strangetrip | [Log] Healing - Geralt x Kash, backdated

Prodded by Illyana, Geralt finally seeks out a healer. He finds someone who might actually be a friend.
When: after his thread with Illyana
Where: clinic

There was something that told him that Illyana was likely to follow up on her not-quite-an-order that he see one of the local healers. She did seem the type, and if Geralt was being perfectly honest with himself, the wounds from the fight in Crookback Bog hadn't healed well. Nor, if he was going to continue with the honesty, had the wounds from the battle in Skellige, however many doses of Swallow he'd taken that day. Caranthir alone had nearly killed him, and by the time he'd taken down Eredin, it had been a toss-up as to who was going to fall first, him or the King of the Hunt.

And he hadn't precisely stopped to allow Ermion or any of the other druids to take a look at him before fleeing Skellige, Yennefer's parting curse ringing in his ears. He'd made sure to dose himself regularly with Swallow on the way to the Bog, but he'd combined it with other potions and decoctions to keep his strength up, so that he could fight the Crone, and he'd been riding the edge of lethal toxicity, just as he had so many times in the past few months.

As used to pain as he was, he didn't feel well, and as the disorientation of this new place was fading, that wasn't changing. So he went in search of this clinic River had mentioned, hoping that Illyana was right and none of these healers would turn him away (or worse).

In the clinic, Kash was sitting on one of the cots, a journal on his thigh and pen moving rapidly. He was trying to remember everything the Brothers had taught him about Vesh and everything he knew from her memories. He had his short spear in his other hand, clutched so tightly his knuckles were white. Someone who hadn't met him might be forgiven for reading the cold sweat on his brow as him being a patient, but there was no one else present.

He looked up at the sound of footsteps in the corridor, and when he saw the other man, his brow tightened. "You look like shit, man."

"Amazing coincidence. I feel like shit," Geralt said dryly, not quite leaning on the doorway. The spear in the other man's hand made him wonder if he was from a world more like Geralt's own. "Should have probably come looking for this place before now. The terrifying blonde librarian gave me a nudge."

"I'd tell you her bark is worse than her bite, but her teeth are sharp." I like your anger, she'd told him. He still didn't know what to make of it. Which reminded him he wanted to ask Z what she thought the sorceress had met. Musing on it, because anything was better than thinking about Vesh, he stood and gestured the man in. "Name's Kashaw. Tell me yours while you're sitting down and telling me what hell you've wreaked on your body."

"Geralt." He settled carefully on the edge of one of the cots, trying not to slump too noticeably. "Long story, that. Been a hectic few months. Took a few wounds that didn't get the chance to heal, took too many potions and decoctions trying to keep myself on my feet. Think it may be catching up to me."

The name twigged his memory of Zahra saying a man who's seen sadness and someone they'd hunt with. "I'm surprised Z didn't send you my way when you met her," Kash murmured, half to himself, while he looked the man over. "Shit was an understatement. Strip down to your small clothes." He could just apply a couple of spells to the problem, but Kash liked to know the problem before he started mucking around. Chances were he'd poisoned his system and it was interfering with healing.

Something about the man's manner was reassuring. He reminded Geralt of Ermion--focused on the problem at hand, rather than the nature of his patient. He nodded wearily and started by pulling his tunic over his head, wincing as his muscles protested. The wounds he'd taken fighting Caranthir and Eredin were darker, livid marks amid the paler, long-healed scars of eighty years of fighting, while the fresh wounds from the Bog were closed, if not much else. As he took off his breeches, he saw that the claw wounds on his leg barely classed as closed, even.

"Appreciate your help," he said. "And yeah, I probably should have paid closer attention to all the people making a point of telling me there were healers here."

"Why didn't you?" The way Kash asked, it was apparent he was accusing him of being an idiot rather than being curious, but somehow did still expect an answer.

His mismatched blue and gold gaze, meanwhile, was appraising and trained fingers quickly followed in its wake, testing bruises for depth and closed wounds for pockets of infection. The leg wound was nasty, mildly infected, and yet the edges showed the kind of necrosis he'd expect only with extensive infection or magically retarded healing. "What's in the potions you've been taking?"

“Mostly herbs. Celandine, white myrtle, cortinarius mushrooms. Couple of more exotic ingredients - drowner brain for the regeneration potion. Definitely was taking too much of that before I got here.” It struck him that he should answer the other, more implicit question, and he sighed. “Too used to most healers not wanting to treat witchers,” he said wearily.

Kash noted the ingredients, especially those he didn't know, and made a note to find out about them. If they were useful for healing, he wanted to know about them, but the other thing actually needed his attention. "I've never heard of a witcher, but I know what a healer is. And it isn't someone who refuses treat people because they don't like something about them." Evil was one thing, but this guy hadn't done anything to suggest evil yet.

“Knew one healer back home who would have liked you.” Maybe he should have gone to see Nenneke, rather than to the bog. Asked her what she thought he should do. “Can think of a few times I rode halfway across the continent holding my guts in because I knew I could trust her to help me.”

"I'd like her better if she'd been riding with you." Kash gave him another long once over and decided he needed at least the lesser restoration to start. "The best healing comes in not letting your people get hurt in the first place. You're not going to bitch about me using magic on you are you?"
“Used to that.” Geralt gave a gravelly chuckle that had something close to actual - if dark - humour in it. “Usually not in a good way. But I’ve been at this too long not to know I need help if my mutations aren’t kicking in to take care of things themselves.”

Kash nodded. "This first spell is a restorative to clean the poison from your system. I'm guessing it's going to take a couple of repeats for it to work fully, which means you're gonna have to find me or Pike for the next couple of days." Without letting Geralt get a look at his symbol (a practiced move, since he'd been doing it since he learned what Vesh was), he put the other hand on his shoulder. "You're going to feel like you just got dowsed in liquid sunlight and spring water. Intense, but not painful." And then he performed the components of the spell, watching to be sure Vesh's black-light didn't overwhelm Life's pure gold.

Geralt caught his breath at the sensation that was... actually, pretty damned close to what the other man had described. “Haven’t met Pike,” he managed, a bit breathlessly.

"Pretty pale blonde gnome," Kash replied and gave the guy a few to recover. "Twist your torso a bit and see if you feel less muscle stiffness and less tenderness in the kidneys." It wouldn't heal up right away, he didn't think, since Geralt had weeks of exhaustion on him too.

It was an improvement, though, as Geralt discovered when he did what the other man had asked. "Does feel better. Thanks," he said, genuinely grateful.

"Do me a favor and don't treat yourself anymore." Considering the amount of damage and infection on him and the possibility he'd need his spells for Z or someone else today, Kash used his non-magical healing training to clean, disinfect, and debride the claw wounds. When he'd finished that, he met Geralt's gaze. "You're going to want to hang onto the edge of the cot. With as battered as you are, this is likely to feel standing under a waterfall."

Geralt's only reaction to Kash's treatment of the claw wounds had been a tightened jaw and a slight narrowing of his cat-like eyes, but the look he gave the healer then was abruptly wary. "Duly noted," he said, and took a firm grip on the edge of the cot.

Using one spell was usually better than using multiple spells, so Kash didn't mess about with Cure Wounds spells and instead gripped his symbol and cast Heal. The blazing white-gold light of Life's energy shot through his hands and into Geralt, lighting him up as if he'd swallowed the sun. It was strange to know that light would feel like being swept away by the cleanest cold water pounding through him, but Kash knew when Vesh's power didn't show (and it didn't), that was how it would feel.

Again, the other man had picked pretty much exactly the way to describe what Geralt felt in that moment, and the sensation was overwhelming enough that it did drag a shuddering gasp out of him as his grip on the cot went white-knuckled. When it passed, so did most of the pain he'd been living with for weeks, if not month, and he took a deeper, relieved breath. "Definitely--not like taking a Swallow potion," he managed after a moment. "That's... quite something."

"Clerics channel divine magic. I channel Life itself." Kash released his symbol, letting it slide out of sight without calling attention to it, as much for his own sake as Geralt's. He hated the reminder that sometimes he didn't channel Life, but Death and Vesh. "Drink water, lots of it. And get rest, as much as you can. Just because your body's healed doesn't mean you're whole. The trauma of an injury can linger, force a wound to reopen, if the mind doesn't have time to accept the magic."

"I appreciate your help," Geralt said, trying not to flinch at the 'get rest' comment. Even meditation didn't help much. Ciri's face kept reappearing in his mind's eye, no matter how he tried to still his thoughts. "Like I said - not used to strangers being used to waste time or effort on someone like me."

"Like I said. Can't call yourself a healer if you don't heal." Kash took to cleaning up what he'd used to doctor the claw wounds before he healed them. "You didn't get those wounds fighting for the fun of it. If I had to guess, you got them keeping other people alive. So look at it like I'm returning the favor if you need to." Because scars like his came with nightmares, and he had dark rings beneath his eyes (or had, before the restoration), Kash offered, "I can make a tisane that will help you sleep if you'll drink it."

Geralt stiffened, then forced himself to relax again, even as he wondered if his state of mind was really that obvious. Not good news, if so. He mustered a faint twitch of a smile, however, for the offer. "At this point I'm ready to try anything," he said quietly, not bothering to dodge the question. Because it wasn't just Ciri, however much that loss hurt. There were losses he hadn't let himself feel, too, that were lurking, waiting to be acknowledged. Vesemir, the only father he'd ever known, lying motionless on the flagstones in the courtyard at Kaer Morhen. Crach, the friend who'd trusted Geralt to help his children, ramming his longship into the Naglfar and attacking Eredin with nothing but his axe and the mad courage of the an Craite... He shook off the memory as doggedly as he could, swallowing past the tightness in his throat. "Thanks. Been... a bad few months."

"For a cleric, I'm shit at listening." But he was working on it and this guy was his kind of people. Not the way Coby was. Or even really how Dyson was. More like himself. "But I'll keep you company while we poison ourselves with a few drinks, if you're feeling it. Just let me put the herb sachets together." He glanced back again. "And get you some aspirin for the inevitable headache."

"Hard for me to get drunk," Geralt said. "But... I'll take you up on trying." Right now the thought of spending some time with someone from a world like his was an attractive one. The strangeness of this place did grate, even if you did your best to ignore it.

"Better if you don't. Hard to sleep when the world's spinning," was Kash's expert opinion on that subject. And by the time Geralt had dressed again, he'd made up a few packets of 'sleepytime' tea and left a note for whoever was coming on shift that he'd be in the bar if they needed him.

***

He'd decided to avoid the vodka tonight, despite Kitty's questioning look as she'd served up their drinks. Geralt felt improved enough that he wasn't actually willing to risk a hangover, even a mild one. "Decent enough beer around here," he observed to Kash.

"Good variety." Kash drank whatever Kitty or the others gave him without giving it much thought, but it was true, he'd never had anything of poor quality. "Better than home. You too?" He'd invited the guy for drinks. The least he could do was try to talk.

"Mostly. Some exceptions - I'd drink most things my dwarf friends made, even if they brewed it up in their attics." Geralt smiled humourlessly. "Every so often I'd get access to good wine. Came from being far more involved in politics than I should have been."

Kash turned his head, eyebrow lifting. "Politics? You don't seem like the type." Neither did Vox Machina, or him and Z, but they got wrapped up in Exandrian politics with the Tal Dorei family all the same.

"It was never a good idea. Never really voluntary, either," Geralt said with a sigh and took a longer sip of his beer. "You do what you have to do and try not to make a mess of things. I was better at the former than the latter."

"Sounds like Vox Machina." Kash chuckled. No wonder Z had twigged to him. "Friends of mine from home. Tended to get themselves in trouble while they were trying to get other people out of it. That included the Sovereign at least once."

"Ugh. Kings." Geralt didn't have to fake the shudder. "Your friends have my sympathy. I would have been perfectly happy to keep killing monsters for the rest of my life. But between the kings and the sorceresses--"

"Z and I--" And most of Vox Machina, but he didn't feel the need to speak for them at the moment. They hadn't really integrated with the Slayer's Take the way he and Z had. "We were part of a monster-slayer's guild back home. I blame Vex for our ongoing involvement with world-threatening disasters."

"Saw some of that, myself." Although he put thoughts of the Hunt and the confrontation in Skellige as far out of his head as he could. This was supposed to are about relaxing, not brooding. "Things have a way of complicating themselves, don't they? Wish they'd give us a rest, sometimes..."

Kash pointedly looked around them, eyebrows high, and then looked back at Geralt. "Be careful what you wish for..."