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“Yen?”
“Yes, darling?”
He watched her carefully as he attempted to find the right words for the conversation he knew they’d need to have, now that their lives were no longer under constant threat.
She looked beautiful as ever, her curls falling down her perfectly smooth back in its state of undress, her attention on the endless lineup of cosmetics in front of her. This time he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by her though.
“Why won’t you believe it was because I'd lost my memory?”
She stiffened up nearly unnoticeably, but he’d become good at watching her closely.
“What are you talking about?” her voice sounded mostly controlled, and she didn’t turn to look at him- in fact, she didn’t even look up from her vanity table.
“You don’t believe my amnesia is why I…” he trailed off, thought about it for a second and tried again, “ever since I met you I’ve always done everything I could to find you, to be with you… what has you so convinced this time would be different? That I’d just give up on you?”
It wasn’t quite what he’d meant to ask, but he figured she knew what he was getting at regardless.
Why was she so quick to blame him for Triss taking advantage of his lost memory? Why was he the one that’d done wrong when her so-called friend had chosen not to tell him about the life he’d worked so hard to build, the love for Yen and their daughter he’d fought so hard to protect.
Why was he to blame for the… the assault? the abuse? He had trouble using the words even in his own mind, it didn’t feel right, somehow, but that was what it was, wasn’t it? If he’d been right in the head he wouldn’t have been with Triss at all, and she’d known that and used it to-
“Are we still not past this, Geralt? I’ve told you before that this doesn’t matter anymore and we should let the past rest,”
He threw his head back against the headboard in frustration. Usually this’d be where he’d swallow any complaint he had and he’d allow her to distract him with a kiss or a well-aimed smile, and they’d move on like he’d never spoken in the first place.
Not this time.
“No, we’re not past this,” he said, “it’s not fair for you to get to decide that we don’t talk about this because doing so makes you uncomfortable, when not talking about it makes me uncomfortable,”
“I don’t want to hear about your time fucking my bestfriend, Geralt,”
Her voice was flat and near void of emotion, and yet part of his treacherous heart screamed at him to stop, not to hurt her with this any more than he already had- but he knew full well by now that she only used that feeling of guilt to get him to drop the topic.
“Then I won’t talk about fucking her, just explain to me why you’re so convinced I’m at fault for her-”
She finally wheeled around in her chair to face him, her violet eyes ablaze with both rage and the reflection of the evening sun streaming into their room. It was almost frustrating how beautiful she was, even now.
“She’s been after you from day one, Geralt, and she got you. You fell for her and left me,”
Geralt gaped at her, wondering for a second if she was really just incredibly dense and he’d misjudged her intelligence all these years.
“I didn’t leave you, Yen! I didn’t even know you existed! ” The desperation in his voice sounded pathetic to his own ears but he was too far in to stop now, “I lost my memory and she took advantage of that, I didn’t remember who I was!”
Her stare would have probably terrified a lesser man, but he knew the minute change in the look in her eyes- she was scrambling for something to say that would make sense. He was winning.
The realization felt hollow and cold.
“She took advantage of me and I couldn’t do anything about it 'cause I didn’t even know who I was! Do you know how much I hated that I still had to be around her, after I remembered? Do you understand how fucking violated I felt once I realized what she’d done to me?”
“Geralt-”
“You called it an excuse, Yen. You didn’t believe I lost my memory and called it an excuse I used to get away with screwing her, but I would never… If I’d known you were out there I would have come for you. Fuck, as soon as I did regain my memory the first thing I did is try to find you. I always have, and yet you… I just don’t understand why-”
He cut himself off, angry with himself for not being able to find the right words, and for a moment they just stared at each other. Suddenly he was afraid he’d overstepped and she’d up and leave.
It wouldn’t be the first time their fights got volatile enough for one of them to decide to go.
Yennefer swallowed and averted her eyes.
“I thought you were happy,” she spoke quietly enough for even his sharp witcher hearing to doubt the words he heard.
“What?”
“I… we weren’t sure if this bond between us was real yet, and you fell for her and I thought that at least that would be real and you deserved that,” her voice was impossibly small, and Geralt suddenly wasn’t sure what to do with himself, “it hurt, but you deserved something easy, and the two of us… well, we were never going to be easy, were we? I thought maybe I should just let you be with her. I knew you wouldn’t leave me without a fight once you’d found me again though, so I thought I’d…”
“Push me back towards her?”
“Yes,”
“That thing," he'd really rather not call it a relationship, "with her wasn’t real though, was it,”
“I… no, not when you put it like that,”
Silence fell again, and their shared home had never felt this uncomfortable before.
He loved their house, loved living the slow and lazy days of homeowners and vintners together, loved the life he’d built with her after all the fighting they'd done to get there.
He loved her.
That didn’t mean he didn’t still need her to understand though.
“Yen,”
She looked at him, and he beckoned her to come over to the bed, closer to him.
Something in her posture deflated, and after a moment of hesitation she got up and approached him carefully.
Geralt sat up straighter and opened his arms for her. This, at least, she didn’t need to hesitate about, and before long she was on the bed with him, curled up against his chest.
It tugged sharply at his heart, the easy way she accepted and sought out his affection in moments like these. Part of him still expected her to be disgusted by his mutated, abused body sometimes, and seeing her now curling into his touch despite the fact that they’d argued- Gods, they’d grown and somehow they fit together differently now, in a way they hadn’t during most of their whirlwind romance.
“Maybe a small part of me thought that surely someone had told you about me, and I…”
“I don’t want her, Yen,” he whispered, “aside from the fact that I want you and no one else, I despise her for keeping me from you and from remembering Ciri, for… for using me when I wasn’t right in the head,”
The thought alone made him nauseous, his skin crawling at the disregard Triss’d had for him in her selfish push to fulfill her sick little dream about a life with him regardless of what he wanted. She’d known that he hadn’t wanted her- not like that, and not in any way when Yen was in the picture.
So she’d taken her chance when Yen wasn’t in the picture, and when he wasn’t himself to tell her he didn’t want her. She’d taken her chance and taken advantage, and he hated it.
He wasn’t exactly a beacon of virtue and purity, and he really wasn’t sure why he was so bothered by any of this. At the time even he himself had thought he wanted her, so it wasn’t fair of him to blame her entirely, right?
Still, he couldn’t think about it all without feeling gross.
“I’m sorry, Geralt,”
Yennefer’d leaned back slightly to make sure he heard her words properly. It was ever the oddity, coming from his stubborn, unshakeable, uncompromising and oh so beloved sorceress.
“What for?”
He didn’t want to push her, but he needed to know if she’d actually understood what he’d said, and this wasn’t just some empty apology to make him shut up.
“For what you’ve gone through,” she said quietly, “and for making you feel like it’s your fault. I should have considered how this might’ve been for you, and what my words were implying. I truly am sorry,”
“Alright,” he muttered, slightly unsure how to act when Yennefer, his Yen of all people was apologizing, “I’m sorry for fucking your friend,”
Their eyes met, and his widened as he realized what he’d flapped out.
He watched as she blinked at him for a moment before rolling her eyes, though he could see a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
“I think we’ve just established quite clearly that you’re not exactly to blame for that, so I suppose that means you’re forgiven,” after a second she scrambled to add, “not that you really needed to be forgiven in the first place, but-”
He cut her off by pressing his lips against hers, the rest of her explanation dying on her tongue as it was met by his insistently.
Somehow, despite knowing he hadn’t been at fault, her forgiveness loosened a tight knot that he’d felt around his chest. Maybe knowing she didn’t blame him made it easier not to blame himself after all.
That was something he’d think about some other day though, he didn’t have the emotional energy left to examine any of it.
He was glad that along with the tension in his chest the tension in their home flowed away, and as he pulled her tighter against his chest he couldn’t help but smile.
He didn’t care specifically about Toussaint in particular, but he could admit that the warm, sweet-smelling air and the sound of crickets and evening birds had become the background conditions to some of the happiest times of his life.
Time spent with her, sleeping in too long and eating fresh fruits in bed, drinking too much wine in front of the first house to have ever truly been theirs, fucking her in every room of said house-
Happiness felt like it should be a foreign concept to him, but somehow it didn’t feel that way anymore, these days.
The relief had spread from his chest to his limbs, and he pulled back to press his forehead to hers.
“I love you, Yen. You know that, don’t you?”
Yennefer nudged her nose against his lightly, and she let out a breath it seemed she’d been holding for a while.
“I know,” she said, “of course I know, you make it quite impossible to miss,”
“Good,” he replied, “I’m glad,”
Her hands wandered lightly over him, and warm breath washed over his face, and he felt the most at ease with her he had since meeting her again in White Orchard. For the first time since that day he didn’t feel like there was something huge still bearing down on them, threatening their fragile peace.
The silence stretched just a moment longer, and then Yennefer spoke up again.
“I know I don’t make it as obvious, most times,” and then, after a moment she added, “that I love you, I mean. Which is to say that I do, of course-”
“I know, Yen,”