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The third glass of wine was going down a bit slower than the first two, Yennefer finally relaxing enough to enjoy the flavor as it rolled over her tongue instead of swallowing it down like water. It had been a stupid day, the end to a stupid week, full of frustrations and small injustices and a thousand things that made her teeth clench painfully in her jaw as she tried her damndest not to scream in the face of obstreperous judges and piss-ant little attorneys that dared to try her.
Whatever.
Fuck them all. She was done for the week, and she was going to relax tonight if it fucking killed her.
She padded past the TV in sock feet and a pair of soft leggings, headed to retrieve bag of salty crunchy something to snack on, but paused on the way to flip to a different playlist. Scrolling through her recent listens yielded nothing that caught her interest, but in the recommended section she caught sight of a new album she'd been meaning to listen to. One of Fran's favorite artists, she couldn't shut up about this new release. (There had almost been a fight over overpriced coffee during a meeting this week when Triss had said offhandedly that she liked the artist's first albums, but had really lost interest in the newer stuff, too angry. The fierce, offended expression on Frangelica's face and the corresponding wide-eyed look from Triss had been extremely entertaining.)
She put it on and skated across the slick hardwood floor to the kitchen, intent on a box of cheezits she knew was stashed there.
Thirty minutes later she sat cross-legged on her living room floor next to the empty bottle of wine, cheezits long since abandoned, clutching a glass to her chest as tears rolled down her cheeks. The song ended and her breath hitched in a stifled sob that she refused to let out.
The first song had been good, she'd been dancing along to it by the end. The second made her heart hurt in solidarity. By the fourth song she had begun to catch on, and by the end of the fifth she was crying.
She hadn't expected this. She hadn't realized…surely Frangelica had mentioned that pregnancy and blood and loss threaded through the whole record like a winding black tendril of rage and pain, surely she'd said something the midst of her monologues about fighting the patriarchy and the power of the singer's voice. Surely. This particular pain was one that she and Yennefer shared, a persistent ache that lurked inside of both of them. It filled Fran's heart with righteous rage that made her a formidable advocate for the kids they worked with. Meawhile Yennefer stubbornly ignored it, threw it down the deep hole in her chest and covered it in work.
That buried ache had surfaced three songs ago, and Yennefer felt like her chest had been scooped out. The next song had begun, a jaunty, vulnerable, self deprecating little thing that made her tears fade into a rueful laugh and a wry smile as the woman sang.
"…keep me a secret, choose someone else—
I'm still hanging off the buckle of your belt…"
Yennefer suddenly had an inexplicable urge to talk to Jaskier about this album.
It's absurd, they met once in a bar, barely spoke. There's no reason he should be on her mind. But between this song and Chappell Roan's brutally honest Casual, she finds herself wondering if Jaskier had been a trendsetter with his big hit, Wanting. Or maybe not, maybe she just noticed these songs now, songs about helpless, stupid love, the kind of love that you know is bad for you but can't stop yourself from craving. They both certainly knew the feeling.
God, that song. It had been the constant, accusatory soundtrack lurking in the background of that whole summer she'd spent with Geralt, those humid months where they'd done their best to consume or destroy each other.
She shook off the familiar shame of those memories and staggered to her feet to get a glass of water, scrubbing at the half-dry tear tracks on her cheeks with the sleeve of an old sweatshirt that she would never allow herself to be seen in. Here, at home by herself, she could allow herself to be soft and comfortable, could be worn and faded and frayed around the edges. Outside this apartment, outside the safety of this solitude she had to be perfect, poised, stylish. Her veneer of control had to be unassailable, her persona of power unshakable.
It was stupid to be thinking of her ex's ex right now, but she was uncomfortably certain that she didn't actually have anyone in her life that she could talk to about the chaos of emotions that were churning in her mind and heart right now.
Triss would be sweet and earnest with understanding tears in her eyes, talking about trauma and the power of femininity in the kind of crushingly empathetic tone that sets Yennefer's teeth on edge. She loved Triss, but her relentless kindness was sometimes be too much to bear.
She and Frangelica weren't close like that. They didn't share personal stories. If Frangelica's loss hadn't been so horrifically public, if Yen hadn't missed so much work after the last surgery that ended her hope of ever conceiving, they would never have known about their shared pain. They saw each other's broken hearts and politely looked away. The kindest thing they could do for each other was to ignore the haunted looks in each other's eyes.
Istredd would offer facts, would cite studies about the impact of gender inequity in medicine. He would try to fix it with logic and information and planning.
Tissaia…talking to her mentor about how she listened to a couple songs and absolutely lost her shit…no, she can't even imagine trying to talk to her about this.
The only other person she could imagine ever talking to about something so…exposed…was Geralt.
But since there was no way in hell that she was going to call up her ex to talk about fertility and loss and the trap and privilege of femininity, about worth and poetry and the power of rage… she found herself wishing that she had a friend like Jaskier in her life. He didn't share any of this experience with her, but she somehow felt certain, as the singer murmured softly about trying to allow herself to love in spite of the risks, that he'd be the best kind of friend to sit with and unpack every lyric, every musical flourish.
Before she could wander any further down that particularly foolish, pointless train of thought, she chugged down the glass of water and lost herself in the music once again.
"dug a hole in the garden and buried a scream"
Yes. That was the feeling. The brimming, churning, feeling bubbling up in her chest. It simmered there for weeks, quiet and ignored, but then a stray thought, an unexpected word upset the balance and left her gasping with the injustice of her loss. It couldn't be contained, it rose and clawed its way out of her throat into the open air on nights like this.
"you can have it all"
Yen let go, ugly sobs bursting out of her as she raised the empty glass to hurl it into a wall before she stopped herself and slumped onto the floor in a heap. She stayed there, indulging in tears that she rarely allowed to fall, face buried in the floppy neck of her sweatshirt as the song played on.
By the time her sobs slowed into occasional hiccuping breaths the song had changed again, something soft and soothing that felt like a hand smoothing over her hair. Her head ached, her eyes burned, nose full of snot and skin itching with drying salt. She felt wrung out, exhausted.
"more like surrendering to something
and more like resting than running
peace is coming"
The song came to a gentle end, and silence fell in the apartment. The hardwood floor was starting to dig painfully into her hip and her neck twinged from the awkard angle. She smiled to herself ruefully and pushed herself upright again, hugging her knees close to her chest and sniffling.
Well, that's not how she'd planned for this night to go. Fucking hell.
The remote was just far enough away to be an awkward reach, which helped to pull her further out of the emotional turmoil she'd slipped into. A soft-spoken nature documentary should be about the right speed; the narrator was talking about the nest-building habits of the bower bird. Perfect.
The couch was soft and welcoming as Yennefer cuddled up in a blanket, feet tucked under her and cradling her phone. She pulled up the singer's website and scrolled down looking for tour dates coming to the city. Once she'd booked herself a VIP ticket, she found herself pulling up a long-abandoned text thread with Geralt. Before she lost her nerve or talked herself out of it, she typed out a message and hit send.
Answer honestly. Do you think we are capable of forging a friendship?
A real one, not an excuse for sex.
She refused to watch the screen waiting for a response. So she switched to a news app and scrolled through the headlines. The intentional distraction worked for a few minutes, but she still swapped back over immediately when the phone vibrated with an incoming message.
I don't know. We could try.