So this is the last chapter of part 1 and also probably the most DramaticTM chapter to date; things are really going to pick up after this so there won't be much slow stuff, at least until the end of part 2. There are a couple things I've pointed out before (n various responses to asks, etc.) that are important that make a comeback here, so there's that. HUGE thanks to Eileniessa and a few people on twitter for reading this ahead of time and giving me thoughts that were literally more coherent than my own (also y'all should follow me on twitter sometimes i post spoilers) But anyway, this is one of the first scenes I fully had in my head when I first got this idea and I think it turned out pretty well, so I hope y'all like it! –Bel

A Wolf Among Lilacs
Part One: Longing/Regret
Chapter Seventeen: Nothing Safe is Worth the Drive

The room was already hot enough that steam had begun to condense on the mirror by the time she shut the door behind her. She set the small pile of clothes on the counter, slowly peeled away the bandages beneath her ribcage. The stitches in the cuts under them had dissolved, but the wounds were still angry and red, standing out starkly against her pale hipbones. She'd have to spend hours the next day getting rid of them, but for now, they would have to stay. For now, she had more immediate, pressing concerns.

She drew in a sharp breath as she stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed. The water was, perhaps, a bit hotter than it needed to be, and within a few minutes it had already begun to carve paths down her skin that she knew would burn when she got out. She wrapped her arms around herself and stood, staring down at the evidence of her mistakes, utterly alone.

She could call Regis. Out of everyone, he would be the most likely to listen and not judge. But he'd also made it clear how he felt about her making these decisions, that he thought it was high time she took a break from this research and moved on to something less painful, something without so many memories attached to it. It was likely that, soon enough, he'd stop helping her entirely. No, if she wanted help without guilt, she couldn't call Regis.

She could call Triss. Triss had already proven time and time again that she was willing to put aside her own feelings in order to be there for her. She'd been doing it for years. But Triss had ulterior motives that she wouldn't let go of, and inviting her here would inevitably lead to one thing or another—things she didn't think she could handle in this situation. No, if she wanted help without sadness, she couldn't call Triss.

The idea of saying even the slightest thing to Val, she rejected immediately. He'd already made it incredibly obvious how he felt about this, and some part of her considered it a miracle that he hadn't tried harder to talk her out of it. This time had felt different—this time he'd let her off suspiciously easy, though if things had gone the way she planned, he wouldn't ever know she'd done it anyway. He didn't need to. And if she wanted any kind of help at all, she couldn't call Val.

Her breath caught in her throat as she shifted her weight, tugging at the fresh scars and reminding her far too viscerally of old ones. She splayed her hand against the tile wall, noticing for the first time how her ring was just a bit too loose around her finger, which she was sure it hadn't been days before. Everything felt wrong, everything felt off-balance. She tried to breathe deeply but the motion pulled at the skin and she ended up half-gasping as her fingers curled, seeking purchase she knew she wouldn't find.

She could call Philippa. It was the same thing she'd done that first day—at the time, she'd been the only person she trusted enough to tell. (Where else would she have turned, she thought bitterly, at Aretuza, with a secret like that?) Philippa would listen, and she would do so at least somewhat sympathetically, but she'd also never had a problem telling her that she thought her choices were the wrong ones. She'd done it eleven years ago, and she'd do it now, were she here. And with that would come a lecture on how this would get her nowhere. She knew, deep down, that this was her way of caring, of trying to make sure she was happy, but if she wanted help without anger, she couldn't call Philippa.

She could…

She could call Geralt. She'd be lying if she said the thought hadn't crossed her mind more than once, though it had never come on quite as strongly as it did then. He'd already proven himself willing to listen without judgement—he'd proven far more than that. He also, she reminded herself, didn't know the reason she had done this, and she didn't know whether or not she could trust him with that. There was a high chance he would jump to conclusions about what it meant in regards to her relationship with Ciri (and he should—how was he to know the thought was agonizing to her?), and it seemed she'd only just gotten on his good side. But there was something about him that made her feel like he was trustworthy, though the less he became a stranger, the more she felt she had to pull away.

Yes, she could. But she wouldn't.

The places where the water hit her skin were starting to go numb and there was an empty space in her, one she knew she wouldn't be able to fill no matter how hard she tried. She knew, though she still couldn't figure out why it hurt so much after all this time. But she'd have to bear it alone, at least tonight. She inhaled deep, held her breath, stuck her head under the water so trails of it dripped down her face, scalding. She couldn't cry. She wouldn't let herself. This was good enough. It had to be.

~oOo~

"Geralt." Ciri sat up straighter on the sagging couch, looked at him intensely. "I'm telling you this as someone who loves you, so don't get all defensive. But…you're a fucking idiot."

He sighed and looked down at his hands, fingers laced together in midair, elbows on his knees. He'd been sitting like that the whole time; for some reason, the idea of looking at her as he relayed the events of the past few days made him uncomfortable, though he couldn't pinpoint why that was. It was apparent she already knew what was going on, or, at least, he surmised that much from the fact that she hadn't been stopping him to ask questions every few seconds. He left out as many details as he possibly could, focusing only on the major events and the way Yennefer had been acting on the drive back. This was the first time he'd looked at Ciri since he finished the story, but her expression had been so incredulous that he almost immediately looked back down.

"Do you really think it's a good idea to leave her alone like that?" she continued, flipping her hair back behind her shoulders. She must have been sleeping before he knocked—she almost never wore it loose otherwise. "If she was really acting the way you're describing, even that dumbass fiancé of hers would have known something's wrong."

"I know." He tried to keep his voice level, but the idea that something could be happening, now, because he hadn't insisted on staying with her, was setting him on edge. "But what else was I supposed to do? Just walk right in? We're not exactly close."

"She likes you more than you think." When he looked back up again Ciri had raised an eyebrow, looking at him in a manner that all but reinforced what she'd said moments ago. Of course, if anyone would be able to tell something like that, it would be her; he could always hear, when she talked about the times they'd stayed together, how close they were, and he himself had found that the more time he spent around Yennefer, the easier she became to read, though some of her reactions still remained a mystery to him. "And she clearly trusts you—look at what just happened."

"Right. Maybe she does." Ciri rolled her eyes at the word maybe, but kept quiet and let him continue. "But that still doesn't change the fact that I don't know what any of this is about, much less how to bring it up to her without her immediately shutting me down." Which was all she'd been doing for the past day, though he was no longer angry at her over it, just concerned.

"You don't need to know. And she probably wouldn't tell you anyway. All I'm saying is I don't want her to be alone. And I don't think you do either."

She looked at him penetratingly until he finally gave a short, sharp nod, then she was up, disappearing into her bedroom and leaving the door swinging behind her. He heard what sounded like a drawer opening, heard her rummaging around, and she returned with something clutched in her fist. She sat back down heavily and grabbed his hand with her own, forcing his fingers open.

"This," she said as she folded the object in them, "is a key to her apartment. And you're going to go over there right now and make sure she's okay."

"Ciri, I don't think—"

"Don't think about it." She huffed and stood again, pulling the door open and gesturing across the small landing. "Just go. Before I go myself and tell her everything you just told me."

He looked down at the key, which was strikingly similar to the one he'd used to get into her lab what had to have been a week ago at most, though it felt like years. The same silver key ring, the same chain. He wasn't quite sure what he was afraid of, only that the worry hadn't left him since they pulled out of the parking garage in Novigrad. It would be easier, he thought, to just ignore the whole thing—he couldn't help but feel that she would be fine, she was resilient enough to handle something like this—but Ciri was looking at him so insistently and the guilt gnawing at him told him he would regret staying out of it. So he stood resignedly, ignoring her triumphant grin (a familiar one, if he stopped to think about it), and stepped out onto the landing. She closed her door behind him the second he'd crossed the threshold, like she was trying to stop him from changing his mind, though he knew he was already in too deep to go back.

The lock on Yennefer's door gave way easily, and the apartment was dark when he stepped inside, nearly spotless except for her bag, which was sitting open on the dining room table. As with the last time he'd been there at the same time as her, the bathroom door was closed, and he could hear the shower running, though it shut off a moment later, and he was suddenly worried she'd heard him come in, that she would be angry. But as minutes passed, stretching on far too long, he relaxed more and more. He found his eyes drawn back to the shelf of framed photos he'd been looking at the first time they met, and wandered over to it. Nothing had changed since the last time he'd seen it, but this time he focused less on the others in the pictures and more on her—the details of her face, her body, the expression he'd seen her wear so many times, a quarter of a smile. Something in his chest tightened when he looked at her, something that made his breath short in ways he didn't want to think about.

The door opened. He heard her before he saw her, because it took him a few seconds to work up the nerve to look over. He immediately wished he hadn't. Her hair, still slightly damp, fell loose around her shoulders, across the white sweater she was wearing, stopping several inches above what he hoped were just very short shorts, though he knew better than to think that was actually the case. Her black socks stopped just over her knees and he lingered, perhaps, a little too long on the skin above them, flushed from the hot water. Her face was flushed, too, and she looked surprised to see him there, though there was something else in her gaze, in the part of her lips.

"It seems," she said after a moment, her voice unsteady, "that you have a habit of getting into places that you shouldn't be."

"Not sure what you're talking about." He held up the key. "I got in through the door, like everyone else."

Yennefer swore quietly, and he thought he heard her mumble Ciri's name. "Of course you did. Well, there's no reason for you to be here. I'm home. I'm safe. You aren't needed anymore."

He was startled by the way she seemed to take offense at his very presence—she'd been more than tolerant of him the past few days, to the point where he'd started to get the impression she actually wanted him there. He'd thought things were starting to settle down between them, fall into something that could even be considered normal, given the circumstances. He let out a breath, shoved the key in his pocket, slowly made his way towards the door as she passed him to sit down on the couch, stretching her legs out in front of her. Her fingers gripped the arm tightly, and he couldn't help the sudden hope that she didn't actually want him to go.

"Right. Well." He turned away from her. The silence curled around his lungs, stole the breath from him. He'd known this would be a mistake. "I'll see you around, then." When she didn't respond, he clenched one hand in a fist to still its shaking, reached for the doorknob with the other.

"Geralt."

He stopped. Turned back to her slowly. She was looking at him, but not quite at him, and he'd never before seen someone so visibly try to force back their own pride. There was nothing in her posture indicating a struggle, but he could see it in her eyes—a moment later, when she bit her lip. She met his gaze, eventually, despite all it seemed to cost her. "Would you stay?"

His throat, he felt, had dried out completely, and he nodded instead of answering out loud. He didn't know what had caused her to change her mind so quickly, but he wasn't going to argue with her about it. After pausing briefly to take off his shoes and drop the key on the table, he sat down next to her. There was a space between them, a foot or so that felt at once much too large and stiflingly small. He wondered if she could even see him well—it was dark enough that most people without his enhanced senses would only be able to make out a blurry outline. It appeared that she had a solution for that, though; she picked up the remote and turned on the television, turning the volume down so only the light flickered over them. She didn't seem much interested in actually watching it, and he didn't either. So they sat in silence.

There was a tension in the air between them, one that felt far different from what had been there the first time, though it wasn't quite uncomfortable. They didn't talk. He didn't feel like he needed to say anything, at least for a while. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, studied her silhouette, and every once in a while he would catch her looking back at him. She didn't look away as quickly as she might have once; in fact, several times she would stare back, the corner of her mouth turned up, some near-emotion there she wouldn't fully express.

He wasn't sure quite how it happened. The most likely explanation was that their occasional shifting was bringing them physically closer to each other. But over the minutes that stretched out like hours, the gap between them shrunk. They ended up right next to each other, his arm brushing against hers, and he hoped he couldn't feel the sudden tension in him as the memory of the last time they'd been this close came flooding back. A few minutes later, she sighed softly and laid her head on his shoulder.

"Geralt?" He grunted quietly in response. He didn't think he'd be able to say anything if he tried. She didn't respond for a moment—and then, barely audible, "Distract me. Please."

He could immediately think of a million ways he'd want to do such a thing, but he doubted she'd care for any of them. He'd have to come up with something else. "Heard about the time Ciri and I went ice skating?"

She huffed out a breath that he thought might have contained a laugh somewhere in it, though it was hard to tell without being able to look at her. "No. Not that I recall."

"One of the first winters she trained at Kaer Morhen." He realized a few seconds into the story that telling it was going to make him look like an idiot, but he couldn't bring himself to care. "Couple months in, she started complaining I was too harsh a teacher. Brushed it off at first. Then she asked me to go skating with her. Didn't really want to. I'd never been before. But she insisted."

He took a few seconds to breathe, and he felt her tilt her head up slightly, though they still couldn't look at each other, the angle was all wrong. "Soon as we hit the ice, she started skating circles around me, hollering No, not like that! Footwork! One, then the other! Crossover! No, wrong! Brake with the heel of your skate, not the toes!"

She was laughing—or, at least, he hoped she was; the sound was so soft and breathy that he couldn't be sure. "Needless to say, from then on…" He trailed off. A moment later, she pulled away, turned to face him, propping her head on her hand. She looked at him for a long time and didn't say anything.

"She really cares about you, you know," she finally said. "It's easy to tell. You were practically all she talked about when we stayed in Ellander." She bit her lip, and he let her hesitate. He got the feeling these displays didn't happen often.

"What I'm trying to say is…thank you. For taking such good care of her." It almost sounded like she was choked up; he could hear the slight change in her voice, one he wouldn't have been able to pick up on months ago. Any guilt over his doubts as to whether or not she truly cared suddenly increased tenfold, because it was obvious now that she did.

"I should be the one saying that to you," he confessed. He'd been thinking it for some time now, though he'd doubted he'd ever get to voice it. "You've done a lot for her that I wouldn't have been able to do." Before he'd even finished the sentence she was shaking her head sadly, but he didn't let her interrupt. "You should hear the way she talks about you."

"I'm not sure I want to." She laughed, strained, and tilted her head. "There are a large number of terrible things I have no doubt she's said about me. We haven't always gotten along."

He tried to hold her gaze, and it seemed to be working, though her eyes flicked away from him and back every few seconds. "If she has, I haven't heard any of them," he said gravely. "There's only been good things."

There was a smile trying to force its way out of her, and he hated watching it, hated the way she pulled it back in. She tilted her head to the side in such a way that her hair fell to partially cover her face, and before he'd even realized he was doing it his hand moved to brush it back, tuck it behind her ear. Once his thoughts caught up to his actions he froze there, his hand halfway cupping her jaw, the closest they'd been. Their stares locked and for a moment he couldn't think, couldn't breathe, as her eyes moved slowly down to his mouth and back again.

In the end, he wasn't sure which of them leaned in first. All he knew was that she kissed like she was trying to swallow him whole and, in that moment, he would've let her.

Gods, he couldn't have even said how long he'd been wanting it—the pressure of her lips soft against his, her hands in his hair and there was a hunger about it, like maybe, just maybe, she'd been wanting it too. She was restless, fingers running across his jaw, his neck, the front of his shirt, never once breaking contact with him. He only barely registered the fact that they were slipping down until she laid half on him and the weight of her, however slight, overrode any lingering reservations he might have had. His free hand slipped under her sweater to press against the bare skin at the small of her back; he brought his leg up between hers and swallowed the noise she made.

A moment later they pulled back to breathe, foreheads still pressed together, lips still brushing, and though his ability to form a coherent thought was somewhat clouded, he knew he had to try, had to address this before things went any further because there was so much wrong with it, but he never wanted to stop, and he had to assume by the way she'd responded that she didn't either. "Yennefer—"

"Don't say anything, please," she murmured, and kissed him again.

~oOo~

He dreamt about Ciri often. It wasn't something he liked to acknowledge and had never admitted to anyone else, but ever since that day when she ran from Aretuza he couldn't shake the thoughts that dogged him, the fear that something terrible would happen and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. The dreams didn't come every night, but that night was one of them, and he jolted awake in a cold sweat, trying to push away the crowd of indiscernible terrors that lingered in the back of his mind. The fear was made worse by the fact that, initially, he wasn't quite sure where he was, but after a moment, the unfamiliar surroundings began to fall into place, and he remembered.

In the end, she had been the one who pushed him away, only a few minutes later. She whispered those words to him and he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, barely stopping even to breathe after that first interruption. Her mouth fit against his in the most dizzyingly perfect way, and he'd wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the night drowning in her, in every way he could, but his own carelessness had cut the thing short. His fingers, which had been wandering her body, brushed against one of the scars on her stomach and she pulled back incredibly suddenly, nearly gasping with the intensity of her breathing, opening her eyes only after another minute had passed. When he tried to apologize she waved the words away, and cut off his every attempt to speak after that. But she didn't, he noticed with painful clarity, separate herself from him completely; she laid down next to him, her forehead against his shoulder in a manner that reminded him of how they'd been the night before. He didn't want to push her, so he said nothing. Words wouldn't have done much, anyway.

After his heart had settled down to a considerably more normal rhythm, he chanced a look over his shoulder, at the end of the couch behind him, and she was there, sleeping, curled in on herself. He felt something constrict in his chest at the sight of her, so different from the last time he'd seen her sleep, far less worried-looking. He wished he could just close his eyes again and stay there, but he knew he wouldn't fall back asleep, not after everything that had happened, not after the dream. No, he had to go, but the longer he looked at her, the worse he felt about leaving her alone. There had to be something he could do, and after a moment he figured out what it was.

~oOo~

Ciri's key was missing. Triss figured this out early in the morning when she went to look for it and found the nightstand drawer empty. Triss herself didn't have a key, so she resorted to unlocking the door to Yenna's apartment magically and hoping she wouldn't be too terribly mad when she realized what she'd done. She stopped short when, in the living room, she saw the missing key on the table, though Ciri herself was nowhere in the apartment—she was in her own bedroom, sleeping so soundly that she hadn't even stirred when Triss let herself in. It was entirely possible that she'd gone to see Yenna after she returned and forgotten to take the key back with her, but she still felt a knot of apprehension in her stomach as she pushed open the bedroom door.

The sound of the door opening roused Yennefer, and Triss sat down on the edge of the bed cautiously as she stirred, stretched her arms out above her head, the only part of her visible beneath the blankets. She'd always done that—bury herself under as many of them as possible—and Triss remembered, somewhat guiltily, how she always used to poke fun at her for it, until she learned why she did it. A few minutes later she pushed them back, blinked against the light coming in through the blinds. She still appeared to be fully dressed, at least from what Triss could see. That was…odd. Very odd.

"How long have you been here?" she asked, her voice slightly hoarse as she turned to look at her. Triss swallowed back any angry retort she might have made. If it had been any other day she wouldn't hesitate to say them, but she knew without having to ask that her early return heralded bad news. So she left the subject alone. They'd come back to it later, she was sure.

"Not very long," she replied instead, letting her gaze drift over to the nightstand, on which sat a perfectly folded piece of paper, unmarked. But when she saw Yenna's eyes narrow, she became defensive, and added "The lights were off."

That had apparently been the wrong thing to say. "They were?" Triss nodded. Yennefer looked around at the room, but the confusion in her eyes cleared a moment later, replaced with something she couldn't name, something that looked like a very odd mixture of longing and regret. She laid back and threw her arm over her face, decidedly not looking at Triss.

"Yenna, what—?" She stopped herself halfway through the question. She wasn't sure she actually wanted to know what was going on, or why she looked like that, or why there was a spare key in the living room. "Are you okay?"

She pulled her arm back slowly and opened her eyes even slower, and when she did, she wouldn't look at Triss, just at the ceiling, as if she was seeing something in it that wasn't there. "No," she said so quietly that Triss had to strain to hear it. "No, I'm not."

alkfdjalfkajl ok please don't hate me too much lol, I promise they're not always going to be Like This (they won't be for much longer actually)