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[worstsin]

There was something wrong happening.

At first Geralt had avoided the woods, because it felt like that off-ness was concentrated there. The birds and insects had gone quiet at first, and soon after they'd started to flee to the forest's edges. Though autumn had barely begun, in some areas Geralt found trees turning rusty, leaves dying off.

That had been at first, and from there things had gotten wronger.

When Geralt realized what was happening, he went to the woods. He worried it had no longer become an issue of protecting himself until he managed to leave Darrow, but of protecting Darrow potentially from himself.

Whatever corruption existed in the forest, growing and spreading, it affected his body, and his mind. It had twisted itself around the witcher mutations, had expressed them in new ways, or simply more.

And so Geralt was back at his old camp. Hiding, biding time, and keeping a baleful eye on the situation. He ought to do something about it, but what? What could he do, when he didn't even understand what was happening to himself?

He sat beside the fire, hunkered over an evening meal in a foulest mood. His skin was paler than usual, dark veins standing out against the white. All of his senses screamed. He gripped his dinner in hands that had begun to end in blackened, pointed nails, that reminded Geralt too much of Regis. That was the bruxa in him, no doubt, a fact that he wanted to put little thought into, if he could avoid it.

The canines that filled his mouth too much more than they used to, those were likely more attributable to a manticore mutagen.

And the fact that he had made dinner of a squirrel, and had not felt the bother or desire to cook it, that Geralt wanted to put thought into even less.

Comments

[worstsin]

Geralt gave a nod. It was curt, full of nothing but concern, knit brows.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry that the world is cruel and you had to bear witness to something like that. I'm sorry it's scarred into your mind. That won't happen here, I'm promising you that. As long as I'm here, there will never be any pyres lit. I won't let it happen."

There were lines to be drawn. Things that couldn't be overlooked. He was angry for Nina's sake, and he was simply angry that such things seemed always to happen wherever humans were.

[every_blossom_blooming]

She looked at him, longing to believe that he would save her from fire if it came for her. She knew Matthias had changed his mind on some things, but it was hard to forget the feel of his hands around her throat and the determination in his eyes to see her life ended.

She moved closer, her eyes full of apologies and sorrow and fear. Part of her expected that Geralt would flinch away from her; she couldn't blame him if he did.

At least she wasn't shaking like the last leaf in autumn anymore.

[worstsin]

"Come here."

She was still bare. He leaned forward, wrapping arms around her and pulling her to him, against his chest. Geralt wasn't certain how to give comfort any other way. His words always felt like half-measures, fumbling, emotionally bankrupt, uninspiring.

But he could hold Nina.

"I'll walk back into town with you, when you're ready."

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina sank against Geralt in utter relief and exhaustion. The sound sleep she'd had before the nightmare was completely forgotten and she felt tired down to her bones.

She tucked her face against Geralt's neck but couldn't bring herself to close her eyes, afraid of seeing the charred faces and cracked flesh.

"I'll come to see you again if you don't want to stay in the city," she said, worn but gently stubborn. "Until you tell me not to."

[worstsin]

For whatever reason, a bit of humor grabbed Geralt. He gave a short rumble of a laugh.

"Just don't get any of your friends worked up on my account. I don't need anyone sneaking out here and threatening me while I'm trying to hunt up my supper."

He tilted his head, moved to meet Nina's eyes. He brushed a tendril of her dark hair back behind her ear.

"Will you be alright? I might be able to make you something, for sleep. Think I can get some Valerian out here."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"I think Inej is done with her threatening. Or she better be." She looked up at him, comforted by his strange eyes and his gentle touch.

Nina reached up and let her fingers curl loosely around his hand. "That's sweet of you," she said with a little smile. "A Corporalki never has to worry about not sleeping, though. I can put myself to sleep if I need to, it's just... I can't control whether or not I dream. So unless you have something that can do that, I might be out of luck."

[worstsin]

"Dunno. Could probably make it stronger. It'd make sure you didn't dream. You also might have sleepwalking sessions the next day."

His mouth quirked in humor.

"Like your hair after you've slept on it."

Geralt plucked a dried leaf out of it and gave it a twirl, before dropping it and reaching for his white shirt.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Don't be an ass." She smiled as she said it, though, and rolled her eyes when he twirled the leaf at her. Nina sighed and combed her fingers through her hair.

"Suppose I should... put clothes on."

She sounded dubious, at best, but Geralt already had his shirt in hand. With a little pout, Nina drew away just enough to sink back beneath the blankets. "It's so early yet."

[worstsin]

"I'm not kicking you out of bed." Geralt's voice was warm. He crawled back to Nina to slip himself back under the heavy blankets and made a deep noise of pure pleasure. They were still warm. He rolled himself onto his side, holding Nina's hip to adjust himself. His hand lingered there.

"Just figured you were ready to leave. If you want to lay here until midday, who am I to argue with you?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"That's what I like to hear," she cooed. The horror of the dream lingered and she wasn't sure that she was ready to try falling asleep again just yet, but she was in no hurry to slip back to town in the pre-dawn grey.

The sound Geralt made as he settled down again made Nina feel warm. She tucked herself close to him once he'd settled, rather liking his hand on her hip.

"I don't like the idea that this is something I can't fight."

[worstsin]

"Neither do I."

Geralt stretched a little, before melting into the warmth beneath the blankets. As much as he didn't need gentle comforts, he preferred them. The morning chill, damp, did his leg no favors. Tucked in next to a warm body, he felt pleased and somnolent. They were things that Geralt seldom achieved.

"It's a personal weakness. I know that much. I prefer simplicity, a problem I can run at with a sword like a basilisk or a griffin. Confronted with something like this, every decision seems like a bad decision. At least, it's true in my experience."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"I feel like that was the world I was trained to inhabit, even if I didn't know it at the time," she admitted. "Everything seemed so straightforward when we went looking for other Grisha. I was Zoya's spy, gathering information about local legends and folklore. Most of the time there was a Grisha or an entire family of them at the end of those roads. We offered them help, offered them asylum in Ravka. We broke up slaver rings, raided slaver ships. Everything felt right."

She nuzzled Geralt's chest, hiding from the morning chill.

"All that changed after the Druskelle caught me. After that, it felt like there weren't any clear and good decisions... everything was shades of not-as-bad. I was in survival mode."

[worstsin]

Geralt wondered what had changed everything for him, but realized soon enough it hadn't been a single incident. Once he'd set off on the path, he'd lost his certainty by a thousand thousand tiny measures, by disgusted glances and screaming children, by aldermen trying to sneak out of paying him. The world was terrible, and it didn't agree with Geralt's sense of good and wrong. The world was terrible, and all there was to do was small, immediate good, for the people around him.

Everything else was politics, which seemed to Geralt to be sinful by its very nature.

"There aren't any clear and good decisions. That's the only thing I know. All you can do is act, and never regret doing something. The only thing a person should ever regret is inaction."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"There are decisions I think that I regret, but... whenever I look back at them, the alternatives aren't any better. I could have screamed for Zoya when the Druskelle found me, but then they would know that she and the others were there."

She sighed and kissed a scar running across Geralt's chest. He had so many.

"I still wanted to change the world," she murmured. "Everything I saw in Fjerda made me want it differently... but I still wanted it." It felt silly to say it out loud.

[worstsin]

She kissed one of the scars on his chest, one of the nastier ones, courtesy of an ancient leshen. Geralt let his gaze rest on her thoughtfully, tenderly. It wasn't often that he found a woman that earnestly enjoyed the look of him; from the neck down, at any rate.

He had always been in demand for other reasons than any sort of beauty.

"It's not a bad thing. Hold on to that, for the sake of the rest of us."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"I'll try. I just wanted to be seen as a whole and valid human, no matter what country I was in. Fjerda saw us as unnatural abominations, the Shu saw us as things to experiment on, Kerch as prizes to be bought and displayed, and Ravka... even my own country saw us as most human but still as a means to an end."

She lightly traced the lines of the scar, wondering at the pain he'd endured. Her own scars were few: pale ones all the way around her wrists from where her skin had been rubbed raw and then removed after being bound in rough rope for weeks on end, the tattoos on the inside of each forearm.

Healers had been able to take care of the rest of her, or she could do it herself if the injuries weren't too bad.