A/N: Written for a Tumblr request of Geralt helping Yen through night terrors. Set in my canon where Geralt and Yen have retired in Toussaint after the events of Blood and Wine, though sometimes both of them suffer nightmares of the pogrom in Rivia (and Stygga Castle, and the Wild Hunt, though that's a different story). Title from the song "Don't Let Me Go" by Raign. References to the short stories "The Last Wish" and "Something More".
"I can hear your heartbeat. It's very slow. Can you control how much adrenaline you secrete? Oh, forgive my professional curiosity. Apparently, you're touchy about the qualities of your own body." - Yennefer of Vengerberg, "The Last Wish"
Blood. Too much of it. Everywhere.
Blood coating her hands. Blood gushing in rivers to the ground. Blood gurgling in his throat.
"Geralt!"
His fingers claw at his chest and she tries to pry them away, lay her own hands upon the wound and summon the energy for a spell, but it's no use. She's barren. She has no life to give to save him. Not even her own.
"Geralt, no. Please..."
It won't keep her from trying. She'll pour her life away to join his drenching the dirt red if it only means he has a chance, that maybe there's a way she can heal him, but already Yennefer knows that she can't.
He's dying, and she's watching it happen right in front of her. The light is fading from those golden eyes, the strength seeping from his body, and that heartbeat—his once steady, powerful heartbeat, is slowing...slowing...slowing…
...to nothing.
"Yen!"
Yennefer wakes with a start. A cry of anguish spills from her throat, sweat drenching her skin as the panic and terror refuses to relinquish its grip. Her body trembles, and for a horrible, too-long moment she feels that she's still there back in Rivia, watching the life drain out of Geralt's body while her own, weakening, isn't far behind.
It takes altogether too long for her to become aware of the voice calling her name, the strong arms wrapped tight around her and the warm chest she's being cradled against.
She blinks, twists her neck to look up. "Geralt?"
The pale moonlight streaming in through the window casts shadows over his features, but those cat's eyes are bright in the darkness. They blaze with life as he peers down at her, cups her face, strokes her hair. His expression is anxious and pained and solemn. "Yen. I'm here."
She lets out a breath, stares back at him with violet eyes glistening, then tucks her head against his chest and grounds herself in the feel of his warm embrace and the comforting beat of his heart.
"Geralt, I saw…"
"I know." He stops her before she has to say it out loud, but something in his chest clenches as he remembers all too vividly the pogrom and the pitchfork, Yennefer beside him as he'd bled out into the dirt. He still has nightmares of it, too. "It's over. Rivia was a long time ago. It's just a dream."
He hushes her as he holds her tight against his chest, and Yennefer closes her eyes and breathes him in. He smells like leather and smoke and the light fragrance of ripened grapes from the hours he's spent tending to the vineyard. It's the scent of home.
"I'm alive, Yen," Geralt murmurs softly. "We both are. Listen."
Yennefer does. She hears the slow, powerful thumping of his heart beneath her ear, and tries not to think of the cold, unfeeling tine of the pitchfork that had once brutally punctured it.
His heart ought to have stopped back then for good, but it hadn't. Ciri's magic had healed him and given him back to her, and Yennefer does all she can to remember that gift and treasure it.
Geralt is alive, right here beside her. She reads his thoughts as he opens his mind and welcomes her in.
Geralt thinks of pleasant things. He remembers in vivid detail lazy afternoon walks in the Toussaint sunshine, carefree smiles and their hands entwined together. Recalls the smell of bonfire smoke and a long ago Belleteyn night making love under a blanket of stars. Remembers her head on his shoulder, cuddling against the chill on the balcony at Kaer Morhen as they watch the sunrise over the snow-dusted mountains.
Yennefer breathes in time with him, losing herself to the memories and the feel of him so unmistakably alive.
"I can hear your heartbeat," she whispers after a while, just as she had that first time, many years ago.
Geralt smiles. He leans down to press a kiss to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of lilac and gooseberries. "Still slow?"
"Mmm. And strong. I don't think I ever told you how beautiful it is."
"You didn't need to. Don't need to read your mind, Yen. You always make your feelings quite clear."
He's not wrong. Still, part of her wishes she had said it. "Geralt?"
"Mm?"
"Don't ever let it stop."
That's beyond his control. Not that it matters. He doesn't intend to put her through an ordeal like Rivia ever again.
"Never."