[Sometime in July] For Greta

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina didn't know what to do. Inej was busy, and Nina couldn't bring herself to go to the Crow Club and say anything in front of Kaz. And, maybe, some part of her was almost afraid of how her best friend might react. Inej hadn't exactly had a good opinion of Geralt less than a year ago, and though by the fall things had seemed better between them, she just--

She just needed to talk to someone. Maybe someone that was not so tangled up in her personal relationships. She found herself on her way to Greta's house before she was thinking too hard about anything at all.

When she got to the door, she stood there for a long moment before she could finally bring herself to knock.

Comments

[every_blossom_blooming]

"I do take comfort in that," she admitted. "Knowing that I'm not all alone." Even if she was, Nina thought she could make a go of it. It would be lonely, but she was strong - stronger than she think most people gave her credit for. But being underestimated was fine with her.

"Sometimes I barely remember my own mother," she said as she picked up her tea again and cradled the mug. "I spent so much of my life in the Little Palace, it's hard to remember a life before that. I was raised by teachers and older students."

[andhiswife]

Well, if that isn't painfully familiar. Sometimes Greta feels absurdly lucky, just for having good, kind parents who didn't die well before their time. Nearly everyone else she can't think of hasn't been so fortunate. Either their parents were lost, or they were terrible -- or both, in some cases.

"Did they raise you well?" she asks, because that, she thinks, matters more than who was doing the raising. "I mean--you've obviously turned out well enough," she adds with a dismissive flap of her hand.

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Well, I think I'm the person I am because of my time there," she said with a shrug. "It was hard. Zoya made for a difficult critic, but." Nina shrugged and sank back with a little huff of breath.

"She'd have something to say about all this, I'm sure. Mostly about how silly I've been and how could I let this happen, it's an embarrassment to my training, et cetera."

[andhiswife]

"Forget her, then," Greta says, looking thoroughly unimpressed. Then, her expression softening, she adds, "You don't have to lead by their example. You could be the sort of parent a child ought to have."

It's not the sort of advice she'd offer anyone, simply because it's open to rather broad interpretation. But Nina seems a sensible young woman, however she was brought up.

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina was quiet for a moment and she drank her tea.

"I don't like not being able to predict things. Some things. I have absolutely no idea how Geralt is going to react and this one time, I wish I did. This is an impossible thing. And when impossible things happen, it's either wonderful or terrible. I don't think there's anything in between."

[andhiswife]

Privately, Greta can't help but think Nina's underestimating the banality of the impossible. The word never meant much back home; few things were impossible when there were Giants in the sky and magic growing in your neighbor's garden.

Darrow is different, true, but not by much. The city routinely throws ostensible impossibilities at them. This is just another one to add to the pile.

Though it is rather more personal than most impossibilities.

"There's an awful lot of impossible here," she points out, gently. "Enough that it doesn't have to be a disaster or a miracle." She reaches over to give Nina's shoulder an encouraging rub. "However he takes it, you know you're always welcome here."