[ 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]

[ Geralt contains the perfect combination of sheer stubbornness and learned patience to force unwanted confrontations. Not once does it cross his mind to consider what he may do if Yennefer won't show. He just waits.

She shows.

She does not look harried or desperate. She looks almost sure in her decision. Like she knows, like she always knew, what it would mean. Had he expected different? No. He had not. She'd realized then, as well, when she walked off with Ciri. His eyes land on her, steady. There's no longer a sense that he's searching—that there's something he's looking for in her. Not as before. What he'd hoped might've been, he's accepted is not.

He walks forward. Closes the distance between them. It isn't an attempt to be closer. There is no bridge he wants to extend. He doesn't reach out for her. ] You knew then, too. What she means to me. I trusted you to protect her and you sold her for yourself. 

[ He had not said it until now. Not that he intended to hide it. He just—when they'd spoken, those times before, he wanted...to try. To leave what may have happened back home. To not confront her over what she doesn't even fucking remember. But he has no desire to let her continue on, believing that her betrayal is any less than it is. This—her, taking Ciri. Delivering her to Voleth Meir. It was never a mistake, a stumble, a decision made in an instant and then regretted afterwards, too late to take back.

She spent time with Ciri. She spent the night with him at the temple. She understood exactly what she was doing. ] 

[vixening]

[ there is less surety in her than there is acceptance, but he is not wrong. she does know what it means, had known what it would mean, which is part of why the summit had bothered her as it had. the knowledge that if she wanted to stay, if she'd kept to where she thought was right, it would mean losing this. losing whatever it was they'd barely begun to build.

( there is smoke, in the air. a smell thick with ashes, with soot. )

he lays eyes on her, and his look is just as sure. just as hardened. he looks at her like there isn't anything to find, like it's not worth looking, because what he sees before him is all he needs to see. it carves away at the cavernous space in her chest, inch by inch, but she cannot find it in herself to be surprised. it's why she doesn't move as he walks forward to close the distance, why she doesn't so much as flinch as he draws near to her.

you knew then, too. it feels like a sudden weight on her shoulders. the words, the meaning. he'd come to her during their last conversation in this space with trepidation, with distrust. the words he says are thick with that same feeling, and she knows what it is he means. what she does, further down the path. the direction she is already heading in, that geralt and jaskier and ciri have already lived. i trusted you to protect her and you sold her for yourself. she doesn't know what he's talking about, won't know until she has another dream, if she ever does. if it's even possible. geralt is right before her and he looks at her like she's done it all again, and yennefer doesn't so much as blink.

before, she hadn't wanted to believe him. hadn't wanted to believe that look. what they'd had - she'd carved herself open to fit it. had been so sure it was all she was going to need. and when she'd come here, when she'd come looking for him to find that distrust in his eyes, part of her had thought she could push back. that she could prove it wrong. she knows now, looking at him, that it was never going to be that easy. that whatever it is she'd done, that this selling she'd done of ciri, it wouldn't simply ease away. ]

I'm not running anymore. [ she steels herself as much as she can, looking back up into his face. it hurts, all of this hurts, from the hard line of his jaw to the cold look in his eyes. but she'd expected all of this. had known this would be how it went.

and she came anyway.

guilt, and something darker, pool at the pit of her stomach. but she does not turn away from him. this feeling, somewhere between looking down the blade of a sword at her throat and that desperate, naïve, childish hope... she knows better than to expect anything of it. to expect anything at all.

you find love and it isn't real, it's just a wish someone made before they knew who you were. ]

And I will protect her, but I will do it in Thorne.

[gynvael]

[ There was a time, he remembers, when he would sit and wonder about the reasons his mother left him. Among the multitude of them, he always thought at least once: perhaps she didn't know. In his mind, this was the kindest option. That she didn't know where he would be taken or what was to happen to him. But she knew, didn't she? She knew everything and she gave him over, anyway.

He should've learned not to wait for better, from the people who have wounded him deepest. He doesn't know how to stop. Some part of him keeps searching for it and he never finds it.

His eyes narrow. Has Yennefer not heard a word he's said? No. She's always only ever heard what she wants. ]

You will not. You've done enough. [ He does not need her protecting Ciri. He has done it this entire time—back home, here, it has been everyone except her by Ciri's side. Jaskier has done more to protect Ciri. Sam has done more. Yennefer has remained in Thorne, working her way up. He told himself to trust her because Ciri does. The only thing it has netted them is a near-miss with the queen finding out the truth and one of his darkest memories clawed to the surface. He tried, after all that, to believe there could be something, that he hadn't—opened himself up for nothing. There isn't.

What the fuck has she even given up? After everyone he lost, everything he went through for Ciri, what did she give? And he knows. He knows she gave her life. It means something, it does. But there is a cold, hollow part of him that almost doesn't want it to. That feels like she has not earned it here, as she is, making these same choices she doesn't remember making.

Maybe it isn't fair. Maybe he doesn't want to be fair. Maybe he wants to let the bitterness take over. Maybe he is tired of being the one to shoulder the burden of understanding, of reaching past jagged edges only to find himself cut to pieces. He promised to keep Ciri safe and in the end, that is the only thing which matters. Yennefer can do what she will—if she wants to believe she is protecting the girl, if she wants to chase her magic, he no longer cares. The only thing he cares about is that she does not put Ciri in danger. ]

[vixening]

[ geralt's eyes narrow to her, and yennefer...it's not that she lets him, necessarily, but she forces herself to accept it. there's a part of her, because there is always a part of her, that wants to push back. that wants to fight that angry, cold, dangerous look in his eyes. she is no stranger to these looks, just as she is no stranger to angry words or broken hearts. she is no stranger to life, and all of its ugliness, and she knows this is no different.

( no matter whatever part of her might have wanted it to be different. no matter how much of her might have even started to hope. she knows better and has known better, and perhaps that is the heart of her stillness, now. )

perhaps it is a testament to how much she does know him, that she can see the stubbornness in his eyes. the anger, the bitterness. it is all rightfully turned to her, and she does not turn away from it, here. but for all that she wishes to hold onto that stillness, he does pull at her strings, just as he's always done. pull at her defensiveness, pulled some energy from her, despite the dark, hollow emptiness that she's coming to terms with inhabiting. ]

I will. [ because what is he to do, really? with all this distance, with all she's done. she does not doubt he would kill her, if he thought it necessary - and perhaps it is that understanding, that realization, that has really done it.

whereas before, she knew he would never hurt her. now, she knows he will, where it concerns ciri.

her eyes search his face for a moment, not out of desperation, or a belief she will find anything there. she does it just to look at him, and perhaps because she knows that it may be it. ] You might think you're safe out in the Cities, and you might be now, but you know as much as I that it won't be like that forever. Not with what the Queen is capable of.

[ yennefer bites back the urge to push, to tell him that she refuses to suffer, refuses to face consequences, for something she has not yet done. that he can look at her and blame her for all he wishes to, but she will carry the burden of something that is not hers.

( and further down, further inside there is the urge to scream. to ask why he can't forgive her, but ciri can. why he looks at her like a monster, like something at the end of his sword, when ciri does not. she doesn't get it, she doesn't understand, and she wants to. but she won't. can't. ) ]

At the summit, I had planned on going to Solvunn- I was going to go, but- [ she presses her lips together, remembering her conversations - with ciri, with jaskier, yes. but also with everyone else. all the faces, the people, the summoned. the queen, herself. when it came down to it, her reasons for going were not enough - geralt, asking her to, wasn't enough. not for everything that it would mean to give up.

she knows why geralt wanted it that way. knows why he'd thought of solvunn, thought it would work. she does not fault him for that, not entirely. but in the end... ]

I am tired of running. I won't do it.

[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. ]