Chapter 20: The Brooding Witcher
POV: Viktor
Two days of travel toward Posada had revealed a disturbing pattern in their group dynamic: Geralt was withdrawing. Not physically—he still led their small party with his usual efficiency, still made camp with practiced expertise, still kept watch with the kind of vigilance that came from a century of dangerous nights. But emotionally, the Witcher was pulling away from them, sinking into the kind of brooding silence that suggested serious internal conflict.
Viktor watched Geralt walk ahead of them on the forest path, noting the tension in the Witcher's shoulders, the way his hand kept drifting toward his sword hilt as if seeking comfort in the familiar weight of steel. The man was clearly wrestling with something, and Viktor had a suspicion he knew what it was.
Blaviken. The choices made and not made. The weight of wondering whether he'd chosen better or simply chosen differently.
"He's going to leave us, isn't he?" Renfri's voice was quiet, pitched to carry only to Viktor's ears. Her green eyes were fixed on Geralt's distant figure with an expression that combined worry and something that might have been fear.
Viktor considered the question seriously. Geralt had bound himself to their small group through shared experience and growing mutual respect, but that didn't mean the bonds were unbreakable. Witchers were solitary by nature, and trauma had a way of driving people away from potential sources of comfort.
"Success Rate Analysis: Will Geralt abandon our group in the next week?"
[MANA DECREASED: 20 → 0]
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
[PROBABILITY: 25% - MODERATE RISK]
[PRIMARY FACTORS: EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT FORMING, LOYALTY PATTERN ESTABLISHED]
[RISK FACTORS: GUILT OVER BLAVIKEN, WITCHER INDEPENDENCE INSTINCTS, FEAR OF VULNERABILITY]
[ASSESSMENT: FLIGHT RISK PRESENT BUT NOT INEVITABLE]
"He's thinking about it," Viktor admitted, settling into step beside Renfri as they followed Geralt's path through the forest. "But he won't. He's... attached to us now, even if he doesn't want to admit it."
"How can you be sure?"
"Because he keeps looking back. Not obviously, but every few minutes he checks to make sure we're still following. Someone planning to abandon us wouldn't care where we were."
Renfri was quiet for a moment, her hand moving unconsciously to the silver brooch at her throat—a gesture that was becoming more frequent as she wrestled with her own questions about identity and belonging.
"I never had family," she said finally. "Not real family. By the time I was old enough to understand what that meant, everyone who might have loved me was dead or too afraid to try."
Viktor felt his heart clench with sympathy for this woman who'd been forced to build her entire life around survival and vengeance.
"You have family now. We're probably the strangest family unit in the history of the Continent, but we're family."
"Are we? Or are we just three outcasts who happened to find each other?"
"What's the difference?"
Renfri's smile was small but genuine. "You have a point."
They made camp that evening in a clearing that offered good visibility and multiple escape routes—a choice that spoke to Geralt's perpetual vigilance but also to his assumption that they would continue traveling together. Someone planning to disappear in the night wouldn't bother with tactical considerations for his companions' safety.
But the Witcher's silence was becoming oppressive, and Viktor decided that direct confrontation was probably more effective than continued observation.
"You're brooding," Viktor announced as he settled beside Geralt at their small fire. "And not the sexy, mysterious kind of brooding. The self-destructive, guilt-spiral kind."
Geralt's amber eyes flicked toward him with an expression that suggested Viktor was treading on dangerous ground.
"I don't brood."
"You absolutely brood. You brood like it's an Olympic sport and you're going for the gold medal."
"I think."
"About Blaviken. About whether you made the right choice. About whether my philosophy of 'choosing better instead of lesser evil' is naive idealism or practical wisdom."
Geralt was quiet for so long that Viktor thought the conversation was over. When the Witcher finally spoke, his voice carried the weight of decades of moral uncertainty.
"I killed four men. The town still fears me. Rumors are already spreading about the Butcher and his band. What exactly did I choose that was better?"
Viktor poked at their fire with a stick, watching sparks rise into the darkness while he considered his response.
"You chose to question your assumptions instead of blindly following them. You saved Renfri by NOT killing her, even though everyone expected you to. You proved that the Witcher code of neutrality isn't a divine commandment—it's just another choice you can make or not make."
"And what good did that do? People still died. The town still suffered."
"People would have died either way. The difference is that this time, you got to save someone who deserved to live. That's not nothing, Geralt. That's everything."
Viktor leaned forward, his voice gaining intensity as he tried to articulate something that felt fundamentally important.
"Stregobor spent forty years telling himself that murdering children was justified by prophecy. The town spent years believing that a little girl was a monster who deserved to die. Everyone accepted that the lesser evil was the only choice available. You proved them all wrong by refusing to accept false dilemmas."
"You talk too much, prophet."
But there was something in Geralt's tone that hadn't been there before—not agreement, exactly, but maybe the beginning of acceptance. The Witcher was still staring into the fire, but the tension in his shoulders had eased slightly.
"Talking too much is one of my many talents. Right up there with climbing trees and accidentally attracting drowners."
Geralt's mouth twitched in what might have been the beginning of a smile.
From across the fire, Renfri watched their interaction with an expression Viktor couldn't quite read. When their conversation wound down and Geralt moved off to take first watch, she approached Viktor with the kind of careful deliberation that suggested she'd been thinking about something important.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
"For what?"
"For giving me a reason to live that isn't just survival. For helping him see that his choices matter. For..." She paused, seeming to struggle with words. "For making this feel like family instead of just... existing."
Renfri stepped closer, her green eyes reflecting the firelight as she studied Viktor's face. For a moment, Viktor thought she might kiss him—the tension between them had been building for days, a kind of electric current that sparked whenever they touched or shared meaningful glances.
Instead, she reached up and pressed her forehead against his, the gesture intimate without being sexual, a form of connection that felt somehow more precious than a kiss.
"Renfri..."
"I know. We don't have to name it yet. But I wanted you to know that... this matters. You matter."
She pulled back, her hand lingering on his cheek for just a moment before she moved away to her own bedroll. Viktor sat by the dying fire, his heart hammering against his ribs as he processed what had just happened.
He was falling for her. Had been falling for her since their first conversation about choosing life instead of death. The realization should have been terrifying—love in a world like this was a luxury that few could afford, a vulnerability that could be exploited by enemies.
But as Viktor settled into his own bedroll and stared up at the stars visible through the forest canopy, he found that terror wasn't what he felt. Instead, there was something approaching peace, a sense that all the chaos and danger and uncertainty of his new life was worth it for moments like this.
"I changed canon," he whispered to the darkness. "Renfri's alive. Geralt's questioning his assumptions instead of blindly following them. What comes next?"
Jaskier, his mind supplied. The bard would be in Posada, looking for stories and songs and the kind of adventure that would make him famous. Then the elves, the mountain, Filavandrel and the question of whether mercy was stronger than vengeance.
More tests. More chances to choose better instead of lesser evil. More opportunities to prove that destiny was just another word for the choices people made when they thought they had no other options.
Viktor closed his eyes and let the sounds of the forest wash over him—Geralt's quiet movements as he patrolled their perimeter, Renfri's gentle breathing from her bedroll, the distant call of night birds and the rustle of wind through leaves.
Tomorrow would bring new challenges, new moral dilemmas, new chances to reshape the story of this world. But tonight, lying under stars in a fantasy forest with two people who'd become more precious to him than he'd ever expected, Viktor felt something he hadn't experienced since arriving in this world.
Hope.
Not just for survival, but for the possibility that some stories really could have happy endings—if you were willing to fight for them.
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