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“Why did you save me?” she asks, eyes fixated on the fire in front of them. Ciri is already sleep, curled up in her bedroll at arm’s reach from Geralt. If the child hadn’t been the one to position herself there, Yennefer would be all but certain that he put himself between them on purpose, as a protective gesture and a slight to her.
“What kind of question is that?” he asks, after a heavy silence that stretched longer than it’s comfortable.
She snorts, this time turning to him with her eyebrows raised. “First you make a big show of how much you despise me now,” she begins, and somehow her voice doesn’t waver, even as she can feel something bleed in her chest at the memory of his disdain for her. “Then you go out of your way to save my life instead of just letting me die, and you expect me not to confront you about it?”
In spite of her eyes fixated on him, which she’s sure he can feel, he doesn’t turn, apparently focused on rekindling the fire—it doesn’t need rekindling, but he keeps playing around with it anyway, and it pisses her off.
“Not to mention how you asked me to join you on the road to be Ciri’s new teacher,” she adds, because that is certainly odd too. You would think he wouldn’t trust her to be anywhere near him or the child.
“You are the only one who made any real progress with her,” he says, with a shrug. “And you are the most powerful mage I know.”
If he thinks flattery will get him anywhere, he’s dead wrong. “Still doesn’t answer my first question,” she counters, coolly.
Some might say she shouldn’t be looking at the gifted horse in the mouth, but—she doesn’t want his charity. She begged him to understand, and he rejected her, so now he doesn’t get to just save her life and let her join them in their travels without saying a word about it.
He made it clear that he hates her, so he doesn’t get to delude her that that isn’t the case.
He huffs, finally turning towards her. He looks worn out, and she can’t help the way her stomach churns at the sight. “What do you want me to say, Yen?” he asks, and she wishes there were more fire to it. “Was I supposed to let you die?”
“Wouldn’t I have deserved it?” she shoots back, without missing a beat.
He opens and closes his mouth, apparently unable to answer, looking rather frustrated with her question. Or maybe he’s only frustrated by the realization that his honest answer to that would be a yes.
“I was going to hand your precious Child Surprise over to Voleth Meir,” she keeps pressing, a twisted sense of excitement building up in her stomach as she feels that she’s getting closer to making him admit it, to have him voice how much he hates her and how she should just leave. “Shouldn’t I be killed for it?”
The only thing that that earns her is a quick flash of anger on his face. Unfortunately, sadness quickly follows. “No matter how angry I am at you,” he says, slowly. “I wouldn’t let you die.”
She scoffs. “Maybe you would just prefer to slash my throat yourself, is that it?”
For a few moments, he has the audacity of seeming confused, but soon enough he remembers what exactly she is referring to. If she focuses, she can still feel the blade against her throat, the crushing pain in her chest as she saw the way he looked at her. He had never looked at her like that before.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” he grumbles, shifting uncomfortably and turning back to start playing with the fire again.
“If you say so,” she says, laying into the sarcasm as much as she can. Though it seems like she has won the exchange, she can’t manage to feel particularly victorious.
She isn’t sure if she can take his weak arguments as an admission of the feelings she knows he arbors towards her, so maybe that’s why the conversation won’t sit well with her. At the end of the day, he’s still insisting that he cares for her.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, breaking the silence unexpectedly enough that she turns to him without thinking.
She finds him staring like he wants to read the answer on her forehead, and she can only raise her eyebrows questioningly.
“If you think I hate you so much,” he clarifies. “Why are you here?”
She swallows, trying to fight back the feeling that she has been cornered. “Perhaps I like tormenting you,” she shrugs.
“You aren’t tormenting me, you are helping me,” he points out. “I wouldn’t know how to help Ciri with her magic on my own.”
“Maybe I just enjoy the feeling of superiority then,” she spits out. “Or perhaps I’m just waiting for the right moment to snatch her away. Have you thought about that?”
“I have,” he admits, slowly. It isn’t surprising, and therefore it shouldn’t hurt half as much as it does. She hates how weak she always is in front of him.
“Yet I’m still here,” she says, spitefully. “Some guardian you are.”
He shoots her a nasty look, but he doesn’t say anything to counter her statement. If she knows him at all, he probably believes it much more than she does.
“You protected me too,” he eventually points out, looking at her like he’s asking for something, though she isn’t sure what.
“What are you talking about?” she snaps, letting her frustration bleed through.
“During the fight. I saved you, but you protected me too. You had an opening to escape, but you didn’t.”
She remembers it, that moment after he came to her defense, pushed her behind him and fought like there was no animosity between them. She saw the chance to run, and she didn’t even contemplate it, standing beside him to turn the fight in their favor, doing her best to shield him from Voleth Meir’s magic .
It was unsettling, how well they still managed to fight together in spite of everything.
“What does that have to do with anything?” she asks, ready to fight back should he press the issue, because she doesn’t have a good answer to explain that behavior, only confessions that would make her more vulnerable than she’s comfortable with being.
He shrugs.
“You said that you were desperate, that you were sorry,” he says, after a few moments.
She tenses up at the sudden change of subject. “I remember.” She can’t quite hide the bitterness in her voice. “I also remember that you didn’t particularly care.”
“I was angry,” he says, quietly. He makes sure to look at her in the eye before he adds: “But I believe you.”
It shouldn’t steal her breath away the way it does. It shouldn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter what he thinks of her, she’s only there because she has nowhere else to go and Ciri is too dangerous to be left unchecked and—and she loves him way more than she’s willing to admit, damn him.
She nods, pressing her lips together and turning away from him, before the pressure behind her eyes can turn to actual tears.
They don’t say anything else, but when he eventually goes to sleep it’s with a soft ‘Goodnight, Yen’ that leaves her lighter than she’s been in a long while.