#was like i guess i'll just go through my inspo tag and write whatever Hits

[nonbinary-renfri]

Geralt learns that loss always comes early on in his life.

His mother, long red hair and soft tones his vague impressions of her memory, vanishes while he fetches her water.

So many of his friends and brothers in the witchers’ keep are lost to the deadly maw of the Trials. They die from the Grasses with tears of blood weeping from their eyes and agonized screams on their lips. They die at the hands of Old Speartip, and if a corpse comes back at all it is in mangled, gory form. Of those that survive, the boys they lived as so briefly die too, becoming unfamiliar, hard men with countless scars and cold yellow eyes.

Taking to the Path is a whole sort of loss in itself. Geralt leaves behind the stone walls of what has become his home and everything their solidity brings- a comfortable bed to sleep in at night, regular hot meals, relaxing baths in the hot springs below, companionship in the bitter cold hours of midnight- and the sense of security Kaer Morhen exudes.

The elders never sugar-coated the hardships of a witcher’s Path during their training, but Geralt quickly finds he isn’t as prepared as he thinks he is for the true loneliness of traveling the road alone. It’s jarring, departing from a place you’ve come to love full of the people you’ve come to know into an unfamiliar world that recoils from the mere sight of you. His eyes mark him as something to be hated more than his hair, but its pale hue is often what draws people’s attention towards him first. Ordinary humans are…  generally unfriendly in their interest in him, and for years during the long consecutive months spent on the Path, Geralt rarely feels another person’s touch except for in the throes of combat, as claws and teeth gouge at his flesh and one of the more humanoid monsters he hunts gurgles out its life on top of him. He aches for something more than this violence that clings to him, but doesn’t know what that could be or how to find it; not when the pitchfork scars carved into the round muscle of his shoulder are still raised and pink.

Traveling the Path means there are no longer mentors to consult, friends to spar with as a way to relieve the tension crawling up his spine, or trusted healers to ensure that a troublesome wound truly isn’t infected. There are just long, cold stares and harsh words and the wet snap of spittle hitting the floor. And sometimes there’s a howling, slavering mob and too-hot flame too close to his skin as blood soaks into his clothes.

Geralt quickly becomes very grateful for his extensive training in wound treatment, especially as he realizes most healers have next to no knowledge of a witcher’s biology, but plenty of dubiously-inspired interest. He spent too much of his youth playing science experiment to fall back into that horrific role again.

A life spent hunting monsters is hard, generally thankless work, but what keeps Geralt’s feet on the Path going forward is the way the clues itching at his brain can become the smallest lick of satisfaction when he solves the puzzle rankling him, curling in his chest like a sun-warmed cat. That, and the creatures with stories and reasons for what they’ve done that would break his heart if he had one that could feel, though it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth as he cleans his sword of their viscera, discontent acrid on his tongue. There are times where he’s not fast enough, not smart enough, not powerful enough to kill the monster quickly, and there’s dead humans and sometimes dead children strewn in pieces at his feet. He’ll flee the town with stones sending up puffs of dust as they thud onto the road behind him and the voices of mothers howling and sobbing echoing in his ears. The guilt aches nearly as bad as the bruises forming across his back and shoulders. He doubts his mother cried that way after leaving him.

Witchers save whole towns from their worst nightmares and scrape by with a palmful of coin, with which they buy an ale the barkeep’s spat in. Returning to Kaer Morhen for the winter is always a breath of fresh air in comparison; every time the sense of kinship washes over Geralt as he sips White Gull by the fire with his fellows and they all swap stories of their most ridiculous contracts from the past year. They laugh and joke, as much as witchers do, and knees and shoulders and fingers casually knock and brush each other as they jostle and elbow their neighbors. The room is loud and raucous and more comfortable a space than any human inn or tavern is for monster slayers such as these, without the blatant glares or the stench of fear or the insults muttered under the breath as they go past. It’s part of what makes stepping back out onto the Path as the weather warms bearable, spring snarling its green teeth at winter’s snowdrifts; the idea of coming back next year with a ridiculous yarn that could make the grizzled, stoic elders chuckle in disbelief and your brothers pound their fists on the table in mirth. This is the closest thing to family many of them will ever know.

And then. The wanderers return to the witchers’ keep one late autumn, to cracked open walls and shattered skulls in the dried-up moat and not a single living member of their guild in sight. The realization hits slow, that they are all that’s left of the School of the Wolf, and the sorrow they all lock behind their clenched teeth hangs heavy in the air.

Most of them don’t stay, that winter. Living for a season in the mangled skeleton of their home among the corpses of their friends and teachers is an untenable prospect for many. They vanish silently for the most part, night after night, taking their horses and whatever supplies they need with them. In the end, a few days before the mountain pass will become untraversable with the season’s snow, Geralt and Vesemir are the only two left in the hollow, broken fortress.

It is somber, grueling work, laying many of their fellows to rest. The dark sadness of the Path doesn’t flee Geralt’s mind like it would’ve among the warmth and clamour of his kin; if anything it becomes even more oppressive, roiling above his thoughts like an overhanging storm cloud. He finally leaves the keep on an eggshell, blue-white dawn when the wind tastes of threatening but still distant snow, making certain to say farewell to Vesemir before he departs.

Geralt can’t remember the old witcher ever having embraced him like this before, but the warm crush of his father’s arms is somehow familiar to him all the same. The weight of the darkness in his soul lessens ever so slightly.

The Path is even harder after that, with their safe haven and respite defiled so and lost to many of them because of that. In the years following the massacre, Kaer Morhen is always even emptier than it ought to be come wintertime, with many of the surviving Wolves abandoning it as a ruined den. Occasionally a silver medallion will find its way back to the keep, devoid of its living owner, but many of the witchers simply disappear into the vastness of the Continent without a trace. Years later, as Geralt searches for a monster to kill for coin, he is shown an eyeless dead man wearing the medallion of his school. He cannot recognize the remaining facial features; no familiarity murmurs in the corners of his mind as he stares at the wrecked visage. A witcher of his ilk is dead and his name isn’t even a hint of a whisper on Geralt’s tongue.

Perhaps in the past that wouldn’t have brought him such anguish, as he expected his fate to someday be much the same. But his moniker is widespread now, thanks to Jaskier, and anyone to find his body is more likely than not to loudly declare, “The White Wolf is dead!”

Or, if whoever it is feels particularly spiteful and a certain bard isn’t within a day’s travel distance, they might name his corpse “Butcher” instead. Despite dozens of songs attempting to convince the people to the contrary, that is one title Geralt still cannot lose. It clings to him like the sucker on a leech, swollen full of bloody deeds.

It’s fitting, he thinks, as he cuts out two of the cornerstones in his life with the neatness of a blunted cleaver. A whirlwind of raven hair and wisteria eyes, tart berries and flowers sweet in his nose; Yennefer leaves because he wished for her to stay but couldn’t simply have asked it of her. And the man who has so desperately tried to change the public’s opinion on witchers runs at the bite of barked untruths from between the white-haired man’s bared teeth.

Geralt has looked loss in the eye many times throughout his long life, but he turns his back before he can watch the second half of his heart walk away, the whole of it carried in the strum of a distant lute’s strings and the perfume fading from his senses. In his youth he thought the organ was needed to feel, but the gaping raw wound in his chest where his heart sat once teaches him that he can hurt almost more without it.