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[niespodzianka]

( any format, go nuts. might be nsfw peppered thru. )

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[gehennawind]

[ Ricochets from worry to fury to anxiety like it's no big deal. ]

Okay, that explains some stuff. I'm sorry.

Can you tell me how long you have left?

[niespodzianka]

No clue

[gehennawind]

Do you figure it'll happen soon, or...?

[niespodzianka]

I don't know
I'm lot laying in a ditch waiting to explode i'm working
just not interested in risking my fucking roommates

[gehennawind]

Alright. I understand.

[ And that, apparently, is that. Unless he has more input, she's not picking up the watch again.

Too busy bundling up a huge blanket of canvas fabric, flagging down more of that mysterious Victorian takeout, the fried and breaded stuff plus paying extra for a warming enchantment, and charging out the city's gates as if she has anything resembling a plan.

At least the sun goes down early. The canvas won't need to cover her completely for very long.

Well-fed and practiced at sifting through the different scents in the world, 'witcher' is a unique flavor. Maybe she wouldn't have found the trail if his blood hadn't gotten in her so many times. Those who meet him tend to remember a rough description, and they point her to a decent starting point. ]

[niespodzianka]

[ That's that indeed. Geralt stares at the watch, but even though he doesn't actually believe Paloma would drop something like this so easily, he doesn't have the patience to follow up. He's restless and irritable, and so he chucks the thing back into his bedroll and sets out again in the cold.

The low temperature helps, in a way. He knows it's just a placebo but he'll take anything at this stage.

Looking for signs of cwytlid monsters (idk how you spell that i'm not looking it up rn) and, less dire but still on his hit list, petalwolf poachers, always starts off practically aimless. There's no contract, no known creature to go after; he's fishing. But Geralt's pretty fucking good at it, and he knows the hint or trail of something will turn up eventually. ]

[gehennawind]

[ Sundown passes before she picks up a scent trail that she can be sure of. The thick canvas makes an acceptable knapsack for the food. Unhindered, a vampire can run tirelessly. Nighttime is a natural energy drink. A Monster, one might say.

When Paloma can hear Geralt, she assumes he can hear her, too. Stealth is besides the point. And she’ll slow, but still transition into a loping run at more human speeds. She doesn’t call his name. ]

[niespodzianka]

[ The beast he is on the trail of is middling, owing to his lack of concentration - sometimes it's off in fucking space, sometimes it's hyper-focused, his senses overblown, unable to pull them back.

He can hear Paloma, yes. Smell her, too. He stops and waits, and by the time she reaches him he's facing her, standing still but only in theory. ]

What the fuck are you doing, [ he grates out. Sounding and looking like someone who's on the edge of spontaneous nonhuman combustion. ]

[gehennawind]

[ Geralt has the kind of scent she associates with a shortcircuiting electrical socket. Not like actual electricity, just the same sense of warning, warning! Even Kindred can’t ignore live wires.

Demonstrating exceptional foolishness, Paloma hikes up her skirt, descending the last hilly meter of mud between his obvious rage and her mulish determination to be a thorny nuisance. ]

Bringing you hot food. Hungry?

[niespodzianka]

[ Hot is not a great word, right now. Not only is he nearing the explodey point of no return, he starts to accidentally set things on fire when he gets a boner. Fun!! Geralt's expression goes darker. ]

You're going back to the city. Now. [ He marches over and takes her by the shoulders, urging her back. ] All this shit about pretending to care, and you come out here, endangering yourself like that's not gonna make me feel fucking worse--

[gehennawind]

[ A snow cone is the cure-all he really needs!

Back? Back to the mud? Paloma literally digs in her sensible heels (flats, really) and stumbles over the thing she’d been ABOUT to say, flinching, but steadfastly refusing to turn or be herded. She shakes her head and doesn’t stop shaking it, hair flopping, not meeting his eye. ]

No, no, I’m not going, and I bet I’d know soon enough to run if you were gonna— gonna incinerate, which you don’t freaking have to do. You don’t.

[niespodzianka]

I'm aware of the options. What I do with them is no one's business but my own.

[ He's not hungry. He could probably eat for the next week and not feel full, just because he's so out-of-whack. The smell of it just burns in his senses, mingles with her, the cold, the distant smell of infected things that permeates the world outside the wall. ]

Go back to the city, Paloma. I don't want any company.

[gehennawind]

[ She quits the frantic shaking to stare at the unhappy line his mouth makes, trying to isolate the uglier, needier feelings, to lock them up until she can open them later, in private. Important: Geralt expects to explode. Unimportant: personal rejection. Unimportant, unneeded, don’t think about that, don’t think about it.

The upward slope behind her makes for great foot bracing. ]

How can it be no one’s business if you make a crater out here? Out anywhere. [ Her voice cracks. She doesn’t understand, she wants to understand. Geralt doesn’t strike her as being— the way she was, before Carlos, before dying wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. ]

[niespodzianka]

[ Geralt's brain isn't working too well right now, but after a moment of scowling he finally completes the puzzlebox of how terrain works and begins to steer her away so they can go around and over on the trail. ]

Because I deserve to have my priorities respected. Because I know more about death than you. Because nobody here's gonna do anything but only consider themselves anyway. Why do you think it's your business?

[ A tree nearby begins to smoke and Geralt steps away, shaking his head. Ugh. ]

[gehennawind]

[ Flat ground’s too slippery to properly resist on. Thanks, winter. She gives it her best, but all that does is make her overcompensate when he lets go, slip, and get a nice swath of forest mud and debris across the skirt. Paloma picks herself off the ground, too distracted to mind it. Her anxiously flicking eyes still won’t go above his chin. ]

As long as you’ve been around, you probably do know more about death, but that doesn’t mean I know nothing, [ She blinks and blinks and blinks, impatient with herself for welling up. ] or that someone wasn’t looking for me after I died, or that you don't have people who’ll always keep looking for you, too. E-even if you don’t think I’m one of them. There’s someone.

[niespodzianka]

[ Geralt rakes gloved hands over his hair, disheveled, too distracted to even notice her stumble. It's unlike him. All of it is. He isn't this bad all the time, just sometimes, and she's really caught him in a mood. ]

My daughter. She would look.

[ Has he mentioned Ciri to her before? He doesn't think about that, now. ]

But she's found me in the afterlife before.

[gehennawind]

[ It's the first thing out of his mouth that isn’t more than halfway to condemnation, so she dives on it like a quarterback at the bottom of a hunk pile. Big, ugly, gulping tears notwithstanding. ]

How? What’s she like?

[niespodzianka]

[ Geralt stops, and turns. Stares at her. ]

Why are you crying?

[ ??? What's going on ??? He's the one that's gonna explode, not her. ]

[gehennawind]

[ She sucks in her lips, not even wincing when her fangs jab bloody holes in them, and starts up the head-shaking eye-avoiding again. What an awful question in that it indicates how much he doesn’t believe she gives a shit about him, if the other stuff being said didn’t already. Her heart might have a few more major and slow-healing fissures in it now than ten minutes ago. ]

That just happens, doesn’t matter. [ God, she’s gonna hiccup. ] What’s your daughter like?

[niespodzianka]

[ It's not that he thinks she doesn't care. He's not out here because he's depressed. He just doesn't understand why she's so upset about it.

People die. People die all the fucking time.

Geralt shakes his head. ]

She's better than I am.

[gehennawind]

[ Well Maybe the problem is that Paloma is the world’s worst undead blood-guzzling parasite and gets too attached to mortal types, missing them like she would miss an arm, or a leg.

This diversion isn’t going spectacularly. ‘Better than I am’ is vague and self-deprecating. (Now that they’ve started, the tears get fatter and roll down her face with abandon.) What can she do with her hands? The canvas and food already fell when she did. They should twist her skirt to pieces. There we go. ]

Would she agree? Does she love you?

[niespodzianka]

What the fuck kind of question is that?

[ Not accusing, just irritable. It's a foolish question; he's not in her head, he doesn't know. And if he had to guess - sure, probably, but he's said she'd look for him, and isn't that enough of an answer already? Why press? Is she trying to trap him? Is she trying to make him feel like an idiot, because he's too inhuman to understand the finer nuances of emotion? ]

Why do people do this shit. If you told me you wanted to be alone, I'd leave you alone. I respect you enough for that. If I don't want to be bonded, that's my choice, and it doesn't have anything to do with anyone here.

[gehennawind]

[ When not even Paloma knows where her point was going or what it was in the first place, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it pisses him off and accomplishes a whole lot of nothing. Time’s up. Really? warbles a pathetic voice in her head, wondering if he does respect her, trying to remember if she did anything to warrant being respected. Their history is short enough to flip through like a novel, everything there cast in doubt, in sharp relief. ]

Choosing to die. [ Geralt is a white blob at this point. The ground is a smear, but it’s a smear she’ll look at. ] That’s what your choice is. More than being left alone, left to die. Could you say what it is about bonding that’s so freaking disgusting to you that you’d rather fuck off and die?

[niespodzianka]

[ Geralt moves over to her, still confused about why the fuck she's crying, but made angry by her assertions-- he grabs her shoulders, like he did when they met in that inferno of the dream. ]

I've been bonded. Before this place. At home. I can't go through it with anyone but her, I can't have it treated like this, I can't--

[ Saying a bit much, there. Geralt abruptly lets go of Paloma and staggers back. ]

[gehennawind]

[ Her shoulders hike to her ears and lock, fingers hooking into claws in an instinctive and violent flinch. Paloma doesn’t believe he would hit her, but it’s not that kind of retaliation she’s afraid of. After he lets go, everything stays in alarmed lockdown.

At least she’s looking at him now. ]

Treated how? [ Thin, reedy, weak, weak, weak. ] Means something different to everyone.