dragonlady7

witcher, dadfeels

via https://ift.tt/347NfuP

I have a lot of feelings about damaged old soldiers, ok. idk if/where i’m using this but i had a rotten fucking week so i’m writing whatever i want today.

“Here’s one more thing about Foltest: In his entire life, no one ever really said no to him. He didn’t have people in his life that he felt he could trust to give him true answers.”

“You tell the truth,” Anaïs said, a little surprised at her own insight.

Roche blinked at her. “I do,” he said. “I told him the truth too. But I was– he only wanted me obedient. It was not my place to tell him things unless he wanted to hear them.”

“You loved him,” she said, because she’d heard someone say that. She couldn’t remember who. Vernon Roche loved Foltest more than sense or reason, they’d said, and she’d remembered the phrase, because she always remembered things about her father, who she had barely known.

Roche looked down at his hands. “I did,” he said.

“Did he love you?” she asked.

He glanced up at her, at that, and she thought she’d surprised him. “That I don’t know,” he said. “The thing is, Anaïs, he might have loved me like he loved his dogs. But I don’t know if he even thought of me as a person. And that’s– something you can’t do. You have to think of people as people. Even if they’re less important than you are, they’re still people. Even the least important person is still a person. And I don’t know if he understood that.”

“Because nobody ever said no to him,” Anaïs filled in.

Roche breathed in sharply through his nose, and nodded, looking out at the garden.

“Will you promise,” she asked, suddenly seized with a feeling that this was important, “to always say no to me? If I need it?”

His eyes went wide and he turned his head to look at her, mouth slightly open. After a long, tense moment, he took a breath, let it out halfway, and said, “Yes.”

coda, tw alcohol:

“I need a drink,” Roche said.

Louisa eyed him sidelong. He’d pushed into the study rather abruptly, looking harried, and was rummaging through the books on the shelf to find the decanters behind them. “Did Anaïs behave?” she asked.

“Like an angel,” he said. He selected one of the decanters and pulled the stopper out, pouring into one of the cups on the sideboard.

“I assume you’re kidding,” she said. “What did my darling child do now?”

“Asked me what her father was like,” Roche said, and took a long sip from the glass. He’d poured himself a generous helping of whatever was in there– some kind of whiskey, by the smell– and quite a lot of it vanished in that first draught.

“How did you answer her?” Louisa asked.

“Honestly,” Roche said, and finished the glass. (Your picture was not posted)