My own true love, farewell for a while

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina woke with a start. Her hand flew to the bed next to her, but it was empty. She sat there for a long moment, calming her heart as she listened. She couldn't hear Geralt moving around downstairs in the cabin's kitchen. Had he gone out early for something? She consoled herself with that thought as she eased out of bed and wrapped herself in a robe.

She watched the clouds race across the heavy, overcast sky, rushed along by the winds blowing. She couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right, and after being awake for a while, she tried calling Geralt. He hated his phone, but he'd learned how to use it and it was, sometimes, the easiest way to find him.

This number has been disconnected, a tinny voice told her on the other end of the line.

Everything in Nina went numb. She dropped her phone and gripped the kitchen table. She didn't know how long she stood there, just breathing with tears stinging her eyes. Eventually, she forced herself to move. Trembling, she dressed herself and put on her shoes. She grabbed her phone, her coat, and went out into the sharp, windy day. At first she didn't know where she was going as she strode through the woods in her sweeping red coat. But she walked through the forest, and into the rolling suburbs, and finally into the city itself. She didn't stop until she reached Dimera.

Nina pounded on the door, eyes red from tears and disheveled from her walk.

Comments

[everymonstrousthing]

He's been baking and his hands, when he opens the door, are filmed with white. He stares at her for a moment, but it's a look he recognises -- he's gone through it twice before, with Jesper, with Inej.

He stands aside and lets her into the apartment.

[tricktofalling]

Inej hears the knock but there's no voices for a moment. She comes out of the bedroom, dressed softly and roused from a nap--and then, at the sight of Nina, very awake.

There is a memory in her of Kaz's face after Jesper. There is a memory of Kaz's face seeing her appear in this apartment. Inej goes briefly cold, and then hurries over to her friend.

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina does her best to hold herself together as she manages to get her coat off, but as soon as she can she's wrapped around Inej and hiding her face.

"I think Geralt is gone," she manages, loud enough that Kaz might hear her too. She can't look at their faces, not yet. She isn't sure that she's ready for the sympathy they might give her: she knows that Kaz lost Inej once, and Jesper. She knows he of all people might understand, but she still can't look. Even as she stands straight again, even as she tries to pull herself back together.

Even as she feels like she can't keep standing.

[everymonstrousthing]

He isn't, he thinks, capable of comfort in the same way that Inej is. He can't wrap his arms around Nina, can't hold on to her. So he does the best thing that he can - he leaves her with Inej and pads into the kitchen, setting the kettle on the hob to boil.

There's no-one thing that they can say to make it better. He knows that, too...

[tricktofalling]

Inej holds Nina tightly, as tightly as she can, as soon as the words are out. She thinks, brightly, of crawling in Nina's high up window to slightly intimidate Geralt, and how mad Nina was with her about it for so long, and for good reason.

She whispers to her in Ravkan, something soothing, little prayers that won't help but that are familiar at least. And Kaz, bless him, does what he can do best right now: be silent and present.

"Let's sit down," Inej says softly, pulling Nina along to the couch.

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina sat at Inej's insistence and stared off into the middle ground. She could hear Kaz moving around and wished he could hug her, too. She'd laugh at that later, her desire to hug Kaz Brekker. For now, she sniffled a bit and leaned against Inej.

"He's just gone," she murmured. "He was in bed last night, and this morning he was gone." She tried to laugh, but it came out wet. "What was I thinking?"

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz does what he can. He brews tea and, when it's done, he brings the pot and cups and sets it down on the low table in front of the couch. He folds himself in at the other end, shirt sleeves pushed to his elbows, gloves left behind. He doesn't say anything right then. He doesn't know what he can say.

[tricktofalling]

Inej looks at Kaz, around Nina's shoulder, a sort of urgency in her because Kaz has dealt with this a bit more than she has. He's lost her before, after all, and Jesper, other people he grew close to.

At least they have Nina hemmed in, a gentle bracket of their bodies around her. Inej runs her fingers over Nina's hair.

"Have some tea," she says softly. It won't do much, but it will do something.

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina cradled the mug when it was given to her, and she looked between the pair of them. She laughed wetly. "Saints."

She didn't even know what was so miserably funny. Maybe the fact that she generally thought of Kaz Brekker as having the emotional capacity of a wet blanket (even if she knew that wasn't true), or the fact that just weeks ago she'd been helping to hold Inej's fragile mind together in the wake of October's horror. And now here she was, between them, hoping for comfort.

"I wish Jesper was here. He'd at least offer to get me drunk." She tried to laugh again, but it sounded like a hiccup.

[everymonstrousthing]

He doesn't touch her, but he does shift so that he's facing her, one leg pulled up onto the sofa between them. He studies her for a moment.

"Now I know you're sad," he says, and it's almost gentle. "Thinking Jes would have had any good ideas at all."

[tricktofalling]

"I like to think he'd at least realize after he'd said it that it was a terrible idea," Inej says with a soft sort of smile. And it was at that, a terrible idea. Nina is months out from drinking, even if she might want to.

"But we're, all of us, full of bad ideas." She pets Nina's hair gently away from her brow and leans in to kiss her cheeks. "It's why we fit so well together."

[every_blossom_blooming]

Nina huffed a weak, wet laugh at Kaz's comment. "You're right," she sniffed as she leaned into Inej. "He has awful ideas."

She sniffled again and tried to sit up a little, mostly so that she could actually drink the tea that Kaz made her. She cradled the mug close. "I don't-- I don't know what to do," she confessed softly, staring at a point on the floor. "There's the cottage, and I have most of his things..."

[everymonstrousthing]

"We've got room for you here," says Kaz, glancing at Inej over Nina's head. "In the short term, at least. You don't have to go there on your own, do we you? We can help." He might not be able to offer physical comfort, but his brain works in practical ways. "So, for tonight, all you have to do is...be here."

[tricktofalling]

Inej nods, because at the moment, rest is what Nina needs. To be with friends and to be able to regroup. It may not be much, but the little cabin in the woods that was Geralt's, and her flat in Candlewood, those will keep until she has the peace of mind to sort through things.

"We'll help," she agrees. "When you're ready. Everything one day at a time, for now."

[every_blossom_blooming]

"Thank you," she said quietly. The thought of taking care of things was overwhelming at the moment, but she had some hope that it would get easier with time.

"I keep reminding myself that he isn't dead, just gone. He'd wanted to go home, back to the people that needed him."

[everymonstrousthing]

Kaz reaches for his own mug of tea, cradling it with long, pale fingers as he watches the two girls together, the closest thing that he has to family in the world.

"It's hard to keep that line clear," he says, because hadn't he been through it before. "But keep telling yourself. Keep saying it. It makes it easier, somehow. Knowing they have a life to go back to."

[tricktofalling]

Inej nods as well. And they know that, sometimes, people come back. She's a perfect example of that, after all. But Inej doesn't say that out loud. Somehow, the idea of it seems too much. If there's a hope of it, it might be too much to put in Nina.

Inej knows she's a rarity.

Softly, Inej says, "It's been good to have some of Jesper's things. It will be good for you to have some of Geralt's. But that's something to think about tomorrow. Drink your tea now."