Azaras' voice has been taken away by internal bruises one too many times and the more it happen, the less she licked this bridge of power getting stripped off of her with such brutality. It was her voice which lit up the missing pieces between her and Geralt when he counted on observations.

Now, everything was not how it was supposed to be. They've been given the decency of timing to get dressed up and only after that assaulted by the local authorities, tossed in their prison and sentenced to an early execution, considering amongst people Geralt killed and stepped over to save Azaras was also the little lord of the city.

Politically messed up situations did not bother him though. Not even the chains, tightly wrapped around their wrists together, connecting them to the dirty floor they have been seated on, back to back, with noth but a sturdy wood pillar between them, disturb him in the possibility that were he to break them free, the roof will just collapse on top. Too little counted on that thin stick. And too much seemed to have counted on her voice, which he deeply missed.

That was the White Wolf's real trouble at the moment, when his eyes shred blankly alit towards a dark wall: he couldn't read her silence, he couldn't find the comfort of her gentle features either.

Left but a wanderer into discomfort, Geraly realized those could have been the seconds that she had to endure when he always wordlessly and thoughtlessly asked to be understood through simplicity and lack. It was an instinct though, he never realized he'd gained, to leave the words to the humans, for they never cared about what he had to say anyway.

She was worth every single syllable and effort of getting over those decades of innermost frail.

Azaras felt shattered, reduced and vulnerable. Pain was something she knew how to get over and the healing process was slow but certain, that she might just wake up in two days time and have her voice restored fully, but it was the moment in which she was cut silent that hit her across the face harder than any stench of a prison. She was forced to be a sort of a silent that doomed her as close to death as anything sharper, for she had to be what small part she did not enjoy in Geralt.

"I...," he began after the bells in the city stroke the dawn and the beginning of the paths to busier markets which will rain the dust of the ceiling over them, soon. Geralt's head bowed and untied hair, still damp, hanged on both sides of his face while he sighed. "I am sorry I let this happen to you, Azaras."

It's not your fault, she wished she said. But her lips would move and no sounds would form from the bellows of her throat. Only a listener, the silence endured and Geralt had to unsharpen his teeth onto words.

"Ever since," his tongue dried, defensive, but if any time he felt was better than right before their nearing death sentence in this Gods forsaken city, it was it. So he cleared his throat with a little cough, drenched in confidence that their escape will be prompt, while it still had to wait for him to take this chance. "Ever since you died by that Blood Sorcerer's last trick... I can't imagine losing you again. I got us into this mess because..."

He hesitated and Azaras' heart skipped its beat downhill. "But I'll get us out of here."

Azaras sighed, ultimately and counted through the last bells above, coming from high towers, how many heavy steps booted the halls of this prison. If she could heal on the inside, she imagined she could heal much more than just tissue, yet with no way of actually asking Geralt about a Witcher's limitations, she decided to take the initiative he so gallantly spoke about.

A bone cracked somewhere in the room.

The following second, Azaras' wrists have been freed of the chains and while her left hand was bleeding heavily enough to start pooling blood on the ground, her right hand held a white fragment, like a needle.

With a piece of her own bone, she unlocked Geralt's chains. The door of the cell opened. Azaras got up and the bone was thrown from her hand into the skull of the man who must have come to deliver them, the prisoners to their deaths.

Geralt got up and caught her bleeding hand in a frim gentleness, though she must have wanted to bow down and take the keys of the dead which might have returned them to their weaponry, perhaps crucial in getting out of that city expecting a public execution. "Did you not hear me?" His voice thundered instead.

Her glare was loud where her voice was missing, silencing Geralt to a low growl alone. Azaras may not have had the ability to speak, but while they were standing in front of each other, she could mouth words.

"I am," her hand holding the bone piece hit her chest, "a Witcher too," she touched then his medallion.

It was a cheap explanation to thousands more words she was silenced before she had the chance to speak of. It was not protection, but love which she desired, for just that certainty of not being separated was enough safety to her. Anything beyond that innocent spark from easier times was plain selfish in her mind, because at the end of the day, Witchers or not, life has proven to be filthy and faithfully dangerous, horribly infected with putrid creatures.

To her, safety was not something earned by not being in danger because even behind tall keep walls, her life was crushed by monsters. No. Safety was in not being alone. Geralt had his horse, he rarely talked, but if they were to part ways, and she was so afraid of that, then Azaras will find herself utterly alone.

Only it was hard to understand the needs which have never been frequent as it was hard to tell the rights from the wrongs when in the dark. Stumbling by his own shadows, Sylvain plunged his sword into the air and stood tall by his blindness fueled in flashing silvers. His new army's ovations bloomed his heart, for soul had left him long ago, into greatness.

Tapestries which covered walls of pain that Arcapan had suffered, carried the silhouettes of southerners who cursed and spit on the north's weather, whose words hanged a blasphemy to the lands of Sylvain's ancestors and turned in their graves by the swing of every man who, awakened into the silent invasion, was cut short with a rope around their necks.

Yulis watched from above, his crimson hands, ridged and old, hidden away into the long sleeves of his dark cloak. The towers were a fitted place for his posture, orchestrating the frail mind of a shivering King, for the real power boiling in the South, about the emerge and melt these pitiful snows.

Far below his wicked feet, under hundreds of stones moss-peppered and behind tons of dirt cloaked in restless death, in the dark of the same prison, Jaskier's voice whimpered the words he would suffer gratefully, to speak out at the right time. "This plan is madness."

He took a deep breath, holding Geoffrey's hand a little tighter to let him know he was not done yet, but he was simply relaxing his panicked lungs, hinged for too long. Every word reminded the bard how very low his state has gotten, degraded so that songs seemed to have totally deserted him, forgotten. In all that thinness, he also felt the skeleton like hand of the knight.

A breath could do much to the comfort. Loneliness would have killed him long ago, yet still... "Let's be realistic, Geoff, death seems like a much better way to end things for each other now. And...," Jaskier coughed from the abundance of words coming out all at once. His teeth creaked down over each other and he swallowed dryly, lightly delusional, "we cannot do more but die."

Amongst his delusions though, Geoffrey caught the tail of hope, the hint of a name. "You're wrong," he shook his head, "if Azaras is alive, like you said, and she's with Geralt, the Witcher, then there is still something we can do. You can let them know of what's brewing in the North and I can help you do that."

"You'll die," Jaskier didn't even have the strength to open his eyes anymore. All the names Geoffrey still articulated properly were hazes of a dream in his mind. "And I won't make it, on the road."

The knight pulled the bard's head back on his shoulder, where he could feel his breath and have some reassurance that the hope had not been snuffed out yet. A breath of relief was what the two Witcher's let out as well, in each other's silent company when they managed to leave the city, concealed in a convoy of entertainers and theater buffoons.

This group of merry travelers were used to clandestine couples and families, taking paths with them, from city to city, tangibly just a passers-by to the their constant show. Even at night, when they camp was set in the forest, around a bonfire, the music never stopped.

Everything else they did in silence fell together piece by piece, in perfect shape, everything but these conspicuous desire, this scandalous love which frightened them so much from the claws of time that once had taught them paths diverge more often than the converge.

Azaras tied her left hand in a bandage, sitting next to Geralt, knowing he was looking at her endearing. He stood much taller than herself, their closeness still brushed their shoulders down upon each other too, but it was uneasy how they left things; it was hard to fix them too.

Across some stands and groups amongst which Azaras and Geralt were just cloaked ghosts hoping not to gain too much attention, she heard the faint line of a very familiar song. It wasn't a happy ballad, it was more of a war legend, with sadder notes they spiced in thrills to fill halls of lords and ladies dancing away the night, and this actor did not play to weep, yet more quietly to practice gaining the attentions of fair maidens.

He did not quite expect this pale woman, lower herself before him and hand him over, in her open palm brazed with many shades of red, a coin. Azaras opened her mouth with a momentary struggle, then, desperate to urge the singer to continue, perhaps just a little louder, she improvised and mouthed her voiceless words clearer. 

"You," she pointed at the singer, "louder," she placed her bandaged hand to her mouth to exemplify how sounds should spread out, then pointed at him again.

The man squinted a while, but not because he had difficulties understanding such a banal request, yet simply because he never would have thought he'd stare into the eyes of such an obvious Witcher and see them kneel before him, giving away a coin. Geralt too, watched from afar, on edge, if not intrigued on the border of awkwardness itself to him.

"You want me to sing the song properly?" the man confirmed, earning Azaras' eager nod. "How do you know of it? It's not a very happy song."

She wished she could have told him how Arcapan admired the legend the song spoke about, enough to make dances on it, to sing it at all festivals and spit the ground whenever wild berry bushes poisoned thorns on their lands as they descended from the mountains on winds of autumn. But she had no way of doing more than a faint smile at first. 

Her bandaged slowly gestured to her heart. "Home." Beneath her touched spot, under her belt, the little purple stone remained, as entranced by memory as her.

The singer reached out to take her coin, nodding along the emotion he understood off of her. Instead, he ended up sighing and closing Azaras' hand on that coin. Her eyes widened, ready to insist, so he took the liberty to shrug first, "A Witcher saved our caravan once, you know? When I was younger... Any songs, for you and your friend," he nodded at who stood now behind her, "are free of charge, my dear."

Then he stroke the chords of his guitar with pathos, some flutes joined at his wink and Azaras turned around to meet Geralt's extended hand. With a tilted head, he listened to the start of the song and remembered clearly that it was a loud ballad based off a northern myth of a huntsman who met the devil in the dark berries on the road. Though the meaning was beyond him as something filled with gore, the memory he held of the song was lighter.

"We danced on this once," he noted, amused in the slightest. That faint smile of his was a serene addition to hardened features shed now of the cloak he did not consider necessary anymore in this company, of a comforting surprise. "Will you honor me with this dance once more?" 

Azaras may have doubted his side of the tale, but for her part of love, there was not a single thing she thought Geralt could ask that she would not first consider. There was no hesitation for her to take his hand and be surprised with his clear remembrance of the steps she taught him at the festival they met.

"Don't look so surprised," Geralt's voice tickled a chuckle. "You stepped on my toes so many times that night that it would have been hard not remembering where not to place my feet."

In the impossibility of replying just as snarky as him, Azaras' smile shone a bit brighter than usual. With the twirl of their dance, many of the actors recognized and joined around the fire, along the loud song beaming the forest alive, she enjoyed the little perk which came with silence. 

"I love you."

Azaras missed her step and stumbled out of pace, getting Geralt to step right over her left foot. She grimaced only for a second, in their stop, right by the fire, in the midst of the turmoil of the crowd now kin to keeping the party going. Starting a dance would not ever end with just one song for this kind of people.

But Geralt's words put a stop to the dance for him and Azaras. He looked down at her shocked face and realized with relief that he finally discovered what she needed to hear; indeed, he thought, it had been unfair how many times he feared those words, shamed himself for them instead too. 

From her hands, he grazed his thumbs up to her shoulder and sighed on the last notes of their song. The dance caught weary his breath which he needed by the warmth of the fire, kissing ambers on their skin, on their hair and into their golden gazes meeting expectedly. 

"The first time, I was a fool," he began once more, justifying all she needed to hear and he wished to tell at last. "Then I was certain that admitting my love will have you wither away, as a sick way of fate taking everything I ever cared about from me. But now you are back and there's no denying how scared I am to want you, how desperate I am to protect you... because I've loved you for a long time and I only just realized how much we are the same or how warm even the winter feels beside you."

Azaras' gaze fell down, under closed lids from shame. Geralt lifted her chin under his hand.

"I am not used to this," he admitted, "yet you deserve at least a try towards a change. And if it is me that you wish as well, then please remain by my side and when the time comes for a fight, I will bite down any urges and trust you will raise your sword for me the way I would do for you too."

He knew it would be hard, perhaps even more so than when he swore he'd hurt her if she'd become to dangerous to hold around. Impatient was his soul, swollen in the waiting of her opening eyes, into the ascension of her gaze. Azaras hand rested down on his chest and off her lips he read a slow, single word: home.

Life was generously long to Witchers who survived the long nights, the dreads of the dark and everything had been much gentler since Azaras returned into his life. Conjoined, their fate intertwined, at last, into one, through a tight embrace, a kiss forged in the flames that drowned all sorrows and pains, ashed the doubts until remained only the taste of safety, that... 

"For as long as the other lives, I will not leave your side."

And it was good, for once, to have a home that could not crumble to the wind, did not need no stone. The home walked, it was flesh and bone, and it would hold the trust, no other ever hoped for. It was the single gifted flower that raised its petals from the dirt named the life of a Witcher. This miracle was theirs and theirs alone.

chapter dedicated to user39923330