[ 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! ))

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[gynvael]

[ In the empty stillness while Sam works through his thoughts, Geralt keeps drinking. For all that they understand each other, Geralt has not experienced this which Sam seems so intimately familiar with: people vanishing, dying, and then returning. Again and again. Not just here in this world, but back home, too. For Geralt, when those he loves disappear, when they're gone, they almost always remain so. The dead do not return. Not in the manner Sam describes.

The concept seems a relief, on the page. But Geralt can see how much of a curse it really is. ]

Yeah. [ He doesn't disagree, doesn't tell Sam that there's some value to be found here that he's missing. There isn't. ] Sometimes that's how shit feels. Fucking pointless.

[ And maybe if he were more like Sam, he'd go as far as to tell Sam that he's allowed to feel that way, that he's allowed to feel tired and like some things aren't worth the effort. He's allowed to build some walls around himself because you can't push through the world without doing so. You can't. It'll kill you, slowly, a resentment and bitterness that overtakes as you start to think, why are you the only one trying when the world will not give you a moment to breathe? But Geralt is not Sam, and so that blunt sentiment sits there on its own, to be taken however Sam wants to take it.

He pauses, taking another sip. ] You made friends, didn't you? As a soldier. Imagined a future. Every one of us, we know deep down everything can change in an instant. We move through life, anyway. Steve was here and now he's gone. You can't grieve him if you're trapped thinking of some unknown time where he might return.

[ He's done the same. Not a long future, not that, but in small ways. He remembers winters spent making plans with his brothers for the next frost. Like the assumption was they would all return, safe and sound, year by year. Even for those as worn down by the decades as them, they did it all the same. Geralt can't say why. It isn't as though they weren't well aware of how fragile their lives were. Maybe there's simply a compulsion that exists in all of them to forge connections as if they were permanent, no matter how tenuous they truly are. ]

[falcony]

[ that is the worst part of it, sam thinks. not only that it happens, that he's aware of how irregular it is and it's not something anyone should ever be used to, but that he can't ever decide where it is he's supposed to be standing. a blessing, or a curse. part of him knows that nothing in his life has ever been that simple, nor will it be that simple. it's not good or bad, but about mindset, maybe. how he should be seeing it as a blessing, though the lack of any pattern, of any expectation, of anything to really believe he can return home to at the end of the day...

sam had never been one to be comfortable without steady footing. so much that the second things started getting rocky, back at home with his parents and the house and the boat, he took to the skies. literally. and now? now it just feels like anything he might try and dig his heels into will just fall out from under him anyway, any foundation would simply be made of the same sand that stretches out in each direction, all around them.

sometimes that's how shit feels. fucking pointless.

which...is pretty much, to the t, of what he expects to hear. it catches him for a moment all the same, a single moment where he just thinks about that. not necessarily the blunt tone to which he's said it, but the truth of it too. the way sam had been sitting on the sentiment, on that knowledge, and knowing that was coming - whether or not because he knows it to be true or because (maybe) he knows geralt that well.

either way, sam feels himself huff a kind of laugh - and with that laugh, a release of tension. not all of it. not everything. but enough. it releases enough that he can take another deep breath, can unwind himself enough to reach for the drink and take a long sip of it. it's not until geralt continues, that the question of you made friends, didn't you? that sam pauses again, freezes mid-drink because he always does whenever memories of riley strike him across the jaw. but then it passes, just as it always does, and sam blinks away the feeling of a different desert, a different time. we move through life, anyway. they have to, don't they? they don't really have the choice.

geralt must know this. sam knows it, too. but leave it to this place, this time, so far from his solid footing, that has him feeling... whatever this is supposed to be. ]

Yeah. [ he offers, because he doesn't know what else to say. he can feel the urge to turn it on its head, to ask geralt something about him - anything - because he feels the focus and attention on his own problems, on his own discomfort at that, even knowing that he shouldn't. he wants to change the subject, but also doesn't really want to run off like that.

so for a few moments, there is silence. the distant sounds of the street, of the creaking of the building, of the life all around them. and then, when sam feels like he's solid enough, he lifts his mug as if to inspect it. ]

His name was Riley, by the way. [ he doesn't even look over to geralt, when he says it. doesn't feel like he needs to. ] The friend I made.

[ geralt didn't ask, but the implication is there. the was. the imagineda future. sam lifts the mug almost like he's offering it in cheers before he finishes it off.

riley. steve. natasha. vision. he supposes he should be ready for any of them, shouldn't he? (god, even his parents.)

he feels exhausted, now more than before, as he focuses on the taste of the wine instead of anything else. ]

[gynvael]

[ Riley. That's not a name Sam has mentioned before, which tells him it's an especially private, painful memory. Not that Sam's especially an open book. The man is and he isn't—a selectively open book, is how Geralt might phrase it. A book with some pages removed and carefully bound back together. It is not like Jaskier, who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Was. Yeah. He knows how it feels. Remembers it a bit too sharply, his blade sinking into Eskel. He knows he wasn't the reason Eskel was taken from him, from them, but does it even fucking matter? Not really. Not when it just. Sits so heavy. How much more weight can they take? He doesn't know. He's lived a long time and he keeps thinking, there must be a limit. There must be a point where it becomes too much, but he's never found that point for himself, where he stops and lets it bury him. He isn't certain he's capable of it. Of stopping. Sometimes he wonders if it would be easier if he were.

Maybe that's a curse, too. That drive that keeps them going even when their world is crumbling.

Geralt looks down at his feet. One of the floorboards is lifting, uneven. He should fix it next. ]

He must've been a good friend. [ A lightly teasing hint rises in his tone—a shift. Geralt's not one to linger over a topic once he's said his piece. And he doubts Sam wants to ruminate all night on shit that can't be changed. ] To put up with you.

[falcony]

[ it's not the first time sam's talked about riley - losing him came up in counseling often enough, when he used to run those sessions back at the va. steve asked him about it outright - who did you lose - and sam had told him easily. riley was one of the names that sam remembered, photos still up on the wall in his apartment in dc. which means that even now, telling geralt, it doesn't feel like a secret that is being shared, or like there is some hidden part of him being laid bare. it still hurts, still sits along his shoulders like a coat he'll never really be able to take off, but it's no secret.

sam doesn't know if there will ever be, or has ever been, a part of him that has been secret. it was part of the reason he'd told fury that so long ago, more of a soldier than a spy. but in that same vein, he also realizes he doesn't know if he's talked about riley, either. supposes that in a way, a lie by omission is just as bad. he lets out a breath, feels the rest of whatever tension leave him, laughs once at geralt's tease. ]

Yeah, yeah. [ sam is smiling, taking the tease with grace. ] But hey- putting up with me can't be all that bad. You've done it long enough.

[ which is more of an acknowledgement than anything, sam putting in words what he's confident both he and geralt have already come to an understanding on. what this is, what this has become. impossible circumstances, impossible places, and yet...

geralt is not one to linger, and neither is sam. which is why his eyes dart over to the bed, in the corner, and his brow raises. ] Alright- have to ask. What is that for?

[gynvael]

[ Has he? He supposes he has. It's been, nearly a year now? He remembers the tunnels, up on that mountain. Of those he met during his first days here, only two or so remain.

The idea that Sam, too, could be taken at any moment—he tries not to think about it. ]

Could be worse. [ There's the smallest tilt to his lips.

His attention lands on the half-constructed bed. Geralt gives the vague grunt of a man who does not want to assign any importance to this thing he is making which is, in fact, of some significance. ]

Jaskier came home with a...pet. [ Which needed a bed. So here he is. Making it a damn bed. ]

wrapping here maybe???

[falcony]

[ could be worse he says, and sam just laughs. because really, that is all there is to say. the smallest smile from geralt, the acknowledgment that neither one of them really wants to think on the what if. it's an understanding that neither of them want to accept - about what will happen, if it happens, what the other will do. they don't have a back home to go to. the second he, or geralt, disappear - that will be it for this. for them.

so they don't, and so sam asks about the bed and they continue to drink this nice bottle of alcohol and maybe they'll had down the street to a tavern for dinner, or maybe they'll just spend the rest of the day right here. sam's pretty okay with either, and as geralt grunts, sam just. lifts up a brow. ]

Jaskier brought home a...pet. And so you're building it a whole bed to itself. [ a beat, as if just to make sure geralt knows that sam absolutely is seeing the significance here. before he just sort of shrugs and takes another drink. ]

Sure. Why not.