Ok, I know I keep saying things'll pick up but "drunk Geralt" and "adorable mother-daughter interactions" were kind of in my head and that shit's hard to pass up. This chapter is basically semi-related vignettes, but they're all important. There's a couple things I want to mention here, but I'll talk about one in the end note: there are going to be some adaptations of Book Things in here. Maybe some references to the games too, but mostly the books. I want to mention it because those chapters might take a bit longer to write because I'll be rereading things, etc. I'll make posts if that's going to happen so no one gets caught off guard lol. For now, enjoy this…whatever this is! –Bel
A Wolf Among Lilacs
Part One: Longing/Regret
Chapter Five: All Just Background Noise
"I met her shortly after her official admission to Aretuza," Regis said, pausing to take another drink. They'd made their way back to Geralt's apartment with several bottles of Regis's famous mandrake hooch, deciding that it would be best because he was the only one without a roommate to annoy. It had made sense in theory—but in hindsight, it probably would've been better to have someone to keep them in check. Dandelion had already thrown up twice, and was sprawled out on the floor singing quietly to himself and occasionally mumbling "that's a good idea…I should write that down" to himself without actually writing any of his good ideas down. Geralt and Regis sat on the couch. Geralt's entire body felt heavy and his head was tipped back so he was staring at the ceiling because if he tried to look at anything that moved, it would end badly. So he didn't look at Regis as he spoke, but nodded as much as he was able.
"She must have been…oh, thirteen or so at the time," he continued. He'd probably drunk a whole bottle of the stuff on his own and wasn't showing even a single sign of discomfort; though, Geralt thought, it only made sense for him to have a stronger constitution than the rest of them. "Not an uncommon age for incoming students—at the younger end of the spectrum, but not uncommon—but under unusual circumstances, to say the least. Hovering on the brink of death, she was, for more reasons than one. Well, even with proper treatment it would've taken time to reverse what had been done to her, and then on top of that she—well, never mind. But the corrective magic was taking its toll on her; they couldn't use more of it to help her heal after the fact. So they brought me in." He finished off his glass and set it on the coffee table with a clink. "As far as working together in a professional capacity, that happened a few years later, when she contacted me personally about a project. I've been helping her with it ever since. I daresay it almost feels like my own project now," he laughed.
Geralt tipped his head to the side so he could look at Regis. The small motion made him dizzy and he dug his nails into his thighs to try and distract himself. "Would she like that you're telling me all this?"
"Probably not, but someone had to." He sighed, poured himself another drink. "Don't think I didn't notice you've no knowledge of her. And there's much to tell. She talks around things, but it doesn't seem right that you don't know at least a little. You do share a daughter, after all."
"I've noticed," he replied dryly. "Are you saying you will talk about it?"
"Well…" In his hesitation Geralt found his answer, but Regis continued nonetheless. "I'll tell you what I can tell you, but that's not much. A lot of it is of the extremely personal variety. I only know most of it from direct involvement." Geralt felt Regis take his glass out of his hand, refill it, and put it back. He didn't respond right away. Instead he thought about Yennefer. The inky waterfall of her hair against her skin, violet irises under eyelashes the color of soot, the noticeable dip of her waist, which he'd seen accentuated by the hasty way she tied her robe days before. No, he didn't have any problem believing she had something to hide. He didn't know a single sorceress who came from a happy life, except perhaps Triss, who always said she was lucky compared to most of her peers. Still, it was odd that it would be talked around even now. "Is it recent?"
"In the grand scheme of a mage's life? Very." Against his better judgement, Geralt tipped his head forward and downed the contents of his newly-refilled glass in one go. Regis smiled a little and raised his own as he continued. "In the grand scheme, she's younger than you think."
"So when did she stop aging?"
"Oh, I think she was about twenty-seven or so."
"And how old is she now?"
His smile widened as Dandelion sang choppily in the background, and took another drink. He wasn't going to respond, Geralt knew, and frankly he felt a bit ridiculous for asking, though he wasn't sure how much control he still had over what came out of his mouth.
"You asked earlier," Regis said after a few moments, "what I've been doing these past few years. I didn't answer earlier, but I suppose there's no harm in telling you now."
When Geralt looked back, Regis's expression was drawn, upset. He wished he hadn't asked. "There was…an incident, down in Toussaint. A dear friend of mine went on…a rampage, so to speak. Murdered several people. Attacked Beauclair, not without help. I went down to try and stop him. Things did settle down, got under control, but the damage had already been done. The duchess's sister is dead."
Geralt sat up straight and looked over, shocked. Despite being relatively cut off from the rest of the world during his time on the Path, he still should've heard about something of this magnitude. "How long ago did this happen?"
"Two years. They've kept it under wraps, as much as was possible at the time. I've been here ever since. I fought him—I had to, to get him to stand down. Others…didn't take kindly to that."
He filled his glass again, and frowned when the bottle came up empty. "It's true, I didn't kill him, but it was enough to anger them. So I fled here. Detlaff found me later, of his own accord. He's staying here as well, though I couldn't tell you why. I did threaten to kill him, after all."
Dandelion groaned loudly. Geralt heard him stagger into the bathroom, retch for a third time. He made a note to himself to make Dandelion clean it up tomorrow. "Sounds like a charming guy."
"Oh, very." He laughed a little, and unlike what he'd heard out of Yennefer earlier it sounded genuine, despite the look on his face. "Actually, I think you'd get along quite well. He also likes to brood."
"Hey!" He sat straight up again, prepared to defend himself, only to slump down immediately when it made his stomach churn. "I don't brood!"
"Yes you do!" Dandelion yelled from the open door, his voice slurred. "You've been brooding all day!"
"I'm annoyed because no one's telling me anything. There's a difference."
Regis was still laughing. The sound rocked back and forth in his ears. Unlike Dandelion, he could hold his liquor, but he was going to be miserable tomorrow, he already knew. "If you asked, they'd tell you," Regis said, and it was clear who he was talking about. "But I'll offer you some advice: don't ask about the research again, Geralt. And don't, for the love of the gods, ask her why she's doing it."
~oOo~
"You gonna clean that off anytime soon?" Triss set a glass of water on the coffee table in front of her and looked over at the large round chair in the corner where Yennefer sat, covered in a blanket and staring at the writing still on her arm. She'd transferred all of it onto paper hours ago, the original and her corrected version, but left the ink on her skin untouched. Triss had been trying not to say anything—especially after the argument they had earlier—but she was starting to worry. She feared being in an academic setting wouldn't be good for Yenna, who didn't know how to do anything besides work herself too hard. Everyone here would push her. She was a department head on top of that, had been brought in specifically by the Academy, and was expected to produce a substantial body of research. The last thing she needed was to be pushed.
"Mmm. Later tonight, perhaps." She tilted her arm, letting the lamplight slide over the pen. "He might be onto something here."
"What could he have possibly turned up that you haven't already tried?" she asked, exasperated, as she sank back into the old sagging couch. The air smelled faintly of lilac and gooseberries and fresh paint. Yenna didn't look at her. "It's been eleven years," she murmured. She hadn't wanted her voice to crack. But it did.
"Eleven years," Yennefer repeated, and though she stayed perfectly still, her tone had softened. "A blink of an eye in a mage's life."
"But a long time in yours."
She hummed softly in response, then fell silent. After a few minutes Triss picked up the remote and turned the TV on, unable to stand it. It had always been like this between them. She had the feeling she knew Yenna better than anyone else, but she still couldn't understand her fixation on the research. Things had happened. They were in the past. But Yenna had always had difficulty moving on.
I worry about you, Triss thought very loudly in an effort to make sure she would hear. Yenna sighed, so faint Triss didn't know whether or not she'd imagined it.
"I know." Yennefer closed her hand around her wrist, covering some of the ink. She still seemed intent on not meeting Triss's eyes, though her gaze had shifted to a spot on the wall, close enough that anyone else would've thought they were looking at each other. "But you don't have to."
Her dark hair had fallen from behind her ear to cover most of her face, and Triss felt in her bones that the conversation was over, that if she tried to press further she wasn't going to get anywhere. Her throat closed up around her protests. No matter how insistently she voiced them, Yenna wouldn't listen.
~oOo~
Ciri woke in a cold sweat, trying to hold back the strangled scream lurking somewhere on the roof of her mouth. It took a moment for the sleep to clear from her eyes, for her to realize where she was—a bed. An apartment. A city. Not the middle of nowhere. Not there.
If she concentrated hard enough she could still feel the shards of broken glass embedded in her arms, blood trickling hot down her fingers. She could hear the sirens, could smell smoke, antiseptic. The beating of Yennefer's heart as Ciri cried into her shoulder. The quiet cadence of her voice. Her scent.
Without stopping to think about it too much, Ciri rolled out of bed, standing on shaky legs as she wrapped a blanket around herself, and grabbed the spare key from the nightstand. She prayed Triss wouldn't hear her creeping through the living room, the quiet click of the deadbolt, her fumbling as she unlocked the door on the other side of the landing. She was glad she'd brought the blanket when the cold air enveloped her, though she supposed she'd be getting back under the covers soon enough.
Yennefer's bedroom door was shut, but it opened easily under her hand. The familiar hum of the white noise machine immediately helped to calm her restless heartbeat, and the dim light she'd left on in the corner illuminated where she lay, only half of her face visible above the black-and-white quilt. Yennefer hated sleeping in the dark. Carefully as she could, Ciri lifted the quilt and snuck her way under it, settling down on the free side of the bed. There wasn't much room, she had to pull her legs up to comfortably fit, but after a minute or two of hesitant shifting she was satisfied she hadn't woken Yennefer up—until she turned her head to the side and saw the light reflected in a pair of very open eyes.
"Dammit," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Thought I had it that time."
"You're going to have to try harder than that." Even thick with sleep, her voice had a certain musicality to it, a way of sounding blithe even when she wasn't. And she couldn't have been—she had to know why Ciri was there, though she didn't say anything about it. After the first few times, Ciri had asked her not to. Instead her hand crept over and found Yennefer's, squeezing her thin fingers tightly. She looked concerned—Ciri could see the furrows in her brow—but all she said was "You should've been there today, when all of us were there."
"Oh yeah?" Ciri exhaled softly in relief. She hadn't wanted to be the one to broach another topic. "What happened? What do you think of Geralt?"
"Hmm." Yennefer bit her lip, looked at a spot above Ciri's head. "He's…well. I would've been fine with him being your father, if that's what you're asking."
"You—no! That's definitely not what I wanted to know!" She let out a choked laugh, all too conscious of the fact that they weren't alone in the apartment, and she didn't want to cause another in the series of fights with Keira that had been going on for days. Yennefer was laughing too, her face pressed halfway into the pillow, eyes closed.
"There was a time I never thought I'd be able to get you to laugh." The words came out of Ciri's mouth before she had a chance to think about them, and she turned her gaze away as Yennefer looked at her, though she could still feel her stare.
"So did I," she said after a very long time. Her voice was quieter, and Ciri could tell she was hovering again on the edge of sleep. "Besides, when we first met…at Ellander…you didn't even like me."
She waited a few minutes, expecting there to be more to the thought, but it became clear enough that Yennefer had fallen back asleep, which, when they first met, she would never have done in Ciri's company. She felt something twist in her chest at the thought of her and Yennefer and Geralt, all in the same place for the first time. There was a rightness about it, one that she suspected neither of them had yet seen.
"You're right," she murmured, pulling the blankets up to her chin as she stared at the light, flickering in the corner. "I didn't."
EDIT: if you're reading this for the first time, now would be a good time to stop and read the first one-shot, "A Face to Call Home," before returning to this. It was written to go after this chapter, since it expands on Yennefer and Ciri's relationship.
Some things I would like to put forth for your consideration: 1. Regis and Detlaff as roommates, 2. Regis and Small Yen, and 3. Yen being comfortable with sleeping around Ciri? this chapter may be pointless but at least it's cute
The other thing I wanted to mention here is the fact that this is labelled part of a series. There's not going to be a sequel or anything, but I'm planning on doing a few one-shots after certain chapters/plot points to fill out backstory (mostly for Yen, because god knows she's not going to say anything about it). I bring it up now because I'm currently in the process of writing one. I'd like to have it up before the next chapter, but I'm not sure yet how long it's going to be - at the very latest, it'll be up next Friday!
