[ 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]

[ 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. ]