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"Prepare to cast off! Clear the lines!"
"Lines clear, Captain!"
Geralt dodged to the side to avoid a crewmate, rushing to obey the orders being bellowed across the ship. He grimaced as the sudden movement tore at what minor healing had occurred on his back, sending fresh trails of blood down his back to soak into his already soaked waistband.
"That looks bad." Triss leant over to peer at his back, squinting to see through the blood. What little she could see, she clearly didn't like the look of it.
"Doesn't feel too great either." He drawled. Triss just rolled her eyes.
"There's a room below deck where they store the medical supplies. It should be empty." She stepped around him to reach the stairs leading below the deck. "I'll lead the way."
Making their way below deck, they soon came to a small room. Half taken up by crates full of cargo, there was just enough space for someone to have shoved a small bunk to one side. Triss waved a hand, and the few sparse candles flickered to life, burning bright enough to illuminate the small space.
"Take a seat." She said, as she moved towards the crates, opening one and starting to dig through its contents.
Geralt gingerly sat down on the end of the bunk, trying not to agitate his back any more than it already had been during his escape. Rubbing his face with his hands, he tried to absorb all that had happened over the past few days.
Foltest dead. He'd been named a Kingslayer. He'd been tortured and interrogated for several days based on this false accusation. And on top of all that, there was what Roche had said.
Now Geralt wasn't unused to the unusual, the unnatural. He was a Witcher after all. It was part of the job. But everything Roche has said. How he had died, stabbed in the chest with a pitchfork. But he was here . He clearly wasn't dead. It can't have happened.
But Roche hadn't seemed to be lying. And as he felt the scars on his chest, scars he had thought nothing of before, he now knew what injury had caused them.
He could see flashes of it in his mind. Buildings burning in the background, smoke thick in the air, people screaming and shouting, blood running across the cobblestones. Elven blood? Dwarven?... Or his own?
The bunk dipped behind him and he dropped his hands. Placing the bowl of water and the other supplies she needed on the bed next to her, Triss made herself comfortable and leaned forward, beginning to inspect his back.
"I think I can heal a lot of this with magic, but I need to clean the wounds to see what I'm working with." She admitted. "It's going to sting."
"Hardly the first time." Geralt snorted. "Go ahead."
There was a quiet trickle of water behind him as Triss wrung out a cloth, before the first touch came into contact with his back. He grimaced at the feeling, even the gentle touch being enough to send spikes of pain through him.
"Geralt… are these-?"
"They're from a whip." He said, shifting uncomfortably. "I wasn't admitting to killing Foltest so they tried to… persuade me."
The cloth stilled, and there was silence behind him. It sounded like Triss was preparing to say something a few times, before she eventually just sighed, dropping the cloth back into the bowl.
"Bastards." She said. The Witcher couldn't agree more.
"Okay, I'm done. Let me see." He felt gentle fingers touch the edges of the wounds, trying not to cause any more pain than necessary. "They did a number on you. These are deep. I can heal them but… some of them might scar."
"Scars stopped bothering me decades ago, Triss. It's fine. Just do what you can."
He saw a warm orange light over his shoulder, before the skin on his shoulders began to tingle strangely. They sat in silence for a few moments, before Geralt couldn't keep quiet any longer.
"Triss."
"Yes?"
"Tell me."
The feeling of magic on his skin flickered for a moment, before there was a quiet sigh from behind him. "What do you want to know?"
"Yennefer." The faint memory of a woman with dark, violent curls. Flashes of black and white. Piercing violet eyes. "Who is she?"
"Yennefer was… she's a Sorceress. An amazing one. She's ambitious, and cunning… and she's loyal to those that she cares for."
"Sounds like you know her fairly well."
"We've known each other for years." The magic moved to the middle of his back. "I met Yenna when I was still studying. She's older than me, so I suppose I looked up to her a little. We kept in touch and over time, we became friends."
"So why did you never mention her?" He asked.
"It's… complicated." He waited for her to elaborate. She didn't. Grinding his teeth in annoyance, he tried another line of questioning.
"How did I know her then?"
"I don't know all the details. She never said. I never asked. But you knew each other for a pretty long time." Triss said. "You two had a bit of a… rocky relationship."
" Rocky? "
"One minute you were together and the next you weren't. But it didn't seem to matter what one of you said or did, you always ended up drawn together again. Like fate, I guess." She laughed bitterly.
"Sounds… interesting ." Geralt said, raising his eyebrows. "Were we together when…"
"When?"
"Roche said something to me, back when I was being interrogated. He said I'd died back in Rivia. Yennefer too. And that our bodies had been taken away by a girl. A girl with ashen hair."
"How much do you know about what happened in Rivia?"
"Not much. Roche said that a mob of humans turned against the non-humans. That it was a massacre."
"It had already been going on for a while by the time we got there. We did what we could, but by the time we found you… there was so much blood ."
"So I really did- ?"
"Yes. You died Geralt." Triss' hands dropped from his back as she tried to gather herself. "Yenna tried to save you but… she couldn't. I don't know what happened. Maybe she drained herself throwing all of her magic into you? But you stopped breathing and she just fell ."
"Then how am I here now?"
"I don't know ." She huffed frustratedly. "All we know is that Ciri took both of you away somewhere. Then the next thing we know, you showed up in the woods outside of Kaer Morhen, half out of your mind but… alive ."
"Ciri?"
"The girl with ashen hair. She was your child surprise. Your… your daughter, I suppose."
Messy ashen locks and a mischievous giggle. A small body in his arms, held tightly as he finally admitted to himself that she was something to him.
Something more .
Something he had lost.
"Geralt?" His breath hitched as he snapped out of the broken shards of memory taking over his mind.
"I'm fine." Triss clearly hesitated, but he felt his skin warm again as she continued her healing.
"Eskel and Lambert found you in the woods and brought you back but then we found out you had amnesia and… we didn't know what to do."
"Telling me about the important things would have been a good start." He said, his voice harsher than he meant it to be. He felt her hands flinch against his back. "Why didn't you?"
"Geralt…"
" Why didn't you? "
"I just… it never felt like the right time, and-" Geralt scoffed as he got up off of the edge of the bed, grabbing a spare shirt from one of the cargo containers and pulling it on. "I wasn't finished with your back!"
"It's good enough." He spat, glaring into the container so he didn't have to look at her. "I need to rest, Triss. Alone ."
"I… okay." Her voice was tiny, wavering with hurt. At this point, he didn't much care. "Let me know if you need anything."
He saw her get up from the bunk out of the corner of his eye, making her way towards the door as quickly as she could.
"Triss." She froze in the doorway.
"Yes?"
"Would you ever have told me?"
"... I don't know."
When he said nothing more, she stepped out the door, closing it quietly behind her, leaving him alone in the small room. He sunk back down onto the bunk, burying his head in his hands as the rage flowed out of him, leaving behind only hurt and betrayal.