~ You're the Last Romanticist Left ~

The Guardian of Soulmates takes one look at the sorceress who has entered its forest and lets out an even deeper sigh than the last time it saw her.

"Already?" the creature says, sounding entirely exasperated. "You've been crowned for less than a minute, and you don't even want to give your soulmate a chance?"

Yennefer's response is an immediate "No."

She is still of the opinion that her real soulmate should be anyone other than Geralt.

The Guardian, however, seems reluctant to do its duty and cut her loose from the witcher.

"Look," the creature says. "I think maybe you should take up your concerns with Melitele herself before you throw your soulmate bond away like yesterday's garbage, okay?"

Yennefer, of course, is stubborn enough not to let anyone talk her out a her decision once she's made it, but the idea of speaking directly to a goddess is intriguing, to say the least...

Jaskier reinvents himself as Dandelion.

He has new clothes made, and adds a little hat with a jaunty feather on it to his outfit.

He considers buying a new lute, but in the end decides against it. The elven lute that Filavandrel gifted him is the finest instrument he's ever owned, and it would be a shame to replace it just to spite his erstwhile soulmate.

He idly strums the lute and whisper-sings the lyrics of a song that he'll never play for a human audience.

"You tried," he sings, "you tried.
I was just along for the ride.
But the witcher's stubborn pride
tied a sorceress to his side.

And she tried, she tried
to fix what had died,
but she didn't know why
her efforts went all awry."

He stops there. He doesn't think he can put into the words the horror of having his soulmate bond severed against his will, and the weeks he'd spent recovering from abject heartbreak in Melitele's temple. He's not sure whether it would be considered sacrilege to directly address the goddess in song, but his most recent composition isn't something meant for the stage. It's a private prayer.

The final verse, when he finds the right phrasing, will be a request that his next soulmate (should he ever find one) at the very least treat him kindly.

"Why would you make Geralt my soulmate?" Yennefer rails at Melitele. "That was fake! My real soulmate should be someone else."

"Do you really want to break the bond without even giving him a chance? Soulmate bonds broken by the Guardian can't be restored."

That answers another question which Yennefer hasn't yet asked: the reason why Jaskier and Geralt weren't each other's soulmates anymore even after the djinn bond was broken.

She changes tack and asks, "Isn't there someone else out there who would make a better soulmate for Geralt than me?"

"You're it," the goddess says. "Geralt doesn't get another soulmate after you. He's already been given three chances. After the first one, I was more careful about who I chose for him. I gave him a beautiful, loyal, charismatic soulmate who improved his reputation and would have followed him to the ends of the earth, and Geralt threw all of that away for a person of his own choosing."

Her. Yennefer. Geralt had picked her.

Yennefer still isn't satisfied with the answers she's receiving.

"And if I still say I want the bond broken, what will happen?"

"To Geralt, or to you?"

"Both."

"You'll find someone, someday, and you'll say to yourself 'Melitele, I want that one,' and you may be saying it more to yourself than to me, but I'll hear you. And that person will be your soulmate. As for Geralt... well. He'll just have to learn how to care for others properly if he wants to have a relationship."

Left unspoken is the fact that Geralt doesn't feel like he deserves to have anyone love him. Witchers have that beaten out of them during their formative years. Historically, witchers have been known to abandon their soulmates without so much as a backward glance.

Melitele tilts her head to one side as she muses aloud, "Perhaps I should put the two of you in towers and let you pine for each other for a millennium."

"Don't you think that's a little... I mean, there's no reason to go locking people in towers for a thousand years," Yennefer protests.

"It worked for your mentor." While Yennefer is puzzling out the implications of that, Melitele continues: "You could be the next Rectoress of Aretuza."

"I'm pretty sure Tissaia already has someone else in mind as her successor."

"Oh, but she'd give you the job if you made noises about wanting it. You always were her favorite student."

Emhyr doesn't question the validity of Cahir's claim that Ciri is dead. He sees the blackened remains of the flower crown, and the anguish lurking in the young man's eyes.

He knows what it's like to lose a soulmate.

He does not consider for even a moment that it's possible his daughter might still be alive. His plans for conquering the rest of the Continent aren't significantly changed by the loss of his only child, although not having a direct heir will complicate the succession of the throne in the future.

"I thought about making Anica your soulmate, but I figured it would be better to let your relationship with Istredd run its natural course."

"Yeah, well... Anica got turned into an eel, so..."

"Your mentor is more sentimental than you think. She wouldn't have taken your soulmate away from you."

Lambert is the only wolf left without a flower crown. For the first time in his life he's starting to wonder who his soulmate could be, when he's going to find them, and if the two of them will be happy together. Sure, Geralt is really going through some shit with his whole soulmate situation, but Eskel and Vesemir both seem to have settled down happily with theirs.

"You know, they always told us 'No one wants a witcher for a soulmate. Your soulmate will better off without you.' Hell, even Vesemir repeated that shit to us, and he knew who his soulmate was the whole time!"

Eskel patiently listens to his brother's rant before replying, "Yeah, and he believed it, too. They met once and then didn't have anything to do with each other for centuries. He only got in touch with her recently, when we were looking into the rumors about the Monster That Kills Your Soulmate."

The conversation between Yennefer and Melitele goes around and around in circles (and Tissaia's name is brought into it often enough that it makes Yennefer uncomfortable on a level she doesn't quite understand), until the goddess finally gets to the heart of the matter.

"Why do you not want Geralt?"

The first answer that rises to mind is because of the djinn bond, but they've already been over that point several times and she understands the role it played in the goddess deciding that Geralt and Yennefer should be soulmates.

"It's not fair that he got to decide for himself who he wanted, and I don't."

"Didn't you?" Melitele asks slowly, tilting her head as she regards the sorceress curiously. "When he carried his dying soulmate into your lair, when he brought you the apple juice, did your heart not cry out 'I want this one'?"

~end~