Finn and Ciri trained in the penthouse garden with wooden swords while Chip and Kelpie ran wild through the grass around them. The animals treated the whole thing like a game. The spar itself was less playful though. Ciri had the upper hand from the start, obviously. She had years of training behind her. Finn had none of that, just some bare knowledge he got from the worlds he visited.
Their swords met, wood struck wood, and Finn had to step back to keep her from driving him off balance. Ciri followed without hesitation. She cut down at his shoulder, turned her wrists, and brought the blade back across at his ribs. Finn caught the first strike and barely got his sword back in time for the second.
"You're really getting predictable," Ciri said.
"That bad?"
"Worse than you think."
She stepped in again and hit him in the thigh with the flat before he could move his leg clear. Ciri stayed light on her feet, ready to come forward again as soon as he gave her an opening.
Finn lifted his training sword. "Again."
Ciri swung at his left shoulder. He blocked, turned the blade aside, and tried to answer with a cut of his own. She beat him to the center line, knocked his sword off course, and stopped her own point against his chest.
Finn let out a breath. "All right. Fair."
"You are too slow," Ciri said. "And you keep watching my sword instead of watching me."
"Your sword is what's trying to hit me."
That almost got a smile out of her.
They went at it again. This time Finn lasted longer. He kept his elbows tighter, gave up trying to overpower her on every clash, and started waiting for the moment after her strike instead. It helped. He blocked her first cut, slipped past the second, and nearly touched her shoulder on the third exchange. Then she changed pace, turned inside his guard, and tapped him in the side before he could recover.
"There," she said. "Dead."
"Convenient that you decide when I'm dead."
"Well, that's how it works, yes."
Finn laughed, then came at her harder. Their swords locked near the middle of the path. This time he let the gorilla arms help. The chrome in both arms kicked in and he shoved forward with enough force to drive her back a full step. Ciri's eyes narrowed, and then she disappeared. The air cracked beside him. Finn twisted too late and felt the flat of her sword land between his shoulders.
"That is dead," Ciri said. "Again."
Finn turned on her. "That's not fair. You can't use your powers whenever you're losing."
She raised a brow. "You were the one who used your implants first."
"Because I'm an amateur swordsman," Finn said. "You're trained by the witchers of Kaer Morhen."
Ciri answered with a mocking scoff.
Finn laughed. "All right. Fine. No implants. Just the sword."
"And no complaining after?"
"I said nothing about that."
She smiled then and took her place again.
The next round went better for him. Finn didn't do anything funny after that. Ciri did the same and kept her powers out of it. He managed to keep her in front of him for longer this time. He even got a clean touch on her forearm with the flat of his blade.
"Better," Ciri said.
She beat him anyway. She feinted high, made him lift his guard, then struck his wrist. His fingers opened and the training sword fell into the grass. Before he could snatch it back up, her own blade was already at his throat.
Finn raised both hands. "Alright, you win."
She stepped back and lowered her sword. Chip burst out of the hedge with dirt all over his snout, and Kelpie followed him in a wide arc across the lawn.
Finn bent down, picked up his training sword, and pointed it at Ciri. "One day I'm going to beat you."
"Mhm," she said. "Do try."
—
They sat on the grass after that. Finn had stretched out with one knee raised. Ciri sat beside him with Zireael across her lap, a cloth in one hand and oil in the other. She worked on the blade with slow care, sharpening first, then rubbing the oil along the steel so it would not catch the damp night air later. Chip had curled up near Finn's foot, still dirty from whatever he had been doing in the shrubbery. Kelpie wandered for a while, then came back when Ciri settled.
Finn watched her work the oil into the blade. "So… What do you think of this world?"
Ciri shrugged. "It's like any other world."
"How so?"
"This world is miserable," she said. "But... There are good parts of it. The technology might be more advanced, but in the end, it's all human."
Finn hummed. "I suppose so."
Kelpie came over just then and pushed her nose against Ciri's shoulder, then lower against her arm, asking for attention. Ciri put the cloth aside, scratched her between the ears, and Kelpie lowered herself down until her head came to rest across Ciri's thigh.
Finn watched that for a moment. "You don't want to move on just yet?"
Ciri kept one hand on Kelpie's neck. "Do you think we're ready to face the Wild Hunt?"
"With guns? Sure. I would think so."
She looked at him then, and the doubt was plain on her face. "I... don't know. It feels nice, you know? Not being able to worry about things."
"Well, I wouldn't say complaining about Avallach's lessons is that..."
Ciri rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."
Finn chuckled once, then sighed. "You can't ignore problems, Ciri. It won't just go away."
"I know..." she said. Her hand slowed against Kelpie's neck. "And I know it is my destiny. In the end I will have to face it."
"The Wild Hunt, or the White Frost?" Finn asked.
She did not answer at once. Her eyes dropped to Zireael across her lap, then to Kelpie's mane. "...Both. I don't know if I'm capable enough to stop the Wild Hunt, without anyone dying, or stop the White Frost, without me dying."
"You managed to do so, in the..."
"In the story, I know," Ciri said. "But that's a branching story, Finn. One of the branches is that I died, remember? And Uncle Vesemir... he'll die. I don't want that."
Finn looked out across the garden. "Maybe I should stop bringing up the story," he said. "In the end, you should make your own path, with all the knowledge that you now know."
She smiled at that, though not by much. "I suppose. Though maybe because now that I know the future, I'm less confident in myself, rather than the opposite. It's like... trying to meet someone's expectations."
Finn reached over, put his hand lightly on her thigh, and smiled. "Just... don't think about it."
Ciri's eyes dropped to his hand. They stayed there a moment longer than he expected. But she did not move away, and she did not say anything about it.
"...I'll try not to," she said.
Finn stood abruptly after that. He picked his training sword up from the grass and pointed it toward her.
"All right," he said. "How about another spar, using powers now."
Ciri's mouth curved at once. She set Zireael down carefully, took up her training sword, and got to her feet.
"Don't regret it," she said. "You're the one who's asking for it."
—
Much later, in the middle of the night, with the garden quiet and the rest of the penthouse gone still, Finn sat alone in his room and stared at the green ring on his finger.
He rubbed his thumb over it once. Then again. The fear of corruption was gone now, or near enough. No corruption had crawled over his hand since he had worn it. With both arms chrome from the shoulder down, there did not seem to be much left for the ring to poison in the old way.
That did not mean it was easy to use.
Finn sat on the edge of the bed, rolled his shoulders back, and held his left hand out in front of him. The room was dim except for the city glow slipping in around the curtains. He kept the construct simple in his head. Simpler than simple. A sphere. Just a sphere. Nothing clever.
He focused. For a second, nothing happened.
Then a green flicker appeared above his palm. Weak. Unstable. It held the shape of a ball for less than a heartbeat before collapsing into nothing.
Finn exhaled through his nose. "Right. Again."
He tried once more. The flicker came back. This time it lasted a little longer. Then it broke apart again.
He kept at it. Again, and again.
A ball. Then a flat square. Then something like a rod. All of them disappeared almost at once. Sometimes the construct formed in the wrong shape. Once he aimed for a shield and got what looked more like a glowing dinner plate. Another time the light spat from the ring in a crooked line and vanished before it reached the length of a finger.
By the tenth try his jaw was tight in annoyance.
He stared at the ring and went back over what he knew. Green Lantern rings ran on willpower. That was the whole thing. You decided something was real and the ring made it real because you said so. He had enough of that, didn't he? So why was this giving him trouble?
Finn flexed his chrome hand slowly. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe the ring wanted a different kind of will than the kind he had. Or maybe it could tell his head was full of too many things at once. Ciri. The Wild Hunt. The White Frost. Getting stronger. Staying alive. Finding the next door. He kept moving, but moving toward a plethora of things with some of it actually not his own goal was not the same as actually having a strong goal to channel his will towards.
Maybe the ring noticed that. That he's directionless. That he doesn't really know what he wants in the end, just flowing with the current.
"Great," Finn muttered. "So the magic jewelry thinks I lack resolve. Marvelous."
He lifted his hand again and tried one last time. Again, he did not aim for something large. Just a knife. Plain. Short. Solid.
The green light appeared. It trembled, wavered, then locked for one full second into the shape of a knife over his hand. Not much bigger than a kitchen blade. Ugly at the edges. But real enough to cast green light over his fingers.
Finn stared at it.
Then it vanished.
He let his arm drop and sat there a while longer, looking at the place where it had been. A knife was pathetic by Green Lantern standards. Still, it was more than a flicker.
He knew forcing it any longer would only make him more annoyed, not better. So he pulled the ring off, set it on the bedside table, and lay back on the bed without bothering to change.
Finn closed his eyes and let his consciousness drift away.