What is it that happens to this land in winter so dark that all vile creatures resurface, multiply and grow in power, against all odds of nature and humanity? Perhaps it is the days, for they grow shorter and the bright warmth of a giant star only graces the soils and the roots with few moments, too little, even if too, kind.
It is in the absence of light that shadows thrive.
Where there is shadow comes the primary instinct of secrecy, of masks and concealment, that every wicked thought won't be discovered and, falsely, all actions won't be measured back in a fitted reward or punishment. That's how snows get tampered with the scarlet stains, how the roads get lonelier and courteous ever light still fades.
Yellow is a color that signifies many things; from gold and royalty to happiness and purity, it can descend, the very same tone, to other realms, from danger and predator to sickness and despair. Every single one of those hues remained trapped inside Azaras' absent gaze. Behind her neck, a breeze was trying to pull her away from all actions she took part in ghostly since Jaskier's return. In front of her laid bare a mess of a writing she did not like the meaning of.
Sylvain had self-proclaimed king of Arcapan. Nilfgaard is controlling him through a mage who uses death for power. People are dying so the king may walk again.
The hardest part about having read that, having heard the plea of help from someone who shouldn't have suffered in a place that used to be so peaceful, was reminding herself this was not something she could separate herself from. Everything was too personal to Azaras this time. It wasn't just another monster or threat, it was her brother, her own blood, at the center of it all.
And that was prone to clouding all her newest instincts, such that even her slowed heartbeat, a calming presence to be held by a Witcher, shivered uncomfortably, surrounded by turmoil. A boiling pot, that's what she was when Lambert became added heat.
"If the brat wants to side with monster and threaten us in the process of fucking up this whole mage life bullshit, I say we drive a spear through that crowned head and be done with it!"
After hours of debate in which she spaced out from shock, hearing those words were like an itch over an old wound, taking off the healing coat and baring out pain once more.
Azaras smashed her fists on the table. Yellow became madness while she glared through the silence at Lambert, someone quite fond of oscillating to her between lists of acquaintances and death. "Sylvain may have started on a wrong path, heck, he may have even become a tyrant too in my absence for all I know, but he's still my brother!" In a single breath, she fired away her shouts, then descended her tone into a locked jaw and a growling threat, "Don't ever talk about him like that in front of me."
Sticking around to see the disappointment in the eyes of the Witcher was not in her prospect. Everyone knew Witchers had to be impartial, neutral outsiders to a game played on the board they simply had to clean of shadows. They danced sometimes with people, their hands caressed and Azaras has been once one of those pawns a Witcher twirled for just a few nights, before he left again. Now, she was to be that hunter too, only her handshake with Sylvain never released.
Azaras left the table and hitched a hinged breath she disappeared from a room that waited in silence. Lambert found himself sighing, just with a drop of sadness dispersing into the disappointment, evergreen. "Tsk," he shook his head towards his lifelong friends, unwanted children all of them given or forced upon the purpose of a Witcher. "She's going to be a liability handling this one."
"Handling what?" Geralt retorted the coldness with trained and learnt bluntness of figure. He did not have to show it though for any of them to know, he too had a strain of liability stuck to him. Eskel especially has smelt it from the start, that their white haired brother took a very final vow. "We don't know anything concrete," Geralt continued.
"I think we know enough," Jaskier gasped in pure distress. He may have been given blankets and warmer, yet disgusting, drinks to get his blood bumping, but every second he breathed, he found it harder to believe he escaped the nightmare which was Arcapan, only to arrive at the Witchers Geoffrey counted on and hear his friend talk such nonsense... for a woman, of all things.
"Arcapan allied with Nilfgaard," Geraly started repeating, calmly, the facts they knew. "War is none of our business. King Sylvain is creating an uprising in the North and he doesn't like us. He had also allied, through Nilfgaard, with one of the members of the Blood Sorcerers Order I encountered with Azaras as well."
"Blood Sorcerers which we can count as monsters," Eskel pointed out, just as diplomatic.
"Who we don't know for sure how to face or kill without getting involved in political affairs," Geralt concluded with the cross of his arms over his chest.
"Bollocks!" Jaskier shouted, voice sore and throat hurting. He sounded more as a wounded kitten than a man covered in dirt.
"Who else would have sent conjured monsters on our land but those sons of bitches who should just be grateful plague didn't kill them all?" More vocal, as always, Lambert made it his job to point out the personal tints into their business; grudges were unfinished business in need of finality to him.
"A couple of monsters we already killed," Geralt dimissed, "hardly the end of the world." Attention of his words returned to Eskel, "Most importantly, though, we are not gettinf paid in this case to interfere. It's not our duty to do so unless we earn profit of it."
"People are dying-!"
Over Jaskier's plea, coming from the fresh fear of almost having died as well, Geralt continued, "However, we do have a duty towards our mentor. We need to focus on finding Vesemir."
Azaras focus got lost from the dying ambers of her eyes. When the tears came, certain and hot, she did not feel them brazing her cheeks. In fact, she hasn't been feeling anything at all, which was perhaps one of the most terrifying states to find herself into; in the tear between her hectic, worrying thoughts and the stillness of her heart, she was finding panic unlike any other.
It became impossible for her to tell just how much time it passed in that room she found herself into, or even how long it took her to realize her heart felt safer still, hiding in a kitchen, deserted and out of use, just for the sake of habit. A howling wind went through furnaces as whistling as the sky itself exhaling all the time, annoyed.
"Don't let them see you cry."
Azaras' hands promptly raised to wipe her tears away, even though, in an instant, she also recognzied it was Geralt's voice who joined her in the dark of that room.
"You can cry in front of me, but don't let the others see it," he rephrased his initial statement at the pace of a careful approach. Azaras sat, with her legs crossed over the other, on the frail, old and creaking table, whose past usage had rusted away in permanent stains it will carry until it is turned to splinters.
There wasn't room to sit next to her and before the characteristic of a Witcher to see in the dark fairly well kicked in, to his attention, Geralt simply walked to stand before her. Azaras dropped her hands back to her lap and through a quietness which he never once considered a good sign in her, he sighed again, "You may not want to talk about this, but I am-"
Azaras' forehead bumped down on the middle his chest.
She leant there, her whole being shivering against Geralt, but she let not a single whimper to bring voice to her cry. Ultimately, an unspeakable heartache froze Geralt's arms in an incapacity to react as he wished and felt it was most normal too. Thankfully though, he did not have time to turn the feelings Azaras helped him experience again to rage and need for vengeance; no one should ever have the power to make her crumble as if she didn't rip a monster open with her bare hands, as if she wasn't one of a kind.
Thankfully, indeed, Azaras heard his words and felt his presence as the true relief of all the words she has been keeping inside without making much sense of. Though Geralt did not react, her hands surely did, holding on to his belts, to the side of his waist, just to keep from hands from shaking. "Why does it hurt so much?"
That was when Geralt's jaw tightened and his teeth creaked over each other. She tugged on his belts, trying to find the least violent outlet for all she was feeling inside. "Why does it hurt so much that my heart is so quiet and my head is so loud?"
In a gasp of realization, she inhaled sharply and looked up, almost resting his chin where her forehead cried the little crystal drops shining his armour stained and, in his mind, unworthy of her weeping still. Geralt did not dare descend his eyes upon his most sacred vow, because he knew it would shatter him the wideness of her desperation.
"And I am so certain this is my fault to carry guilty. I should have never left him alone."
Geralt looked down when she let go of him and wiped her eyes. Though they have not decided on it outloud in any way, their conversation remained on mere whispers as a result of the obscure ambiance they found themselves into.
"No, don't do that to yourself," he insisted of reminding her of reason, "if you stayed, you would have died."
"Then I should have taken him with me!"
"And have the entire of Arcapan throw shit at your name? Be reasonable, Azaras..."
"I can't be reasonable! That's my little brother out there and he's taking a dangerous road on which I cannot follow him... from which I cannot save him and I cannot be there for him either."
The same Order that fooled her into the pain of becoming a Witcher could just then be signing Sylvain for even greater torture, so wicked he had turned the wheel of war on the continent. Not even for a single second did Geralt look at her judgemental, because even with her eyes changed, he still remembered their first dances and how many times Azaras had voiced her care for her brother.
"And," Azaras bowed her head again, while Geralt's gaze bowed over her and stared at the braid he made of her dark hair, "if what Lambert and Jaskier said its true, I know I should have rather considered ending his suffering two years ago... I won't be able to kill him now."
"No," Geralt decided he had heard enough at last. Hearing her sniff her nose, he placed his hands, until then limp on both sides of his body, onto her shoulders. "We don't know what's happening out there for sure. You're right, you cannot help him, but not because he thinks you're dead or because you cannot return to him right now..."
Azaras watched carefully, patient and still while a rough thumb wiped under her left eye. Every fragment of her being yearned to keep that contact longer. But it was just a brush, trying to be gentle, much like her own realization that it was not the fact that her parents decided to rather give her an empty grave than tell Sylvain she ran away that bothered her to such levels of turmoil, but the fact that another Blood Sorcerer was alive and taking advantage of her brother...
"He cannot be helped, because there's a choice to be made here, one that you also made on your own and accepted fully all the consequences of," Geralt spoke slowly, remembering vividly the pathos with which Azaras had placed her life into his hands without a single doubt in her mind, when she learnt her wish for power might have created a monster instead. "If Sylvain makes a wrong choice, he'll stand by it too. It's not your fault, nor responsibility to carry the burden of what he chooses to do next. Your only concern should always be your own picks."
Yet here I am, Geralt thought to himself, holding on to you and trying to make you stay away from the very thought of leaving Kaer Morhen. Afraid of your choices, because where you will go, I know I will gladly follow, even to perdition.
Azaras hiccuped her inhale. My choice, she thought, lookind down upon Geralt's medallion, a piece she had worn and still remembered the weight of. Then, in a perfect recall of all those feelings, all the moments she has gained and the freedom she achieved, something she didn't quite distinguished until she pinned it against what Arcapan meant to her, Azaras realized she had never felt more distant from the halls of stone she had been born to.
She never belonged to that castle which forced her to hide under a table, behind a father, into the shadow of men. Her heart did not bother feeling agitated, because for once, it was more reasonable than the brain, too quick to focus on just Sylvain. He may have gone mad, but he was alive, making his own choices, tempering with his own fate.
"And if he becomes a monster," Geralt addressed the worry he left unanswered, finally taking his hand on a stroll over her brushed back hair, "I won't let you have to make that choice." He'd put Sylvain down himself, were it to ever come as far as that. "But I doubt it."
"And...," the shivering over her lips started fading, "after we find Vesemir and find out who really called the monsters here... Can we pay him a visit anyhow? He doesn't have to see me, I fear his choices will get tempered by rage to find out that I am alive now, but... just to see him well."
Geralt's sigh of relief was as discrete as the unnotice touch of his lips on her forehead. There, holding her head steady, he breathed out a thoughtless agreement, another promise to her.
All facts brought by the message from Geoffrey did not fit however with the cruel narrative Jaskier was bringing to Kaer Morhen and presenting with a flare of a still born artist, made to charm or fool crowds. His charisma was splintered by the frail body left behind from a long incarceration time he did not even think he deserved.
Unlike their first meeting, undeniable hurt, Jaskier was no longer even willing to look at Azaras when she sat next to him, by the fire. He found many of her features reminding him now of the nightmare which was Sylvain. But when her suave voice asked for explanations, Jaskier's shoulders dropped the tension lamely and his sigh waved spinkles of agony.
"Jealousy," he summarized it all.
Geralt knew Jaskier for a while apparently and he had warned her not to bow her ear too long to this man's words, for lies have often found themselves coming easily from his head. Stress, hunger... many aspects could have made him delusional enough to think blood was falling from the ceiling in complete darkness.
Yet, inhumane curiosity pushed her to turn over even this heavy stone. "Of what?"
"The knight."
"Geoffrey?"
"Geoffrey...," Jaskier's absent laugh marked the end of their shortage of words, their quick exchange soon to be filled by a burdened silence, molten in burning ash from the fire, sparking the air in a warmth not yet great enough to cover the frozen bard wrapped in a blanket. "Yes, may he rest in peace."
"Geoffrey died?" Azaras did not hesitate to ask, gaining the first true acknowledgement of a gaze from Jaskier that night. He was shocked to see such genuineness from her, before he remembered... she wasn't there.
So he looked back into the flames, "Sylvain killed him."
It was Azaras' turn to laugh. Uncertain and fearful, her laughter was a ghost of disblief. "That's impossible. Sylvain loves Goeffrey," she spoke of what she remembered. Those two have been in love for years, twice as much as the time she has been away from home.
"Surely," Jaskier shrugged, "enough to see me talking with Geoffrey, throw me in the prison for it after a good beating and a good time later, throw the knight in with me for treason." His spite was sincere, once again leaving a gap for the winds of fire to kiss the floors in gold. "A jealous, mad love..."
The Sylvain Jaskier was talking about sounded like a stranger to Azaras just then. Two years passed as unbothered and fast as a river to her, while for Arcapan, it felt decades washed them over to decay in corrupted mold.
"If you don't want to believe me, that's fine," Jaskier turned one last time to face the woman whose eyes have changed since last he stared into them. A humane green turned as dangerously amber as Geralt's. "You don't know me, you have an excuse. But I told Geoffrey you are alive and he looked as if he's been touched by a Saint, Azaras. Believe him, because he has given his life so that message could reach you."
"There's nothing I can do, Jaskier."
"They're your people," Jaskier tilted his head concerned to hear such heartless words.
Azaras' heart quenched at the sound of truth leaving her lips. The heartfelt conversation with Geralt settled her on her comforting smaller goals, as Eskel has once pointed out she worked so well on. "I'm a Witcher now. The old me has a grave, which is fitted. I won't be returning to that life again, Jaskier. I can't take over, if I get involved I cast a bad name over all other Witcher I will bare the marks of soon... and apart from Sylvain, they're not really my people. My brother too is an adult, he can... he will make the right choices."
"By killing thousands in sacrifices for his legs," Jaskier said words put into his mouth by Geoffrey.
The room grew darker from the frowns, some cold, others trying to hold on to the very little light. Azaras felt bad for the suffering that drowned away Jaskier's spite and fun then, while he felt awful knowing, to some extent, he knew he agreed with her judgement. He too saw the graves and the madman behind them, he knew her sudden "resurrection" may just make things worse. It did not make it any easier to admit, he selfishly let Geoffrey die for a plan doomed to failure.
So Jaskier remained silent and Azaras turned to leave. Unfamiliar with Kaer Morhen, her steps carried her with an aery carefulness, an on-the-edge concern that around any corner she would have to draw her sword. Just outside the open door, a draft past through her hair and the faint call of a howl made her gaze shift to the left.
Beside her dark furred wolf, a door opened and auburn flames roared lighter ways inside. It did not move, her wolf, just pierced its gaze into her and invited a move, a couple steps, compliance.
"Is something wrong?" Seeing her frozen in the doorway for quite some time, Jaskier forced himself to turn around and think of the very worst... reminding himself of just how secretive and thoughtless Geralt too was in times of danger when he should at least warn poor Jaskier to run.
But Azaras blinked and saw the door closed, the corridor empty and even the light gone.
"It's nothing."
That was all Jaskier heard her say before she turned right and vanished. Left by his single source of warmth and bright company, Jaskier turned around and missed his lute. "Damned Witchers...," he mumbled on a musical tone he had missed the possibility of taking.
chapter dedicated to cavalrylads
author's note: i may not have provided that manip of azaras in full witcher attire bUT here's a closing gif with her pretty yellow eyes tho ✌💫