( OPEN ) cold ground got a hold on me

[gynvael]

Who: Geralt + Jaskier, Yennefer; You
When: September // Septeril
Where: Aefenglom
What: Full moon + events/quests later
Warnings: Body horror

[ prompts in comments. find me at discontinued for plotting. ]

OPEN: quests + wildcard

CLOSED: full moon | wish break

Comments

[gynvael]

[ The small form that collides with him is one that Geralt almost doesn't notice. It takes half a second before he glances down, blinking. ]

Leslie? [ Shit. His brows furrow, reaching down to help her up and hand her cap back to her. Great. Now he's seeing things and barrelling over a young girl. ] Fuck. Sorry.

[ He realizes she's not looking at him, though. Or she is, but she's also looking behind him and around her. Wait. Can she see this? (Don't tell him she can see this.) The scenery flickers in and out, the grass and orchard clearly hidden beneath. He doesn't want to be here. He sure as fuck doesn't want Leslie witnessing it with him.

Even as he's guiding her away from the mess of visions (is that possible, when it's attached to him?), an awful scream comes from behind. The boy begins to convulse, and it's becoming clear he's not wounded as simply sick. Extremely so, from the inside out. ]

You shouldn't be here.

[foundfamilies]

[ Leslie is grateful for the help to her feet and her cap. She shakes it a little to try to flick off the illusory blood that got on it before settling for holding it in front of her in her hands instead. Though she is still looking at the boy as well, she mostly focuses on him long enough to answer him. ]

It’s okay. I’m all right. ...Does your neck hu —

[ “Um, is it okay if I ask what ‘fuck’ means? Does it have something to do with necks?“ “Umm... Y...es. It's a word adults say...when their necks...hurt.“ “I see. So that's why ‘fucking massacre’ means to break the nape.”

Her continuing adventures of misunderstanding the word fuck are interrupted by the scream and her head whips back to the convulsing boy. The hat in her hands crumples a little as she grips it tightly. She ignores his statement on it, because, well, she is here. ]

Is he real? The boy. Or is it the moths?

[gynvael]

[ His what? The question catches him off guard; it would linger for longer if he hadn't other shit on his mind.

He steps into her view, blocking off whatever's behind him. Might be futile, in the end, when the illusion is ever-shifting around them. His spotty memory of the Trials means the boy changes, too -- sometimes with more white in his hair, sometimes less. The men and women that come in and out have no identifiable faces, just ghostly figures that carry what might be recognized as potions. Strange concoctions that are injected directly into the boy. If they're meant to be a cure (they're not), they seem to only be making things worse. ]

Just a vision. [ The lines of his shoulders are tense, but his voice is even. A split second passes before he tilts his head, a question that should've occurred to him earlier only coming to him now. ] How're you seeing this? Did the dust get you?

[foundfamilies]

[ Leslie wants to let Geralt block her view. This isn’t her nightmare, and nightmares are often deeply personal. It’s also not exactly something she enjoys seeing.

But as the shifting vision moves in the corners of her eyes as she looks at Geralt, she is unable to stop her instinctive glances to see the source of the movement, her eyes flicking back and forth between Geralt’s face and the strange, indistinguishable people and the suffering boy. ]

I think so. I heard people running while I was picking up some apples that fell, and by the time I looked up, I saw — I think it was dust for a moment, before then I was here. Um, was seeing this.

[ She winces slightly as she sees one of the concoctions being injected — she’s been able to avoid medical needles altogether, so such an idea is completely new. ]

But this isn’t my nightmare. Is...?

[ Leslie, you can’t just ask people if this is their nightmare, or at least that’s what she tells herself as she cuts off her question.

Saying that this isn’t her nightmare isn’t completely true, though. Past Leslie, there is a white gazebo in the distance, enclosed completely by glass, that was never a part of this ruined castle’s horizon. It’s a little difficult to make out from here, but the pavilion is actually suspended over a canyon by a bridge extending from one cliff to the other.

It looks fairly innocuous right now, but it’s the first suggestion that this might not entirely be just Geralt’s nightmare. ]

[gynvael]

[ In a way, it's easier to focus on Leslie. She's so out of place in this entire scene, the pull of the illusion is less anchored. Less likely to drown out what he knows is or isn't real. ]

It's mine. [ At least that much, Geralt won't deny -- even if he offers no further clarification. Like her, his answer trails off as he follows her gaze to the distance. The glass enclosure sits in a canyon that's somehow found its way into the Blue Mountains.

Speaking of out of place.

He takes a step forward, one hand on her shoulder in case something is truly invading the visions. Is this hers? Fuck, he hopes not. The last thing he needs is the two of their darkest thoughts colliding. He almost doesn't want to ask, but he does. ]

What's that?

[foundfamilies]

[ Leslie is slow to answer. Her expression makes it clear that she didn’t expect to see the pavilion here and that it’s an unpleasant surprise. A lot of her nightmares are more dramatic than the sight of a building she hates and she started to let down her guard a bit when she realized she’s in someone else’s nightmare. She thought she’d be spared from also encountering her own. ]

It’s mine. [ She almost leaves it with only imitating his words, but he did ask what it was. ] It’s a place where some really bad things happened in the world I come from.

[ That...barely gives any more information. As if to provide a little more detail, a fire springs up inside the glass enclosure, quickly growing into a bonfire reaching the ceiling of the gazebo-like structure. But instead of the usual colours of fire, this one has a core of black. There is red in it, too, but much of it mixes with a violet into a more burgundy shade, leaving only a few sparks or some outermost edges with a true red. Even that red is a bright crimson rather than anything with an orangish shade, and it is joined by similar edges of violet elsewhere.

When that happens, Leslie flinches and looks away — if Geralt doesn’t continue to hold her by the shoulder, she intends to turn her back to that vision entirely, but she will at least turn her head away.

That doesn’t entirely help, though, because that just means she’s now back to looking at Geralt’s nightmare. And with the information she’s gained from seeing such a real part of her world in a nightmare, almost completely unmetaphorical, the shifting amount of white in the hair of the boy allows her to make a connection she hadn’t quite figured out about his nightmare. ]

Mr. Geralt, your hair — it’s not because you’re really old, is it?

[ Her main motivation for asking is concern for him, but there might be a part of it where she just wants to avoid her own nightmare. ]

[gynvael]

[ If there's one thing he recognizes, it's the unnatural flames of magic. His eyes narrow. Until now, Geralt hasn't asked about Leslie's past. Hadn't seemed worth delving into when he knows full well he's not anywhere near willing to talk about his own.

Now it stares them both in the face. His and hers.

His hand slips from her shoulder. He knows, logically, that there are no real threats arising from what's just visions. But the air is nearly oppressive, a thick tension ready to snap. He pulls his attention away from the gazebo engulfed in fire.

Another time, he might've found the assumption a little amusing. ]

No. [ He almost doesn't explain further; that's more than he wants to share. But Leslie's entrenched in this fucking nightmare. It feels like he owes her more. A beat passes. When he answers, he leaves out the fact that he's one of a handful of boys who survived it. ] We're changed as boys. Some more than others.

[ His gaze flicks back to the flaming structure. His questions go unasked for now. Seems like a bad time to press. If she has something to tell him, he'll give her time to do so. ]

[foundfamilies]

[ Leslie doesn’t know what a train is, but she’s certainly learned the way a wreck of one draws the eye. It’s a very unpleasant sight to see the pain a young Geralt endured and yet she finds it hard to look away. It’s not even from avoiding looking at the images of her own past behind her. ]

Why? Why would anyone do that?

[ But, in a way, she knows. She knows there are people who will do the most awful things for their own benefits, and she also knows how talking about it can be painful. Edelgard has told her that talking about such things to others can be a part of healing and that may be true, but it can hurt, too. ]

I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to talk about it. It’s only — it’s so awful.

[ She manages to tear her eyes away from the scene and look instead at Geralt. He was leaving when she arrived, wasn’t he? Maybe they should go. At least, as long as they didn’t go toward the flaming pavilion. She doesn’t think any good will come from that.

Her thoughts are soon interrupted by a child’s scream. It’s coming from vaguely the same direction as that structure, but it’s much too clear to have truly originated from so far away. It seems to be coming out of thin air.

Leslie can’t help but whip her head in the direction of the sound, realizing too late that she’s now watching the fire. As the scream dies away, more children’s voices begin to filter in — all of them highly distressed.

”I promise, I won’t do it again, I promise!” one begs. A different child’s voice overlaps it: ”Save me! Please, I’m begging you...! A third weakly chokes out: ”B-brothe...” A fourth — or maybe the first one repeating? — screams: ”Please, I was wrong!”

Leslie claps her hands over her ears, but the voices aren’t really coming from anywhere. It’s an illusion created in her head by the nightmare moths’ dust, so covering her ears does nothing to drown out the sound as dozens of voices cry and beg, their words overlapping each other like a strange round where none of the lines are the same. Some cry out for parents or siblings; some beg for their lives; and some desperately ask what they did wrong.

Even though it doesn’t help, she keeps her hands over her ears as she looks at the ground and closes her eyes — away from the magical fire that continues to burn. She half-mumbles to herself a reminder: ]

This is a dream. It’s a dream. I’m dreaming.

[ It’s difficult to pick out a single voice in the cacophony, but if Geralt has good hearing and is especially good at picking out a voice in a crowd, there’s a chance that he might realize one of the voices sounds familiar. A ghost of Leslie’s past begs in her voice: ”I-I want to live...please....” But it is only one of many. ]

[gynvael]

[ Why is a good question. He wants to say it's fear; it might be true for why the first of them were made. Fear of the monsters that overran the Continent. Somewhere along the way, he can't help but feel that changed, when the mages had taken such extra interest in what he could endure and the monsters they'd been made to fight began to dwindle.

In the end, he doesn't answer, not because he doesn't want to but because he doesn't have a good one for her. Just as well. Her own visions are somehow more visceral: whatever is obscured by the flames, it's written all over Leslie's face.

He crouches down beside her. He'd been prepared to deal with her seeing his. Her nightmares being thrown into the mix, he has no fucking idea what to do about that. But he does know there's little point in opening those doors any further. They've blown wide enough. ]

It is a dream. [ He produces an apple, plucked earlier from the moth-infested trees before the dust blew over them, and offers it to her. Maybe something solidly real will help the illusions fade quicker. Even amidst all the children crying out. ] Why don't you tell me how Ferdie's doing.

[foundfamilies]

[ She takes the offered apple silently — for once not remembering her pleases and thank yous — and stares at it as she cups it in her hands. It’s easier to ignore the mixed nightmare with her focus on that, at least enough to start haltingly speak. ]

He’s...he’s doing — well. The other day — I let him go running. He likes it when he’s allowed to do that. Though I can’t keep up with his full speed. So he can’t go very fast when he’s still on the leash with me.

[ Although she can’t block out the sounds completely, her attention on both the apple he gave her lets her at least not see the visions the moths are providing. The dust has one last parting gift, though, which Geralt may or may not see, depending on how good he is at ignoring it, too.

Much like the adults in Geralt’s nightmare, the children in a group of two or three dozen now standing behind Leslie almost all have indistinct faces. The one exception is what looks to be another Leslie. This one is the same height as the real Leslie currently focusing on the apple, not looking significantly younger, and has the same violet eyes, but the hallucination Leslie shows the effects of not being given enough food or sleep, though a few of those signs are somewhat covered by some sloppily applied foundation. Her arms and legs, in particular, are so thin that they look like they would snap if roughly handled.

The rest of her body is hidden behind a loose white dress trimmed by blue ribbons, like the similar outfits all of the other children wear. Some are tunics, or robes, or other variations on the theme, with different colours of ribbon, but the cloth is always white. As is every last child’s hair.

The voices have changed somewhat. Some of them sound a lot like the previous voices in volume and tone, but say new kinds of things: ”Never forgive them. Never forget it.” ”You must crush the house of Sperado into nothing.” ”Take our resentment. Avenge us.”

The rest, however, are much more muddled together as multiple voices say the same words at almost but not quite the same time, varying between distant voices that only can make a couple of the words heard to nearer voices that are loud enough to make out properly: ”Over here.” ”We’ll help you.” “Live. You must survive.” ”Quickly. You must escape.” Without the visual aid, it would be nearly impossible to know the age of these voices.

Together, the children reach out towards the hallucination of Leslie, who turns and holds her arms up as if to protect her torso, looking scared. The other children push this illusory Leslie such that she falls into the real Leslie and disappears.

It’s not long before the rest of the nightmares begin to also disappear as the dust’s effect begins to fade. Leslie doesn’t notice, as she is still focused on the apple and the story about Ferdie she’s trying to tell. ]

[gynvael]

[ It's hard to tell how much is reality and how much comes from Leslie's memories, distorted in her mind and by the hallucinogen: if those children are all her or if they're others she's known. Or figments of her imagination.

Perhaps it doesn't matter. They fade, and the silence that blankets the air is heavy. He's not sure what to say. Whatever he saw, he knows he wasn't meant to. An apology feels insufficient -- both for what he'd seen and for what she's seen from him. ]

Sounds like you take good care of him. [ Geralt gets up. He might as well get her home. He's not a clue whether her guardian realizes what she's been through -- something tells him probably not, or at least not the full story -- but she'll likely feel better with a more familiar face than his.

So much for an afternoon picking a few apples. He doesn't offer his hand, exactly, but it's there if she wants to take it. ] Come on. He must be waiting for you.

sorry for the accidental undeclared hiatus from playing genshin impact all the time

[foundfamilies]

[ Leslie notices him move out of the corner of her eye, but it’s only when he says “come on” that she realizes that they’re no longer in Geralt’s illusory castle or surrounded by Leslie’s own nightmares.

She looks up at him, silent for the few seconds longer it takes for her to process his words. Then she shakes off some of her shock. ]

Yes — yes, I think I should check on him.

[ She recognizes it’s an excuse he’s giving her. She will take that excuse gladly.

She does not, however, take his hand, instead standing on her own despite somewhat wobbly legs. If he’d explicitly offered his hand, she would have accepted the help, but she is extremely sensitive to the idea of possible boundaries and she doesn’t think she should ask for help unless she either has very direct permission or needs the help very badly. ]

Are you okay, Mr. Geralt? That was — [ There are a lot of ways one could describe what they’d just experienced, and many more for someone who knows swear words, but she settles on merely: ] — bad. [ That seems insufficient. ] Really bad. [ It’ll have to do.

She herself is still shaky, gripping the apple in one hand as through it were a lifeline to reality, and she came pretty close to a panic attack just moments before, but she still has space in her brain to worry about Geralt. She wasn’t the only one who had to encounter her own nightmares. ]

no worries!

[gynvael]

[ Really bad about sums it up. Geralt's concern is still largely on her. Personal experience: he's both aware that children are not nearly as fragile as some might believe and also that certain events from childhood linger far longer than they had any right to. ]

I'll live. [ Which, in the end, is what matters. Memories are just memories. He tells himself that, anyway. ] Not sure these fucking apples were worth it.

[ She seems all right on her own two feet, though he lingers a bit behind her. In case she happens to topple back for some reason. She looks, still, not altogether steady. ]

Your Lady home? [ He'll drop her off if her guardian's there -- but he's not so sure about leaving her alone. Even at her own house. ]

[foundfamilies]

[ There are a lot of things that you can live through that are still things that you shouldn’t have to deal with alone. She might have even said as much if she wasn’t so shaken herself (and so bad at taking her own advice).

Without the word she doesn’t properly understand, she might have smiled just a little at his statement about the apples, even if she certainly doesn’t have the energy to laugh in amusement over it. But with that word, she looks a little puzzled instead. ]

I think they’re supposed to be used in a festival this month as a way to demonstrate overcoming a harsh environment...but it is a very high price for some apples.

[ The wages to pick them had been quite high, but she’s starting to think she might have been overestimating her ability to confront her own nightmares for that. ]

Lady Edelgard will be at the house. I don’t think I’ve seen her sleep anywhere else.

[ She says this casually even though it’s the middle of the day, but that puzzled expression has not left. ...Okay, she has to ask. ]

What do the apples have to do with fucking?

[ She says the swear word without any kind of awkwardness or emphasis. She only vaguely understands that it’s not just an ordinary word, one that she is supposed to ignore, but if Mr. Geralt keeps using it, clearly he is fine with it, right?

Two roads diverge in a yellow wood of the conversation. Do you ask why her Lady would be asleep during the day, or explain the ways of swear words? The latter is the road less travelled by. Or do you just chart a path down both? Find out next time on Geralt’s comment. ]

sorry for the wait!

[gynvael]

[ That it is, in fact, the middle of the day catches his attention for a brief second. And if not for Leslie's puzzled look and the following question, Geralt might've given it more thought.

Instead, he blinks. He shoulders the bag of apples. He's, uh. Never been asked that before. It isn't even to do with Leslie's age; the children he's often been around, they hardly pause over vulgar language. Like the kids by the orphanage. If anything, it's the adults futilely getting them to stop.

Geralt's not about to send Leslie home to Lady Edelgard with brand new vocabulary. He hasn't met her and has no desire to be given shit for corrupting her ward. But, you know. The girl's going to learn at some point. ]

You can't tell me you haven't heard anyone curse around here? [ Has she simply glossed over it this whole time? ] Try not to say it around your lady. She might have my head.