[ Yes, choices. She has always made choices. And though he's never held this against her pain—he understands the shape of regret as much as he does that of loss; he understands the lines between them are often blurred—in this moment, as her sharp edges rise, he finds his own rising further. Past the anger, an unexpected hurt—that she could've seen what she did in the throne room and try to tell him they lived through the same sort of loss.
Something wounded that he doesn't intend threads through his words: taut, fragile. ] You gave up what you lost.
[ He swallows it down. This isn't what he wants to tangle the conversation in. It's not the point. They've all lost too much. It doesn't matter how or why or what it looks like. Everything hurts the same. (But part of him thinks, she still had choices to make: to take her place in the Brotherhood, to leave it for her own ambitions. Her enchantments. He did not. He was never given one. And it feels like she's making the choice to give up what she has here—him, Ciri, something that could be more—and she will call it another loss. It is a loss. But it's one of her own doing.)
He supposes this will be one of his own doing, too. Where she's concerned.
He wants her to argue: for herself, for them. She accepts it instead with so much finality, he can't help but ask if she ever meant to hold onto what they had. What they managed to build in that brief time. If she was always one step away from letting it go. From letting him go. Is that why she walks away so easily every time? Was it even a hard choice for you?
Some of the jagged lines fade. A quiet settles over him. He takes her hand—soft, slender, intimately familiar to him—and places in her palm a smooth red stone. Pressed alongside it is the small charm she tucked in his room all those months ago. He'd worn it, for awhile, behind his medallion. He hasn't done so since the memories returned. ]
Ciri forgave you. [ I do not. ] Don't break her heart again.
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Something wounded that he doesn't intend threads through his words: taut, fragile. ] You gave up what you lost.
[ He swallows it down. This isn't what he wants to tangle the conversation in. It's not the point. They've all lost too much. It doesn't matter how or why or what it looks like. Everything hurts the same. (But part of him thinks, she still had choices to make: to take her place in the Brotherhood, to leave it for her own ambitions. Her enchantments. He did not. He was never given one. And it feels like she's making the choice to give up what she has here—him, Ciri, something that could be more—and she will call it another loss. It is a loss. But it's one of her own doing.)
He supposes this will be one of his own doing, too. Where she's concerned.
He wants her to argue: for herself, for them. She accepts it instead with so much finality, he can't help but ask if she ever meant to hold onto what they had. What they managed to build in that brief time. If she was always one step away from letting it go. From letting him go. Is that why she walks away so easily every time? Was it even a hard choice for you?
Some of the jagged lines fade. A quiet settles over him. He takes her hand—soft, slender, intimately familiar to him—and places in her palm a smooth red stone. Pressed alongside it is the small charm she tucked in his room all those months ago. He'd worn it, for awhile, behind his medallion. He hasn't done so since the memories returned. ]
Ciri forgave you. [ I do not. ] Don't break her heart again.