i've already spoken a few times on tumblr about what my situation has been the past couple months so i won't go into that here, but i'm sorry this took so long to post even though i kept saying it wouldn't lol. thanks to my unofficial beta eileniessa and everyone who follows me on twitter and has listened to me worry about everything that's been going on without complaining akfjkaldfjao. also, we're getting to the point in the story where i need to strongly suggest that people check the tags to see if they've been updated before reading - we're getting into the heavy stuff, starting here, and i don't want anyone to read anything they aren't comfortable with. i'll always update the tags before i post the chapter if there are more serious elements being discussed –bel

A Wolf Among Lilacs
Part Two: Hope/Fear
Chapter Twenty: It's Too Cold For You Here

"Seven years," Yennefer said, pacing back and forth in a circle around the room. As soon as they had gotten properly inside she'd found Regis and all but dragged him up the stairs along with Geralt. They ended up on the third floor, which was entirely dedicated to her bedroom and what he assumed was a master bath, behind a door. The roof sloped high above their heads, beams visible, and light from the street shone faintly through the frosted-glass windows. Geralt and Regis had sat down on a small sofa in what looked like a sitting area, but Yennefer was unable to keep still. "Seven godsdamned years in this city and I hadn't run into them. Not once. And now everything's gone to shit."

"Not everything," said Regis, who was notably calmer than either of them. Geralt still wasn't quite sure why he was there in the first place, except that he was there when the incident took place. He didn't even know who any of those people were, though based on what he'd seen he could hazard a guess. "We need to step back and look at this. You don't even know whether or not they recognized you—"

"There's no way they didn't." Yennefer stopped and looked over at them, pressing her lips together, her arms wrapped loosely around her midsection. The sudden absence of her boots clicking on the wood floor was nearly startling. She'd pulled the sleeves of her black sweater down over her wrists, to the point where they almost covered her hands completely. "A lot of things about me changed at Aretuza, but my face wasn't one of them."

She exhaled heavily, reaching up to toy with her star, which he'd noticed she only did in situations like this. Uncomfortable ones, though this had surpassed uncomfortable completely and gone straight to something heavier, something worse. Geralt saw the tension in her neck as she clenched her jaw, the way she shifted for a moment before she started to move again, even more agitated this time. She reached for the swirling silver ring and twisted it around her finger.

"If we're lucky, they won't stay long," she said softly, almost as if to herself. "He'll realize he's in a house full of mages and leave. If we're not…"

She was quiet so long that Geralt briefly considered asking if she was okay, even though he knew he would probably get yelled at for it. "Well," she said finally. "Perhaps it's a good thing you're here after all, Geralt of Rivia." He clenched his teeth surreptitiously. He'd thought they were past that.

"I just need to act like I didn't even notice." She looked over at the windows and bit her lip. "If he's trying to get a rise out of me, it won't work."

"That's about all you can do now." Regis was doing a good job at appearing positive, but Geralt could tell he was just as tense as Yennefer, if not more so. "I'll keep an eye on them, try to keep them away from you. Dettlaff as well, if you wish—"

"I don't," she said sharply, digging her nails into her arms. "I'd prefer for as few people to know about this as possible. If you must tell someone, tell Philippa. She'll keep her mouth shut about it."

She looked over at Geralt, meeting his eyes for the first time since they'd gotten upstairs. Her gaze was, somehow, pleading and closed off at the same time. "I assume you're also going to keep your mouth shut about it."

He nodded, and she held his gaze for a moment longer before she turned sharply, back to Regis. He seemed to understand what she wanted without her needing to say it, because he stood and left, not catching Geralt's questioning look. Yennefer didn't look at him again either, just stared out the window until a few minutes had passed. She was tugging on the bottom of her sweater, pulling it farther down over the tops of her thighs, and he felt himself growing more apprehensive as the seconds passed.

"I'm going back downstairs now," she said finally, drifting hesitantly towards the staircase. "I've got to host, and people will notice if I'm gone much longer, if they haven't already. But they'll also notice if you accompany me back downstairs. So you'll need to wait here a few moments more, then come down." Her hand curled around the balustrade. Her nails were perfectly manicured, painted a green so dark that anyone without his eyesight would likely think it black, but the whiteness of her knuckles belied her anxiousness. "Please try not to snoop too terribly much," she said, and then she was out of his line of sight, and he heard the clicking of her heels on the stairs.

He waited a minute before he stood, intending to take a good look around before he left, though not one that was close enough to upset her. He didn't want to pry, but he had to admit he was curious about how she lived outside of a shared apartment. All of the floors in the townhouse were a dark-stained wood, and the walls were paneled halfway up in it as well, in a style he'd seen in several other larger cities farther north, notably Novigrad. The ceiling was open to the sloping roof, exposing the beams and effectively making her bedroom the biggest room in the house.

He looked briefly around the latticed divide that separated her actual bedroom from the small sitting area he'd been in, just long enough to catch a glimpse of what was possibly the biggest bed he'd ever seen. There was no way that someone that small actually needed that much bed. Most of the furniture was dark wood as well, glass-topped tables and intricately carved dressers with large mirrors above them. The couches in the sitting area were off-white and had been surprisingly comfortable when he was sitting on one. His gaze landed on a folder sitting on top of one of the sideboards and he walked over, picking it up curiously.

It was plain, slightly heavy in his hands, and he flipped it open to the first of the stack of papers inside. It took him only a moment to realize what it was—her records from Aretuza, from her time as a student. Something inside him froze over and he knew that if she found out he'd seen them, that would be the end of any chance he had with her (not that there'd been much of one to begin with). But now that he had them in his hands, he couldn't put them down. He had the feeling that, just maybe, he could finally find some of the answers he'd been seeking.

He couldn't figure out whether he was relieved or disappointed when he flipped through all but the last few pages and didn't discover anything he didn't already know—that she was brilliant, had moved up the ranks at a faster pace than the vast majority of her peers, that the recommendations she'd gotten from her former teachers when she was looking for apprenticeships were nothing short of glowing. He wasn't quite sure what he'd expected to find there in the first place; what else would be in educational records? He was about to close the folder and put it back where he'd found it when he caught the header on one of the few pages he had left to look at. Medical records. What Regis had said about being called in specifically to help her swam to the forefront of his mind, and he turned the page.

The dense nature of the text, the descriptions of what corrective magic had been done on her, were hard for him to wade through. He would freely admit he had no idea what most of it was saying; he'd never bothered to familiarize himself with the particulars of magic, seeing as he didn't need to know them. But he could piece together enough of the terminology to figure out most of what had been done—notably the straightening of her spine, something that had caused her so much internal trauma that Regis had been called to stabilize her. He swallowed thickly. He hadn't been under the impression that she had gone into Aretuza looking as she did when he'd first met her, but he didn't know that the problems had run this deep. He wondered what else about her had been changed.

That was the majority of the medical part of the file; other than that, it seemed, she had been mostly healthy, and he wasn't surprised, given the access she would have had to potions to stave off illness, and the ability to heal minor injuries on her own. There were a few entries about injuries she'd gotten through magic, or alchemy, ones that she wouldn't have been able to heal herself, but they all seemed minor, considering the space they'd gotten was so little. But when he flipped to the last page, he stopped, and had to put the file down and grip the sideboard tightly to try and control the surprise he felt at seeing a record of recovery from two separate suicide attempts.

He didn't want to admit that it made sense to him, that when he stopped to think about it he could see the vestiges of what should have been so obvious in her behavior, in her reluctance to talk about any aspect of her past. What she'd said to him in the main square was the most he'd managed to get out of her in regards to her background, and the things he'd heard from others weren't much different. He flipped the folder closed, repositioning it as closely as he could get it to where he'd found it. To keep the peace, at least until the party was over and he had an opportunity to ask her about it (if he could work up the nerve to do so) he would have to push it out of his mind. He couldn't take the risk of her reading his thoughts and finding out that he knew. In fact, he was beginning to believe he shouldn't ever tell her that, let it slip. She'd never forgive him if she found out.

After another moment to steady himself, to make sure the folder was perfectly positioned and his mind was as empty as he could make it, he ventured back downstairs.

The first floor of Yennefer's townhouse, the one he'd entered on, had been dedicated entirely to a sitting room full of couches and chairs and tables identical to the ones in the room he'd just left. It was being used, mostly, to house a makeshift rack that held guests' coats, though a few people lingered there, chatting idly. Geralt wasn't one of them. He stopped on the second floor, which was the kitchen. The whole house was narrow and cramped, though every trick had been used to make the rooms inside it look spacious, and they were working. The kitchen was lined with cabinets whose dark wood nearly matched the floor and in the center was a large, marble-topped island, and it was there that he found her, with a wine glass in hand, looking like nothing had ever happened. If she saw him come in, she didn't acknowledge him.

Philippa was standing next to her, a lipstick-stained glass on the counter in front of her, and she was, to Geralt's eyes, notably tense. Her eyes kept darting over to the staircase leading down—Geralt had to assume that the people he'd seen when he came in were down there, and that thought lent him a certain amount of relief, but not much. They could come up at any minute, and only the gods knew what would happen then. If it had been his decision, he would have called the whole thing off, with no regard for how it might look to the others in attendance. But he knew how mages worked; he knew that none of the hosts would even consider that a possibility, so the best thing he could do was stay.

"Geralt!" He turned and Triss was standing there, in dark jeans and an emerald-green sweater, her hair curling loosely around her arms. She was smiling, but, as with Philippa, it was easy for Geralt to see that something was wrong. It was even more obvious with Triss, who he'd known far longer. "You enjoying yourself?"

He looked briefly over at Yennefer, who was talking to a sorcerer he didn't know and grinning with the corners of her mouth. Her hand was tight around the edge of the counter, rings glinting in the light. He looked away.

"I guess," he responded, for lack of anything better to say. He was only wearing a long-sleeved shirt (the whole thing had been so last-minute that he refused to put too much thought into how he looked; the stereotypes about witchers ran so deep that he doubted it would change anyone's opinion of him if he did care), but it felt like it was tightening around his neck, choking him, and the box hidden in the pocket of his jacket seemed as if it weighed a million pounds. He had been hoping to steal a moment or two alone with her, give it to her. Now he doubted that would happen any time soon.

Triss glanced around, then edged closer to him, leaning so her lips were close to his ear. He could smell alcohol on her breath. He wondered how long she'd been drinking. "Do you know what's going on with Yenna?" she asked. "And don't try and act like you don't know. I saw you come in here from upstairs."

Geralt sputtered helplessly. "You really should've known someone would see you," Triss said. "You should just hope no one else did." She laughed a little, quietly, somewhat harshly. "Now tell me what's going on."

He sighed reluctantly. "I don't really know much. I'm not lying," he said in response to her incredulous look. "All I know is there are some people here that she doesn't seem particularly excited to see. I don't know who they are, or what they did to her. She was talking around it."

"Like she always does." Triss rolled her eyes. "Okay. Guess I'll have to find out for myself, then. Thanks, Geralt." She gave him a lopsided smile as she pulled back, turning to walk away, further into the crowd. Geralt followed her even though he didn't want to. He would look far too suspicious if he stayed on the edge of the crowd. He'd been invited, the least he could do was act like he wanted to be there.

It didn't take long for him to find Regis in the middle of the crowd, a few yards away from Yennefer even though his eyes, like Triss's, darted over to her every few seconds. He had a glass in his hand that was half-full, but Geralt knew he wouldn't have actually drank any of it. Someone else had. "You're not going to tell me what that was about either, are you?"

"She didn't?" He didn't sound particularly surprised, though his tone was casual. "The man is Vilgefortz of Roggeveen, a member of the Chapter. Its head, more or less. He was the one who nominated Yennefer for Council membership."

Geralt had almost forgotten about that, but now that it had been brought back up he remembered all too clearly the look on her face when she'd first read the letter with that news, how similar it was to the expression she'd been wearing only moments ago, when they'd come in the house. He wondered if Vilgefortz had been the one she'd wanted to stay as far away from as possible. It certainly seemed like it now. "And the others?"

"The others…" Regis sighed, glancing over at the stairs. Geralt wondered if they were still on the porch, if they would even come in at all or if they thought their work was done. "The others are her only living relatives."

"Ah." He didn't know what else to say. Like the file, it explained so much, things he wasn't sure he was supposed to know. Regis hadn't said how exactly the two were related to Yennefer, but he could guess. "Why bring them here, though?"

"Vilgefortz and Yennefer have…a history, so to speak," Regis said. "One of them wants it acknowledged and one of them doesn't. So he does this instead."

None of it made sense to Geralt. On some level, he understood the political games mages participated in, started, even; personal ones, however, seemed on a different plane entirely, the kinds of things that should be played out in the shadows, not so overtly. He hoped the banquet he'd reluctantly agreed to attend with Triss would be calmer than this, though he knew it was a futile hope.

"I'd leave it alone if I were you," Regis said. "She wouldn't be happy if she found out I told you any of this. She's been trying very hard to keep this in the past." Geralt nodded, his throat tight, and Regis took that as his cue to step away, make his way through the crowd. He stopped where Dettlaff was talking to a small group of mages, effortlessly inserting himself into the conversation. Geralt tried not to look at Yennefer, and failed—only to realize she was looking back.

She picked up her glass from where she'd set it down next to Philippa's and excused herself from the conversation delicately. No one even noticed; he supposed that being one of the hosts gave her a certain amount of leeway to flit between groups as she wanted. She slowed down next to Geralt and tugged at his sleeve discreetly, getting him to lower his head so she could put her lips to his ear.

"If you look around and you don't see me here, go downstairs. All the way downstairs, to the clinic," she murmured. He scrambled to focus on her words; the smell of her perfume was overwhelming his senses. "I've got something for you."

He blinked rapidly a few times, but before he could begin to formulate a coherent response she was gone, leaving a wave of lilac-and-gooseberry-scented air in her wake. It was difficult to breathe in it—he had the sudden desire to inhale and keep the breath there, in his lungs, to take some small part of her with him until the time came that he could be alone with her again, though now it seemed that time wasn't far away.

~oOo~

Geralt stayed at the party for two more hours before he scanned the second floor and didn't see any sign of Yennefer. He kept to himself, mostly, nursing a glass of wine Triss had brought him and not speaking much to anyone except her and Regis, when they occasionally circled back around to him. He wondered whether or not Yennefer was purposely avoiding him until she slipped out, if she worried about how things would look if they stayed near each other too long. She was putting too much thought in it if that was the case. No one here knew about what had happened, and he doubted any of them would find out.

The first floor was empty when he went down the stairs, and he glanced out onto the porch, now also empty, before he opened the door that led down another flight of stairs and into her private clinic. The stairs opened up into a narrow hallway with doors branching off of it, and he followed it until he emerged in a larger room, which he assumed was some kind of waiting room—it had a door that opened to the front of the house, and a couple of couches and chairs around a low table.

Yennefer was sitting on one of the couches, one leg crossed over the other, another glass in her hands. He sat down next to her, trying to leave as much space between them as possible. She didn't look at him, but instead towards the table, where sat what looked to be a long black case of sorts. He couldn't have even began to guess what was inside.

"Did Triss tell you to come?" she said quietly, unsure.

Geralt shook his head, but a moment later, when she didn't look at him, he said "No. Ciri did."

She laughed a little, but it died out quickly, and she bit her lip. "That doesn't surprise me at all," she said. "She's not exactly happy about the fact that she can't be here. But she knows why."

"Right," he said. "Too risky." A moment passed. Part of him felt he should be quiet, let things fall where they may, but he didn't want to chance anything like the last time they'd been fully alone. He didn't think he could bear it if that happened again, and she did the same thing. "How have things been going upstairs?"

She didn't look at him, but her fingers tightened slightly around the stem of her glass. "Fine. As fine as can be expected at these sorts of things. Regis is introducing Dettlaff to people as an old friend who just arrived from Nazair." Something about the tone of her voice seemed to indicate that she found that amusing, but since he'd only spoken to Dettlaff for a grand total of roughly five minutes, he didn't get the joke.

The air between them was so thick that he felt it would take him hours to reach through it, lay his hand over hers. He watched her brush her hair back from her face and thought about what it would be like to run his fingers across her jaw and have her not pull away, not retreat. He could, now, if he wanted to, but he didn't want to risk putting her off. He was about to reach into his jacket pocket and give her the box when she put her glass down on a side table and gestured towards the case.

"For you," she said, glancing over at him finally, one eyebrow raised. When he looked at her incredulously, she smiled, in that way she seemed to only direct at him. "That is why I told you to come here, isn't it?"

"It is." He slowly moved so he was sitting on the edge of the couch and he could reach the clasps of the case easily. He took his time undoing them, needless anxiety rising in his throat as he opened it and was met with a pair of gleaming swords.

He had to stare at them for a couple of minutes before he fully understood what he was looking at. The two swords were laid facing opposite directions, so the tip of one lined up with the hilt of the other, and the dim light of the various lamps she'd lit gleamed off the blades. He picked one up and held it up closer to his face, the steel glinting. The other one had to be silver, he knew without even having to touch it. At the top of the case, nestled in its own small compartment, was a tube which, when he picked it up, turned out to hold scrolls—diagrams of the blades he now held.

"I had a little help," Yennefer admitted. "Ciri was the one who found the diagrams, when she was traveling. She brought them to me to have them made." A pause. When he looked over at her, the lights shone off her hair like spilled ink. "I suppose that makes them from both of us."

The corner of her mouth tilted in a way that made him draw in a slow breath, swallow thickly. He couldn't decide whether or not this was an opportunity for him. If he reached over and took her hand, would she pull hers away? Or pull him closer? He stared at the place where her black sweater, folded down to leave her shoulders bare, met her skin, and wondered if she was cold.

"Yennefer, I—"

"You don't have to say anything," she interrupted quickly, her fingers curling against her leg, vainly seeking purchase. "It's fine. Just…" She gestured towards the case with her free hand. "Take them."

He nodded, closed the case and redid the clasps, thinking about how her fingers must have done them up carefully, how she would have laid the blades in the case, rolled up the plans and left them in there too in case he would want them—of course she'd think of that. His throat closed up and before he could give himself time to reconsider he'd pulled the small box out of his pocket, offered it up. "For you," he said when she looked over at him, confused. She pressed her lips together, took it from him, and he stared intensely at the table as she opened it.

She was tense beside him, silent for several minutes, and he couldn't bring himself to glance sideways, to see what she was thinking. "I know this is probably coming out of nowhere," he said hoarsely. "To be honest, I wasn't planning on coming at all. I didn't know it was happening until Ciri told me about it, and this whole thing was her idea and—"

"Geralt." He looked up finally and she didn't meet his eye, staring down at the open box with an expression he couldn't read. "You don't have to explain yourself," she said, finally smiling, crooked, confused—or he thought she was confused. "It's—well—"

She trailed her fingertips across the silver band, looped closely enough to fit tightly around her wrist (he hadn't asked Ciri how she'd gotten the measurements so quickly—he wasn't sure he wanted to know how much preparation she'd put into this before even bringing it up to him), then over the small emerald hanging from it. Unobtrusive—Ciri had made that clear in no uncertain terms. "There's no enchantment on it or anything." He cleared his throat. "Figured you'd want to do that yourself."

Yennefer exhaled quickly, making a sound not unlike a quiet laugh. "As opposed to what? You doing it for me?"

"You know me. Always enchanting things."

The whole exchange felt a bit too close to flirting for his taste—she'd already made it clear how she felt on that count, and he didn't want to get his hopes too high. There were a million reasons why a thing like that would never work. Yennefer closed the box and set it on the small table beside her, next to the glass, which remained nearly untouched. "Thank you," she said, barely more than a whisper, as she stared at the dark wood floor.

"It's nothing," he replied, equally low. He wanted to reach over, put his hand on her arm and see if she would let him. He wanted to feel her against him, the press of her cool fingertips on his neck, his shoulders—and he was sure she knew all of that. He wouldn't be surprised if, after what had happened only days ago, she'd been keeping tabs on his thoughts all night.

"I—" He stood and cleared his throat again, unsure as always of what to say around her. The room suddenly felt stiflingly hot, crowded even though it was just the two of them. He had stepped too far. She was too close. "I should probably go." He heard, as though from the other side of a wall, her say his name, startled, but he was already out in the hallway, heading towards the exit he'd seen when he came in, to the half-flight of stairs that would deposit him back at street level. He needed to clear his head, but simply rejoining the crowd didn't seem like it would be enough—though at this point, he thought, any breath of air that wasn't tinged with the scent of lilac and gooseberries would do him good.

~oOo~

Yenna was upset about something. Val could tell, as he could always tell, just from looking at her, at the way she'd drawn in on herself that no one would notice but him. At the same time, he knew she wasn't going to actually tell him what was wrong. He'd resolved not to start a fight about it—these parties left her in a sour mood more often than not—but it was eating away at him steadily, had been for hours. He was worried this went beyond her typical post-party bad mood; he couldn't help but feel that, somehow, Geralt of Rivia was involved.

He'd seen him come down from her bedroom several minutes after she had, and though they seemed not to interact with each other for the rest of the night, the sight had been enough to set him on edge. There was something about him that he didn't like, the same thing he didn't like about Cirilla, who Yenna called her daughter; the same thing he didn't like about most of her friends. Things were calmer when she stayed with him in Aedd Gynvael; things were less hectic. It would never be like that with the others around, and the situation had only gotten more complicated since the witcher entered the picture.

"Are you sure you want to stay?" she called from the other side of the slightly-cracked bathroom door. If he looked through at the right angle he would be able to see her, standing in front of the mirror, rubbing glamarye on her forearms like she always did at night. But he wasn't looking—he was standing in front of one of the couches in the small sitting area off her bedroom, too agitated to sit down. "I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to portal home."

She was trying to get rid of him, he just knew it. On any other night, she would've welcomed the company. "I'm fine," he replied, trying to keep his tone neutral, not to betray any of his suspicions. "I wouldn't want to leave you alone. You looked upset earlier, Yenna."

"Did I?" He kept quiet—he wanted to let the weight of his words sink in, to let her realize that even though he wasn't intending to comment further on it, he had noticed. "Well, I'm not."

When a few more minutes had passed and she didn't come out, he took to pacing, circling the same path around the room over and over again until he thought he might forget about everything, lose himself in the monotony of the routine. Sometime after his twentieth circle, he noticed something—a folder on top of one of the sideboards, one that he could've sworn hadn't been there when he'd been upstairs hours ago, before the party started. Out of nothing more than idle curiosity, he picked it up and flipped it open.

It was full of records from her time at Aretuza, and it immediately caught his interest. She rarely spoke about what things had been like for her before they met, somehow managing to give him the impression that those things were both incredibly painful and of little to no consequence. Most of what he was seeing in the records seemed to back up the latter theory; he wasn't surprised to see exceptionally high marks or glowing notes from professors on the various larger projects she'd done. At the back were medical records. Those, too, seemed to contain nothing of interest, until he got to the last page and—

"Yenna?"

There must've been something about his tone that made her suspicious, because it only took a moment for her to pull the door open and step into the room, pushing her hair back behind her ear to keep it out of her face. "Yes?" She raised an eyebrow and he motioned her over silently, handing her the folder when she was close enough. She took it, initially confused, but as soon as she realized what it was, her expression hardened, her fingers tightening around the paper.

"Where did you get this?"

"It was sitting there, on the sideboard." He pointed to the spot he'd picked it up from, watched her eyes follow his hand. Something about the statement only seemed to upset her more. The longer he looked at her, the more difficult it became to speak. "Yenna." His voice was hoarse now, barely audible. She was keeping things from him, that he knew—but he'd never expected anything of this magnitude. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it wasn't any of your business." She shut the folder, waved her other hand discreetly and then it was gone, vanished to who-knows-where. "It's in the past. It doesn't matter."

"It does matter. Yenna—"

"I think you should go."

The tone of her voice brokered no argument but he hesitated anyway. She wouldn't look at him in the meantime, going over to the dresser in the bedroom proper and pulling a tank top out of it. In another moment she was out of his line of vision, throwing her robe over the top of the screen that separated the two areas. He wanted to cross that barrier, make her look at him and tell him the truth, the whole thing this time because there was clearly something he'd been missing. "No," he said, any previous resolve not to start an argument forgotten. "Yenna, we can't just not talk about this—"

"We can, and we will." She rounded the corner fully dressed, grabbing a small box from one of the other tables and shoving it in her pocket. Her movements were fluid but strained, matching her voice, and he watched in pulsing silence as she raised her arms, opening a portal. "And if you won't leave, I'll do it for you."

He didn't even have time to ask why she was doing it, leaving him alone in her house when she could have easily forced him out—it wasn't as though she didn't have the power to do so. All he could do was watch the shaking of her hands, the way they clenched and unclenched at her sides, as she stepped through the portal and was gone.

so the next chapter is a little more of a cooldown/less action-y bit and then it's straight to this four-chapter thanedd arc, so things are getting interesting (in case they weren't already lol)