She watches him, curious; she had almost hoped to get a rise out of him, but watching his response only makes her tired, and a little regretful. She does so enjoy picking at old wounds, and then cursing the Yennefer of the moments before who’d drawn blood. She wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him but more than that she wants to tuck herself comfortably into his side and say that the silence between them has stretched long enough. She wants to be with him, near him. Wants him to have said it. Wants him to say it now. Wants, wants, wants, as if there’s nothing else for her to do but want, and she wonders if this wanting makes her weak.

     Yennefer lets herself enjoy his company in a way she hasn’t for too long, but then he speaks again, voice so quiet she almost misses it entirely. “You are not mistaken,” she says finally, and she keeps her voice neutral. It takes some practice. No; he’s not mistaken at all. 

     A topic they’d once discussed with some openness; now, it feels like he’s the one drawing blood, to feel herself laid so bare before him. I have no secrets from you, she thinks, eyes flickering to meet his, no secrets at all, and it makes me feel naked in the most wretched ways. 

     “Fabled, yes. There are no guarantees. There rarely are. But if the rumors are wrong, then there’s no harm done, and I have time enough to waste on false leads. If the rumors are true, then — ” She trails off, shrugging one shoulder, not wanting to dwell. What would she do? She’s never gotten close enough to it to have to consider what her next steps would be, but…

     “Do you intend to try and talk me out of it?” she asks after a pause that lasts a moment too long. Her tone takes on a lightness, feigned but present all the same. “You’ll remember that I’m very stubborn. You may not be able to do it.” 

          SHE IS COMFORTABLE IN HER OWN WAYS, in the way that things of the dark are. In the way that a Witcher finds comfort in the dark of the night against the harsh realities of Death and Tooth, the Witcher finds comfort in her, too. She is comfortable in her discomfort, Geralt thinks. Or he doesn’t, because that, too, would be laid bare, and he can barely bare the weight of his emotion to himself, much less to another. 

          How much of his thoughts she’s reading, he can’t help but wonder. And he can’t help but wonder about her reading of him trying to guess at her thoughts. Geralt wonders how much of his resistance to wandering thoughts of Her is futile, about how she must know anyway, because there is nothing that escapes Yennefer’s grasp. He wonders about how quick he is to dash fleeting thoughts, yearning memories, when she can read him plainly, like a Scroll of some sort which she’s read and reread again since before she can remember. It makes for a funny cyclical, roundabout way of thinking ... but he isn’t smiling. 

          “No. No, I don’t,” he says, then, bluntly but not carelessly.  He says nothing, then, for a long time, staring off to the side, playing with his Witcher’s Medallion. The head of the wolf, snarling up at Geralt’s gloved thumb, stares blankly. The wolf, frozen in time, says nothing, too. It sours him, knowing the mood that has befallen Yennefer again, the origin of which he knows all too well.  He would like to hold her, like to let her just cry into the crook of his neck, and simply be. He cannot. The time for that has long passed, perhaps. Finally, Geralt looks at her. There are boundaries--in relationships, and in limits to the possible. His face betrays his urge to frown.

           THE WITCHER TURNS HIS HEAD AND SMILES, and the Elixir hisses into his skin as the blood clots. It’s an affair made routine. He, too, pours an anaesthetic Elixir, and the sight of injury quickly becomes unfeeling. Geralt wipes the sword with cloth, dispatching the blood, necessary for the upkeep. Once, he remembers, in a bout of anesthesia induced by Elixirs, trembling hands and clattering teeth, he simply passed out before doing the necessary maintenance. When he next returned to Kaer Morhen, his blade was rusted, and he hadn’t heard the end of it for edges ... especially not from Vesemir. He hasn’t made a similar mistake since. 

          He sighs, then, imperceptible, and he shrugs.

          “Not exclusively. Not always. I am surprised that there was a beast, if you would like to know the truth. But I am not surprised that it went the way that it did.”

          He is unhurt, at least. She, too. This, he is happy about. It didn’t hurt him, the unnamed beast in the Wood. He would have felt it, he lies to himself. He is quick with a blade, and he can couch it in pretty words that would be the envy of the world’s finest storytellers, but the truth lies in the fact that he is lucky. He is always lucky, until he isn’t. 

          It is the trade of a Witcher to operate under the blanket of darkness. A Witcher exclusively uses the darkness--anything else threatens the Witcher’s mortality and that, indeed, is very bad. The darkness, the starlight, the crescent moon, and not much else ... a sharp dance, a traced semi-circle, and a flash in the Night. Finally, he nods in quiet contemplation and his eyes, unusually warm and with crow’s feet plaguing the corners, briefly light up.

            THEIR HORSES GALLOP IN SILENCE MADE MONOTONOUS BY STEADY HOOVES. The sun sets along the horizon, no longer obscured by branches but by the enveloping hilltops. The grass, pale and withered and orange-brown from the change in seasons, blandly lights up. In silence, they set up camp. It is formulaic, in the way that their life should have been together--unseparated and predictable, with each night composed of them together looking out for each other. Geralt makes off with his fishing rod and Ciri makes off with an axe. And it is a funny story, too, because he remembers telling her, once, that she did not need to have a large build to fight Monsters, but the speed to parry and dodge. She did not need to be built like a lumberman. And here she is, too, with an axe in hand, to gather kindling. It is a funny story, too, but he does not smile.

            As he fishes, he thinks of the time they’ve had together. His knee aches, indicative of poor weather to come, perhaps. And he thinks of how fables spread, inevitably, of the Witcher and the Witcher Girl. When they arrive in townships, in villages, Geralt is the first to correct: attention, good man, but there is no Witcher Girl here--only my companion, the Witcher. A subtle distinction, but an important one nevertheless. And he thinks, too, of Change. And he frowns. But he leaves it at that. 

            The bones of the trout, then, help feed the fire. Geralt nearly swallows a bone, but he hacks it up, and they laugh about it afterwards. They laugh, but their smiles quickly disappear, like illusions, like smoke. There is unease in him, perhaps--like relief and trepidation compete for his attention. The fire crackles. The horizon doesn’t look so ugly now, they both think, with the sun having finally set, and the moon now in full display. 

          Ciri’s words, then, do not change his face, unchangeable, like Stone. But she does not believe him, does not believe it. And a silence, thick, gathers. 

            “There exist ghosts everywhere, in everyone, Ciri.”

            She is a ghost in the same way that he is, he thinks. An apparition, pieces of him vanished along with noble companions. Along with aen hanse. But it does little to mourn their losses repeatedly, like a reopened wound. Like blood that pours and pours, and will not stop pouring, and will leak until he dies one day. Exsanguination of the heart, Geralt thinks, will do no-one any good. And your scars, my girl, he does not tell Ciri, cause me great pain. The scars which he knows not the whole truth about, the scars which he wishes to brush away with the pad of his thumb as he would hold her face, carefully. Ghosts of a little girl, perhaps, made harsh by the World ... the World that he so aggressively sought to protect her from. For naught. They say little about it. He sighs breathlessly.

            Geralt finally gets up. His hands, then, from a pouch in their pack, gather a bunch of oats in each palm. He feeds the horses quietly, in silence, in comfort. They are content, these noble companions. Geralt smiles, small. He busies himself before responding to Ciri, before growing gravely quiet. She almost thinks he’ll ignore the question, he’ll completely overlook it, desperate for some semblance of comfort. She would not blame him, either. 

            With finality, Geralt returns, this time at her side. He sits next to her, on their log bench, and he squeezes her shoulder, carefully, warm. And he speaks very quietly, as though this truth is meant exclusively for her.

            THE BED IS NOT SOMETHING THAT HE TAKES FOR GRANTED. It is not like the bed at Kaer Morhen. It is not like a tavern bed, either. And it certainly is unlike the bed at that shared room at Thanedd. But that was a long, long time ago. Outside, the cotld blisters the air. It is warm, to be here. The winter is too harsh for anything but cozying up, he thinks. His cheeks would flush with red were they capable of it. And that is precisely why they’ve decided to winter here. The Winter here is unlike any Winter he’s endured before ... woefully unlike a Winter at Kaer Morhen. Woefully unlike anywhere. 

            Here, there are no sharp edges. Like a Dream. 

            The bed is not something that he takes for granted. She, too, does not take it for granted. She uses it much to her advantage, with all sorts of creaks, squeaks, squeals. He touches her, too, with his hands, callused as they are. He smells not of waste, not of bloods and guts. He smells of herbs and sandalwood. She smells of something that he can’t quite put a finger on, Witcher Perception or no.  And what ever is it that she does causes the medallion around his neck to throb and shake violently. He does not question it. He questions, in fact, very little here.

            Geralt is quiet. In the same way that there are implicit truths, he is quiet. His chest heaves, and he squeezes her thigh. She sighs, satisfied. They sit, together, in silence. But she cannot sit in the unbearable, uncomfortable silence for long. And she suggests, then, something that makes him very unhappy--tardiness in its essence. Time wasted twists in his gut, like a knife. Like a hot knife, like a brand that’s been marinating in the heat of a fire, or a hearth, red hot. 

            It is pointless to reflect on What Could Have Beens. There are certain truths in existing. Every Witcher knows this--their life has been chosen for them. Fatalistic, perhaps, but true. It is pointless to dwell. He is here, and they are there, worlds away, his unnamed Gone.

            “There exist certain, individual truths that each person must come to accept ... their own unique, lived truths.” 

            It is a lofty ideal--a lie. It’s a good one, too. Like the fairy-tale land. Like the Medallion she has made for him. Like the ease that rests so carelessly on his shoulders. But there, too, lies the crux of the issue: certain lies are fragile, and only last as long as they are meant to. And she smells in a way that he cannot precisely identify. This, too, makes him uncomfortable ... much in the way that Fringilla, too, finds herself comfortable with Geralt. Like a Cat, ready to pounce. The Witcher’s smile is rotten, then. She thinks to herself that she’s gotten used to it, that she loves him, but she hasn’t. It’s vicious, savage, like white maggots squirming around in carrion, or a deer felled in the forest, toppled over to die in its own gore. Geralt shrugs.