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If she were more present to herself, she might appreciate the dramatics of it all, how appropriate it is, to be struggling for breath and heaving out sobs as a thunderstorm rages outside and flashes of light keep bursting in the room.
Unfortunately, she is rather busy keeping quiet, trying to reign in her terror as best as she can in spite of everything within her refusing to settle down. The feeling of emptiness, of helplessness, is still awfully vivid in her mind, and she almost tries to summon her magic, to do any little trick that could reassure her somewhat, but she’s too terrified at the thought of finding that she can’t.
Instead, she clenches her fists around the sheets and breathes, breathes, breathes.
“Yen?”
She jolts, turning around without thinking and fixating him with a look that’s probably as wild as they come, if the deeply worried expression on his face, briefly illuminated by a lightning strike, is anything to go by.
“I’m fine,” she gets out, but it’s so quiet and strangled that if she had been talking to a regular human they probably wouldn’t have heard.
Geralt might as well not have heard it either, for what good it does.
He doesn’t make a move to get up, because Ciri is tucked under his arm, nested between him and the wall, but he keeps staring, for long enough that Yennefer wishes she had the will to snap at him right now.
As it is, an eternity of stifled sobbing goes by before anybody speaks again, and it’s not her.
“Yen,” he calls, quietly, and she’s attracted to it like a moth to the flame in spite of herself. “Get in,” he adds, when her eyes are on him. It sounds a bit like a question, and the way he raises the covers is an open invitation.
She should say no. She should spit at him, turn her back, and spend the rest of the night terrified if she has to.
But it’s late, she’s tired, she’s cold, and her stupid, stupid instincts always seem to settle when she’s at his side, something in her trusting him completely no matter how much she yells at him, no matter how rocky their relationship may be.
Pitifully dejected, she shuffles out of her bed and accepts the invitation, settling under his free arm and sealing her eyes shut, cheek pressed against his shoulder.
He pulls the covers back up for her to hide under, and he doesn’t say anything, the way he wouldn’t over the years when her dreams would wake him up in the middle of the night and she’d press tighter against him, trying to hide her tears.
Her breaths slowly even, her sobs subduing, and when she eventually falls asleep it’s to the feeling of his hand squeezing hers.
(In the morning, when the awkwardness between them isn’t yet gone, it all feels like a dream.)