(no subject)

[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]

It was a harsh way of life, without choice. But Geralt realized that he truly had no room to cast aspersions. He'd been swept into nothing larger than a guild. Even at its height, there had never been more than a hundred heads at Kaer Morhen, witchers, trainees, alchemists and sorcerers. It was no society. But the rigidity remained.

"Sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes, all you have is a purpose. You spend your whole life convincing yourself that it's enough."

And if it's not, you simply don't survive. Momentary doubts killed witchers.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull looked over at Geralt, wondering if the witcher really did understand. So few humans seemed to grasp the idea, or so few seemed willing to.

"I understood my place in the world and it felt right. Doubt shattered that. I couldn't live like that. I didn't want to. More than that... I went mad. Went into the jungle, risked the lives of the men that followed me, and slaughered every Tal Vashoth in sight. By the time they found me with back up, I was surrounded by bodies and blood. I needed them to fix me or to kill me."

Bull sighed and took a longer drink from his jug. He should slow down. It would hit him eventually.

"Feeling that now."

[worstsin]

"And you were afraid of dying. So you had them fix you. Because we all are."

Geralt lifted his head and gave the Bull a slow, yellow gaze.

"I've known for a very long time that I was going to die in a cave stinking of carcasses, by some griffin or another horror. But I have a purpose. One day, the world may very well be lying in ruin, but I'll carry on killing monsters in the ruins of that world until one kills me."

For whatever reason, he thought of Kaer Morhen's disused laboratory, of the table and the straps and lines of dusty demijohns filled with mutagenic poisons.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"I don't know if it was being afraid of dying as much as it was being afraid of losing control. If I was going mad, I'd be a danger to everyone, not just bandits and enemy soldiers."

Bull shrugged his heavy shoulders. Losing control had always been more terrifying than dying. He knew what he had in him.

He looked at Geralt and a faint smile tugged his mouth. "You'd probably do well under the Qun. Too smart to be Beresaad, but the tamasrans would figure out what you were suited for. Maybe spying, maybe just farming or some craft."

But he knew if they got Geralt as an adult they wouldn't be able or willing to ignore his useful history.

[worstsin]

"Have a friend, Dandelion."

Geralt made quick work of getting the food off the spit. He tossed it onto wooden trenchers he'd whittled, with an apple and some cheese. Bull was reserved the rabbit, because it was bigger and so was he, but also because it was Geralt's campfire Bull was sitting at. The laws of hospitality demanded it.

"I used to threaten to stop, the witchering. He'd tell me he thought it was a good idea, that I would be great as a priest, or a soldier. Reminded Dandelion I didn't believe in gods. And I didn't believe in war."

Geralt would not have chosen to become a witcher. If he'd have had the choice. He hadn't. It was no more complicated than that why he still walked the Path.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull regarded Geralt again, wondering. Tanassrans would take all of that into account during and after conversion, and if Geralt had been born under the Qun they would have known what to do with him by the time he was twelve. Likely a craft apprentice, he imagined. Strong and clever, but generally not suited to violence.

Not like Bull.

"We don't choose under the Qun, either, but the tamassrans try hard to discern a person's proper purpose. I was too smart for the army, too interested in violence to learn a craft. Ben-hassrath it was. You were taken as a child, weren't you?"

[worstsin]

Geralt gave a nod and plucked at his food. He was hungry, but didn't want to simply choke it down as quickly as possible, especially if there was a conversation being had.

"I was abandoned at Kaer Morhen by my mother when I was barely finished breastfeeding. I was raised my entire life at the stronghold, I don't remember anything else. I was nine years old when they administered the mutagens. I remember ... pain, and seizures. Malodorous sweat, hallucinations. Nosebleeds, vomiting. Then there was a fever, and I fell into a coma. I didn't wake until the seventh day."

He shook his head.

"World was different, after that."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Yeah. That'd fuck you up even without the genetic rearranging."

He shook his head. "Didn't have that, but never felt like anything was a choice, either. Never really bothered me until the Chargers died... but I rededicated myself after that. I'd been living outside the Qun for ten years as a spy by that point. Forgot my purpose. That made me find it again."

[worstsin]

Geralt's eyes fluttered closed, and he gave a long sigh. It was a blank sound, but he felt for the first time in days honestly relaxed. The stuff that Bull had shared with him hadn't been vodka, but it had been, maybe a little better.

In only a few drinks, it had managed to send warmth through him, though his throat still tingled.

"It was nearly a century ago now. I barely remember what everything was like before."

He opened his eyes again, looking at the Bull.

"No retirement under the Qun?"

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull shook his head. "Not really. You do your job until your too old or too infirm to do it anymore, then the tamassrans will take care of you and make sure you have a comfortable life until you die. But there's no real... retirement. There's rarely even reassignment. The tamassrans are good at what they do - I couldn't have stopped spying to be a farmer. I'd be bored out of my mind."

He shrugged one shoulder and finally pulled the food Geralt had given him closer. He understood hospitality rules better since traveling around places like Ferelden, so he didn't refuse what he'd been given.

"For people like me, you do your job until it kills you or until you physically or mentally can't anymore. Then I might be called back to Par Vollen and allowed to live out my life. I'm forty, still doing my job. Our natural lifespans aren't that different from humans." He added that last part to give Geralt an idea of what that meant.

[worstsin]

"Same for witchers," Geralt said, around some of the greasy squirrel. "Except a witcher always dies violently, we don't get old and infirm. Lifespan is too long for that. Oldest I'd had the pleasure of knowing was Vesemir, the man who taught me everything I know. At the time of his death, he was nearly four hundred years old. He looked, maybe, into his fifties. Though I've heard of longer-lived witchers, mostly from the Griffin school, south of the Northern Kingdoms."

He was surprised, actually, that the Qunari should live relatively human lifespans, though he knew barely anything about them.

Geralt didn't often like to think of lifespans at all. It reminded him too thoroughly that Dandelion was now around the Bull's age also.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull nodded. "The other option, though it never really seemed like that, would be to leave the Qun. If I decided to do that at any point, I could expect to be hunted down as soon as my superiors found out. For a few reasons."

He paused to eat some of the rabbit, and he thought, absently, that he should hunt something tomorrow and bring it to Geralt. If it was something big, they could share it.

[worstsin]

Geralt bristled a little at that information. He knew there were cults and spy organizations that did such things, but the witchers had never been so strict about their guildmembers. A witcher could leave the Path at any time, if he chose it.

The trouble was, there was seldom anything out there for a witcher, seen as they were as repulsive, unscrupulous, cold outcasts. There had been Jad Karadin, but Lambert had made short work of the man, and he'd been off, wrong, exactly what Geralt knew people feared of them.

"Qun's not here, though. What are you doing about it?"

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

His eye gleamed as he looked at Geralt but there was no humor there. "Losing my mind."

Bull looked back at the fire and he sighed. "Since I got here it's been... a struggle. After the Chargers died, I rededicated myself to my job. I did it faithfully, my letters to my superiors were my lifeline back to the Qun. But... here, it is easier to question everything. Again. I don't like feeling the earth move so violently beneath me."

It was shaking him down to his foundations. He had been trying to make peace with it since he told Dorian and Krem about embracing a more... Vashoth existence. But his nightmares had him unsteady again. Had him questioning his choices in a way he never had under the Qun.

"When someone leaves the Qun, we call them Tal Vashoth." He was pretty sure he'd mentioned to Geralt, at some point, that his job had been to hunt down Tal Vashoth on Seheron. "I've been told my entire life that leaving the Qun means madness, means giving in to the savagery that's in our blood."

He looked at Geralt again, holding his gaze steadily.

"I almost killed Dorian."

[worstsin]

Sometimes, heads just roll.

Geralt could understand, somewhat. There were parts of him that ought to frighten people, parts that became more excited, more violent, the more the adrenaline built up in his system, the harder he fought for his life. He'd been made that way.

But more often, the times when Geralt had killed many, it had been for other reasons entirely. He'd become the Butcher of Blaviken not out of rage and wildness, but out of cold, brutal calculation. Fifteen men had to die, so that the village, so that all those innocents might be saved.

They had not thanked Geralt, naturally, for murdering fifteen men in market square.

"Dorian; name of a city I used to pass through twice a year. Killed a basilisk there. He the one I'm always smelling on you? Smells like violets and oranges."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull nodded, and for some reason he had weird feeling about someone else being able to so clearly identify Dorian's scent. He knew Geralt had a ridiculously good nose; Bull himself was privy to more scents than most humans were, but Geralt's abilities were beyond his own.

"Yeah," he answered, his mood shifting again because he thought of Dorian's delicate neck beneath his hand, and the sounds the mage made when he was suffocating. He tried to push the memory aside.

"He's-- kadan," he said, not bothering to translate himself just yet. His tone revealed a lot, though, and he knew that. He let it. "Our countries have been at war from longer than either of us have been alive. My people are notoriously wary of mages and he is a particularly high ranking one in Tevinter. That we didn't try to kill each other speaks volumes to our civility."

He looked down, a faint smile tugging his scarred mouth. "He poked at me relentlessly. He had this idea of what the Qunari are and are supposed to be, and I think I broke most of the assumptions he had. I poked back, because he made the best sounds when I cornered him. Verbally."

[worstsin]

Geralt slid his food aside briefly, to look for a drink that wasn't alcohol. He still felt that pleasant warmth, a swimming in his steadiness and the world around him.

He smiled, unbidden, at the Bull. It was a very small and gentle thing, as if it were his first, as they often were.

"Sounds romantic. Too bad Dandelion isn't here. Silly skald would already be composing the ballad."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"I'd probably break his lute over his head. Or whatever instrument he traveled with."

Bull shook his head, thinking of the way Varric had gotten all poetic about it when he realized what was going on.

"Was bad enough having a bawdy romance author trying to immortalize it. Going on about two worlds tearing us apart, only love to keep us warm," he said, amusement creeping into his voice. He remembered that entire conversation, much to Dorian's consternation. "I think Dorian was ready to kill half the Inquisitor's inner circle when it came to light."

Bull wish he'd brought something of Dorian's with him. He missed how he smelled and the warmth of his skin when he first woke in the mornings.

"Took a long time for both of us. Dorian was the one to break first, but... he had to be." If it had been Bull, it would have seemed more like imposing, like true conquering. Dorian coming to him was permission.

[worstsin]

"It's a lute," Geralt confirmed, with deep exasperation.

He did adore Dandelion, but the strumming could get old, when Geralt was trying to concentrate on tracking. Though, should anyone ever actually threaten his lute, Geralt would step in unhappily. Not because Dandelion wouldn't deserve it, but because that particular lute was made by the elves of Dol Blathanna, and was irreplaceable.

"'These scars long have yearned for your tender caress, to bind our fortunes, damn what the stars own.'"

Geralt snorted over the lyrics, from that damn ballad about he and Yenn.

"Really love between you two, isn't it?"

He could tell, in the way that the Bull's tone changed, his expression. In other ways, that he couldn't finger, but were surely a part of his background senses.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Oh yeah. I would've beat him with the thing," he huffed after he heard the verse Geralt recited. Worse than Varric; at least Varric was a good writer.

The look that crossed Bull's face was almost pained when Geralt mentioned love.

"It wasn't supposed to be." He quickly pressed on, not wanting Geralt to jump to any particular conclusions. "Under the Qun... there aren't relationships like that. Not really. We have friends, close companions, you could even say familial bonds but-- but nothing that would ultimately come before our service to the Qun. Dorian made that... difficult."

Before Dorian he had been softened by living with the Chargers for a decade, his adopted family. When they were ripped away, the only thing left that made him question his priorities was his relationship with Dorian.

"Loving someone like that and adhering to the demands of the Qun do not go hand in hand," he said quietly.

[worstsin]

"A witcher doesn't usually find a long-term relationship. It's not part of the codex, not anything like that, but it just doesn't happen. It doesn't make sense. We spend everything but the winter constantly traveling and risking our lives, through every country on the continent, wartime or not. You don't find many people willing to be part of a relationship like that."

He and Yennefer had an arrangement, but that was something else entirely. That had started with the Wish.

"But isn't it worth it? To step off your path, even for just a while, to have someone to love."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"If stepping off the path means madness?" Bull shook his head slightly, but he knew some part of him wasn't being honest. It's worth it. But not if he killed Dorian in the process. "I almost killed him, Geralt. I had my hand around his throat, pinned down and crushing him. He had to use magic to heal himself before he could talk."

Bull growled under his breath. He wanted to headbutt something.

"I wasn't even awake."

He wanted to say that it was worth it. He wanted to say that having the Chargers and Dorian meant more than anything, but look at where he was now. Nearly murdering his lover, his kadan in his sleep. Dorian hadn't even been awake to defend himself.

"I can't do that again, Geralt. I can't risk it. Whatever's happening now, it's fucking up more than dreams."

[worstsin]

Geralt, slightly drunk, stood from where he sat and, in fact, did headbutt the Bull, just hard enough. He grimaced afterward -- headbutting a fiend was worse, but damn, that was a hard head for a humanoid.

"Then don't do it again. But don't pretend like the choice has anything to do with whether or not you're being a good subject under your Qun. I know there's something wrong with me, that I can't have faith in anything at all. But maybe it helps me see through some of the bullshit. You need help, get help. Look outside yourself. You want to feel better, visit me. I'll make you meditate with me."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Geralt didn't have a chance to far before there was a second, firmer headbutt from the big Qunari. His skull was built to hold two massive horns; his neck was strong enough to bear and balance the weight. He tried to hold back, a little, but it was hard after the drinks he'd had and tempting to not bother at all.

But he didn't want to nurse Geralt through the ensuing concussion if he hit too hard.

He huffed a bit and sat back, listening while Geralt spoke. "You are not the first person to try to get me to meditate."

Maybe Krem would let him sleep in his barn until this whole thing just... reached some conclusion. But that wasn't fair to Dorian, was it.

[worstsin]

The headbutt was strong enough that, for a moment, one of Geralt's pupils blew, but only one of them, as he reeled back half-confused. He recovered quickly enough -- taking punches from giants was, in fact, in his job description.

"Shit." He shook it off, and then leaned on the nearby maple tree for support. Even with some food in his belly, the Qunari liquor was damn strong.

"Yeah, and maybe I'll be the first to succeed. What's there to lose?" Geralt sniffed. "Ill be out here until whatever this is either kills me or blows over. You're welcome to linger."