She wanted to do something. [ Just the tree. Hanging the medallions. Most of the rest, Geralt took care of on his own. Nadine and Sam had stumbled by incidentally, lent him a hand briefly, but otherwise he pieced it together himself. Bit by bit.
Julie had apologized, too. For not coming to help. He feels now as he did then: that it isn't anyone's responsibility except his own. Something inside him broke it. At the end of the day, he's been repairing Kaer Morhen since he was a boy. Fixing crumbling walls and rotting floors. Rebuilding benches and tables worn by time, by the wet and cold that filters in through the holes in the keep. ]
You helped elsewhere. And it's done now.
[ He tucks an arm under his head. He knows why Jaskier does not come. It is the same reason he goes to his domain less and less. Before it fell, he could put aside what laid behind that door, beneath the stairs. Now it's—he's spent all that time fixing every inch of the fortress, and yet there's one place he can't touch. If anything, it seems to grow. Last time he ventured to open the door, it was no longer just a blood-stained lab. It was dark, cold stone, smelled thick of rot and blood and vomit, and he had shut it immediately.
He doesn't bring it up. He has carved his space in the Horizon. It's a shard of home and there's comfort within it in many places. But as with the only home he ever knew, it is splintered deep in its foundations, too. He isn't certain it can be any different. ]
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Julie had apologized, too. For not coming to help. He feels now as he did then: that it isn't anyone's responsibility except his own. Something inside him broke it. At the end of the day, he's been repairing Kaer Morhen since he was a boy. Fixing crumbling walls and rotting floors. Rebuilding benches and tables worn by time, by the wet and cold that filters in through the holes in the keep. ]
You helped elsewhere. And it's done now.
[ He tucks an arm under his head. He knows why Jaskier does not come. It is the same reason he goes to his domain less and less. Before it fell, he could put aside what laid behind that door, beneath the stairs. Now it's—he's spent all that time fixing every inch of the fortress, and yet there's one place he can't touch. If anything, it seems to grow. Last time he ventured to open the door, it was no longer just a blood-stained lab. It was dark, cold stone, smelled thick of rot and blood and vomit, and he had shut it immediately.
He doesn't bring it up. He has carved his space in the Horizon. It's a shard of home and there's comfort within it in many places. But as with the only home he ever knew, it is splintered deep in its foundations, too. He isn't certain it can be any different. ]