mountainside. where she would be haunted by the image of him, the feeling of him, thoughts and dreams and impossible things. but yennefer can't lie to herself now how much she missed it, how much she missed him. how much of him had been on her mind, those last nights in sodden, faced with her own (possible) end.

the thought, for a brief moment, has her tightening her hold around him. a slight, but needed, squeeze. a breath she makes and a stutter of a heartbeat that he can probably hear, that he does hear, especially with how close he is to her. she knows it doesn't matter, in the end, because she survives sodden - she has to, if she is to teach ciri of her chaos. but that hole, that darkness that had crept up into her, that fear - she is sure some of it will linger, even now, in these softer moments. even as she feels the muscles in his back loosen, relax.

at some point she does find herself sitting - either with him on the chair or settled onto his thigh, somewhere where she doesn't quite let go of him, doesn't have to. she feels her breathing match his own, feels a kind of comfortable silence neither of them need to break. not for a good while, at least, where they simply sit with each other. with each other, in turn. she does not apologize, does not offer words of explanation, not for this - but she also does not shy away from it. there is an understanding between them for that. in turn, she lets him take the time he needs. if he wishes to pull himself back together, if he wishes to let himself fall to pieces, she does not care which.

yennefer, some time later - she does not know how long, doesn't care to count the seconds or minutes or more - adjusts where her face had been buried in his hair. turns it, so it is her cheek pressed to the top of his head, as she huffs something of a small laugh. quiet, warm. ]

You can change your entire appearance in this place, everything about it your own choice, and yet you still manage to smell so much like Roach I would think her here.

[ there is a familiar warmth in her voice at the words - a connection, a history, them. she does not pull from him and suspects that she won't until he does first, but she does shift as she holds him. does let her fingers thread down through his hair, a hand splayed out across his shoulder.

( it feels too good, even in this imaginary place, to touch him again. part of her is scared if she let's go, she might not get another chance. ) ]

[ He does hear it, the skip in her heart. He lifts his head after a moment, hand resting on her hip as she settles on his thigh. He's not sure if he's pulled himself together or if he's fallen a little further apart, but for the first time, it does not matter which. He lets himself be, existing, and he lets that be enough.

A small smile tugs at his lips. ] How else are you to recognize me?

[ He prefers to keep reality as it is. It feels especially important for a place where no rules apply. He's been lost in here before, fallen into fantasies and dreams that were not real, of a home and a girl. And yet, there was something missing even back then, wasn't there? He remembers the lilacs and gooseberries that grew outside the cabin. A pale imitation of what he had been seeking, as shadowed and half-formed as the girl who appeared.

By inches, he relaxes under her hands. They're familiar, warm. He's missed them. Her. Of course he fucking has. More than that, more than her presence, he's missed being sure. That he could trust her. That their nearly two years apart has not made her colder, more distant. She can be all those things, he knows, but not...towards him. Not like that. But he's felt it all, her uncertainty and fear over what needed to be done (afraid that she might've lost him because of it, in more ways than one), and it's—

It's important to him, to know that.

He reaches up, runs his thumb over her cheek. He makes his decision and coaxes her down for a kiss: soft, but sure, and filled with everything he's wanted to say to her since they parted that day. ]

[ his head lifts to her, his hand on her hip, and yennefer watches the small smile spread across his face. small, barely there, but it’s geralt. geralt, who looks at her with those eyes. geralt, who smiles, and yennefer. can’t help but smile back. who can’t help but settle a bit more comfortably where she sits on his leg.

there is a moment where she wonders if it’s worth it - worth saying it, worth speaking aloud, worth breaking what she had always known what is between them to be. but maybe that is what this is all about. maybe that is why they’re here at all. to change that, to offer herself up to that unknown edge.

geralt’s lips turn up in a smile, a joke somewhere in that rough voice of his, and yennefer feels like she can laugh a bit, can smile. ]

I will always recognize you, Witcher. I don’t need your horse’s smell for that.

[ it’s the truth, which is probably the scariest part. he relaxes under her hands and she melts into the open spaces in turn, finds her place in the crevices he leaves open for her. with him. with this newfound agreement between them. it’s a new feeling, that she can be here and that she can just breathe, and that even with everything else that’s happened over the last two years - with the wish, with sodden, with what lies before them both and what will be ahead of them when they return to their paths - maybe, just maybe, they will at least have this.

he reaches up and runs his thumb across her cheek, and yennefer relaxes under it. under his hands. under his eyes. he looks up at her like maybe this can be enough, maybe she. and he, can be enough for now. (it won’t be, and she knows that - he has ciri, to protect and to keep and to watch over, and she…maybe she can too)

yennefer kisses him back, once their lips brush. soft, at first, accepting all the things he doesn’t say aloud, but also all that he offers in the kiss. she takes it, and then kisses back in kind, her hand moving to his cheek with a bit more that a gentle brush. she wants him to stay - here, with her, now. and that is what she says to him back, in her own kiss. the things she won’t say because she knows he doesn’t want to hear them, but also that he knows she won’t say aloud, anyway. ]

[ The last time she'd smiled at him, it'd been shadowed by the knowledge of what was missing. Of her absent past. Here, finally, he sees it without any of that. It's just Yennefer, yielding to him, and it no longer feels so fragile as it once had, this thing between them.

(Part of him is still afraid, though. To want this much.)

He knows it's not ever so simple. Not ever so easy. He knows when he leaves this plane, he will not be free from what haunts him and neither will she. That's not how it works. The regrets and hurts will linger, always. But there are small moments they can have, where they can start to move on; he'll take them where he can, when he can. Isn't that the best they can hope for? For a chance to keep moving along their paths, together? His thumb traces down to her jaw, her chin, tilting it up for more. He breaks apart only when he feels the chair digging into places not near comfortable.

He breathes out. His eyebrow lifts. ]

How's your bed? [ Nicer than what he has out there, he's sure. ]

[ there will always be that fear, she knows that. after the time she spent with istredd and what he did to her, she's not sure she'll ever be able to let herself feel like this without some of that shadow alongside. but she supposes that is what makes this real (wish or not, half-faded memories of a girl she isn't any longer still clinging to her, to this). yennefer wonders if there's something she should be more concerned about, if there is something she is missing.

perhaps those are worries for later. because for now, much like he had just a few moments before, she lets herself unspool. in his arms, on his lap, his lips pressed against his own. she feels herself relaxing, feels bits and pieces of the carefully constructed armor she's held so tightly too since arriving in that dungeon, falling away.

because geralt knows, doesn't he? the decisions she's been making, the steps she's taken, who she is in this space and in every other. she's not been anything but herself around him - all the ugly edges, the scarred wrists, the anger, the broken pieces healed back wrong - and he might be one of the only ones.

he tilts her up to him, and something warm and wanting curls at her gut. she's missed this, missed him, and when he breaks the kiss, she's not quite ready for it to end, her lips brushing across his cheek, pressing her nose to his temple. at the sound of his voice she pulls back enough to see him, enough for him to see her brighten, laugh once. ]

My bed? [ she portals them - quick, like a wink - and the laughter is still lingering as they come out on the bed, itself. she doesn't change much about their positions, instead bringing them so that he is now sitting at the edge of the bed (a mirror image, of that one on the mountain. the same wood. the same sheets. maybe they will still smell like them, still smell of the candles burning low in the room.) with her still in his lap, one of her arms around his shoulders.

as they fall the remaining inch or so, bouncing once on the feathered mattress, yennefer leans in low - her voice a brush of a whisper against the shell of his ear. ] Why don't you tell me?

[ His breath catches, surprised in the way only she can do to him. The mattress bounces beneath them, soft, silk sheets. She can do that here, teleport them like it's nothing, without leaving his insides lurching, and he curls his arm around her waist. He's missed that, too. Her magic.

He remembers. Of course he remembers. It should hurt, this scene, taking them back to how thing had been before. Before Villentretenmerth spoke to them, before she pushed him away, before he pushed everyone else away in turn. It should, and maybe some part of it does, but the warmth is there, too, in the memory that lines every edge. His medallion dangles, her small charm clinking against his heavier silver pendant. For someone of importance.

He wonders if she thinks about it. If she has wondered this entire time if he's found it, seen it, what he's done with it. If she will notice that he's wearing it now. He wonders if she realizes it doesn't matter where they are, how their paths come together or diverge or if years and years may pass between them. She will always be important to him. The one thing that will never change.

He kisses her jaw, her throat, where the band of her necklace sits. ] Familiar. [ His eyes glint with a tease. ] Have we been here before?

[ she does love the sound of that - of catching him off guard, of his breath caught in the magic of it. it's a silly thought, really, but something about that alone excites her. catching him, surprising him. it makes her feel young (if that's even really possible), almost playful. the mattress bounces under them and geralt tenses for that moment and yennefer's smile widens.

using her magic was always like this - easy, simple, as much a part of her as breathing. the horizon provides for that unlimited access to chaos, and even with tissaia's voice in the back of her head - don't waste chaos on things like this - yennefer knows she can. knows she can afford to.

and while she doesn't necessarily notice the charm just yet, that doesn't mean she won't. that doesn't mean she might not look for it, when the candles run a bit lower, when they're curled up in the sheets together. because she's thought about it - equally in embarrassment for who she'd been that night and in curiosity, if it had been found, if he would even care to...care to what?

his lips move from her jaw to her neck, the stubble of his jaw nearly sending a shiver through her, and yennefer just...lets herself keep smiling. moves, though not far from him, to adjust how she sits - now moving to come astride him, her knees on the mattress on either side of his thighs. she also leans her head, moves her hair to on side, opens up more skin of her neck for him. for his mouth. ]

Hmmmm. [ the hum is content, catching the glint in his eyes. it sends a sort of heat her through - being here, being here with him, seeing that look from him. it feels like it's been years, lifetimes, since a moment felt this easy. she chooses to let it happen. ] Perhaps. [ there is a brief moment where her one hand moves to his chest, fingers splayed out flat across his pectoral, and she considers pushing him down onto the mattress. it is only a brief moment, because before she can, she remembers the throne room.

and so, instead of shoving back against him, her hand wanders. across his chest, up to his neck, back into his hair. it nearly feels like she's learning what all of this feels like again, like some part of her hadn't, really, thought she'd be here again. and that part feels hungry at the opportunity to. after that moment, her hand tugs at his hair, pulling him away from wherever it is his lips might have traveled, her eyes fluttering down to his mouth and then to his eyes, that smile, that curl to her mouth, lingering even now. ]

But you might also find I've made some adjustments.

[ His fingers curl around her wrist where her palm rests against his chest, wraps with ease around the slim bone. Her scars are raised beneath. Familiar, as much as his own. He's learned the grooves of them. (He's learned the grooves of all her unseen scars. Glimpsed more of them in the Horizon, with her shifting features, and he understands. He does.)

He lets her hands wander, bury in his hair. When she tilts her head, he takes the invitation and trails his lips further down, towards where the curve of her neck meets her shoulder. He reaches behind, tugging on the laces he finds there, undoing them until her dress loosens and he can push it off to bare more of her skin. He's more careful with his movements, hitching her up, careful not to disturb the still healing marks on his back. But he does lift her, arms underneath to encourage her to lay back. And if she does, he will lean over her, one hand cupping her face. His thumb traces her lips. The gentle curl to its edges.

(Is he giving himself over too quickly? There's more he's yet to ask, more they've yet to talk about. But he's so tired of heavy clouds plaguing his every thought, his every action, and he wants to put it behind him. All the blood and terror that grips his memories at night. He wants to be okay again, and he wants her to be all right, too.)

Adjustments, she says. He only raises an eyebrow at that. She will show him, he's certain, soon enough. For a moment, his forehead rests against hers. He breathes her in, memorizes all over again her eyes, the violet glow under candlelight. He wants to not be separated by a vast swathe of mountains and rivers, but at least they can have this. At least they can be here, away from prying eyes. ]

[ his hand curls around her wrist, and yennefer does not tense under the feeling of his fingers along her scars. she knows he has seen them, knows - in some way - he must understand. whether it was the girl he met in his room or any of the times before that, when it had been real and it had been them and it had ended too early, too abrupt. he knows these scars of hers, but has not pressed beyond that, and yennefer doesn’t quite have the words for how important that is.

he lets her hand wander, lets her relearn the feel of him under her touch, while his lips travel down the length of her neck. she wants to melt under the feeling of him, wants to meld into the shape he wants to find, adjusting to help as he goes about undoing the laces of the back of her dress. yennefer knows she could simply wish the dress away, knows that in the horizon these things are possible, but something about how easy it is for him to work at the laces of her, how quickly he goes about unraveling, undressing, bearing down.

( it too terrifying a thought - how safe she feels with him. safe both in the outside intrusion sort of way, but also safe to be her. without pretense, without walls. safe, to simply be with him, even as they lay thousands of miles apart. )

geralt lifts her, at some point. encourages her to lay back, so that he might lean over her, and yennefer goes. finds that tonight she would do just about anything, if he asked it if her. for him, for this, for this feeling of warmth seeping through her to last just a bit longer. he lays her back and she goes, he leans over her and draws a calloused thumb across her lip, and she parts her lips for him. he leans down and presses his forehead to her own, and yennefer stares up at him, taking the chance to see him. to watch him drink her in, watch him breathe.

yennefer let’s that be enough, for a few silent moments. let’s them be enough, until she feels the sudden urge to speak. her hand lifts to cup his cheek, her thumb rubbing across the like of his cheek bone, her eyes - for these next few moments - suddenly very intent. ]

I missed you. [ she says at first - because it is the truth, because until this moment it has remained so. but she also realizes that without context, it could fall flat, and with a sort of soft desperation she keeps speaking. ] That last night in Sodden, before the Nilgaardian army attacked; I thought of you. Missed you. I… [ i thought i’d never see you again. but she can’t bring voice to the words, somehow. doesn’t know if that’s actually the point she’s trying to get him to understand. whether he looks back to her or not, yennefer’s eyes search his face - for some answer, for some goal she’s been after for so long. if he’s watching, he’ll see the flicker of fear in her eyes - the barest flash of something, a hint, a brush. she swallows, her thumb idly running back and forth across his cheek - needing the touch, needing him to ground her.

finally, yennefer closes her eyes, her voice soft. quiet. like she’s not quite sure she wants it verbalized at all. ] I thought I was going to die, that day. I was prepared for it. [ she swallows, glad for the press of his forehead against her own. glad for that one place of grounding. ] And I- I honestly thought I did, when I first arrived here. That Sodden had been my end. That the last time I saw you had been the mountainside…

[ that it was over. ]

Edited 2021-12-25 09:21 (UTC)

[ Bent over, their lips meet again. His eyes close and for once, the splashes of red and rusted chains are less vivid. Her scent fills the air instead, fills his head, and he sinks into it. Into what is familiar and warm. He ignores the sting on his back to curve over her as her hand rests on his cheek.

Missed you. He nearly says he did, too. Missed her. She keeps talking, though, and he lets her. His brows draw together. Sodden. She had never really told him about Sodden. They'd only spoken of it briefly—her wrapped up in her anger, him wrapped up in his worry and fear for Cirilla. For all of them. He'd been so fucking thrown by Yennefer's appearance. Especially after the Horizon, after that first time. That life he still thinks about. It will always stay with him, he knows, even with the understanding that none of it was real. But he lived it and the realization that Ciri was not...that had been real. How he felt upon returning to the world.

He stares down at her. He'd never thought, not once, that she'd...somehow, in his mind, he wanted to believe she was fine. She'd appeared here, after all. Injured, but not fatally so. Still herself. Whole.

He does not want to dwell on what-ifs or tragedies that didn't come to pass. She's alive, just as he is. He'd survived what he was not meant to. Several things he was not meant to, from the bite that's now scarred his leg to the throne room. They are still both together. Drawn into the same fate. Forces at work, apparently. Perhaps it's true. ]

It wasn't. [ His reply comes simply. He eases down beside her on his side. Pushes back her hair, tucking it behind her ear. He catches that flicker of fear. It's the same one he saw flash down at him when he'd been bleeding on the floor. ] I'm right here. So are you.

Edited 2021-12-27 08:14 (UTC)

yennefer.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

nsfw on down

no subject

no subject