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If the rumors are to be believed, Witchers do not feel.
They have been designed, tweaked, trained, beaten – molded into calculating soldiers that cannot be bothered with frivolous matters such as emotion.
Those who have spent more than one day in alliance with Geralt of Rivia know this rumor to be blatantly false. It’s almost hilariously obvious that the man feels everything. Human emotion isn’t diluted in Witchers; rather, these emotions are manually packaged into neat little boxes and shoved into the deepest bowels of the unconscious, where they remain locked under the tightest security.
Anyone who frequents Geralt’s company can see just how emotionally constipated the man forces himself to be.
Nivellen has been haunting Geralt’s thoughts since they left the man’s (monster’s?) home yesterday. Geralt likes to think himself a relatively good judge of character; it kind of comes with the job. Trust the wrong people and you get yourself into the least-fun kind of hot water. It’s rare that Geralt willingly spends time around others, much less actually going so far as to trust them. Perhaps that’s why the revelation of Nivellen’s true nature is crawling under his skin so insistently.
That, and one other reason that refuses to vacate his head.
Geralt had left Ciri alone. With him. In Nivellen’s fucking goddamned castle, where Geralt was too far away to hear if she screamed, or cried, or if Nivellen had tried to—
“Something on your mind?” Ciri’s voice jarred him out of the spiral that his thoughts were falling into. Looking over, Geralt could see that she was doing that thing where she pretends to be nonchalant, but it’s entirely clear that the matter at hand holds much importance to her.
“Why?”
“Your palms are bleeding.”
Oh.
Geralt shifted his gaze downward to see that she was right – smudged streaks of red surrounded the crescents where his fingernails had broken the skin of his palms. He forced his hands to unclench, wiping them against the rough canvas of his shirt. Geralt almost wishes Ciri hadn’t pointed it out; he hadn’t even noticed the dull sting until he had looked down.
“Hm,” he grunts, characteristically.
He is no longer looking at Ciri but can still feel her eyes drilling holes into his skull. She wants an answer.
Geralt pauses, wondering to how to broach the issue. After a bout of silence, he settles on simply saying, “… Nivellen.”
It’s not a lie, even if it doesn’t contain the amount of detail Ciri is likely after.
He is surprised to hear Ciri sigh and mutter a soft, “Me too.”
The two sit in tense silence for a few moments. Ciri probably wanted him to ask or expand, but Geralt wasn’t particularly keen to. Finally, she broke through the quiet chirps and rustles of the forest night.
“Do you think he…”
Geralt had a bad feeling he knew exactly where this was going.
“Do you think… I don’t know. What he said about the priestess, and how he was so doting on me.”
Geralt’s stomach was squeezed by an icy fist.
“Do you think he was going to try to—”
“I don’t want to think about it,” Geralt finally interrupted, a sense of nausea bubbling up in this throat and causing the words to spill out of his mouth. “I misjudged him. I left you alone with him. That is a mistake I will never make again as long as I live.”
At these words, the tension in Ciri’s shoulders seemed to lessen a bit. She quietly shifted closer to him, eyes not leaving the flames of the campfire before them. Geralt allows himself to watch the flicker reflected in her bright green eyes. The glow suits her, he thinks.
The protectiveness twisting in his chest, the pit in his stomach. At first Geralt thought these sensations were a leftover remnant of the elixir coursing through his system from the fight. He almost has to laugh at how deep in denial he is. He’s a fool for trying to convince himself that these feelings are any different than the intense, caring emotions he developed for Jaskier, and gods, for Yennefer. Ciri has rapidly clawed her way onto the ever-growing list of people who Geralt treasures more than the universe itself. He refuses to hurt her the way he’s hurt Jaskier and Yen.
She’s dozed off. Geralt takes off his own coat, lays it across her shoulders, brushes a stray lock of curled hair out of her face.
Goddammit, he’s getting soft.