[Sometime in late July] Law of Surprise

[every_blossom_blooming]

The entire walk to the house in the woods felt heavy. At first she had written off a few strange symptoms as simply feeling off, but it hadn't taken much at all to know for certain. A part of her felt terrible that she'd already spoken to two other people without telling Geralt first, but she needed-- she needed to get her thoughts out. To come to terms with the reality. She still wasn't entirely sure how she felt about everything, but Greta and Inej were right: she had to talk to Geralt. That would make everything clear.

Or at least, she hoped so.

It had been more than a month since the strange shooting star in Darrow, since so many people fell victim to weird wishes. Nina knew this was some strange fall out from that, but it hadn't disappeared when everything went back to normal. If it had, well. She wouldn't be walking this slowly.

The cabin was more furnished now than it had been a month ago, cozy and comfortable to live in. Nina took a deep breath and let it go slowly; she focused on her own pounding heart and slowed it down, forcing her body to calm. She tried to do the same for the churning in her stomach. She didn't know why she was so anxious: this could have one of just a handful of outcomes, and she would be fine no matter what.

When she saw Geralt out in the little garden he'd started, she smiled. Whether she liked it or not, she'd become terribly fond of this man. She was rather certain she loved him, but she still held tight to that word, afraid of it.

"Oh good, you're home," she said with a smile. A breeze whipped the skirt of her dress: she always wore red when she did her tailoring and Grisha work in the city.

Comments

[worstsin]

Geralt put on his shade of a smile as Nina came around the side of the cabin. She was wearing her red. The color suited her, his favorite, with deep green coming in shortly behind.

He set down his work and dusted his pale hands on his denim trousers. He was about to speak, when he noticed something was off about her voice. There was a tiny tremble of trepidation, or something like it.

He held a hand out for her to take, to pull her closer.

"Nina? Something happened at work?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina should have known he'd pick up on something, no matter how good she was at schooling herself. First of all, this felt big, and second of all... Well. He was back to his witcher self.

Still, she kept her smile and caught his hand when he reached for her. He was warm and he smelled good, and she reached with her free hand to stroke his beard when she was close enough.

"Nothing at work," she promised him as she leaned up to kiss his cheek. "But I had a lot on my mind on the walk home."

[worstsin]

"Did you?" Geralt asked. He was almost irritated with himself for immediately searching for any possible reasons why. But Nina seemed fine. He brushed a stubborn lock of her dark hair off of her cheek before leaning in to drop a gentle kiss on it.

"Should we go in to talk about it? You look like you might need a drink."

[every_blossom_blooming]

The gentle touch, the kiss, made her entire expression soften. "I do, but I'm not sure that's going to be a good idea for a while."

Nina felt her heartbeat jump with anxiety and she tried to calm it back down. She had no reason to believe this would go badly. Whatever happened, whatever they decided, she could handle it.

"But you might want one. Come on." She linked her arm with Geralt to pull him toward the cabin. Maybe the news would be better delivered if he had a drink in hand. Or if he was sitting.

[worstsin]

Geralt couldn't place what it was Nina was getting at, and watched her with confusion making a knit between his brows. Geralt took her arm and followed, quiet and obedient, into the cabin's kitchen to make himself a drink, a strong vodka which he'd soaked anise, lemon balm and a vanilla pod in.

He sipped it from the glass tumbler before sitting down. One drink wasn't anything that would actually affect him, but the flavor and burn were bracing, and often the act alone calming.

He pulled a chair out from the wooden table and settled himself into it, peering at Nina and waiting for answers.

"You know there's nothing you couldn't share."

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina got water for herself; it was something to hold, and it wouldn't hurt to drink after her walk home. She debated sitting as well, but she felt too restless for that. Maybe it was draw it out, but she was trying to find the words. She wasn't much for being flowery when delivering serious news.

It would be better when it was all out, and there was no sense in stalling any longer.

"I'm pregnant, Geralt. And unless some saint or god has taken a liking to me, it can't be any one's but yours."

[worstsin]

Geralt manages nit to choke in his liquor when Nina says it. He doesn't ask if it's a joke. Nina wasn't in the habit of playing pranks, and even if she were, there would be something in her manner that would lead him toward the truth, whether it was a change in the way she smelled or the twitch of her eyes in an untruth.

So Nina was pregnant. That was the truth.

There was no point in asking how. They both had to know; there was only one way it could have happened. When Geralt was without mutations, from a wish he'd never recalled making, on a star that shouldn't have had any power to grant it.

"Give me a minute," Geralt murmured. There were too many emotions running through his mind and heart at once, some of them at odds with each other, and Geralt at a disadvantage. They had no easy way to crystallize themselves, poor practice in expression.

But he steadily met Nina's eyes, and gave her a sweet-tempered and ephemeral smile.

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina watched him steadily, her entire demeanor soft. She had just given him something big to process, and if he needed a minute, she could give him that. A smile quirked her mouth.

"Yeah, I needed a minute, too," she admitted. She didn't want Geralt to think he was alone in needing to process this, in needing to get around how it should have been impossible, how it had been impossible, right up until it wasn't. Geralt was sterile; Nina was a Heartrender. At no point in her life had her body been beyond her own control. But she had gotten careless. Zoya would have had a thing or two to say about it, but Zoya wasn't here.

Just her, just Geralt.

She moved closer and stroked her fingers over his bearded jaw. She set her glass of water down and finally sat down at the table with him.

[worstsin]

Geralt leaned forward to rest his cheek against the soft, dark fall of Nina's hair, breathing slowly. He'd missed the complicated scent of her, the sound if her living and breathing, when held been withoyt the mutations. Now that they were back, he wanted to memorize them.

Ciri came to his mind before anything and anyone else, how would she feel about all of this? Resentment, because it wasn't Yennefer who had gotten what she wanted, a child? Jealousy, for having to share Geralt's concern? Or would she simply be happy for him?

Maybe all of those. Emotions were never promised to be simple.

He thought of how it would reorganize Nina's life.

He thought about how much he wanted this without knowing it.

"What do you think?"

Geralt pressed a kiss to Nina's ear.

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina closed her eyes and leaned into Geralt. Everything that was familiar about him had come back, and though she'd enjoyed him as a normal, human man, she had missed the witcher she had come to know, come to love.

"I think that as long as you want this, as long as I'm not alone, then... why not? It's a baby. One that should have been impossible, mind you. But here it is."

She lifted her head so that she could meet his gaze, searching. Geralt's expressions were subtle but she'd learned them. "Do you want this? With me?"

Because that just as important, wasn't it? Maybe it was Geralt's only chance without some other kind of magical intervention, but it meant being tied together.

[worstsin]

"I believe things happen for a reason," Geralt said, turning his head away for just a moment, worried that the statement might seem ridiculous, especially coming from a man who seemed as unsentimental and realistic about such things as he normally did, being a witcher as he was.

"So there's no reason not to believe that this wasn't the same. It shouldn't have happened, but it did. If that ties us together, that's fine. It's not something to avoid. I learned that years ago."

He gripped one of Nina's knees, drawing loose, gentle circles.

"That means yes, to be clear."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"That sounds an awful lot like fate, Geralt." She smiled at him, though, because it was nice to hear something sentimental just then. Saints, what would she be like in a few months' time?

Nina took comfort in the warmth of his hand; she covered it with one of her own.

"I'm not used to slipping up like this. I don't make mistakes. Not this kind." She was still coming to terms with it, too. And she had the benefit of having talked to Greta and Inej already, because she needed to get her head straight before telling Geralt. A smile quirked her mouth and she looked at him.

"Will you still think I'm pretty when I have too much belly to see my toes? And when I'm a bear about everything one minute and crying the next?" She lifted her eyebrows at Geralt, trying to look serious. She'd met and tended plenty of pregnant women and girls, but she had no idea what the process would look like for her.

[worstsin]

Geralt snorted and stood from his seat to bend over Nina and press a long, committed kiss to her mouth before moving away again.

"I would still think you were pretty even if you turned into a werewolf tomorrow. Because you're pretty."

She would always be pretty. She was a pretty soul, and nothing would change that. It was unlike Yennefer, whose spells made her beautiful. But she'd been born with a hard and bitter soul, and Getalt would always see that as well.

"We'll need a nursery."

[every_blossom_blooming]

She sighed happily beneath the kiss, even closed her eyes before he pulled back. Nina turned to keep her eye on him. She hadn't realized how concerned she was on the way over until the weight of it was gone. She felt like she could breathe.

"I promise if I turn into a werewolf tomorrow, I won't eat you. I make no promises for a handful of other people, but they'll deserve it. And I'm eating for two now, anyway."

Something in her softened at the mention of a nursery.

"We will, but you have about nine months to build one. It'll be a spring baby." That felt right, somehow. A new life at the turn of the season seemed like a good omen somehow, or good luck. She held on to that. "And we have about that long to negotiate names."

[worstsin]

"Spring sounds ... fortuitous," thinking of the Lady in Dol Blathanna, the Valley of Flowers. It was a blessed month. Geralt didn't believe in the hods, but the Lady wasn't a god. Not any more than Ciri's abilities made her one.

He kissed Nina again, briefly, in passing, and poured himself another drink. This time, it was in celebration. He could celebrate while still being terrified. He'd never dealt with infants before, not like Vesemir. By Geralt's time, the sutcher alchemists had already been slaughtered, lost with the secrets to the Trials. There would be no more witcher children.

But what sort of child would their be?

"Negotiate?"

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Negotiate," she said with a smile. She wanted a drink but she knew that she should give that up, for the most part. "I'm sure we'll both have ideas on what to call it. Just be aware that my vote counts twice."

Nina rose and leaned up so that she could catch him in another kiss; she could at least enjoy the taste of alcohol on his lips if she couldn't indulge too much herself.

She eased back enough to take in his entire face, looking over his expression. A question hovered on the tip of her tongue. It seemed silly, in the face of all this. A thing they'd never spoken, and had never worried about speaking. Maybe the sudden relief made her bold. She wondered if it was too early to blame it all on hormones.

"Do you love me? Even a little?"

[worstsin]

Geralt nodded, but turned his head away to hide a very slight grimace. The question hurt a little, because of what he was, how many times he'd endured it. It hurt a little more, because it brought on only his worst memories of his time with Tris.

"Of course I do. I don't have any reason to pretend if I didn't. I'm not a typical man."

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina reached to touch his cheek, to kiss the corner of his mouth when he grimaced.

"I'm sorry, I-- I'm being overly sentimental, I suppose. I only wanted to hear it once," she said quietly. "I know you've a life where you came from, a lot behind you and a lot ahead of you, someone you love. You told me that when all this started. I don't ask for more."

She would never ask to be his one and only - how could she, when he had so much behind him and ahead of him? She might be long-lived for being a Heartrender, but while she might see a century, she would not see far past it. Besides, who knew what Darrow had in store?

Her hand slid down and she squeezed his arm tenderly. "I love you. Just... know that. Whatever happens."