Chapter Text
Spot fires are still burning in the streets of Vizima when Geralt makes his way back to the field hospital, but the battle is over and there's time enough to find someone to sew him back together before the next lord or ruler finds him with some urgent task to be done. The wound at his back is still bleeding sluggishly, what must be over an hour since he received it, though he scarcely remembers the moment through the haze of noise and adrenaline. He's too tired, his wits muddled by the fading effects of too many potions, to judge how bad it might be, but it needs seeing to before he collapses to sleep this day off.
Going to Shani is so obvious that only on arrival does he realise he should have known better. The battle has supplied her with a waiting queue of patients whose need is far greater than Geralt's. It's more than he deserves that she sees him at all, even to wave him away into the hands of some volunteer assistant who may be able to find time for him, eventually—even her assistants have queues waiting for their aid.
A shy girl in the dull grey smock of a temple novice helps him to peel off his bloodied leathers and makeshift dressing while he waits. She's not much for conversation; the poor thing so unprepared to deal with the sight of Geralt of Rivia, shirtless and bloody, that she's more or less tongue-tied from the moment she lays eyes on him. He wonders if his reputation is to blame or whether she'd have responded thus to any grim-faced, wounded soldier in need of similar assistance. Was he ever that young? It's more than Geralt can picture, and for once, he's not even sure whether his shattered memory is to blame.
As he sits and waits, a boy in a dented helmet and an ill-fitting, blood-soaked jerkin is sat down opposite by a filthy old man who, under the filth, is probably his father. The man is likewise bloody, though whether some of that blood is his own Geralt can only guess. It disturbs him to realise he hopes perhaps it is, because for one boy—and despite his soldierly dress, it's hard to believe the boy is much older than the novice Geralt just failed to speak to—to lose that much blood paints a very bleak picture of his prospects. The boy and his father seem to be in a different queue to Geralt, but one has to wonder if it will make a difference.
Coming here was a mistake, he decides glumly. He likely doesn't need more than a few stitches. Surely Triss or Zoltan could have managed, or at the worst, found him someone who could—who didn't have half the walking wounded of Vizima beating down their door. But now he's here, and Shani made it clear he won't be allowed to leave without being seen, and he certainly doesn't have the energy to protest.
He hasn't quite finished that thought when he hears his name. "Well. Geralt of Rivia, I presume?"
Geralt turns to see a slight, elderly man in a bloodied apron. He frowns. This again. "Do I know you? Or am I meeting another of Dandelion's fans?"
A moment—slightly too long a moment—passes before the man replies, but his voice is light enough that Geralt thinks no more about it. "No, I fear I must be counted among those who first learned your name and reputation from the latter. Nevertheless, how may I... ah, I see," he says, as Geralt twists to show him the gash. "Well, come over here, let's get that seen to."
Geralt glances briefly at the hunched figure of the boy in the dented helmet... but no, there's probably no point in asking. Geralt's not here to question Shani's triage system. He turns his attention back to the old man who addressed him.
"And you are?" Geralt prompts him, standing up.
The man gives him a thin smile. "Call me Emiel. Barber-surgeon by trade." He may have gone on, but this is the moment Geralt notices that the man's hand is shaking.
"Hey," he cuts in, "Are you alright? You sure you're up to this?" Now that Geralt looks at him more closely, he's pale as a wraith, with dark rings sunk deep beneath the sockets of his eyes. There's an awful fragility to Emiel that wouldn't look out of place among those lying around them on pallets on the floor.
"Oh," says Emiel. He grasps his shaking hand with the other, a trifle guilty. "You must forgive me. I am... ah, recovering from a malady of my own." He moves to a bench in a corner of the room and takes a deep draught from an earthenware cup containing some foul-smelling herbal concoction. The grimace as he swallows the mixture suggests nothing better about the taste, but with this ritual complete, he appears to compose himself. If his hands are still shaking, Geralt can no longer discern it.
Emiel gives him another apologetic look. "In other circumstances I would be still convalescing myself—alas, the city can ill-afford to pick and choose among its physicians today, and all hands are needed, so I have volunteered myself in whatever capacity I am found able. Take a seat, please." He waves Geralt to a stool, facing away from him so as to examine the wound. Presently, Geralt feels the touch of a damp cloth wiping away the worst of the blood. "Man or monster? Man, I would guess, given this would appear to be a blade wound."
"You guess correctly." It's some relief that Emiel has wits enough about him to recognise as much.
"I see you've already applied... hm, one of your witchers' concoctions, I assume? Alcohol-based, from the smell. I realise the specifics likely represent a trade secret, but in the interests of avoiding any risk of adverse reactions with my own..."
"No secret. It's just alcohol. All I had to hand." And poorly applied at that, given the angle, but better than nothing.
"Ah. Well, Geralt, this will need a number of stitches, but you've plainly survived much worse." A second cloth, this one soaked in stinging fluid, wipes cleanly over the cut.
"Your... malady," says Geralt. "Should I ask?"
"It isn't the plague, if that's what worries you. Nor is it contagious. But if you will permit me to avoid the... complicated and rather personal subject of the specifics, suffice to say I was brought back from much closer to death than I have any desire to venture again." Geralt feels the familiar sting of a needle at his back as Emiel makes his first stitch. "Though I suppose, Geralt, that must be true of the both of us."
"Is that a question?" Geralt asks in return, though not without the faint suspicion Emiel is deliberately changing the subject. 'Complicated and personal'—well, that means either it was much worse than Emiel wants to let on, or illegal, or cause for embarrassment. Venereal disease, maybe. Emiel seems a little old for that, but you never know. Aloud, he says, "I'll have to disappoint you: I have no recollection of how I did it. I have no recollection of much at all before they found me alive, half a world away from where they tell me I died."
"Well, I suppose we must consider amnesia a small price to pay, under the circumstances," says Emiel. "I must confess," he goes on, more conversationally, "when I heard someone had appeared in Vizima claiming to be the miraculously reborn Geralt of Rivia, I naively assumed it must be a fraud. Some scoundrel exploiting the reputation of the original, crying amnesia when pressed with questions exceeding his knowledge of the subject—you know the type."
It's not the first time Geralt has encountered such doubts, but there's something rather refreshing about Emiel's healthy skepticism. "Still could be," he says, letting himself enjoy the idea. "What makes you so sure?"
"Your witcher's eyes, for one—exceedingly difficult to fake," says Emiel, reasonably. Geralt feels a slight tug as he ties off his stitch. "The medallion, likewise. The white hair—very distinctive, and apparently genuine."
"You can tell?"
"Barber-surgeon, it's not just a title. And... if you'll forgive me, I couldn't help but note the scars of three evenly-placed stab wounds on your abdomen. Consistent with the gauge of a pitchfork. The same injury which reputedly felled the original Geralt of Rivia. In summation, if you are a fraud, you're a remarkably good one."
Geralt is genuinely impressed; Emiel couldn't have had more than a minute or two to look at him from that direction, and the scars in question are neither the largest or the ugliest he might have noticed. The man obviously has a surgeon's eye for detail.
"Could be a doppler," Geralt offers on a whim. "They can copy someone down to that kind of detail." He knows this—the idea comes to him that he's seen it demonstrated, though under what circumstances he can't recall. More likely it's something he learnt in his training; dopplers are supposed to be all but extinct nowadays.
"A doppler, mimicking a member of a profession regularly expected to handle silver weaponry? I'm not sure I find that very likely," says Emiel, taking the idea in good humour. "But it's possible, I suppose, and how would I know? You tell me, Geralt—are you a doppler?"
Well, isn't that just the million-oren question? "You're assuming I'd know," says Geralt, a trifle morose. "Maybe I shifted into Geralt of Rivia, took a bad blow to the head, and now I'm suffering the consequences."
"A novel theory," Emiel allows. "One moment... ah, hold this for me, would you?" Geralt is handed a length of bandage lined with foil. "Should I take it," Emiel goes on, deftly pulling his needle through another stitch, "that you have found waking up in the supposed life of Geralt of Rivia a somewhat... disorienting experience?"
"You should." Perhaps this is more than he'd be eager to admit were he less exhausted, but Geralt is very, very tired, and something about Emiel invites one to unburden himself. "When someone takes offense at the sight of me, I don't know whether it's my face, my profession, or some personal slight I committed against him years in the past. Every other man in the street thinks he knows more about my life than I do, and I haven't the self-awareness to tell what they've got wrong. Why, to listen to people, I've slept with every sorceress in the Northern Realms, ridden with the Wild Hunt, butchered a whole town after a disagreement with a sorcerer over some woman, kidnapped a princess of the Elder Blood, and can count both a dragon and a higher vampire among my friends."
Emiel's hands still briefly as he seems to consider this. "Some of that would seem a mite unlikely," he allows. "But I'd be the last to advise you to take everything from Dandelion's ballads as gospel truth."
Geralt is inclined to agree. He's starting to suspect even Dandelion himself doesn't remember anymore which parts he made up for his ballads.
"Given that word of your amnesia has begun to spread," says Emiel, who seems to be choosing his words carefully, "I would imagine you might also be at risk of those who would, ah, attempt to take advantage of the fact."
"It's begun," Geralt tells him, gloomily. "I've already been accosted by an 'old friend' whom I apparently owed a substantial sum of money. He wasn't very convincing. And a woman who insisted I was the father of her child, and considerably in arrears in alimony. I informed her that witchers are infertile, but she wasn't put off."
Emiel gives a soft huff, not quite laughter, but there's something strange in his voice when he speaks again. "So it goes. I fear for the next genuine old friend of yours from unlikely circumstances who finds himself having to convince you of his good intentions." He hesitates a moment. "Has anything, ah, come back to you?"
Geralt shrugs a little, though only with his good shoulder. "Bits and pieces. Muscle memory. Tricks of the trade. Impersonal stuff, mostly—how to track a drowner or kill a harpy. Things I guess I learned young enough that it's deeply ingrained. Don't remember how I learned it, but it's there. Keeping me alive."
"Something to be grateful for, then," says Emiel. "Well, Geralt, I can't answer all your questions for you, but I can offer you this much—you're not a doppler."
Geralt looks over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. "How's that?"
"You're holding a silver-lined dressing without discomfort. A most useful material, silver, in my profession as well as yours—it has disinfectant properties. When applied to beings with no inherent sensitivity, of course."
Geralt eyes the bandages in his hands. "Nicely done. Hope it won't ruin your theory that I'm holding them by the fabric layer. Haven't touched the foil."
"True," Emiel agrees, "But I would add that the disinfectant I've applied to your wound also contains colloidal silver. Though careful handling is certainly a valid strategy for silver objects, I promise you the application of silver solution to an open wound would be excruciating for any post-conjunction species. Ergo, you are human. Or as much so as any member of your profession. Pass me back the bandage, please—we're ready to wrap your wound."
"Are you this good value with all your patients?" Geralt asks. Behind him, he hears the click of scissors as Emiel cuts the dressing to size.
"Unlikely. But one tries. Raise your arm, please." Geralt obeys, then holds still as Emiel applies a length of clean, unlined bandage to hold the foil-lined dressing in place. The impulse is strong to protest the wound doesn't need such extravagant treatment; it isn't infected, and witchers are, if not wholly immune to infection, far more resistant than most. Or he should offer to pay Emiel for his time and attention, being one of the few patients here tonight who can certainly afford to. But something in Emiel's manner tells Geralt that raising either subject will be a waste of breath, if not actual cause for offense, so in the end he says nothing.
"Well, there you have it," Emiel concludes. "The wound should be kept clean, of course—the silver should enhance the time you may leave the dressing without changing it, but you will of course need the stitches removed within a week or so—perhaps less, given your witcher's metabolism. I cannot promise to be available to aid you in doing so, but..."
"That's fine. I'll manage." If he's still in Vizima then, Shani will probably insist on inspecting her volunteer's handiwork.
"Well, on that note," Emiel concludes, "unless there is anything else I can do for you, I feel it may be time to concede to my own limitations and leave the care of the remaining wounded to other capable hands. Would you be so kind as to make my intentions known to one of the novices as you leave? They should know whom to pass the message on to."
Geralt stands, flexing his shoulder slightly to test the range of movement the bandages have left him. On facing Emiel again, the man seems somehow even smaller and more fragile than he remembered. Fatigue, he supposes. "Are you sure you're alright to walk out of here? The battle might be over, but the streets have been safer than they will be tonight."
Emiel gives him a wan smile. "I thank you, Geralt—your concern is very kind, but for the moment, unnecessary. I am fortunate enough to have a... an old friend waiting for me, who has found it in his heart to nurse me through the worst of my weakness. He is more than capable of seeing me safely back to our lodgings."
Lodgings, thinks Geralt. That's interesting. "You're not from Vizima?"
"No. My companion and I are visiting a mutual friend."
Geralt frowns. He's far too tired for this—too tired to notice silver foil on a length of bandage after a such an obvious opening, even—but there's been something ever so slightly off about Emiel and his story from the start, and it's becoming impossible to ignore. "A sick man, travelling to a closed city in the time of a plague? That's bold."
Emiel waves a hand. "A calculated risk. I won't bore you with the details."
I won't bore you with the details. A polite fiction if ever he heard one. But what right does Geralt have to press? Let the man keep his secrets. "If you say so. Well, thank you, Regis. I hope staying to look after me hasn't set you back too far."
The long pause that follows isn't the first Geralt has noted in the course of their conversation; it lasts long enough to make him rethink his words, but nothing comes to him to explain it. "The pleasure is all mine, Geralt," Emiel tells him, before Geralt can come to any conclusion. He bows, lightly. "I am, as ever, at your service." With that, he sets about tidying his equipment into its various containers, preparing to leave.
Reluctantly, Geralt turns away and makes for the door.
He's halfway there when the commotion begins. A slow, horrible wail comes from across the room—it's coming from the filthy man who'd held his son's hand while Geralt waited. Beside them stands another of Shani's volunteers, rising slowly to her feet after pronouncing the findings of her examination. Hesitantly, she offers a hand to the wailing man, but with a howl of rage he launches himself at her, knocking her to the ground with his hands around her throat.
Geralt has taken two steps towards the scene before someone beats him there: a man in a black coat appears as if from nowhere, drags the howling father from his target and slams him against the wall, one-handed and with terrifying ease. For a long moment the two men lock eyes like that, frozen in tableau, then the man in black leans forward, seems to whisper something in the other's ear, and he sags, slumping against the wall, then curling to the floor when the man in black releases his hold. And there the dead boy's father stays, rocking slightly as he sobs. The man in black gives him one last, pitying look, and turns away.
By chance, his eyes meet Geralt's—a startlingly pale blue, Geralt notes, as a shiver goes down his spine. He looks away.
Nearby, he sees Emiel helping Shani's volunteer to her feet. Geralt finds himself thinking over what the surgeon had said, about his companion who would be more than capable of seeing him safely home. He believes it, now, though he couldn't have rightly said what made him sure.
He's already decided not to ask, he reminds himself. Not every mystery in Vizima is his to solve.