does anyone else remember when I was like "hey I should reblog prompts and then people might send them to me and I'll write them that would be cool right?" and people sent me prompts and some of them have been in my inbox for literal months? Well I'm doing them now and I'm dumping them all into one 'story' on my fic sites but don't be fooled, this is not a continuous story; it's just prompt fills. I'm doing them in order of 'how ridiculously long they've been in my inbox' so if you sent me a prompt more recently it'll be answered later. This first one is for tumblr user vengerberg and the prompt was from a list of lines of dialogue: "Are you really going to leave without asking me the question you've been dying to ask me?" (This is set more or less immediately after the end of "The Last Wish" - the story, not the quest, and I edited the dialogue prompt slightly, but I only added a word so it still counts lol)

The First Hour

They didn't leave the ruined inn until the rain finally made its way through the rubble forming a barrier over them and started to drip down, leaving damp lines on their skin as they dressed. Yennefer had entreated Geralt to turn around—more like commanded him, actually—but he didn't listen, and she didn't complain. He had a feeling she had done it more out of habit than anything else; it was obvious enough that neither of them knew how to handle this situation. Geralt himself still couldn't quite believe he'd done it. Clearly she couldn't either.

When he finished re-fastening the belt that held his swords across his back and turned around, she was looking at him. There was something different about it, something less clinical, though he still felt awkward under her gaze as she looked him over. When she met his eyes he smiled faintly, hoping she would return it, but though her lips twitched up the slightest bit at the corners, her expression remained largely unchanged.

"So," he said after a few minutes of silence, starting to look around for a way they could feasibly get out of the wreckage they were stranded in. "What now?"

She did smile at that, albeit barely, and turned with him, pulling one of the sleeves of her blouse higher up on her arm. "Now…" She sighed and looked around in the same direction as him. They could get out through the one intact window. He would likely have to help her through it, though he didn't know whether or not she would even let him. And if she didn't want to do that, they would have to force a doorway out of the rubble. It would be easy enough for either of them. "Now we go back out there. And…"

He watched her expectantly as she trailed off, and after another moment she huffed out a breath that could've been a laugh. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know where to go from here."

"Well." He could see her picking up the scraps of the wall of indifference around her, reconstructing it brick by brick. She tried to smooth down her hair with her hand, but it sprung back into its curls almost instantly. "We should probably start with 'out of this building.'"

She pressed her lips together and raised an eyebrow. It could've been entirely wishful thinking on his part, but it almost looked like she was holding back a smile. "That does seem a good place to start, doesn't it?"

He didn't trust himself to speak, so he nodded instead, moving over to the spot where the roof had collapsed around what had been the door. If he could move enough of the debris, they would have no trouble getting out. Then they (and 'they' mostly meant 'Geralt') would have to explain to Dandelion and everyone else waiting outside how, exactly, they had survived. He didn't have the slightest idea what he would say. How could he even begin to explain a decision when he himself wasn't sure why he'd made it?

"I'll try to move some of these," he said instead of voicing this concern, deciding it was probably safer not to bring it up. He grabbed one of the collapsed beams and pulled it roughly to the side, ignoring the pain where the splintered wood dug into the burnt flesh of his palms. "See if I can clear us a path that isn't through a window." He made to duck down under another beam, to see just how blocked the doorway actually was, but the sound of her voice stopped him short.

"And that's it?" she asked, suddenly far closer than he thought she had been. On any other day, with any other woman, he would've been more acutely aware of the movements of the people around him. But on any other day he wouldn't have just fought a djinn, and this wasn't any other woman. This was her. "We'll rejoin the crowd, just like that?"

There was something of amusement in her voice and he couldn't bring himself to look at her, because if he did he would lose any desire to rejoin the world outside the collapsed inn. She waited a few moments before she spoke again, waiting for an answer that hadn't come. "Are you really going to leave here without asking me the question you've been dying to ask me?"

He was dying to ask her a million questions, and he was sure she knew every single one of them; it seemed highly unlikely to him that she would have any qualms about reading his mind. But most of them were of a sensitive nature, the kind he didn't want to broach with someone he had only just met, even considering the newfound bond they shared. He'd have to come up with something else, something that he could be reasonably sure wouldn't set her on edge, not so soon. He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood as he turned back to face her, struck once again at the sight of her. When she made her way over to him he rested his hands on either side of her waist without hesitation.

"I don't suppose you know the location of the nearest intact inn?"