Jo's brain is scrambling as the door shifts, rots, explodes forcefully enough to send debris every which way, making her throw her hands up over her face, but she can still hear it. Geralt's not even looking at that as he throws himself through it and down to the ground. Smacks that ground in a jumble on his knees, which might be the least together, solid and stoic, she's ever seen him, and then, his back is shuddering forcefully, and he's retching into the hard, cold earth.
A fact that sticks hard for a second, and her mental claws dig into that passing scrap of logic like a door in a tornado. The ground isn't the same either, making her look at everything around him. Barren dirt packed between those same walls and three pathways not far off, but nothing that looks like immediate danger, whatever the fuck that even might or might not look like now. But there are more pressing things, and she scrambles out the door.
It's more graceful than him, uses the bottom door ledge, twisting to hang from it, and doing a drop from there, rather than a free jump right out the door at the ground hard like a missile. Approaching him quietly, waiting for him to stop retching, awkwardly uncertain of moving forward and staying back both, Jo lets him get it out of his system. Until it's just the soft, low, grasping for air returning to being called for the outpour.
The smell is still there, but it's got more air to mix with out here.
Jo crouches down, nearby but not right by him. Conflicted wariness (her mind shouting that there are still horrible monsters that started out as innocent people; it doesn't change who they are now, why they have to be stopped), but it's all part of that whirlwind. It can't latch down. It comes, screaming, jerks away into the tumult just as fast.
"If it's not supposed to be there, why is it there?" Because it's really, really vividly there.
She shouldn't ask. She shouldn't. She knows better. It's a goddamn door with a big red x flashing blinding. It's details she doesn't need, details that will only trip her up, tangle in that mess of her chest. "What happened there?"
When was she ever good at listening to anyone, even herself?
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A fact that sticks hard for a second, and her mental claws dig into that passing scrap of logic like a door in a tornado. The ground isn't the same either, making her look at everything around him. Barren dirt packed between those same walls and three pathways not far off, but nothing that looks like immediate danger, whatever the fuck that even might or might not look like now. But there are more pressing things, and she scrambles out the door.
It's more graceful than him, uses the bottom door ledge, twisting to hang from it, and doing a drop from there, rather than a free jump right out the door at the ground hard like a missile. Approaching him quietly, waiting for him to stop retching, awkwardly uncertain of moving forward and staying back both, Jo lets him get it out of his system. Until it's just the soft, low, grasping for air returning to being called for the outpour.
The smell is still there, but it's got more air to mix with out here.
Jo crouches down, nearby but not right by him. Conflicted wariness (her mind shouting that there are still horrible monsters that started out as innocent people; it doesn't change who they are now, why they have to be stopped), but it's all part of that whirlwind. It can't latch down. It comes, screaming, jerks away into the tumult just as fast.
"If it's not supposed to be there, why is it there?"
Because it's really, really vividly there.
She shouldn't ask. She shouldn't. She knows better. It's a goddamn door with a big red x flashing blinding. It's details she doesn't need, details that will only trip her up, tangle in that mess of her chest. "What happened there?"
When was she ever good at listening to anyone, even herself?