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Waiting. Ploughing waiting. Again. Was this all he ever did for Geralt? He waited for the Witcher, he waited for Dijkstra and Radovid, these days it felt like all he did was wait. Just after dawn Geralt had said, by the tavern near the bridge in Oxenfurt. Just after fucking dawn, and the mid-morning sun was already in the sky. The way he saw it, it would mostly likely be raining before the Witcher turned up.
Truth was Vernon Roche hated waiting, he could feel a tight ball of anger sitting in his chest. Waiting meant thinking, and thinking meant… he shut his eyes briefly and returned his mind to his childhood practice, look at the ground and start counting, slowly, one breath in, one breath out. One… two… three… four… the street was a dirty grey, even here, even in Oxenfurt it took on the grimy hue of thousands of passing feet, vomit from a night time drunk, the spilt blood, the rain washing it all away, and all of this over and over, again and again. Damn Geralt was late… he shuts his eyes.
Fucking count… five… six… seven… eight… problem was the counting didn’t really work anymore. Sometimes he wondered if it ever had.
He looked up at the sky - blue for once and the sun hanging low and hazy, but it still made him squint. The babble of merchants and sailors that came distantly to his ears, strange noises and shouts, and for some reason now it always feels like he is being drawn back to the centre of battle. The little oasis of semi-silence in the centre of a raging storm. He shakes his head slightly, will it always be like this? The moments of escape have become harder and harder to find. His eyes scan the horizon around him carefully again. He can see a good way in all directions and there’s no sign of that rangy bugger anywhere. So instead he’s left here with thoughts that press in hard on the sides of his temples. Brenna, Foltest, Dol Blathana now, all the death he’s seen.
Odd things, like the way a man will remain standing in battle for long seconds even with his head severed near off the body, how sometimes it can seem to take an inordinate amount of time before the blood starts to spurt, before the legs give up and crumple. So many men and so much blood, and for a moment it seems like the street before him is swimming in it. For a long minute it’s like he can see the bodies, bodies on bodies piled up around him, the heat of that day and the way it smells, guts ripped open, the stench of it all there in front of him. A tightness seems to grip around his throat like a hand. The feeling of slipping on someone’s lost limb and the gagging that rises up in him until he coughs and the spell is broken and he’s out here on the streets of Oxenfurt, waiting for the Witcher, and really shouldn’t he just give up and fuck off back to the cave? Problem being the thoughts just follow him everywhere now, like a shadow he can’t shake off.
He looks around again. The white hair is an easy spot, and he hates himself for waiting, and the way that his heart will lift a little when he sees the other man. Geralt of Rivia. There are times he wishes he’d never met the Witcher, but then again there are times… he forces his eyes down again, habit. Forces his mind to still again, to count, Gods did he only count to eight… nine… but he knows it isn’t any use and to shake himself out of it, he starts to walk across the street, slowly towards the harbour.
All these people scurrying round, sometimes he wonders at it all, people like ants crawling this way and that, surviving, and a part of him now, a bigger part it seems day by day, makes him wonder why bother? Why even try? He brushes the thought away, turns to the left now, takes in the butcher and the fish merchant, looks impassively at the dead flesh, lets his eyes blur for a moment, remembers all the times they couldn’t even bury the dead Temarians, just pile them up on logs and try and get all that wet flesh to burn. The way it would stink for days, a dense, choking smoke that seemed to just linger in the air, Oxenfurt is like a fucking perfumed bath in comparison to that.
What is it with all the thinking? Did it start when Foltest died? There are days when he believes he’s going mad. Times sitting safe in the camp where he could swear he was getting ready to fight again, the smell of the fire, the clang of the men practising with swords and the weird hallucinations that it brings. The strange sharp clarity he gets sometimes walking down a dirt road and it’s like he’s been there before, has never even left. The feeling of fear coming back and back and back at him until he can feel sweat running underneath his shirt, even when the temperature is cold as hell. Maybe he is mad, he’s seen men go mad from war before, the battle sickness, pitiable creatures who spend their days cursing at the sky or lie rotting in asylums. Maybe this is how it starts, and the idea fills him with such a horror when he does think of it that he holds onto anything, anything to keep busy, to keep his mind away from it. Anything to not fall asleep until black waves of exhaustion are on him, because maybe then he’ll avoid the dreams and the dreams are the worst of it all. He exhales through his teeth. He can feel a great chasm opening up in himself, he almost sways with the effort of repressing it, digs a palm into his eyes. Start again, breathe again. Only when he thinks about it, the breath sliding back into his body, does he realise how tense he is. The same tenseness as staring into a crossbow bolt, every muscle poised for flight. How has he even lived so long? Why has he survived when he’s seen thousands around him perish?
He looks for a distraction now. Geralt, where the fuck is he? There’s no real point in looking, the Witcher will come when he’s good and ready, but he feels in his chest an almost desperate longing to see him. To not have to think. The faint warmth of the winter sun, the way the air shimmers hazy on the horizon and all the people passing by as if he wasn’t even there. Vernon Roche, once a man to be feared, now just a glimmer of himself.
He can see a slight commotion as he wanders down the harbour side. Some men are holding a boy by the ear, one hits him hard around the face. He watches as people split around the group, like water around a boulder, their eyes carefully averted. That’s the smart thing to do, never get involved in someone else’s altercation - that could mean a knife in the ribs. A stupid, meaningless death when you were just going about your daily business.
Still he’s never been the smartest where death is involved. He keeps walking towards them, sizes them up, three men. Not the best odds, but he’s had plenty worse… the one doing the hitting is big, run to fat, he’d hit hard, but he’d be slow. The second is a skinny little rat eaten man, wiry but with one clear shot he should be easy enough. The third, he’s the problem, broad shoulders of a dockhand who’s spent his life moving cargo on and off ships, wouldn’t do to take your eyes off that one. Of course he should walk by, that would be wise, but he’s closer now, can see the streaks of clean tears on the dirty face and the boy can only be five or six years old. There’s a strange closed resignation on his small face at the world of adults he inhabits and Roche can feel the frustration he’s felt all morning rising up in his stomach. He walks right into them.
“Real fucking tough aren’t you?”
He keeps the dangerous one to the right of himself, keeps him carefully in his line of sight as he gives the big man a mocking look. He glares at Roche, like he’s a fucking idiot for interrupting them.
“Listen mate, he stole a loaf of bread off me. Thieving little prick needs to be taught a lesson.” The big man eyes him up, obviously thinks little of his chances and smiles at his friends. “So why don’t you walk on, go find your army. Or did you all runaway?” Roche hears the muscly one laugh at that, he doesn’t move at all, weighs up the distances between them all, lets his eyes flick to where the little boy stands cowering.
“Go plough yourself.”
When he does move it’s fast, the men are left standing still as his right fist connects with the wiry man, hard in the neck, he isn’t even expecting it and he goes down hard, coughing and chocking for breath on all fours and Roche twists to allow himself to absorb the blow that the big man throws. It catches him on the side of his face and he can feel his lip split open, tastes the blood and then he shifts and smiles, all danger. He can feel the atmosphere around him change, just the slight seeming slowing of time. Raises his arms to block the double blows from the muscle, ducks under the big one to land a hard blow to his gut. He can tell now that it’s going to be tight, both men have a lot of weight on him, but he’s been trained to fight hard and dirty all his life, since he was a little child on the streets, he knows how to absorb the blows that come, take their energy to counter, block, counter again and hope their timing isn’t lucky. He ignores the blow that splits open his eyebrow, although it makes his head spin for a moment. He can see the big one winding himself, starting to slow, keeps his own hands up, fast and light, jab, hook and then as the big man slips between him and the muscle, he times his hardest hook to the side of his soft face, follows it through with a jab and feels his nose crunch and watches the blood splatter on the pavement with an air of detachment. Clearly he’s not a man used to dealing with pain as he crumbles back into his skinny friend and holds his face groaning. Two down, and now he fancies the odds. Circles and eyes his opponent. He’ll have to be taken down hard, he doesn’t look like the crumbling type. So he watches for his opening, allows the blows to hit his ribs and he realises how much he enjoys this, no space for anything but pure concentration, the pain he feels something dull and distant. Every atom of him is concentrated in the moment, moving carefully to avoid the shots he can, rocking back to absorb the ones he can’t.
“Think it’s funny you fucking prick?” The muscle grunts out. “I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
Then he spots it as a flurry of blows reach him, and he uses the other man’s forward momentum to flip him over his leg and hard onto the pavement. His head hits the cobbles with a nasty crack and Roche watches to see if he’ll pick himself up, but the knockout is clean, and then his friends are there, looking up at Roche in disgust. Dragging the sorry ass of their friend away.
He turns to the little boy who is looking up at him with a mix of fear and wonder. His clothes are ragged, just skin and bone waiting for the cold of winter. He feels a pang of remembrance even though childhood feels like another life to him now. He can taste the blood in his mouth and he spits it carefully behind him.
“You should run home kid. I wouldn’t come round this part of town. You understand?” The boy’s eyes are wide, but he nods. Roche flips him a crown from his pocket. “Go on then, avoid those fucking idiots.”
A little look of surprise lights up on the boy’s face as he catches the coin. He watches the back of the kid as he runs, arms pumping and like all skinny starving kids on the street he can move, sliding in between people like an eel and vanishing into the crowds. Roche checks around in case his beaten foes are returning with accomplices, but they seem to have disappeared. Fucking cowards, damn fucking grown men who can only take it out on the weak. The whole fucking world built on layers and layers like that. The people walking past now split around him, like he’s a rabid dog and he smiles crookedly.
He walks slowly across from the harbour and resumes his previous stance leaning against the tavern wall. Rubs his knuckles against his broken lip, tastes the blood, feels it throb. Feels the deadness slowly creeping back over him again. Was that all life was now, brief moments of oblivious pain before it all sinks over him again? He knows he should have left it, that things like that happen all over, all the time, nothing will change and what’s one little boy anyway? He can feel his thoughts turning the way he really doesn’t want them to, turning back through the years. Fuck. Ten… ten… fucking ten... A little boy standing in the streets like a rat, all the hunger in him and the longing for anything. Eleven… a little boy standing behind a sheet in a room listening to men and the banging of the bed and the voice of his mother with her false, lonely groans of pleasure. Twelve… a little boy watching from behind a chest as the old woman came again, long instruments and potions and his mother lying on the bed and the blood, and the crying, and the crying, and the crying. He shudders then, he feels the hotness behind his eyes and he glares at the sun. Thirteen… the rage that burns in him, and the feel of a man’s fist against his face, the stars and the helpless singing in his ears. Fourteen… the memory of hot iron held against his flesh and the smell of it rancid and burning in his nose, the memory of that punishment for trying to steal a hunk of fucking mutton. He rubs the spot unconsciously and no one, there was no one who even lifted a finger and he spits a big clot of red blood out of his mouth, his hands clench back into fists and he would do it again and again, and he wants to feel the pain of the fight singing against his bones and skin. Maybe he wants to feel that way forever.
Then, suddenly he’s there, a shadow that’s come up silently to the left of him, fist to his shoulder. It takes him a long moment to draw everything back in again before he turns his head slightly.
“About fucking time.”
Geralt shrugs, “Something came up.” Funny thing is he was so fucking angry before, and now he feels nothing about it. Like it was nothing to spend his day out here, like his days were nothing at all.
“Fucking something.” Roche spits again, turns to look into those cool eyes, his own dark and tired. Geralt raises an eyebrow.
“Run into some Nilfgaards or something?” He watches Geralt rock back on his heels to take him in, he knows he must look a mess, and Geralt seems to forget himself for a moment and raises a hand to wipe away the blood that’s trickled down from his eyebrow. He feels himself stiffen slightly, draw a breath in through his nose. He licks his lip to stop the blood clotting there and it’s almost like he can hear Geralt thinking, not for the first time, that there is something off with him. That he can sense it, like looking into a well with no seeming bottom, like looking into a night sky without stars. Perhaps that’s what he is now. “You okay anyway?” Geralt’s voice is flat like the Velen swamps.
“Fucking peachy Geralt.” He smiles so both the cuts on his face open again. “Never better, wouldn’t you say?” It seems like Geralt has to resist the urge to shake him, and he rubs at the blood again, a softly intimate movement, then his hand slips slowly down Roche’s face to his neck, his thumb tracing the muscle there while Roche swallows. Geralt lets his hand drop then to his left shoulder and he draws it back awkwardly. Blinks, breathing out slowly through his nose.
“So you going to tell me what happened? Or do you want me to tell you? I can work it out easy enough.”
“Oh fuck, no. Don’t use your fucking senses on me.” Roche shoots him a dirty look, bloody Witcher unnerves him sometimes with his ability to see what should remain hidden. “Fine, I got in a fight. It was nothing. They lost. You did leave me waiting here a long fucking time you know.” Geralt holds his gaze a little too long for it to be comfortable and Roche turns away.
“Huh, yeah sorry, I was busy though, didn’t intend to get held up. Why the fight anyway?”
“Anyone ever tell you, you ask too many damn questions? What the sod were you busy with?”
“Noonwraith. Can’t rush these things you know.”
“I can only imagine.” Roche sighs. He pushes himself slowly off the wall a little stiffly. Feels the Witchers eyes running up and down him like they’re looking for weakness.
“You don’t have to tell me if it embarrassing for you.” He can hear the slight inflection in Geralts voice that is meant to goad him. He should feel more angry than this. He shouldn’t have this strange desire to suddenly tell him everything. Tell this man standing beside him how fucking crazy he feels, like a ghost of the person he used to be. What the fuck would a Witcher understand anyway? No emotions, he rubs his chin.
“You’re one lucky fucker Geralt.” He mutters softly and the Witcher raises a questioning eyebrow. “They were beating on a kid for stealing, alright? Three fucking grown men, one little kid. So they pissed me off. Happy now?” He can feel Geralts eyes boring into him.
“Doesn’t sound your style.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His voice is low.
“Nothing, I just didn’t think you worried much about the little things.” Geralt shrugged. He’s looking at him sideways, and Roche can feel his face twitch involuntarily. “Thought you were a bigger picture kinda guy.”
Roche shuts his eyes, it feels like the world is swimming before him, that’s he’s back in his childhood body and helpless against a universe that just doesn’t care. “You think I wasn’t ever a little boy Witcher?” He spits a last time, the pink bubbles hitting the cobbles and mixing slowly with the dust in the afternoon sun. “Let’s get a fucking move on right? Like I said I’ve been waiting all day.” He starts to stride off and Geralt watches the way he rolls his shoulders, the swagger in his hips and the Witcher sighs and slowly licks his lips.