jaskoleczka | { pfsb } a letter and a meeting

Entry tags:

{ pfsb } a letter and a meeting

Time is passing strangely for Ciri; it's difficult to tell if she has slept entire days or only a few hours. There is no way to mark the days aside from weather, and that changes quickly enough that it is wholly unreliable.

(The Bar, in her infinite kindness and usual sympathetic meddling, has in fact created a mild time loop in Ciri's room, giving her time to recover and somewhat ignoring the distressed flurry which has emanated out in ripples from her arrival.)

She comes downstairs, therefore, determined to more fully explore this strange place. There are stables she wishes to visit, and the woods remind her very slightly of those around Kaer Morhen...but her plans are abruptly canceled when, along with the strong hot tea she'd ordered, Lady Bar provides her also with a note.

Anyone watching would see Ciri rub at her forehead as if to quell a sudden headache, then lay a hand on the bartop and request something in a soft voice. Quill and pen appear, and she bends her head to write briskly and neatly:

Reverend Daughter,

I am terribly sorry for the distress I have caused. Please know it was not intentional.
I welcome your request for a meeting. I am at your disposal and shall visit Room 99 within the hour.

- Ciri

Folding the note, she looks for a waitrat to charge with its delivery and watches as the messenger scampers up the stairs before she turns with a sigh back to her tea.

Which she is now wishing was something a good deal stronger.

It's about half an hour later that she stands at the door of Room 99 with no idea of what to expect, knocking lightly with gloved knuckles.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"And yet without it, I would not be who I am," she says. "I would not have this scar, or this sword. I might not have ever been born at all.

"What I mean, Lan Wangji, is that I am not an expert on prophecy, or what can or cannot be averted. It may have been destiny that brought me here to you – or it may have been one of a million possibilities. I think...even if I am a child of destiny, I still have the right to my own choices and actions. And so do you."

He takes the time to consider this fully, sipping at his tea, even though it has grown cold.

"The vagaries of fortune are not unknown, where I am from," he says, finally. "I have never placed much weight on them. As you have said, it is what we do - or do not do - that determines who we are and how we choose to live. That is more important."

"I wish more on the Continent thought as you do," she says, frankly. "Instead, kings and queens, sorcerers and sorceresses, elves and men – they all cower to destiny's whims. There was once a prophecy that doom would come at the hands of sixty women born under an eclipse. So what did they do, the wise men of the Continent?"

She takes her mug of beer and rolls it between her palms, shaking her head. "They hunted down those girls. Some of them they killed and cut apart, looking for proof that they were cursed. Others they locked away in high towers, never to be seen again. Of those who escaped, many did turn cruel or insane, murderers and thieves. But would they, if they hadn't been treated that way from the start?"

Something shifts in his expression as the darkness of memory fills his eyes. He nods.

"To blame all for the actions of a few, to blame innocents for the actions or circumstances of others -- these things are wrong."

Her eyes narrow, studying him.

"It sounds as though you know something of these things in your own world."

"Yes."

His teacup is empty. He pushes it aside.

"There was a war. Cruelties during, and injustice after."

She nods in sympathetic recognition.

"This war, was it for resources? Or ideology?"

Or both, perhaps.

He thinks about it for a few moments, then shakes his head.

"Power. And the desire for more."

She's thinking of Emyhr var Emreis as she makes a small sound of understanding.

"And did they get it?"

"Yes. But they did not keep it. And what came after--"

He lets out a quiet breath.

"-- led to great wrongs."

"A war like that killed my grandmother," she says, in quiet remembrance. It has been so long that she worries her mental pictures of Queen Calanthe and Eist are no longer accurate to the real people.

Her eyes return to Lan Wangji's face, and she smiles, a little wistfully. "And so you right them? You and your sect?"

He is very, very still.

Lan Zhan--

"Not always successfully." A single, quiet breath. "We have failed. I have failed."

He looks up, meeting her eyes.

"But yes. I have made a vow. I will do everything I can to keep it."

She leans forward, intent and sympathetic.

"Everyone fails, from time to time. You are still alive," she says. "You still have time. You are a good man, Lan Wangji. I may have only known you a short while, but it's plain to see."

"You are kind."

His voice is very, very quiet.

"And you are right. I am alive. But Wei Ying is not. I failed him."

He draws a careful breath.

"So I keep the promises we made together in our world for both of us. And it may be clearer, now, why I cannot lose him again."

She wonders, if this Wei Ying were asked, if he would say Lan Wangji had failed him.

(She thinks probably not.)

Taking a deep breath, she lifts her beer but puts it down again almost instantly, her stomach tight.

"I know I caused you a great deal of distress. You and this Reverend Daughter both. If I could go back and keep myself from speaking...but I can't of course. The only thing I can do is offer you my help. If you wish it, Lan Wangji, I...I will see what I can of your future."

She's tense as a wire, but her brow is stubbornly furrowed in an expression Geralt would recognize from Kaer Morhen, from Lower Sodden, from Brokilon Forest. "I might be a shit oracle, but if there are answers, you may be able to find them."

He cannot fail to miss either her tension or her stubbornness.

"Ciri. It was not your fault."

"Wasn't it?" she says, wretched. "I ought to have known better, prepared for it. Avallac'h would have known, hell, even Geralt –"

But that name slices into her heart like a knife and her mouth shuts on it as she shakes her head. When she looks at Lan Wangji again, her green eyes are as fierce as a defensive cat's.

"If you wish it, I will submit to another trance," she says, determined. "You'd be better prepared, able to ask questions. Maybe you could learn something useful."

"It was not your fault," he insists. "You could not have known what my music would invoke. In that, it was as much my fault."

"You called it a -- a cursed power. How could I ask you to submit to a curse, for me?"

"Easily," she says, "oh, easily. As easily as I can offer it. This power – it might be a curse for me, but if it can help you – I wouldn't even remember it," she continues, eagerly.

"Just – consider it. An option you didn't have before. Will you?"

In that moment, she reminds him of Wei Ying.

Wei Ying, draining himself to unconsciousness and near death in the first battle of Nightless City. Wei Ying, defending the Wen remnants with everything he had.

Wei Ying, always ready to give to others if they need it, despite what it might cost him.

"I will consider," he says, gravely. He suspects it might hurt her, if he did not. So he will consider, and will discuss it with Wei Ying as well.

(Gideon, he knows, would want him to accept - at least until he explained.)

"But I will not harm one innocent for the sake of another."

From his tone, it is clear, very clear, that he considers her to be the innocent in question.

The last person who wanted to protect her was Geralt. And Lan Wangji...is nothing like Geralt.

More than that, he's nothing like Bonhart, or Avallac'h, or Eredin, or Emhyr, or any of the myriad others who have wanted her for nothing more than the child she could give them or the power she could provide them.

(If he reminds her of anyone, it is Galahad. Pure of heart and of soul, dedicated to a singular cause.)

She was right. He's a good man. She sighs in relief. "Good," she says, smiling, and finally takes a drink of her beer, pleased enough that she doesn't even argue his last statement. She is no innocent, but if he wishes to keep her from harm, she can go along with it as long as necessary.

She seems more relaxed, and he is glad to see it.

With a slight press of his fingers to the bartop and a murmured word, he has a new cup of tea in hand, and takes a sip.

"Are you recovering well? From your injury?"

"Yes, thank you."

Having secured a small victory, she feels a good deal better and is happy to change subjects. "Doctor Ford did a beautiful job of stitching, I doubt I'll have a scar at all by the end of it. And I believe your cultivation sped up my healing remarkably – it's quite astonishing, what you can do."

"I am glad. That it helped."

He takes another sip of tea.

"Ford-daifu has been very helpful to me in the past, also."

She gives him a sympathetic glance over the edge of her mug. "Did you come here injured as well?"

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject