Chapter Text
Ciri was throwing a fit.
They were stopped on the side of the highway at a rest stop. She’d spilled water all over her shoes and when Yennefer went to swap them for a different pair from her bag, she realized Ciri had forgotten her favorite pair of blue sparkly tennis shoes at Vesemir’s house. They were six hours away by now—six hours into a three day road trip home to be exact—and Ciri was insistent that they had to go back.
“Vesemir will mail them to us,” Yennefer said in a futile attempt to placate her. “You’ll have them back in a few days. For now you can wear your sandals.”
“I don’t want my sandals!” Ciri protested. “I want my blue shoes.” She was crying now, wailing in fact and attracting a lot of attention.
“We don’t have your blue shoes. But I can give you your sandals,” Yennefer bargained.
This only made Ciri angrier, her little face red and her hands clenched into fists at her side.
Geralt watched this all unfold from a few paces behind where Yennefer knelt in front of her tantruming child, unsure how to help. Ciri wasn’t usually like this. She was generally a happy child—not that she wasn’t easily upset—but she tended more towards sadness and worry than she did towards anger. This was strange.
After a minute or two more of Yennefer trying to get her to see reason, Ciri gave up and sat down right on the asphalt, curling up into a ball and wailing. Yennefer put her face in her hands, looking as defeated as Ciri did, and Geralt decided this was his time to step in. Ciri was past logic, so he might as well get her back into the car. It seemed as if she was intent on throwing a tantrum either way, so she might as well do it in the car so they could continue home, rather than here at this rest stop where they were achieving nothing more than making a scene for their fellow travelers.
Geralt didn’t understand though. He’d never seen Ciri throw a fit like this. Was it because of their week with Vesemir? Had a deviation from her schedule caused this? That didn’t make sense; she barely had a schedule at all with the way she got passed back and forth between Geralt and Yennefer’s. Too many new things and people then? Was she just over tired? None of these reasons seemed quite right. It wasn’t until he scooped her up in his arms to put her back into the car that it all made sense. Of course. This would make anybody irritable.
She was burning up with fever.
Geralt set her down, glad to see her stand and look at him rather than sitting back down on the ground.
“Hey,” he said, trying with moderate success to get her to stop crying enough to pay attention to him.
“I’m sorry about your shoes. I really am.”
She just stood there, tears still streaming down her face, hands still clenched into tiny angry fists.
“You aren’t feeling well, are you?” He said, more statement than question.
She nodded, sniffling and rubbing her eyes.
“We want to help you feel better, okay?”
“Okay,” she whimpered.
“Now Can you let Yennefer trade your wet shoes for your sandals?”
The mention of the shoes caused her to delve back into near hysterics, but she sat down in front of Yennefer, offering up her feet for her to unlace her wet shoes.
“How did you do that?” Yennefer asked as she made the switch.
“She’s sick, Yen. That’s why she’s upset.”
Yennefer’s face fell.
“You’re not serious,” she said, with a defeated tone which told him that she knew he was.
“Feel her forehead,” he told her. “She’s burning up.”
Yennefer did as he said, sighing when she came to the same conclusion he had. This hadn’t been about the shoes at all. Ciri was sick and there was no amount of bargaining or reasoning with her that would change that.
“So what should we do?” Geralt asked her. “Do we go back to Vesemir’s? I don’t think any of us want to endure three days of this,” he said, referring to road tripping with a sick and therefore easily upset eight year old.
“We can’t go back,” Yen countered. “You have that contract. We’re already cutting it close.”
Geralt resisted the urge to swear. He’d forgotten. He’d arranged to do a contract when he got home, a big one. He’d planned his budget this month around it. If this contract didn’t get done he wouldn’t have enough to cover his mortgage. He didn’t usually cut things this close, but between taking almost two full weeks off to go see his father, and having to pay someone to stay out at his house and tend to his plants and animals, this month’s budget was a bit tighter than normal. Which hadn’t worried him because he had this contract lined up, but if he missed it…
“I can work around it,” he said, barely convincing himself and surely not convincing Yennefer.
The shoes were switched now, and Ciri was up again, but now that she had given up on her anger, she looked so tired and sad that Geralt would agree to anything at that point.
He lifted her into his arms and she immediately laid her head down on his shoulder.
Yennefer walked behind him so she could once again feel Ciri’s forehead.
“It doesn’t feel too high,” she said. “She’s probably just too hot, and she hasn’t been getting enough sleep or drinking enough water.”
It made sense. Geralt wasn’t sure where she would have picked up a cold or a flu in the middle of July.
“How far are we from our hotel for the night?”
“About two more hours.”
“So we’ll get there in the evening. She’ll have all evening and all night to rest and get rehydrated. I’ll bet she feels a lot better in the morning,” Yen reassured him. “What do you think, Ciri?” She asked. “Are you ready to get back in the car so we can go to the hotel and rest?”
“No,” she whined. “I don’t want to go back in the car.”
“What if you put some pajamas on first, and I can sit in the back with you?” She offered.
Ciri cautiously nodded her head. “Okay.”
Yennefer smiled at her. “Perfect, now let’s go get you changed into something more comfortable.”
***
Ciri was the queen of her own queen bed.
When they’d reserved this room the plan was for Geralt and Yennefer to share the queen bed and for Ciri to take the pull out, but after she was finished being angry over the shoes she’d become very clingy, Yennefer sitting in the middle seat so Ciri could hold onto her arm and sleep on her shoulder, so Yen and Geralt had decided to let her share the bed with one of them while the other took the pull out couch.
He would never say anything out loud in fear of making her feel bad if she chose otherwise, but Geralt secretly hoped she’d choose him. Not that he didn’t think Yen deserved the good bed, but she was more appropriately sized for a pull out couch than he was.
He tried not to look too pleased when Ciri said she wanted Geralt to sleep in the queen bed with her.
His smugness quickly wore off though as the night continued and it became more and more obvious that despite being long enough that his feet didn’t hang off the end, the queen bed was the less comfortable option.
Ciri wanted to lay practically on top of him and even with the air conditioning on, the room was uncomfortably hot. With a feverish child pressed right up to his side, it was almost unbearable.
And if that wasn’t enough, she started coughing around ten and by midnight it was bad enough to keep her from sleeping. After a coughing fit so bad that she started to gag, Geralt gave up on sleeping for the night.
“Come on,” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “Let’s sit up. This will help.”
He sat up against the headboard and pulled her up with him, hoping being upright might help her to stop coughing.
She was still half asleep, but she didn’t protest as he set her in his lap, propped up against his chest. She pressed her cheek up against his t-shirt, drooling a bit and breathing through her mouth.
Yennefer padded over, eyes half closed. “I can take her for a while,” she whispered. “If you want to get some rest.”
Despite having gotten a couple hours of sleep, Yen looked even more tired than he felt, and anyway it looked like Ciri might have fallen back asleep. He’d hate to wake her.
“It’s fine, Yen. Go back to bed. At least one of us should get to sleep tonight.”
She nodded, yawning.
“Okay. Wake me if you need anything.”
***
By the morning it was obvious this was not just a case of being over tired and under hydrated. Ciri had picked something up somewhere and she was miserable. For now though, she was finally sleeping, and although they needed to leave soon if they wanted to stay on schedule, Geralt couldn’t bear to wake her, and the couch felt so comfortable. If he could just doze off for a few minutes.
He could feel himself drifting off when Yennefer sat down next to him, snapping him awake.
“So I just got off the phone with the pediatrician.” She leaned her head against his shoulder and he put an arm around her.
“What did she say?”
“She said to bring her in if she hasn’t gotten any better by the time we get home, and to take her to the ER if her fever is above 104,” she told him. “Do you have a thermometer in that giant first aid kit?” She asked.
He nodded sleepily. Yennefer had teased him in the past for lugging around his big first aid kit even when he wasn’t out on contracts. Look who was laughing now.
“And she said we should give her something to help with the coughing, and make sure she stays hydrated.”
Okay. They could do that.
“Are you ready to go then?” He asked, knowing they needed to get back on the road, but hoping she’d say no, so he could get a few minutes of sleep.
“We probably should,” she said. “We can stop and get medicine on the way out of town.”
“Alright,” he reluctantly agreed. “Do you want to wake her or should I?”
***
Geralt had one job.
Yennefer was driving, and all he had to do was get Ciri to take some cough medicine and drink some juice. And she was not having it.
Geralt had thought he might be able to sleep in the backseat while Ciri slept, like she had yesterday, but it looked like she was gearing up for another tantrum. He almost thought it wasn’t worth it to fight tooth and nail to get her to drink the cough syrup, but then he remembered her coughing nearly to the point of throwing up last night, and he pictured himself having to mop up vomit from the back seat of Yennefer’s car, and that was enough to renew his vigor.
“The medicine is going to help you feel better,” Geralt promised. “And we got you some juice. I just need you to drink a little bit.”
“No,” she whined, stretching out the word. “My throat hurts.”
“This will help with that,” Geralt told her, once again offering up the little cup of cough syrup.
She turned her head away from him, toward the window. “I don’t want it. I don’t want it. I don’t want it!”
Yennefer caught his eye in the rear view mirror. “Do you want me to pull over?” She asked.
Geralt shook his head. “Keep going,” he instructed, trying and failing to think of another way to get Ciri to take the damned medicine.
“Cirilla. Please,” he said, trying to be firm. He wasn’t the best at discipline—although to be fair, he didn’t need to do it very often—and right now that lack of experience was going to be his undoing.
The tiny bit of harshness was enough to push her back into full temper tantrum mode. Geralt resisted the urge to just throw the dose of cough syrup out the window. Instead he very calmly poured it back into the bottle before burying his head in his hands.
“Geralt,” Yennefer chided. He thought she sounded disappointed, but it was hard to hear past Ciri crying.
“If you have any better ideas,” he snapped at her.
She just sighed and pulled over. At least today they were on a highway going through the woods where there was a place to pull out, rather than the interstate they’d been on yesterday.
Ciri didn’t protest when Geralt unbuckled her seatbelt and carried her out of the car, sitting down on the curb with her in his lap.
He was too tired to try to get her to stop crying, so he decided to just wait it out, rubbing her back and trying his best to offer up comforting and reassuring sentiments.
“I’m sorry you don’t feel well. Yen and I just want to help. I promise you’ll feel better soon.”
Yennefer came and sat next to him. She once again laid her head against his shoulder, the three of them sitting in silence for a few moments. The only sound was Ciri’s steadily diminishing sobs.
It took a minute or two to realize something else was wrong. Ciri was so hot against his chest, it didn’t register that Yen’s forehead against his shoulder was just as warm.
Ciri’s crying had faded to sniffling and stray catch breaths when Geralt spoke up.
“Yen, you’re—“
“I know,” she interrupted him.
He leaned over to kiss her on the forehead and try to get a read on her temperature. It wasn’t as high as Ciri’s, but it definitely wasn’t good.
“I can drive,” he offered. “You sit in the back and try to get some sleep.”
She gave him a tired laugh. “Because that worked so well for you.”
She had a point, but Ciri had stopped crying and was well on her way to going back to sleep by now.
“I know. I was unlucky, but I think the worst is over. Can you grab the cough syrup?”
She nodded, getting up slowly and retrieving the cough syrup from the car, once again pouring Ciri a dose.
“Ciri?” He asked.
She looked up at him, her eyes red and puffy and her face flushed pink.
“Yennefer is going to sit in the back with you now,” he told her.
Yen handed him the medicine.
“One drink before I go?”
***
They were quite the lively group, stopped at a picnic area for lunch.
Geralt was exhausted, but he felt like he needed to have an extra good attitude to make up for how miserable Ciri and Yen were.
None of them were all that hungry, but tempers were running high and he knew low blood sugar would only make that worse, so he had stopped around noon and pulled out the ingredients to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
He made Ciri’s first—just how she liked it, peanut butter on both slices of bread with jelly in the middle and the crust cut off—and she sat picking at it half heartedly while Yen rested with her head down on her arms, blocking out the sunlight. Geralt made her a sandwich, which he knew she’d only eat to set a good example for Ciri, before making himself one. He wasn’t much of a fan of peanut butter and jelly, but he was too tired to get out anything else.
They all sat in silence as they ate.
“How much longer until we get to the hotel?” Yen asked after she finished eating.
“We should get there around five,” he answered. “Maybe later if traffic is bad.”
“What if we just went home?” She said it like a joke, but Geralt knew it was what she wanted, even if it wasn’t the most realistic plan.
“If you really want me to Yen, I could have us home by one or two.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” she brushed him off.
“I mean it. We’re all miserable. Might as well get it over with all in one go. Ciri will sleep just as well in the car as she would at a hotel—maybe better since she’s sitting up. I don’t see why we couldn’t just go straight home.”
“You haven’t slept,” Yennefer argued.
“I can handle an all nighter Yen. I’ve stayed up for much longer than this before. You don’t need to worry about me.”
He knew she wanted to give in. It wouldn’t be hard to convince her. Another twelve hours of driving would be long and uncomfortable, yes, but he too just wanted to be home.
“We should only do it if you promise to let me drive at least part of the way.”
“No,” he answered curtly. “You’re sick. I’m not making you drive.”
She glanced over at Ciri who was still nibbling on her sandwich.
“I’m fine, really. I hardly feel sick at all.”
She was lying. She’d never tell the truth if Ciri was listening. She hated to look feeble in front of her daughter.
He dropped the issue, letting the group lapse back into silence until it was obvious Ciri was finished eating.
She sat there with her cheek resting on one hand, the other hand poking holes in her sandwich.
“Do you want to eat any more?” Geralt asked. “Or are you ready to get back into the car?”
“I’m ready.”
He opened the door for her and turned on the air conditioning, but he stopped Yennefer when she moved to take her seat again in the back.
“Wait just a second,” he said in a voice low enough that Ciri wouldn’t hear.
“What?”
She looked irritated.
“How are you really feeling, Yen? Please be honest. I want to help.”
She sighed.
“I feel achy and tired and hot,” she told him. “My head hurts and my throat hurts and I want more than anything to be home and in bed.”
“Well then—“ Geralt began, but Yen wasn’t finished yet.
“But that won’t happen if you fall asleep at the wheel and drive us off the road. I might not feel well, but I’m not so indisposed that I can’t drive at least part of the way.”
Now it was Geralt’s turn to be frustrated.
“We don’t have to decide anything yet. For now you should stay in the back seat and try to rest.”
He could tell she wanted to keep arguing, but right now her tiredness was winning out over everything else.
“Alright, but the second you feel too tired—“
“I know I know.” He ushered her up and back into the car.
He’d made up his mind to get them home tonight one way or another, and he didn’t want to spend any more time debating and delaying.
He wanted this over with.
***
Geralt could tell Yen was trying her best to seem fine and healthy, but she could only fight the fatigue for so long.
Ciri had curled up, using one of Geralt’s sweatshirts as a pillow, and fallen asleep within a few minutes of leaving the picnic area. And Yennefer, despite her obvious and frankly entertaining attempts to fight sleep, which Geralt watched in the rearview mirror, joined Ciri in sleep before an hour had passed.
Now all Geralt had to do was drive.
It was almost painfully boring, and it seemed as if the journey might last forever, but he was happy to do it if it meant Yen and Ciri could be comfortable. And they were comfortable for an hour or two, but of course the, albeit dull, peace of the sleeping backseat couldn’t last forever.
The cough syrup Geralt had fought so hard for must have worn off because Ciri was awake and coughing again, and then Yen was awake and rubbing her back and Geralt was offering up sympathetic sentiments from the front seat.
Yennefer barely avoided another meltdown trying to get Ciri to take another dose, and the promise of a popsicle at their next stop was the only thing which kept the car from once again dissolving into chaos.
This was going to be a long drive.
***
It was almost three in the morning by the time they arrived back at Geralt’s house. Yennefer and Ciri were both out cold in the back seat, and Geralt couldn’t bear to wake either of them.
He went first to unlock the front door before carefully unbuckling Ciri from her car seat and picking her up. She didn’t even stir. He carried her into the house and deposited her on his bed. He would stay in here with her tonight so Yen could get a good night’s sleep.
He expected Yen to be awake by the time he came back to the car, but he was surprised to find her still asleep, slouched over the armrest down over the middle seat. Just like he had with Ciri, he unbuckled her and picked her up, careful not to hit her head as he maneuvered them out of the car.
Unlike Ciri, she woke when he did this, but she didn’t protest being carried.
“What?” she asked sleepily.
“We’re home,” Geralt whispered. “I’m taking you to bed.”
She closed her eyes again.
“My hero,” she mumbled, and Geralt smiled.
He put her down in Ciri’s bed and she either didn’t notice or didn’t care, because she immediately wrapped her arms around the pillow and fell back asleep.
He kissed her forehead. Still too warm, but they were home now. She could rest as much as she needed to here.
He walked back into his own room and checked on Ciri, who was still fast asleep, before going out to unload the car.
It had been more than forty hours since the last time Geralt slept when he finally pulled back the covers and laid down next to Ciri.
And less than four minutes of relaxing in bed, not quite sleeping yet, when his phone rang.
He answered without thinking, afraid the sound might wake Ciri, and immediately regretted it. Whatever was going on could wait, couldn’t it? At least until he could get some sleep.