[ CLOSED ] through open passageways

[gynvael]

Who: Geralt + Various
When: March
Where: Cadens; Horizon
What: Catch-all for things
Warnings: Adding as we go



(( placing starters in the comments below. find me at discontinued or at Noa#1979 to plot stuff! ))

Comments

[gynvael]

[ Is that what she thinks? That he finds the Cities safe? He isn't anywhere because it's safe. The entire world is not safe. It never will be. It's one more thing Yennefer doesn't know, doesn't understand: that Ciri can be both the key to unlocking and destroying the Singularity. If these monoliths exist on every realm, then every realm will have someone seeking to control them. Where they go, she will be wanted. The only thing he can do is to make sure she isn't further at risk from anything else. From someone he was supposed to be able to trust. Who is she to lecture him about what he needs to remember when it comes to protecting his child?

Fuck the Queen. She is still so caught up on the Queen. There's so much more to contend with than a vindictive royal operating behind closed doors. His expression says she is telling him nothing he wants to hear, that she doesn't get it, that he no longer finds it worth trying to explain. ]

I did not ask you to run. I asked you to make a choice that wasn't about you for once.

[ She is afraid of leaving Thorne. She's afraid of losing what she's gained there. He understands. It also doesn't matter. They are all afraid. He's afraid of what will happen to Ciri here if he can't protect her secrets, he's afraid of what might happen to the Continent back home that they've now put behind them. He's afraid of what Vesemir will do, when he and Ciri never return. He's made his decision, anyway. They can't keep turning back because they're too afraid to move forward. All Yennefer has ever done is try to turn back: her chance to have a child, regaining her Chaos, returning to Thorne.

He's moved on. From what's been taken, from stolen childhoods and homes. Ciri has moved on. Jaskier is beginning to. It feels like Yennefer never will. ]

All you have done is run back to Thorne. [ Destiny has brought them together. It can't keep them from falling to ashes. That's only something she can do. ] If you won't look beyond what you've lost, so be it. But I will not wait for you to find your future.

[vixening]

[ he’s not wrong - she doesn’t fully understand the extent to which ciri’s powers go. she knows that there she has it, that her conduit moment was real and was powerful, and that she, herself, is a spark of something that yennefer used to know so well. seeing her at the summit had only solidified that - that precious, bright, powerful thing in her. that which had to be protected. that which voleth mier had obviously wanted for herself.

but he also doesn’t see it. not in the way she does. that ciri living in a place that fears magic already, that drawing any unnecessary attention from the queen - geralt has always fought monsters, creatures he could track and study but ultimately had to react to. yennefer has fought the world of men, the machinations of court and the greed of war and everything else in between.

she wants to argue that this decision wasn’t about her - because in a lot of ways, it wasn’t. but she also knows better than to say that aloud, despite the urge to - knows that the second the words would leave her lips, they wouldn’t be entirely true. some part of this decision had been about her, about where she could actually help, about where she’s been helping - or trying to. a muscle in her jaw jumps as she holds her mouth closed, her eyes still on him as his anger seeps into the air around them.

except that’s the problem, isn’t it? that with his anger, her’s can’t help but rise to meet it. ]

You asked me to make a choice, and I did.

[ she will not mention how he hadn’t really given her the option, that as far as he’d been concerned, it was solvunn or betrayal. solvunn or this. a small part of her knows that, and nearly resents him for it. nearly, but not quite.

except that she can’t leave it there - because he says the exact things she, in part, knows are true. because in a way, she is running. because in a way, no matter how much she tries, no matter how much she builds, it all burns away in the end. she knows this as well as she knows the shape of the burning carcass of a domain that she has left. knows this as well as she’s always known everything.

( her hands had burned through much more than nilfgaard’s army, long before the war. why would she ever think she’d stop there? ) ]

Do not lecture me about loss, Geralt. I know it just as you do. [ the words are edged with a sort of echo of her own anger, her heels digging into the ground. geralt is angry, she’d known he would be, and she should have known in turn her own would rise to meet him.

because for all he may know of it - of the loss of choice, the loss of life, the loss of what they’d thought they might have once been able to hold onto - it is also one of the few consistencies she’s ever really had. loss, and the drive to take it back.

here, though, yennefer does not feel that drive. can’t allow herself to. won’t. instead, she swallows, tilts her head a bit more towards him, let’s all of this settle in the soft earth.

i will not wait… ]

Then don’t.

[ she could try to explain herself, if she thought it would matter. the singularity is the key or the queen is our biggest threat or a slew of other explanations, but none of them would matter. not to him. not for this.

( please believe me. )

broken hearts are nothing new to yennefer, even when they are her own. ]

[gynvael]

[ 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.

[vixening]

[ you gave up what you lost he says, and all that rings in yennefer's ears is the quiet fragileness in it. all she can hear is exactly the things she won't say, she couldn't, even if she had words for them now. there are a hundred things she could probably say to ease these sharp edges, a hundred more to soften the pain in his expression, but she doesn't. doesn't, or won't, it's not clear even to her.

there is still that part of her that drives in even deeper, that wants to scream back at him - that he can't know about her choices, that he doesn't know about her pain. it had always been easy to fall back on that anger, to keep the wall high and strong and to keep the thorns sharp, even when she'd found herself alone, there. those things had been what kept her safe - the distance, the disconnect. because it had been easier, and it is easier still. she had made the choice after istredd to deny each request he'd made to come after her, and now geralt looks at her and there are a million things she could say.

instead, she says nothing at all - her jaw tight enough to shatter stone. if he looks (if he's looking) he will see the pain of it in her face, in her eyes - where it builds and builds and builds, but doesn't quite spill over. the tension in her is so great, she's nearly amazed that she can hold the form and connection here at all, and it only gets worse the moment she watches his own jagged lines fade.

he reaches forward and takes her hand, and yennefer lets him. watches, some part of her knowing, as he places the stone and pendant (the pendant she'd given him back in his room, when she hadn't even known who they were. it was the pendant she always found herself searching for, despite her best efforts. the thing she always needed to check, just to be sure, just in case, the same on he'd always had. until that dream, until she lost her chaos.) in her palm. she doesn't need to look down to know what it is, but she does anyway, and for a moment she simply closes her eyes. tries to swallow and finds it nearly impossible, a mass of something in her throat.

ciri forgave you he says, and yennefer's fingers curl around the items. when she opens her eyes, some of that emotion does finally break free from her, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. if this hurt any less, maybe she would feel more embarrassed about them. for now, she just looks at him, building up the...what? because this isn't courage, this isn't bravery. ]

Goodbye, Geralt.

[ is what she says, finally, be cause all that yennefer has left in her now is the heels she still has dug into this scorched earth, and the soft sounds of the remains of that very building - embers, soot, whatever had once remained - collapsing in on itself. ]