middaeg | (semi-open!)

[ This is one of the many reasons why Geralt hates war. It's why he's spent so many decades entrenched in vile neutrality; because during war, he's always here. He's in the burned skeletons of demolished villages, he's knee-deep in the muddy mass graves left behind, full of press-ganged soldiers and innocent civilians.

Before he died - gods, hours before - he'd passed a long line of hundreds of refugees, been forced to walk past victorious northern soldiers dragging Nilfgaardian women and children away by the hair into the dark lines of trees. Nilfgaardians were the enemies, they'd lost in a shattering defeat at Brenna, but the settlers had been herded there by their government, by force, now left to the whims of victorious soldiers of Temeria and Redania with nothing to do but entertain themselves.

And this isn't even really war. But the aftermath tastes the same, because these are, for all intents and purposes, war orphans. At least they have somewhere to go; there's no long line to walk, and be picked off by bored soldiers. He can't distrust Aefenglom with the sharpness some do. Maybe that's foolish of him. ]

Over here.

[ Geralt is up in the rafters, probably barely above Eren's oversized dragon head. The little sigil on his shirt collar keeps the rain sluicing off one side, out of his clothes, like a duck's butt. Handy, because it's pouring down all over him, through the barely-there thatch and busted planks. Only his impeccable sense of balance keeps him from putting weight on supports that would crumble. ]

Shove one up under where that bracer is. [ Point. ]

[ eren situated himself where he had to. rather, he'd stay quiet about which side he was on, feign it even, if it meant that he'd advance his own resolve. it was not so different from what every side does, realistically. though eren's valued freedom, experience has shown that he would trample over these very children if it meant he’d get from point a to b. a very dangerous thing, but one that doesn't need to be pondered today.

today, he’s not a devil—just as much of a stranger helping out. aefenglom or the coven is a grey area, and these were just people caught in between. he’s done enough collateral damage in his life anyway. wordlessly but acknowledged, the dragon man shoves the far end of the slab where directed, towering higher than most on the tips of his digitigrade toes and extended up where his large, granite horns just make him seem all the more larger. ]

Need one more for your weight?

[ that balance is cat like man, he’s impressed. ]

[ Geralt talks a big game about not giving a shit what people are - and he means it - and has shed an awful lot of blood lately in the name of monster equality. But privately, he is somewhat relieved to have been designated a witch, here. The handful of experiences he's had with losing control over his own body have been quite enough.

Eren still cuts a hell of a figure. Particularly compared to the half-pint he was some short months ago. ]

Not if I pay attention. [ He's alright up here. His balance isn't elven; he has to try, and he's fallen on his ass more times than he can count in a hundred years. Geralt shifts so that he's a counterbalance to the new support, listening for any telltale creaks. Finding one, he carefully hops to another spot so he can inspect it for rot.

Nope, all clear, just squeaky. ]

If it can hold me it can hold a new roof, anyway.

[ he was beebin and now he’s bebonk with stache potential. ]

It might be in for extra testing.

[ eren will begin to stick in any extra slabs where he’s asked from other nearby workers, getting much of the side and middle structure at their sturdiest and safest. next come metal cuffs, thick nails and hammers to seal any extra squeaks with, and giving stress points more endurance. he’ll climb up to hand them out rather than throw them— some people have lettuce leaves for fingers— using his talons rather than his own weight for anchoring. he’s not as cool as the witcher, even if heights don’t bother him. tail is slithery and his weight can fall to either side if he isn’t actively holding it up.

it does slowly begin to curl around the closest possible pillar when he’s found a place to stay, holding a cloth hanging from his neck open to grab at. what’s in his hand first is metal, with holes. ]

They said to, [ hold on— because he’s never actually seen these before, and gestures with it toward the other man in case he knew. he’s too far back in his time period for this sort of evolution lmao ] they go in the corners?

[ they might need some heat and bending to fit. ]

[ Structures in cities are advanced enough for Geralt to be familiar with metal construction materials, even though the only home he's ever built with his hands was a wooden cabin; a very rural affair. ]

It's just a puzzle piece. See?

[ He picks it up, holds it up where it's gonna go, making sure Eren can see so that he understands what's gonna happen when he's inevitably asked to make an adjustment to the piece. Geralt eyeballs the measurement and sticks his finger about three-quarters of the way down on it. ]

Can you bend it .. about there?

[ There's something provincial about all this. Too unusual to be domestic, but offering no refinement. Surreal, given the past few months. ]

[ you’re one step ahead in mechanics when all eren’s ever done is build a cabin with wood and strings. he also cheated at fifteen meters. marley may have a far more advanced hand in architecture, but the shifter never really did stop to admire it. breaking things apart to see how they worked was more armin’s thing.

with a nod, eren takes the piece, marking it with his thumb before geralt can remove his completely, before bringing it up to his mouth— half to give it a tongue taste, half to afterward give it a localized flaring; fire comes in a controlled stream and steady exhale, only coming to a stop when it brightens to kindling orange, the same color as the scales on his face become the more he breathes.

bending it is no problem afterwards— they’ll just need the rain water to cool it off fast. ]

You’ve built things like this yourself.

[ a statement that should’ve been a question— nevermind the quality of the work, it wasn’t different from the homes in shinganshina. ]

[ Luckily, this structure only has the mere suggestion of a roof, and so rainwater is in vast supply. ]

Of course. [ Geralt pokes some guide holes in the wood. ] I'm no landed gentleman with a family estate. Our home was a castle so ancient and decrepit even the humans didn't want it.

[ Witchers of the wolf school love to rag on Kaer Morhen, but Geralt still loves it, in his own way. Too old, too fucking cold, always in a state of decay no amount of repairwork could ever seem to come up with - but that's pre-elder architecture for you. For longevity you really need to colonize elven ruins. Whoever built their crumbling keep in the northern mountains, there's no record of left in the world.

Thunk thunk thunk. Geralt hammers in the bracer, one peg at a time. ]

[ with all these questions and fluttering curiosity that may not cease so soon, eren may start to seem more like a lad. castles were either abandoned and used by his former military, or belonging to kings he’d rightfully smite. ]

Our military never stuck around in one place for long. We never needed to. [ never really needed to build when so much of it was abandoned and free to use. he’s feeling talkative enough to share, as a man who already speaks so little of himself to others to begin with. as the bulk of the hammer vibrates under them, eren tries his hand and the “puzzle” on his own. trial and error would teach him, perhaps, and he measures briefly with his fingers before heated the plate into flexibility. ]

What doesn’t make you human?

[ says he, who wouldn’t be considered one either, where he came from. just a thing that can turn into a giant. geralt looked very much human to him, feelings and all. ]

[ Ah, a soldier. Geralt always believes that those types will never see eye to eye with him - and maybe that's fine. He's content with not understanding war. Someday he'll die again, for a final time, and maybe it'll be over refusing to fight. That'd be alright with him. ]

I'm a mutant. I was created by human mages to kill monsters.

[ Eren doesn't seem like the type to fly off the handle because he used the m-word in a context obviously not relevant to the way it's applied in this world, so he doesn't try to word it differently. ]

We're called witchers. People like to hire us to do work they can't do, but don't want us living alongside them, either. Freaks, you know.

[ Thunkthunkthunk of the hammer. Geralt doesn't sound bothered. ]

[ everything is so subjective to his mind’s eye that surely, it’s difficult for any use of labeling to get him to lose it. one must be a true offender of freedom to break his patience. nowadays. ]

With or without your consent?

[ the whole creation thing. he’s been around coven classes enough to know what mutants are, how magic conducts itself depending on the world ir came from was like a minimal detail.

it does feel a little familiar, though. eren would’ve argued so much back then, that he never chose to take an injection and what came along with it— today he knows it was him who made it happen all along. ]

How do you mean?

[ .. is the kind of strange inquiry that tells more than Geralt means it to, probably. If he has to ask what Eren means by consent, it heavily implies that it was not a factor taking into consideration. But who knows, maybe Geralt will have a happy story to tell.

He moves to another section of roof, avoiding a log that looks particularly questionable. Sitting on a sturdy area, he applies some pressure with an outstretched leg and watches it crack. Hrm. He leans out to mark it with chalk. At least it's just a horizontal bracer, and can be replaced without the whole structure caving in. ]

[ words come carefully here, because obviously— it wasn’t the grand majority that wants, per se, to become a monster. sometimes this life chose you, but eren would always believe in the judgement they have as a whole to do something or not. ]

If you had your choice in it. [ it almost seems odd to him, the question given back to him and what that says— but who knew, and it wasn’t his place to judge it either.

the man still receives back up as they work; one bracer coming up immediately, faster than the last few times as eren grows accustomed to bending metal. ]

No one's dragged kicking and screaming, [ he says with a shrug. ] But you don't usually end up a candidate witcher because you have an abundance of other choices.

[ Plenty of people would disagree. Lambert, even, the other witcher in the city, Geralt's own 'younger brother'. But Geralt's of the opinion that Lambert's bitterness is a teen angst phase and that someday he's going to understand that he wasn't snatched up from a loving family. He was gambled away by a shitty parent who was going to beat him to death one day, and that at Kaer Morhen, he was at least given a life with a trade and a fate.

Not all war orphans have to be eaten by swamp crones, not all peasants living in the war-torn wastes of Velen have to starve to death. Once in a while, one of those boys ends up finding his way north. And whenever a witcher accidentally ends up with a claim to a child from a prosperous situation, they reject it. Like Eskel did with Deidre, and like Geralt did with Cirilla.

(At first.) ]

[ they are same hat, today. eren pauses through geralt’s words, not so much surprise on his face, but a bit of— an empty looking stare as he continues with the work in his hands. similar to an oh, seeing a familiar piece of poetry while flipping through a book. ]

Most burdens are that way. [ would he go as far as to call it a burden? yes, though remembering that every man carries the weight he can on his cross. ] Or, choices.

[ there was never an easy choice to make— but if he made them, so be it. ]

Does it bother you?

[ That far-off look, his offer of something like understanding. Seems like Eren knows from experience. Also, seems like he's not at the stage of easy acceptance, like Geralt is.

Construction continues, tedious but necessary. This house is starting to come together. ]

. . . Yeah. [ see, it makes him feel like he’s back on his four year long spiral of silent depression. except back then he didn’t say a word, to anyone. holding the wood slab with one hand, claws sinking into them to keep it from moving while a hammer plunged whatever nails it had to, while his other hand scrapes at the horrendous mixture of scar tissue and scales up his neck. ] Makes me sick, sometimes.

[ of himself, definitely of himself. ]

But that’ll get me as far as tantrums go.

Sorry to hear that.

[ I guess.

The person that would be sympathetic to that, who felt it himself, is so far in Geralt's past that he feels like a stranger. It was selfish of him to agonize over his lack of choice, and his predetermined destiny. It was vanity that made him despair over being different. He is what he is and that's the way things are. ]

All the worst people I know chose to be that way, though.

[ his shoulders roll, the best he could in acknowledgement while holding pieces of bark and metal together. a moment of honesty left behind as a boy and that’s all it was. he wasn’t the only one and there were those trapped in worse down the line. ]

I’m not. I need that. [ it’s what gives him gas to revolt! and there comes some sort of— weird lip quirking, not actually a smile but something done to adjust the direction of his tongue and where it darts— unless geralt wants it in his face ] Worst?

[ Eren's tongue is always doing something weird at him. You need that snipped off or is it just lonely. ]

What, everyone you've ever met has chosen to be an upstanding saint?

[ Geralt's pretty sure most of his friends have made horrific choices. The only ones he still respects boil down to the people forced into their fates. ]

[ it’s lonely 😞 and doesn’t quite laugh! there’s no smile to signify that, but there goes a bit of a huff-chuckle as if to say no way. no way in the world. everyone can be pretty god damn horrific. ]

It’s just— subjective, that’s all.

Yeah, people love saying that. [ But subjectivity is the refuge of someone who knows he done fucked up real bad. Not that Geralt hasn't used that excuse before. (Or a version. Something even more insufferable, in neutrality.) ]

Sometimes being made isn't so bad, is what I mean. You can always choose later, whichever way you fucking want.

Pretty much. [ they all done fucked up but grandpa geralt is still cool ] It’s passed down or-?

[ he doesn’t mean to actually pry, but— it’s in the air in the first place. curiosity always led to hell but fuck if he won’t stop doing it. ]

What? Subjectivity?

[ Geralt doesn't have nearly enough daddy issues to think that his tale might have the air of inherited agony. Witcherism is a truly bizarre state, but it has nothing to do with fathers and sons. Actively, anyway.

Tacktacktack. Construction rp description goes here. I don't know how to do this without a crafting tab. ]

That’d be the end . . . [ or not, but humanity just isn’t built that way. also my google fu is lame lately, but they are getting this shit done. the wood is sturdy and holding them up with less squeaks by the second. ]

Your— Status? Your mutation. [ subjectivity is, grunts. ] The only thing I know about that’s like that is passed down. The host doesn’t live for long, so they find the next best contender to inherent the roll, [ and, weird off gesture. something something, cannibalism. ]

No, it's not an evolutionary mutation. It's an immediate mutation. We can't reproduce once we've been changed.

[ Witchers are not the result of humanity trying to solve a problem, witchers are the results of horrific experiments on children. ]

We're abandoned children. Mostly war orphans, but once in a while someone will just dump a baby [ like him lol ] or trade a kid for services, or lose one gambling. Children who'd have died anyway.

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