Prompt 169
Danny is from a world where everyone has wings, even if most have long since lost the ability to fly. Something about loading and aspect ratio, wings being too small, body too heavy, now mostly used as display, whatever.
It doesn’t matter even if he had blueprints from when he was like six of a jetpack to help fly. It won’t work anyway and hey, he has his ghost form! Which uh, might be perhaps, affecting his wings which were maybe sort of scorched black and practically down to the bone thanks to the accident.
It doesn’t matter, he swears. Though he’s admittedly relieved to see the new feathers growing in are different from Dan’s angry sunset. Even if they’re not even supposed to be able to grow back. Alright, this is fine, no one is going to notice! It’s not like everyone knows about the poor Fenton kid whose wings were absolutely destroyed thanks to an accident! It’s fine.
He’s not flying in a half-panic towards the Far Frozen while crying because his wings are coming back and he’s so scared. He didn’t panic and instantly fled the moment Jazz pointed them out while changing the bandages.
He definitely didn’t trip over something while wiping away said tears and blacking out from all the stress and all of his problems that he definitely mentioned to someone and isn’t keeping a secret. Definitely.
Hawkwoman and Hawkman would like everyone to know that neither of them were expecting a very small child to be spat out of the villain of that week’s machine that should definitely not be a portal. A very small child, maybe nine or ten, with a multitude of concerning wounds both old and fresh. Which isn’t even beginning to touch on the wings.
Feathered, like baby down despite the gnarled scars, unlike their own metallic, with the beginning of tiny specklings like stars amidst the darker fuzz peeking from the wounded flesh.
Who?! Who dared?! It’s (at least to the forever reincarnating duo) a literal baby! They still have down! Tiny baby fuzz! Was it the portal?! Oh this villain is going to taste their maces for causing this if that’s the case!
The rest of the Justice League would honestly like to know what just happened and are honestly unsure on if they should stop the two…
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“what does geralt get from that friendship…”
another post examining the weight of geralt and dandelion’s friendship… because i don’t think people recognize how painful and debilitating loneliness can become.
the witcher as a deconstruction of the genre takes fantasy tropes to their most logical ends—it asks us to consider what The Lone Swordsman feels, looks into the humanity in a Cold-Blooded Killer. and it turns out he’s not cold-blooded at all.
that despite some superhuman abilities, he laments and worries and curses himself, just like any other worker of any other profession. just as the farmer is scorched by the sun, the washerwoman’s back aches, and the scholar goes half-blind studying, a witcher deals with all of the pains and annoyances and dangers of his job in a mundanely human way.
but the farmer, the washerwoman, and the scholar have something the witcher does not have—they’ll always be seen as human and part of their society. at the end of the day after enduring all of their labor, they have their wife to caress, festivities to attend, and taverns to frequent. but for a witcher? after the killing is over, what does he have? no one and nothing. not even a thank you. he is met with fear and hatred everywhere he goes, baseless bigotry and dislike.
I did my job. I quickly learned how. I’d ride up to village enclosures or town pickets and wait. If they spat, cursed and threw stones, I rode away. If someone came out to give me a commission, I’d carry it out.
so he faces not just loneliness, but being deliberately ostracized and cast out from society. geralt can’t even find a polite word in most settlements, much less a friend.
‘(…) Tell me, where should I go? And for what? At least here some people have gathered with whom I have something to talk about. People who don’t break off their conversations when I approach. People who, though they may not like me, say it to my face, and don’t throw stones from behind a fence. (…)’
this kind of loneliness is not a mere inconvenience. it’s completely altering to your self-perception and ability to see the positive in the world.
each day is not lived, but endured.
day in, and day out—forced to the most difficult and lowest labor in order to survive, and knowing that were you to die, no one would search for your body, few would miss you, hell, they might even spit “good riddance”.
in this situation, to find a friend, is not only friendship, but a rescue.
without dandelion, geralt may have drowned—drowned in solitude, amidst a sea of strangeness.
‘(…) And I’m alone, completely alone, endlessly alone among the strange and hostile elements. Solitude amid a sea of strangeness. Don’t you dream of that?’
No, I don’t, he thought. I have it every day.
because dandelion is not only a bright soul, characteristic rippling laughter and the strum of a lute, but someone who will intently listen to geralt, someone who mutually enjoys his company.
‘(…) you almost jumped out of your pants with joy to have a companion. Until then, you only had your horse for company.’
someone who doesn’t see him as strange and at the fringes of society at all, but as an utterly normal man.
and doesn’t impose demeaning, sappy sympathy onto him, but sobering and realistic “quit your bullshit” which ridicules the very thought that he should internalize societal hatred.
Do you know what your problem is, Geralt? You think you’re different. (…) [You don’t understand that] for people who think clear-headedly you’re the most normal man under the sun, and they all wish that everybody was so normal. What of it that you have quicker reflexes than most and vertical pupils in sunlight? That you can see in the dark like a cat? That you know a few spells? Big deal.
dandelion isn’t “willing” to accept geralt for himself—he already has accepted him. and to him, it’s no difficulty, it’s nothing worth discussing, because he sees no abnormality and no strangeness in him.
while others “prefer the company of lepers to witchers,” dandelion has already offered geralt to share his room and board. not out of sympathetic pity, not out of fetishizing curiosity. because… they’re friends.
and what else does this friendship save him from?
not only from others, but from himself.
worse than enduring others’ apathy and hatred is one’s own thoughts—the darkness and negativity which builds from witnessing and experiencing such behavior.
dandelion’s ability to counter and dispel geralt’s pessimism and self-flagellating tendencies—again, not out of pity, but out of friendship—is undeniably invaluable. someone to rescue you from your darkest thoughts, when you begin to spiral.
and in this darkness, all you can do is cry. you cry, beg for someone to help you, please—
Help! Why doesn't anyone help me? Alone, weak, helpless – I can't move, can't force a sound from my constricted throat. Why does no one come to help me? I'm terrified!
to be alone, the saga reminds us, is worse than a death sentence. to be alone is to “perish; stabbed, beaten or kicked to death, defiled, like a toy passed from hand to hand.” to be alone is to suffer, and to be with someone is to save them from that suffering.
'(…) I wouldn't like anything bad to happen to you. I like you too much, owe you too much-'
'You've said that already. What do you owe me, Yennefer?'
The sorceress turned her head away, did not say anything for a while.
'You travelled with him,' she said finally. 'Thanks to you he was not alone. You were a friend to him. You were with him.'
it is true that geralt has saved dandelion countless times, helped him, gotten him out of some scrape… but to ask what did geralt get in return? are you kidding me?
did you ever consider that it is dandelion who saved geralt?
by being with him. by being by his side. by being his friend.
indeed, dandelion has rescued geralt, countless times, from the yawning jaws of endless loneliness. he’s helped him, chased away the danger of geralt’s own rumination. and he’s gotten him out of scrapes, his own insecurities and bitter helplessness.
so what does dandelion give geralt? what does geralt get from their friendship?
an amusing question. what one gets from friendship is the friendship itself. and that is more than enough.
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