Chapter Text
The white one is in danger. In danger. Danger, Ancient beast, he’s in danger!
“Regis, what is it?”
Regis was sitting ramrod straight, suddenly assaulted by the cawing panic of his friends. They were flocking in the trees, talking over one-another, and there was only one individual they referred to as the White One.
“Something’s happened to Geralt,” Regis answered Dettlaff, worry etching itself into his posture even as he took strides towards the forest.
The ravens led him to a glen, and despite its almost unearthly beauty Regis knew not to trust it. Dappled sunlight spotted through layers and layers of green leaves, creating a damp, moss-soft floor. Mushrooms and toadstools sprouted liberally.
Near the cave mouth Regis found the shattered remains of a bomb casing. The churning dirt was damp with centipede blood and chunks of archispore lay like rotting flesh among the ferns.
“Can you sense any sign of him yet?” Dettlaff asked, having followed Regis and his fog of worry.
“No--”
“I can smell no blood, that is a good sign,” he tried to reason, placing a comforting hand on Regis’ shoulder. Regis was tense, nodding even though he didn’t really agree. Just because Geralt wasn’t bleeding didn’t mean he wasn’t in more trouble than he could handle.
The two vampires scouted the area for a while, finding evidence of Geralt’s fight strewn across the forest floor. The cave was the first place they looked and yet there was no sign of him--only a haze of sickly green still hanging in the air and the burst sacs of centipede eggs. The floor was uneven, blanketed with moss and fungus-encrusted debris, and if Regis hadn’t been wholly consumed by his need to find Geralt he may have realized that, curiously, much of the debris resembled human remains.
“Regis! There--”
Regis whipped around, materializing next to Dettlaff in an instant. He was looking up, pointing to a sword handle hanging over the edge of a ledge fifteen feet above them. He didn’t waste another moment, dissolving into smoke and solidifying at Geralt’s side. He hardly noticed when Dettlaff followed.
Geralt was laying on his stomach, his eyes closed, his breathing horribly labored. It wheezed painfully and Regis’ throat closed up in worry as he reached out, carding back Geralt’s hair so he could see his face.
“Geralt, my friend what have you done now?” he bemoaned, quickly feeling down the back of Geralt’s neck and looking down his spine, ensuring it was safe to turn him over. When he saw no obvious damage he took Geralt’s shoulders and turned him onto his back, careful to mind his head. Geralt’s head lolled in Regis’ hand, and as it fell into a streak of sunlight his eyes opened.
He wheezed out a groan and swallowed with visible difficulty, his eyes squeezing shut before blinking back open and allowing the pupils to adjust. They fixed on Regis with a glazed look of pain.
“Geralt,” Regis said, relief in his voice. “I’ve found no injury--can you tell me what’s wrong? What happened to you?”
Geralt’s teeth ground together and his chest strained to get a full breath, but it seemed futile. His jaw worked and he managed several small, mucousy breaths instead. Dettlaff even looked worried.
“His armor may be too heavy,” he observed, and Regis agreed.
“Geralt, we’re going to take off your breastplate, make it easier for you to breathe. Then perhaps you can catch your breath enough to talk to us,” Regis said, trying to keep a lid on his worry. It was clear that Geralt wouldn’t be able to breathe well enough to form words. He was barely getting enough oxygen to stay conscious, and the sound in his lungs was deeply worrying. Regis was almost afraid to focus his hearing to learn more, but just passive listening told him that there was a great deal of fluid building in the Witcher’s chest.
Regis didn’t have to tell Dettlaff that they needed to act quickly, and he was silently grateful for the other vampire’s care as he made short work of Geralt’s buckles and straps. The moment the heavy breastplate was gone, Geralt managed a deeper breath, his back arching against Regis’ hand and his head falling back. His eyes rolled back and his mouth was open with a look of relief, but it was short lived.
A deep, wrenching cough seized Geralt’s body and forced him to give up the oxygen he’d only just managed to get. Every muscle in his chest seized up and Regis hurried to turn him onto his side, helping support him as he coughed so long and so hard that he simply couldn’t any longer and he passed out.
The moment he went slack Regis really began to panic.
“Geralt,” he pleaded, shaking the Witcher and holding his head. “Please, my friend--” Geralt’s chest shuddered and he managed another breath, but it was the rawest, most painful sounding gasp Regis had ever heard.
“Regis--” Dettlaff’s tone was grave. “Look.”
Regis looked, and his whole body went cold.
The mucus Geralt had managed to spit into the moss before losing consciousness was bloody and dotted with thousands of tiny spores.
“Lungspore…” Regis breathed, his eyes wide with fear. “The cave must have been full of it….” he looked back at Geralt just as the Witcher shuddered back into consciousness. His wheezing was loud and his expression pinched with pain, his hand coming up to grip Regis’ sleeve.
Lungspore was a sure death sentence, and Regis realized it was either his denial or his worry that had kept him from recognizing it when they’d first searched the cave. An aggressive fungus, the spores burst into the air with the slightest disturbance and then seeded themselves in the lungs, flooding the victim's blood with sedative agents and growing quickly until the individual died and the fungus gestated easily in the decaying body.
“Regis….” he croaked. “Help...me…”
Regis shook his head, brow knotted with grief. “Geralt I have no cure for this, do you have a potion, something to help you fight--”
Geralt shook his head, and Regis felt the ice bury itself deeper into his chest. Beside him, Dettlaff lay a hand on his shoulder.
“No….potions…” Geralt managed, closing his eyes as though even that was too much effort. His fingers were clenching hard on Regis arm as the mucus gradually came back. Each breath the Witcher forced himself to take sounded heavier and filled less of his lungs.
“There must be something,” Regis said, feeling his own voice tremble.
He knew there wasn’t. The only reason Geralt wasn’t completely unconscious was because of his constitution as a Witcher. In the end, it was a crueler fate--he’d suffer longer before succumbing but wouldn’t stand a chance at beating the spores. Some of those he’d coughed up had already started sprouting little white hairs.
“Bite….me…”
Regis blinked, brow twisting further as he shook his head. “Geralt, no I would never!”
Both hands gripped Regis’ tunic and Geralt suddenly pulled himself up, the look in his eyes wild. “Bite. Me. Regis,” he demanded, his body shuddering with the effort. “Now.”
Regis was stricken by Geralt’s behavior, confusion and panic chasing his mind into a paralyzed indecision. He couldn’t cure Geralt and yet desperately sought his knowledge for a way around it. Something to ease his breathing, halt the progress of the spores, bypass his need for oxygen--every theory he came up with was less and less realistic. And now Geralt was...what? Asking him to euthanize him? Even though Regis knew without a doubt that it would be kinder than letting Geralt suffocate, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The mere thought of being the cause of Geralt’s death turned Regis’ entire body to lead.
“Geralt,” he said, his voice thin and broken. “I don’t understand…” he shook his head and Geralt ground his teeth harder, frustration and pain digging itself into the lines of his face.
Geralt’s throat and chest worked, the gasping in the back of his trachea barely deeper than a sip. It was plain he was about to loose consciousness for good when his hand let go of Regis and snapped out, grabbing Dettlaff instead. The other vampire actually startled but didn’t move, his icy eyes fixed on Geralt like he was trying to understand. Geralt hissed forced breaths through his teeth, his eyes fixing on Dettlaff in turn with a look of utter determination.
“Dettlaff.”
The way he said the name was a command, all too clear in its implications. Dettlaff stared back for a long, long moment before something seemed to click between them and he nodded once.
“Forgive me, Regis,” he said, and before Regis could twitch to stop him Dettlaff had buried his fangs in Geralt’s throat.
Geralt’s body arched and his hand came up to fumble and then twist into Dettlaff’s shirt, a spasm of movement all through his torso betraying how hard he was fighting to stay conscious and stay still. Regis made a noise in the back of his throat and grabbed at Dettlaff, wanting desperately to tear him off and yet knowing that if he did Geralt’s throat would be ruined and he’d die in seconds.
He watched in a helpless, sick haze, not understanding what Geralt was doing or why Dettlaff had seen what Regis himself hadn’t. He knelt there next to his Witcher, next to his brother, a hand gripping both. One hand held tightly to Geralt’s shoulder, the other was knotted in the back of Dettlaff’s shirt.
“Dettlaff,” he pleaded, his voice a tremble of fear. “Please, let him go--”
Geralt himself held onto Dettlaff like he didn’t want the vampire to stop feeding, and the sight of it frightened Regis to his core. He could hear how heavy and fast the Witcher’s heartbeat had become, and his hand strayed from Geralt’s shoulder to rest on his chest instead.
By the time Dettlaff let go Geralt’s heart was beating so quickly Regis was having trouble discerning the sounds, and the force of it under his hand was almost violent. Geralt’s hand fell away from Dettlaff’s shirt and Dettlaff pressed his palm against the bite, stemming the bleeding even as he licked a drooling of Geralt’s blood from the corner of his mouth and swallowed.
Regis met Dettlaff’s calm expression with one of betrayal and anger, his jaw clenched tightly.
“What have you done?” he demanded, pushing Dettlaff away and pressing his hand to the wound instead. Geralt was, incredibly, still conscious and trembling with the effort of breathing, but he no longer had energy to spare on paying attention to the two vampires.
“I saved him, as he requested,” Dettlaff answered simply. Regis had to look away, unnerved by the blood still staining Dettlaff’s teeth.
It was only another heartbeat before Geralt claimed his entire attention anyway, because, somehow, Geralt still had the energy to cough. His hand gripped Regis with surprising strength and he groaned, turning himself over and managing to get to his knees even as blood and saliva drooled from his slack mouth. His eyes were half closed and Regis was too shocked to do anything but steady him and help him sit back on his heels.
That’s when the coughing really began. It was long, and deep and horrible, and Regis feared it would never end. Blood seeped from the bite in Geralt’s throat, his muscles corded and sweat ran down his body with the effort of it all, but still he didn’t stop, managing to draw mutilated breaths through his teeth and into the back of his throat just often enough to keep conscious and start another fit of coughing.
Regis, in the end, just clung to him.
When it finally ended Geralt had bloody mucus and spores drooling over his lips, a mess he wiped away with a shaking hand. At long last, he slumped against Regis with a groan and lost consciousness.
Regis, startled, held him, one arm around his shoulders, his other supporting Geralt’s chest with a hand pressed into his sternum. Miraculously, Regis could feel no breaks in Geralt’s horribly abused ribs as he slid his hand across them, and though his breathing still didn’t sound healthy, it was no longer clogged with that dreadful, saplike sound.
It seemed Geralt would make it.
Regis’ mind was spinning, trying to make sense through his daze even as he watched Geralt’s slack face with furrowed brow. Presently, he swallowed and looked up, meeting Dettlaff’s eyes.
“Explain,” he said, his voice clipped.
“The spores were killing him. He could not fight them on his own.”
Regis’ expression hardened and Dettlaff gestured to the unconscious witcher.
“You know how our venom works, Regis.”
That was when the pounding of Geralt’s heart beneath Regis’ palm clicked and he suddenly felt a great, hot wash of shame.
“Oh Geralt….my friend….” Regis bemoaned, dropping his forehead to rest against Geralt’s jaw. “Forgive me--I did not understand.”
Regis had been so horrified, so panicked by the situation and what Geralt was asking that he completely missed the last-ditch chance Geralt had decided to take. Vampire venom was a powerful cardiac stimulant and a trigger for adrenaline--two things that just might supercharge a Witcher’s metabolism and give him the power needed to kill and expel the fungus trying so hard to sedate and suffocate him.
“Let’s get him home to Yennefer,” Dettlaff suggested, his brow furrowed with apparent worry. “I am certain she can aid in the rest of his recovery.”
“Yes…” Regis said distantly, nodding and unable to meet Dettlaff’s eyes. “I will carry him.”