every_blossom_blooming | Don't you see that lonesome dove sitting on an ivy tree

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Don't you see that lonesome dove sitting on an ivy tree

Nina sat at a booth near the back of the bar, staring at the bottle of liquor on the table. A glass sat next to it, though she hadn't touched either just yet. She wasn't even sure how long she'd been sitting there anymore.

It had been a day or two since Geralt disappeared. Maybe two, now, she thought. She'd spent the first day on the floor of Kaz and Inej's apartment, and she'd managed to leave, but she wasn't sure where to go or what to do with herself. And that was probably how she found herself in a bar, sitting in front of a bottle that she'd like very much to drown in. Her eyes were still red-rimmed from crying, her hair limp from the lack of a shower in the last few days.

She pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts, barely focused as the tears threatened to overflow again.

Come sit with me? I'm at Tintern.

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He goes because she asks.

Because he's that fucking easy when someone gets under his skin and he'd say it's not an easy thing, worming under there, making him give a shit, but he knows that would be just as much bullshit as everything else he says, so instead he just pretends he doesn't notice. If he doesn't talk about it, maybe no one else will either.

So he goes because she asks and when he slides into the booth across from her, he can tell something is wrong. Something bigger than pregnancy hormones. Something more than just a shitty day, because she's got a bottle and a glass and she isn't drinking it yet, but that's a hell of a lot of alcohol for a pregnant lady.

He does the asshole thing and reaches for the glass, claiming it as his own. As he pours himself a drink, he asks, "What d'you need, darlin'? Besides the booze."

She had a crumpled napkin in front of her when Sweeney arrived. She'd been using it to wipe at her eyes and she'd been fidgeting with it ever since. It wasn't much use to anyone now.

"Geralt's gone," she said quietly as she resisted another wave of tears. Her accent was heavier. Usually she could speak like a native, wherever she was. Saints, she needed to pull herself together. Her life was not over. But she felt his absence like an ache, and it wasn't something she could just heal.

"The father of this baby is just... gone. And I can't drown myself in this stupid bottle, so I'm just sitting here and looking at it."

He doesn't say anything at first, just downs the first drink he's poured himself from her bottle, then sets it aside and reaches across the table to her. His arms are long, it's no stretch for him to push his fingers gently through her hair, cupping the side of her face in his large palm.

There's no sorry in the world that can change the situation she's just laid out. It is what it is. And he may very well be sorry, but that doesn't do anything. He's shit at verbal comfort, anyway, but something physical, even if it's brief, is something he can do.

"That's shit, darlin'," he says simply when he pulls back.

She started crying the moment he touched her, and she hated herself for it. Her one consolation was that she wasn't sobbing: just tears, quiet and plentiful. Nina closed her eyes for a moment and her hands covered Sweeney's, holding onto him until he started to pull away. She hiccuped and used her ruined napkin to wipe her face.

"I'll be alright," she said, because she knew she would be, no matter how terrible she felt just then. "And he wanted to go back."

His daughter was waiting for him. An entire world was waiting for him. And she was here, with a baby not yet born.

With another little hiccup, Nina got out of the booth and came around to Sweeney's side so she could tuck in against him. The touch felt good, and she just wanted to be held.

"I hate this place. This pregnancy should have been impossible in the first place. He was sterile. And I'm-- I don't get pregnant by accident." But she had. She'd stopped focusing because she thought she was safe. Silly girl, said Zoya's voice in her head.

"It's shit all right," Mad Sweeney agrees, shifting in the booth and lifting his arm so he can drape it over Nina's shoulders. There are no words he can say that will fix this, nothing he can do that will bring the man back or make Nina feel less like she's lost everything. If she wants his bloody arm around her, if somehow that's going to help her even just a little bit, that's a thing he can do.

It isn't the same, he hadn't loved Hild the way Nina loves Geralt. Maybe he could've, he thinks it might have been possible, but it wasn't the same. It's the closest he has for comparison, though, in this damn place. He's lost people before, plenty of them, but this place fucking takes like nothing he's ever experienced before.

"You'll be alright," he echoes. "Don't mean you're not allowed to feel like shit for now."

"I think I just don't want to feel like shit alone," she admitted softly. "And I've already spent far too much time on Inej's floor. Keep drinking, one of us has to."

A wry little smile curved her mouth. "I bought the whole damn bottle."

Matthias and Kaz wouldn't approve, even if they understood. Inej and Greta would be horrified. But Sweeney wouldn't judge her, she thought. Even if she had a sip or two.

"I got you, darlin'," he answers and whether he's referring to the alcohol or to being here with her, he doesn't specify. Either way, he's not sure the words matter. He is here and there's no much he's good at when it comes to comfort, but he has no intention of leaving here alone. He'll drink her alcohol, he'll sit with her, he'll listen to her talk or he'll sit in silence, whatever it is she wants to do.

He pours another drink and downs most of it, then leans back against the booth with his arm still around her.

"You know, seven hundred years is a long time," he says. "You lose a lot of people in that kind of life."

He's not trying to compare. There's no sense in something like that. He only wants her to know it's something he understands maybe better than anyone would want to.

"Geralt was nearing or just over a hundred," she said with a dry little smile as she looked up at Sweeney. "I have a thing for older men."

It felt easier to try to grasp her normal, maybe slightly flirtatious self in the midst of this strange grief. Nina looked at the little bit of liquor left in the glass and she plucked it up, taking just enough for the taste to sit on her tongue.

"He wanted to go home. He had people waiting for him. A daughter, lovers. I should be glad that he isn't so painfully apart from them anymore." As she said it, her hand fell to rest over the bump of her belly. It was getting harder to hide, even in her loose dresses. "Zoya was right. Whatever else I might be, I'm still a silly girl."

"Why silly?" Sweeney asks as he pours another drink. "What the fuck is silly in wantin' something real?"

Not everyone has to live as long as he has. Not everyone is cursed with that same sort of bullshit. If people want to be happy, if they want a family, if they don't, if they have goals and desires, they should be able to have those things. There's nothing silly about it, as far as he's concerned. Nina's young, she has a whole long life ahead of her. She ought to do with it whatever the fuck she wants.

He doesn't know who Zoya is, but from his slightly protective perspective, she sounds like a bitch.

Nina laughed, and it came out sounding a bit wet. "Oh, just that I got myself in this situation in the first place. I'm a Heartrender. Of all the people in the world, I should have the easiest time avoiding an unexpected pregnancy. She'd think I was silly for getting pregnant in the first place, and silly for keeping it."

She cleared her throat and affected a much heavier, Russian-sounding accent. "You are a foolish girl, Nina Zenik. You are too loud, too memorable, too much." She shook her head at the memory. "I wanted so badly to have her approval. And of all the people I've ever known, one look from her was enough to burn every ounce of my confidence to ash."

He wants to say she was wrong, that she was just being an asshole, but he remembers what it was like, training soldiers. Preparing them for war. Nina has said enough about her life and this woman for him to make that assumption and he could be wrong, but he's got a feeling he's not.

Sometimes, with soldiers, you have to be fucking hard.

"None of that shit matters here," he says with a shrug. "Bein' memorable is a good fuckin' thing around these parts. At least, far as I'm concerned, it is. You can be as fuckin' foolish as you want. Not that I think any of that shit is foolish."

Nina smiled and bumped her shoulder against Sweeney's. In some ways, she knew Zoya was right: being memorable, as a spy, was not necessarily a good trait. But her cover was always so good, her manner so open, that no one ever suspected her as anything more than a tourist or someone from another part of the country.

"You're sweet," she said to Sweeney, and she meant it, whether the leprechaun would appreciate the sentiment or not. "And you're right, I'm not a soldier here. And I have it on good authority that Zoya Nazyalensky likes to take long baths with lavender bubbles whenever she gets the chance."

Nina refilled the glass and lifted it. "To impossible babies being born in impossible places."

She took barely a taste and then promptly passed it to Sweeney. She gave him a fond look. "And to impossibly tall friends that are willing to risk life and liver."

"Yeah, I'm a fuckin' darling," he answers, a snort of laughter slipping out. Whether he believes it about himself or not, he doesn't particularly mind the sentiment from someone he likes. For all Nina might really mean it, he also thinks she's not the sort to get taken in by his bullshit.

He watches as she takes a sip of the drink -- barely that, so he doesn't say a word -- then takes the glass from her and lifts it in response to her toast.

"Were my liver in any danger, I think I'd've died a long time ago," he says with a faint smile, then takes a sip of the drink. "Let's drink to the impossible baby. Rather, I'll drink to the impossible baby and to the fucking over of anyone who says a word against you or it."

Nina grinned at the promise to fuck up anyone that troubled her or the baby. "Well, I'm glad to have you in our corner. I'd almost dare someone at this point to say something rotten to me about having a baby without a father. I'd love the excuse to break someone's leg or to make them vomit on the sidewalk..."

She sighed wistfully. "I couldn't even participate in fight club. Too pregnant, and to do it any other way would be cheating," she said with a pout. "If you ever happen to find someone that really deserves a bad day, let me know? I get so bored."

Mad Sweeney hasn't needed anyone to fight his battles at any point in his life, not at his size, not at the status he'd had before he'd fled from his death, but it's a sweet offer. One made sweeter by the fact that he knows she could do it, too. She could kill a man easier and with less effort than he'd have to put out to do the same.

"Wouldn't want you to get bored," he says. "I'll keep an eye out for people who need to be taught a lesson that can't be taught with my fists."

They have to exist. He's probably one of them. Getting into a fight has never once put a damper on Mad Sweeney's day.

"I'm getting better at using my power from a distance. A friend's been helping me practice with a scope. And Geralt let me track him through the woods, following the sound of his heart."

It was easy because Geralt's heart sounded so... different. She realized, again, that she was going to miss it. Nina tucked her hair back.

"Do you think you can hide that bottle? I paid for it but I don't know how they'd feel about me walking out with it," she mused. "I think my couch is more comfortable than this booth."

He could drink it all in under a minute, but that's not what Nina is asking of him, so Mad Sweeney caps the thing and tucks it under his jacket. He makes no attempt to really hide it, trusting his luck to carry them out the door and wherever she wants to go.

"Lead the way, darlin'," he tells her. "I'll get the bottle out safe and sound, don't you worry about that."

He's fucking terrible at this. He feels like a goddamn idiot, toting around a bottle when she's so clearly in pain, but there's shit he can actually do about that. Nothing brings back her man. Nothing he says eases the pain. Someone else might be able to, but he's not the right man for that job. Too rough. Too damn old.

But Nina wanted his roughness, his age. Sweeney was old, much older than Geralt, but there is something familiar in his manner that was comforting just then. It made her feel like she could survive this, because Sweeney had survived saints-knew-what.

Nina wrapped herself in her shawl as they stepped outside, the chilly air doing a bit to clear her head. She focused on keeping herself warm, though she was careful these days with how she used her power on herself.

"Don't feel so down on yourself," she said as she looked up at him. She grasped Sweeney's hand and she shared her warmth, whether he needed it or not. She could see the look on his face. "If I have one more person telling me that it's going to be alright, and that I'll be fine, I'll scream. I just need someone that can keep up with me."

"Not gonna say any of that shit," he answers easily. Because while it might all be the truth, it's a truth she already knows and she doesn't need to keep hearing it, as if that's going to somehow make it true now. That sure as fuck isn't how grief works and Sweeney, for all his bullshit and bluster, isn't ever going to force someone to feel a way they don't feel.

"Dunno if I can keep up with you either," he adds a moment later, looking down at her with a faint, fond smile. "You get this whole bottle in me and I may just pass out face first on your floor and then what'll you do? Seven foot leprechaun snoring away all bloody night."

Nina grinned and rolled her eyes at him. "I'll be sure to roll you over to make sure you stop snoring," she said fondly.

She bit her lip, considering what she wanted to ask next. "Will you stay the night? It's not-- It's just been some time."

For over a year Geralt had been a steady presence, either staying in her apartment or she out in his cabin. It was a sudden, lonely feeling that she was still getting over, and she felt silly for asking in the first place.

"Yeah," he answers easily. There's nowhere else he's expected and even if he were, it's nothing a quick text wouldn't solve. There's no one waiting for him. He and Spike aren't exactly the sort to make plans, they sort of just fall into the same places at the right times.

It's better that they're not the kind to make plans. He doesn't want investigate that or dwell on what he wants or all the pointless shit he's been thinking lately. None of it's the sort of stuff he can allow to matter.

"Yeah, I can stay," he says. "You think you got a space big enough for me?"

"The bed might just work if you don't mind propping up on pillows or if you have the tendency to curl your legs when you sleep," she said with a little smile. It's a king bed, but Sweeney's just a little too tall for it's length, she's certain of that.

She found her keys as they neared the building and she looked up at him.

"You really don't mind?" she asked, a bit quieter.

"I really don't mind," he answers and leaves it at that. There's no sense in qualifying that, in telling her there's nowhere else he has to be and no one else expecting him. Even if there were, he'd stay with her. She needs him and he's not always good at being needed, but he'll be damned if he leaves her at a time like this.

"Long as you don't," he adds. "You might change your mind after havin' to spend just a single night with me."

He doesn't have the slightest fucking clue how it is Spike puts up with him. They have weird, differing schedules, and still manage to spend some of their nights together.

"You might change your mind," she said airily. "I might kick. Or what if I say unladylike things in my sleep? What if I bite?"

There had been a time that Nina took the stairs on a whim. Now, she headed straight for the elevator. With a soft sigh she leaned against the back wall and rested her arm across her belly.

"Did you see the way people were looking at me?" she asked with a grin, her eyes closed for a moment. "In the bar? Saints, I'm impressed no one tried to say something. The bar tender looked ready to call the police or something when I asked for the whole bottle."

"As if you're not already used to people starin' at you all the bloody time," Sweeney replies, following her onto the elevator. "You're an eyeful, darlin'."

And she knows it, too, he knows she knows it and the way he looks at her says as much. Maybe it's a different sort of state, but he's sure she'd endured worse than that, too.

"And if you bite in your sleep, it still won't be the sharpest bite I've had this week," he adds. "Bet you won't even draw blood."

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