Bard's Song

CH 2: Her Sweet Kiss

It wasn't early when Ciri pulled her boots back on. When she announced that she had to take another job or she'd go mad with the tension in the air.

"It's worse than being strung along by the stirrups." Green eyes flashed half serious, half teasing. Completely honest.

Geralt nodded, humming in response. He understood, dear Gods did he ever. Could he choose to be anywhere but here he would be. Hilt deep in a wyverns gullet, duking it out with some werewolf or ghoul. But...

Stomping above alerted him to the beast he'd be wrestling with today. Yennefer did hold her anger close, like a shield and a weapon. Geralt couldn't blame her. Soft creatures, things with heart, didn't last long in the world as it was. Yen had learned that lesson young and early - He could hear Yennefer's heart thrumming angrily. Could hear her heeled boots sliding over stockinged feet. Could smell the headache pulsing, threatening to erupt behind her temples.

And yet as he stood before her bedroom door, he couldn't bring himself to simply knock.

Just knock.

"Come in."

The words soft, powerful in their stillness. A calm before a storm, the wicking of waves before a tsunami.

Of course she would have known he was there; whether she anticipated him attempting to make amends or she was as accustomed to their song and dance as he was, Geralt wasn't sure. Still, of all the creatures he'd slain - to be so utterly laid low by a woman was an irony not lost on the Witcher as he crossed the threshold of her bedroom.

"What is it you want, Geralt?" The words snapped, eyes flashing.

She hadn't forgiven him. Of course she hadn't. It would have been too much to ask, he hadn't done enough; grovelled, begged, proven. She needed the power, the knowledge that she was important beyond a shadow of a doubt - and he had cracked that armour, hadn't he?

Now it was her turn to crack his. And Yennefer never did anything in half measures.

"Yen, about yesterday, I-"

"Could you keep it down?" The voice muffled, muted.

A white eyebrow quirked, predatory eyes accused. "Oh."

"Oh don't look at me like that, Geralt." Yen tsked, sitting at her mirrored table, pulling out her kohl. "I needed the release-" She waved her hand, and the man was gone.

Geralt felt for him, probably naked in a muddy ditch outside of town. But the sympathy was nothing compared to the anger simmering.

"-and I wasn't going to let you touch me after these last few days." Raven hair fell over her shoulder as she carefully filled in her eyelashes.

"So you-?" Geralt shook his head. Jealousy, ugly and consuming, snaked up inside of him. But... wasn't that the point? To get a rise? To prove he still cared?

Eyes rolled. "Don't be so sensitive." Yennefer read his reaction despite his silence. "We both know-"

"I know!" Geralt growled low, voice rumbling like thunder on the horizon. "I know we do this over and over to each other, don't you get tired of it?"

Something in Yennefer changed, became colder. Slowly she finished her other eyes and leaned away from the mirror.

"I look in this mirror," gaze locked onto herself, "and I can still see the hunchbacked, misshapen nobody who lived with the pigs in the sty." Calm, factual. "If I had stayed that way, you never would have loved me. You never would have made that wish." Purple eyes rose to challenge Geralt; more than that. It was her reality.