I don’t know what impression I should be under, Yennefer.
If you’re the same, then I know you better than I thought I did.
If that man is in me, if he is a part of me, he is not the greater part of me now.
But even there, I came to regret it. Not the time I spent with you — it was easy to spend time with you. For a while, it made me happier than I deserved. It was the rest of it — why I did it, how it ended.
Why bother coming to me at all? To appease your conscience?
[ she suddenly feels very defensive, mostly because she can't see what he'd possibly get out of this. yennefer is finding she preferred the other jon, the one easily understandable, to all this sincerity. ]
No. What’s done is done. I can’t change it. None of us can change anything that happened there.
When it was happening, I thought we both knew what it was. That may be true enough. I don’t fool myself that you felt anything for me then. But whoever you are — the woman I knew, or someone else — you’re not a thing to be used.
I dishonored you. I don’t know how to make it right. I don’t know if I can.
[ it is both something she needs to hear and something she loathes to hear. yennefer aches to feel valuable, important, loved. yet she cannot brook the vulnerability required of it, and he paints her as someone very, very vulnerable — helpless, even — to his manipulation. it rankles her. ]
Has it ever occurred to you that I was using you?
[ to feel something, to distract herself from the gnawing nothing that power had gotten her. she paces her apartment now, furious. ]
You're giving the awfully strong impression that you want to be taken in hand, Jon Snow.
[ if not punished and left underfoot, then at the very least, that he didn't linger around the cardinals to social climb so much as that he enjoyed feeling beneath them. ]
(“Except the memory of Ned Stark and a million pounds of guilt and obligation.”)
To hear the people of this world tell it, there's a wasteland there since the war. But if the rest of the world has overgrown in our absence, revived with wildlife, then certainly it has been as well.
Do we know if anyone has seen it, or if it’s only what they’ve been told? There may be more than a little truth to it, but it may not be the whole truth.
I'm quite adept at crossing monsters, though I avoid it if I can.
And I'd rather have a comfortable tent and encampment than depend on the wilderness, if it's all the same. But it will not be unfamiliar to me.
I lived eighty years in a scrabbling continent on the verge of civil war with nary a pipe indoors before settling here, then centuries in the Aerie. There is very little I have not seen or learned, Jon.
I would have thought that we were of an age, away from the Aerie.
We take what we can, and what we can get, but it’s better to travel light than not. Do you ride horses where you come from? We won’t have those. Might be that we could have a few of what they ride here instead.
perhaps it is the elven blood in her veins that gives her the canny youth, on top of the chaos, that blood which almost ruined everything for her. thinking on this helps put to bed some of her lingering wistful nostalgia for istredd. ]
We ride horses. Carriages. But here they use cars, and there will be no power for them if there is no civilization waiting for us.
I’ve crossed the sea here. It wasn’t very pleasant — rough waters. But the boat was given to us. I haven’t a Lord Manderly to ask for the loan of a ship, or the standing here to do it. Don’t know if anyone else does, or if we would want to, if there would be a chance of them carrying the tale to the UN.
[The rest, he sets aside for a moment. If magic has kept her young, even prolonged her life... it’s strange to him now, even it would not have been strange in the Aerie. But he is not sure that it should be. While it may not give him eighty years of life, it’s only through magic that he lives at all.
A discomfiting thought. It’s better when he isn’t reminded that he should be ashes on the wind.]
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I don’t know what impression I should be under, Yennefer.
If you’re the same, then I know you better than I thought I did.
If that man is in me, if he is a part of me, he is not the greater part of me now.
But even there, I came to regret it. Not the time I spent with you — it was easy to spend time with you. For a while, it made me happier than I deserved. It was the rest of it — why I did it, how it ended.
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[ she suddenly feels very defensive, mostly because she can't see what he'd possibly get out of this. yennefer is finding she preferred the other jon, the one easily understandable, to all this sincerity. ]
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When it was happening, I thought we both knew what it was. That may be true enough. I don’t fool myself that you felt anything for me then. But whoever you are — the woman I knew, or someone else — you’re not a thing to be used.
I dishonored you. I don’t know how to make it right. I don’t know if I can.
I’m willing to try.
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Has it ever occurred to you that I was using you?
[ to feel something, to distract herself from the gnawing nothing that power had gotten her. she paces her apartment now, furious. ]
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You didn’t stand to gain much. You could have had anyone. As for me, I was young, but I was no innocent.
[It occurs to him now that he’s inviting her to use him again, but in a different way.]
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But you, I'm beginning to think your problem is the opposite.
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[ if not punished and left underfoot, then at the very least, that he didn't linger around the cardinals to social climb so much as that he enjoyed feeling beneath them. ]
(“Except the memory of Ned Stark and a million pounds of guilt and obligation.”)
No one rules me.
LMAO
I recall what we did together, Jon. Every moment. You don't have to feel ashamed, with me.
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[Or any of the other places.]
It’s only wrong that I hoped to gain something from it.
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In fact, I do have need of you, if your offer is genuine. I have a few pursuits of interest at the moment, and I am in the market for like minds.
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I can promise that I will listen. I can promise my aid if you’re in danger.
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New Amsterdam is harboring us for now, but the UN government wants blood, and sooner or later, they will get it.
We need a place the Displaced can go that will be safe —secluded from their reach.
I understand a continent was destroyed in one of their wars. North America. I'd like to see if it has a gate.
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We also know that things came through the gates. We don’t know what’s in North America.
Where I come from, we built a wall to keep monsters out. It works, to a point. The cities have those now, but I don’t see how much good they do.
A lot depends on what we might find there.
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It will be a haven.
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Might be that there’s a reason they can’t touch it. Elsewise, why wouldn’t they?
Either they don’t know what’s there, if there’s anything at all other than some trees and rocks, or they do, and they don’t want anyone else knowing.
[Trees and rocks and water, he thinks. Are my father’s gods to be found here in this world?]
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Wilderness, I can handle. Ranging, I can handle.
What can you handle?
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I’m not going to leave you to it on your own.
[But if she is the same woman she was, then he isn’t completely sure that she wouldn’t leave him on his own.
He has to be prepared for that.]
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And I'd rather have a comfortable tent and encampment than depend on the wilderness, if it's all the same. But it will not be unfamiliar to me.
I lived eighty years in a scrabbling continent on the verge of civil war with nary a pipe indoors before settling here, then centuries in the Aerie. There is very little I have not seen or learned, Jon.
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We take what we can, and what we can get, but it’s better to travel light than not. Do you ride horses where you come from? We won’t have those. Might be that we could have a few of what they ride here instead.
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[ or perhaps not.
perhaps it is the elven blood in her veins that gives her the canny youth, on top of the chaos, that blood which almost ruined everything for her. thinking on this helps put to bed some of her lingering wistful nostalgia for istredd. ]
We ride horses. Carriages. But here they use cars, and there will be no power for them if there is no civilization waiting for us.
There is, of course, also the sea to consider.
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[The rest, he sets aside for a moment. If magic has kept her young, even prolonged her life... it’s strange to him now, even it would not have been strange in the Aerie. But he is not sure that it should be. While it may not give him eighty years of life, it’s only through magic that he lives at all.
A discomfiting thought. It’s better when he isn’t reminded that he should be ashes on the wind.]
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just some light treason in here, it’s ok, they never swore fealty to the UN
LMFAO
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