Chapter Text
No human life should have to feel this, Yennefer thinks. Her purple eyes have lost their light, are full of darkness and anguish. There should be a limit to the pain a heart can take.
An endless cycle, forever circling, like a snake eating its own tail. Yennefer looks out across the sea, thinks about sinking inside the waves. Cognizant of being overtaken but lying back to be pulled down into the abyss.
She’s reminded of standing here not long ago. A few months, was it? Time gets skewed to an unfathomable variable when one tends to live past the norms for any human life. What she would give to bend the very fabric of the moments she’s lived, rearrange them all to see if they might ache any less.
Her thoughts skitter like a drowner, yanking her deep into the wounds she can never heal from. Her eyes close and she trembles against the salty spray, the cold that permeates even though the moon is hanging low in its perch and there’s not a cloud in the sky.
The tablet of names, seeing her name etched across it. Being dead to the eyes of the world but still having her feet moving forward. Tissaia said she had waited to carve it for a month. Now Yennefer has waited the same amount of time for Tissaia.
If it were possible to rip the beating, distraught organ from her chest, Yennefer would. Because this wait for Tissaia? Well, it shows no ending.
//~~~~~~~~//
“The Brotherhood…” she begins and Yennefer immediately wants to scream.
She’s so tired of the Brotherhood’s puppetry, so frustrated she can’t find a knife to flay Tissaia’s strings attached to them.
“The Brotherhood, The Brotherhood,” Yennefer paces, closing her eyes and tossing her head back and forth in a shake. “The bloody fucking Brotherhood who would rather have me impotent than tearing the world asunder in aid.”
“Your own magic has made sure of that,” Tissaia says much quieter than her usual tone. This snaps Yennefer’s eyes open again.
“Excuse me?” Yennefer spits out, incredulous. Tissaia is suddenly much closer than she’s ever been before too, her hands touching Yennefer without a second thought.
“I know you to your core,” the woman says, the waver in it cleaving Yennefer right where it seems she feels anguished much of the time.
Can you feel every single time I crack, every time I threaten to fall apart? But Yennefer assumes one needs magic for that, which she is without. What used to be the tether tying her and Tissaia together no longer exists. She’s a mere commoner, a regular human. No one worth a Rectoresses’ time, certainly someone unworthy of being within the walls of a place of spells she would utter in vain.
Worth no more than a pig still. Not even worth the four marks which were paid. What’s lower than the ground from which you crawl from? Yennefer does not know.
Yennefer stares defiantly into Tissaia’s eyes. Dares her to say it, to let it out between the two of them. “Tell me what it is you see then, Tissaia. Tell me what you see when you look at me.”
“A Yennefer trying to fill the gaps she perceives,” Tissaia never breaks eye contact. The sharpness of the woman’s cheekbones in the faint light makes Yennefer feel a sense of wonder, having known Tissaia for years and only looking at her now, like this, after everything. “I see one incapable of being filled.”
“Then you know nothing at all,” Yennefer shakes her head. She feels so cut out, so torn apart, that if Tissaia is only noticing one chasm, she’s failing to observe the trenches there too.
“You are not only your magic. You have always been so much more.”
Yennefer jerks away from the hand on her cheek, feeling undeserving of this version of her savior, her mentor, her only constant when nothing stays the same.
“I asked you to help me once. You refused,” Yennefer reminds. Of a time when her fingers were dangling from a ledge and it felt like Tissaia pried them off completely. One, two, three, and so you fall.
Back then, there had been a way to circumvent a Nilfgaard future. Now, there seems little way to breed magic into a body that lies dormant. How can Tissaia fill a well that’s lost its source?
“If I could strip it from my very veins and give it to you, I would.”
Tissaia is at Yennefer’s back now. Yennefer doesn’t have to go inside of a dream because there is a finger tracing down her bare back, dipping to the lowest point that her dress goes. Her eyes flutter shut, so weak to this touch she’s never had.
Suddenly, Tissaia’s hand jerks. A movement that despite no magic, Yennefer can still ascertain. Something is amiss. Something is causing her to pull back.
When Yennefer turns, Tissaia’s jaw is set. Trouble etches her features, making her look older than she actually is. A stray lock of hair has unwound from her upkept braids knotted at the base of Tissaia’s skull, and Yennefer wants nothing more than to wind her finger in it, tuck it back where it belongs. To give Tissaia back some control she is clearly lacking.
“There’s no place here at Aretuza for me anymore,” Yennefer finds that speaking the words hurt more than she would ever care to admit.
A school built on grandeur, reputation, skill—all shit now that a war has launched flaming arrows into its facade. When Yennefer said she wanted to burn it all to the ground, she never thought she’d be taking the hallowed halls of the school with her. Nor the small woman who watched over it.
“You’ll not walk out of those doors unless I bid you to do so.” Tissaia is standing before her, forehead connecting and right hand holding Yennefer’s uncovered arm. “For once, just stay.”
Despite her proclivity to run, Yennefer finds herself agreeing to the directive. After all, where else is there to go? Moreover, what other soul does she have in the world?
//~~~~~~~~//
The top of the grotto almost sparkles in the faint light, reminding Yennefer of a thousand tiny stars forever stuck in the heavens. Twinkling light whose only purpose it is to sit idle, to burn, to die.
Her arms stretch wide out to her sides, her body floating. The world is a muted construct of time with water filling her ears. It’s why she doesn’t hear the approaching footsteps, doesn’t even register the presence of anyone else until Tissaia is standing before her, face impassive of what she thinks of finding Yennefer bare and hiding nothing.
Although Yennefer doesn’t much care. She’s heard of the Rectoress’s penchant for visiting the bath house in Gors Velen so if she is bothered by the sight of a naked woman, it’s really a personal issue instead. Planting her feet and pushing her hair away from her face, Yennefer takes a few steps to where Tissaia stands.
Her hands find the edge of the pool, the edge of Tissaia’s skirts precariously close to the liquid of the bathing area. To Yennefer’s now resting elbows that she crosses over one another, kicking her feet idly behind her.
Tissaia indulges Yennefer for some reason, observing quietly until the sorceress decides to speak. “I’d ask you to join me, but I know you won’t. Your little invites only extend to people you find equal.”
The bite of Yennefer’s words isn’t lost in the cavernous space. In fact, they’re only amplified. A growl threatens low in her throat, but she manages to contain it to only a sneer on her face. Of which is promptly wiped away as the cerulean fabric of Tissaia’s dress drops with a plop in front of Yennefer.
Jerking her attention upward, Yennefer is met with the sight of her former mentor, all curves and angles. All compact beauty and shrouded mystery, even though not one single thing covers her now either.
She descends into the pool, wet shoulder brushing against Yennefer’s. Tissaia scoops the water into her hands, lets the warmth of it trickle from her palms. Her face is pensive, far off. Sighing, she turns faint blue toward Yennefer.
“I’ve found little to gain your magic back that you haven’t already tried,” Tissaia shakes her head.
“Is this your subtle way of telling me I’ve worn out my welcome already?”
The full moon just passed again. It’s only been a few days past a month since she was asked to stay. The Brotherhood has lasted longer than Yennefer suspected they would in letting her sit within Aretuza.
“The prisoner…”
“I figured you’d have off with his head by now,” Yennefer interrupts.
“They wanted you to do that, you know.” Tissaia’s face is hard. “I told them no.”
The laugh that escapes Yennefer is brittle. The amusement she feels throughout her body is much the same. “When have they ever listened to you?”
It’s not a dig at Tissaia but rather to the antiquated ideas of the boy’s club she serves, their self-righteous bullshit they uphold and call it for the good of a Continent that barely cares about them anymore. There’s a scar on Yennefer’s abdomen, across Triss’s neck, on the fabric of theirs, Sabrina’s, and Tissaia’s very souls. That’s what the Brotherhood has given them.
“I pried his mind, tried to strip it to nothing.” Tissaia says it quietly. Her palm forms a cup, her eyes fixing on creating ripples with it on the surface of the water. So unlike her. “I’d have done the job for them then if it had meant finding you.”
The look that passes between her and Tissaia then is something they’ve never given one another. Yennefer has to wonder what exactly is happening, of just why her heart is shifting in her chest. It flickers between them, Tissaia pulling back first. “I’m portaling him back to enemy lines. They can do what they will with him.”
“Don’t you think they’ll embrace their golden boy who almost brought down the Northern armies? Who managed to ransack Cintra to smoldering ruins?” Not that Yennefer wants the task of lopping off the poor sap’s extremities anyway.
Tissaia ignores her, head tilting. “As for your magic…”
“I’ll not let you go alone. What your doing is fucking crazy, and you know it,” Yennefer refuses to let Tissaia continue to shoulder the burden of Sodden still. It’s all of their nightmares. If Yennefer can lessen it even a bit…
“Two birds with one stone then,” Tissaia sighs. Yennefer cannot quell what she feels because of the way Tissaia’s face holds the weight of too many things. “I’ll be depositing the prisoner in Vicovaro. After, I’ve also managed to procure the necessary mutagens for you to undergo the Trial of the Grasses there.”
“The fuck you have!” Yennefer shouts, indignation boiling over. Droplets fall from the strands of her hair, her breasts, to splatter against Tissaia’s shoulder.
Tissaia stands, an eyebrow raised. “You’ve never wanted to be normal, Yennefer, even when you never have been. I suspect much the same now.” She does her own dripping as well.
“By turning me into a witcher? I’d rather wander into Nilfgaard with the prisoner and play the lute for them than subject myself to anything that becoming a monster-killer-for-hire involves.” Which is a lie. Which Tissaia calls her on immediately.
“I can protect you as a witcher. We can walk in the same world. As a human, I cannot,” Tissaia forewarns and Yennefer sinks into her words.
She’s trying to keep you, Yennefer thinks. For once, the idea doesn’t sound half bad. To be wanted. To be given a choice rather than have it dealt to you like a Gwent hand.
Yennefer launches her body into Tissaia’s, feels it like a counterpoint everywhere. Nothing between them, nothing to mask. “This is how I save you, Yennefer” she hears and finds herself nodding in agreement while gripping Tissaia ever tighter.
//~~~~~~~~//
The first time something feels amiss is the first time she sees them together. The way they linger around one another isn’t right. How he walks her to her door, stands there a little too long.
Yennefer knows because she follows them. It’s not as if she can cloak herself or shield her presence. She has to practically adhere to the wall, to silence her footsteps to imperceptibility. The smile he gives her makes bile rise from Yennefer’s gut and burn in her throat.
Tissaia may close the door, Vilgefortz may leave, but Yennefer already doesn’t like what she’s seen. Wishes she could sear it from her retinas. How odd to envy Phillipa with her bound eyes.
While she would like to broach the subject with Tissaia, Yennefer bites her tongue. Usually she’s not one for being strategic, instead adopting to barrel forward with whatever it is she thinks. But she is still undecided what she feels tugging at her insides, so she chooses to remain mum. On that at least.
“The Trial of the Grasses…”
“I know about the Trial,” Yennefer waves off, moody and somber. She overlooks the expanse of the Isle from Tissaia’s office window. “After all, I’ve fucked a witcher more than once.”
Seems like I’m not the only one who’s been fond of something in the grass, Yennefer’s dark thoughts gnaw. She works at the corner of her nail with her teeth. Yennefer has always been good at identifying snakes.
“Must you be so crude?” Tissaia looks down at the woodgrain of her desk. Her fingers are laced together creating a knot of her hands. It’s easy to see the furrow of her brow.
“If you’re worried I’ll die when I receive mutagens, I’d place my bets against that. Might I remind you, I’ve already survived an Enchantment without any herbs.” The pain of what she experienced surfaces again, gone but never forgotten. How she’d screamed in pain. How close she’d toed the living world and afterlife, staring death in the eyes.
“A fact I am doomed to never forget, to never feel any less guilt at letting you go through it to begin with,” Tissaia turns, her chair facing Yennefer as she holds her hands in her lap and crosses her legs.
“You dwell on things that are beyond your control, Rectoress.”
“So we’re back to that then? The way it’s always been between us?”
The woman motions between them. She looks so small and so tired and so absolutely beautiful that Yennefer’s heart quickens at the sight of her even though she’s been standing in the room with her for some time. Yennefer hugs herself, feeling a shiver develop despite the temperature of the room. She cannot look at Tissaia.
“I’ve earned the right to call you by your name? Does fighting in a war for you give me that right? Does me having no part of my magic divest me of my ability to refer to you by the title you’ve earned? Am I not allowed to reference that I even know what magic is at all?” Now Yennefer does look at her, face displaying the dueling emotions she feels.
A knock interrupts any correspondence Tissaia might launch into. It robs Yennefer of getting an answer. Without waiting for one either, the source of the knock enters and Yennefer feels her blood boil.
“Tissaia…Yennefer,” Vilgefortz’s face shifts in that disturbing way Yennefer is learning she loathes. “I didn’t know I was interrupting something.”
“Well you were…”
“Right on time,” Tissaia stands, effectively blocking Yennefer from the man’s ire inducing face. The back of Tissaia’s head is only slightly more pleasant to look at since Yennefer is apt for a fight. She turns around, placing both hands on Yennefer’s shoulders. “In five moons.”
“He knows of the plan?” Yennefer drops her voice. Steps closer. Speaks in just a whisper. “Of everything?”
“Vilgefortz is the one who suggested we take the prisoner well beyond the Northern Kingdoms. He is also satisfied that you will be accompanying me to do so, despite you being without the protection of spells.”
“I assume you know how to use a sword?” his smugness immediately incenses Yennefer.
“Why don’t you go fetch me one like a good lad and let’s find out,” Yennefer’s lip curls.
“We’ve discussed how you have volunteered to lead the prisoner into Nilfgaard from Vicovaro as well.” Tissaia sounds so sure and Yennefer wants to come unglued, but when she’s pinned by icy blue, she knows not to launch into how she has most assuredly not done what Tissaia is announcing.
Vilgefortz looks so pleased by this that Yennefer cannot rob him of thoughts of her most likely demise upon returning Cahir. Even without magic though, Yennefer is still able to read Tissaia well.
He doesn’t know shit about the Trial.
“I find myself growing restless here,” Yennefer motions around disgustedly. “I’ve never exactly hidden what a shit hole I think this is. On to greener pastures, as they say.” Or to an actual shit hole. Past Nazir, what’s the point even?
“Then five moons can’t pass quickly enough, I assume,” Vilgefortz has the balls to goad. He holds his hands behind his back then, showing no signs of leaving.
“That will be all, Yennefer,” Tissaia says in that tone Yennefer has never much liked but knows very well.
Never one to not know when she’s been dismissed, Yennefer passes out of the room without another word. On the other side of the door, she leans against it. Places her head on the rough wood.
Why does it feel like her heart is on the other side?
//~~~~~~~~//
A bunch of small moments over the next four days add up to the big one the night before Yennefer and Tissaia are set to leave. What Yennefer sees has her drunk and staring out into the milky twilight.
A kiss shared supposedly in secret. An act that felt like the height of betrayal to Yennefer’s entirety. How can Tissaia let him touch her like that? How can she stand him to touch her at all?
Her belly is full of Touisant wine and her emotions are essentially liquid too when Tissaia finds her swaying against the columns. Using them to keep herself upright.
“I’ll never get used to not feeling you.” Yennefer’s words are slurred and her eyes are closed. The whole of the world feels like it tilts with her. “That’s what non-mages will never understand. How chaos is like having a signature, a unique flavor. The way you created electricity on my tongue is unlike anything I’ve experienced in ninety years.”
The sea rumbles beneath them, as tumultuous as Yennefer herself. She leans back against the pillar, sees the moonlight on the backs of her lids. Licks her lips trying to remember the exact way Tissaia feels.
“You’ll feel me again as a witcher,” Tisssia offers, stepping closer. (She’s always so close these days.)
The ‘if’ between them stays unspoken even though they both know it. An enchantment, the Trial. There are no guarantees in life at all. Yennefer could die strapped to a table, trying to get even a fraction of what she’s lost back.
Yennefer reaches out blindly, feels fuzzy fingertips connect with Tissaia’s hips. Sloppily, she pulls her in, wraps her arms around her tightly. She’d like to think to hold Tissaia, but it’s more likely it’s the other way around.
“Just how does he feel you, Tissaia?” Yennefer whispers hotly, drunkenly against Tissaia’s ear. Even in her inebriation, Yennefer is able to feel Tissaia stiffen. “Come now. I may be a lot of things but being unobservant is not one of them.”
Now Yennefer lets her eyes flicker open, doing her own type of pinning. She holds both sides of Tissaia’s face, keeping her immobile. “I know you to your core too. He doesn’t dwell there.”
Before Tissaia can say another word, Yennefer hastily retreats. She’s got another lurking man to speak to.
//~~~~~~~~//
The wooden slats are not exactly smooth for a face to slide down. Yennefer finds this out the hard way as she peers into the dark, dank cell where Cahir sits against the wall, peering out from the shadows like a deranged mouse. Yennefer cannot help the laugh that bubbles up from her.
“Aren’t you a sight.”
“Says the drunken sorceress standing at my prison gate,” the man retorts.
“No, no.” Yennefer shakes her head dramatically, holding up a finger. “Ex -sorceress. Turns out when you scorch an army, that somehow drains one’s power completely.”
“Then I suppose congratulations are in order,” Cahir leans back against the wall, knees up and hands joined over them. “One less mage around to muck up the proceedings.”
“Speaking of things being mucked up, how’s this working for you?” Yennefer taps slowly on her skull. “Feeling disjointed, mentally? One too many nails digging into the old mind?”
“She tell you that, did she?” He nods once then glares. His eyes look beady in the faint light. “Did she also mention she got not one word from me?”
“Said you screamed like a bitch, actually.”
Yennefer has to move away from the wooden cross beams because Cahir’s lunge is insanely quick and Yennefer is still moderately intoxicated. She barely manages to miss his hands which grip the wood separating them tightly.
“There she was, your all powerful Rectoress, and she couldn’t yank the truth from me.” His voice is cold, calculated. He knows exactly what he’s doing: digging his own nails in. “Day after day after day. I saw her wilt each time she had to walk from this cell without knowing where you were.”
Yennefer’s stomach swims at this. (Swims, perhaps, for other reasons too.) Her vision blurs for a few moments and she has to gain purchase on the wall. “Tissaia is stronger than the lot of them.”
“If she is, then why am I still here?” Now he taps his head in a mocking gesture. “All intact up here.”
Yennefer takes a few steps back toward the entrance of the dungeon. Her feet feel like bricks, her body leaden. As if she’s being sucked into mud and unable to move away.
“The way you speak of her gives you away,” Cahir calls out. “They come here together, you know. Walking along like they hold all of the power. He struts like a peacock and she follows him dutifully like the bitch you accused me of being.”
Now it’s Yennefer’s chance to lunge. Unfortunately, the Touissant wine is less fine rolling around in her belly. She’s unsteady in her steps as she braces against the gate. Her purple eyes burn in the darkness.
“Enough.”
“What bothers you, Yennefer of Vengerberg? That he’s had her or you never will?”
How she makes it up the steps and to her quarters, Yennefer does not know. Likewise does she not know she’s crying until there are tears running down her face.
//~~~~~~~~//
There is no whisking away the hangover she has the next morning as she stands mutely in front of Cahir’s cell again. He eyes her solemnly and she pointedly ignores his look, instead choosing to wrap her cloak tighter around herself.
She also refuses to look at the source of their discussion last night, who stands to Yennefer’s right. It’s better to feign disinterest. It’s better to pretend she’s aloof in this whole matter, especially when Vilgefortz appears at the gate with them.
Yennefer takes a second to let her gaze flicker to him, automatically feeling the stone of annoyance sitting steadfast in her gut. No part of her wants to call this jealousy, but Cahir’s words from last night are like twine tied to that rock—they keep floating up to the surface.
“You’ll portal back promptly?” Yennefer snaps back into the land of the living instead of the one of fog. Vilgefortz is standing a bit too close to Tissaia for Yennefer’s liking.
“Ymlac is right over the border from Vicovaro. I’m sure the prisoner will make it to his lands in a promptly manner,” Tissaia responds, turning to face Cahir. “And if not, we can at least say we extended our part of the bargain.”
“With Yennefer here, he’ll probably stroll into the City of Golden Towers bound and gagged,” Vilgefortz’s brown eyes look sinister in the faint light of the holding cell area.
Yennefer shoves away from the wall, shrugging. “Why not just save ourselves the trouble and lop his head off so I can throw it at their feet on a pike?”
She doesn’t care one way or the other for Cahir, not really. Having been a prisoner herself, she cares little for the rules and art of war. That being said, Yennefer is of no doubt that Vilgefortz would want a front row seat for Cahir’s execution—a courtesy she is beyond extending him.
Fucking prick, Yennefer thinks just as Tissaia swoops in to intervene. Both she and Vilgefortz focus on the hand Tissaia puts on her forearm, a gesture not inherently intimate but one that the two of them obviously take as such. For Yennefer it’s a let me protect you and for him, a why are you still trying to save her?
“The Brotherhood has agreed to extend a bit of good faith toward Nilfgaard and try to mend relations with no more bloodshed,” Tissaia reminds them both.
“Tell that to the thirteen who died at Sodden, the countless other people who gave their lives.” Yennefer glares, looks Vilgefortz up and down. “Interesting that I never heard the story about how you managed to make it out.” Her tone is accusatory, she knows. “You best count your good fortunes that Tissaia never got that one there to crack. Might have been interesting to see how you both came out alive.”
As if his face wasn’t already too self-assured, Yennefer watches as that transforms to barely contained rage. She doesn’t need magic to know that if he could incinerate her on the spot, he would.
“Off we go then,” Tissaia cuts off any rebuttals between the two of them.
The portal to Vicovaro is conjured, Vilgefortz glaring at Yennefer the entire way as she holds onto Cahir’s arm roughly. She knows she’s digging her fingers in hard enough to bruise, but the man says nothing. It’s probably still a more pleasant feeling than having someone rip apart your mind.
“Must you peacock so?” Yennefer hears muttered.
“It seems you find that characteristic quite charming,” Yennefer shoots back, her eyes never leaving the mage in charge of the portal.
Like a strap, the portal snaps closed and sends them all into those fractions of seconds where one can’t be sure if the world will materialize again or if one is destined to be stuck, somewhere in the ether. Somewhere only blackness and cold exist.