Work Text:
Ciri had always expected to live her life in Cintra, after all she was the heir to the throne, the Lioncub of Cintra. At the very least she’d assumed that she might move to Skellige, with Eist’s ties to the Isles, and her grandmother’s dedication to the union between the two kingdoms, Ciri was sure she was bound to end up betrothed to one of the Jarl’s children.
Nilfgaard had changed everything.
Even with the rumours about her Destiny, and murmurs of the White Wolf. Ciri had never expected to find her new family in a ruined keep in the Blue Mountains during the dead of winter, but Destiny was a mysterious force that worked in equally mysterious ways. She still mourned her blood, but the family she had found in the witcher’s keep was invaluable, more than she could have ever asked for. Not only could they give her the skills to defend herself and survive in the cruel war-torn land they now lived in, they were also the most peculiar ragtag group of people Ciri had ever met.
When she’d first seen Geralt bathing on the way up to Kaer Morhen, she hadn’t questioned the uniform scars on his chest. He was a witcher and witchers had scars, that was just a fact, but when Eskel had pulled his shirt up one day to reveal matching scars… she began to get suspicious and the questions had started. She had been shocked to learn that both witchers had been born girls… or something like that. She was still trying to understand the language they used, assigned female, if she remembered correctly.
Jaskier had been absolutely thrilled when he’d learned Ciri was asking questions about gender, perking up from his favourite spot in Geralt’s lap to announce that he didn’t give a shit about gender or pronouns and people could refer to him however they felt most comfortable. Ciri tended to use ‘he’ out of habit, but she’d heard Geralt and the others refer to Jaskier as ‘they’ or ‘she’ at times as well.
And then there was Aiden, Lambert’s partner, who was very much neither a man nor a woman. They often used make-up to change the shape of their face, almost like magic, looking more masculine or feminine depending on their mood. It was incredible…
And Ciri wanted it.
She’d always hated being treated like a girl, being seen as less because she was a girl. She enjoyed wearing boy clothes just as much as her pretty dresses, sometimes even more, but she’d just assumed that all girls felt like that. Most of her friends at the castle had been boys after all.
But… Did that mean she was a they?
Could she be not a girl and still refer to herself as ‘she’?
It was all very confusing and it was giving her a headache.
“Alright, cub?” Aiden asked, leaning against the doorframe to the library. Their long dark hair loose for a change, damp and curly as it rested on the towel slung around their shoulders.
“Just thinking,” Ciri hummed, pressing her fingers to her forehead in the way she had often seen Geralt do when he was exasperated with Jaskier.
“About?”
“What if I’m not a girl?” she whined, falling backward onto the wolfskin rug in front of the hearth, staring up at the ceiling with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t even realise that was possible until coming here.”
“And now you’re not sure?” Aiden pressed, coming to sit next to her, pulling her head into their lap so they could card their fingers through her hair.
“No,” she pouted.
“Well, that’s alright. We’re older than we look, you know. It’s taken us years to work it out, and you’re just a kid,” Aiden reassured her, a low purr started to rumble in their chest, “and if you never figure it out, that’s alright too.”
“What if I change my mind?”
“Little lion cub, nothing in life is constant, change is inevitable,” Aiden laughed, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Lambert is still trying to figure out whether he’s a man who likes dresses or something else, and he’s old enough to be your grandfather.”
Ciri giggled and snuggled up closer to the cat witcher. Geralt might be her Destiny, but these people were all her family, and she couldn’t be more content.