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Yennefer, as little as Ciri knows the woman, is now classified as something in her mind.
She’s tempted to put her into a familial category, such as “Auntie” or even “Vaguely Mother Figure-ish”. Considering that she taught her how to portal, as well as whatever happened back at the bridge, Ciri even considers putting her into the “Mentor” box.
And, well… she wants to like Yennefer. She really does. Yennefer is a brilliant, beautiful woman (with so much hair, honestly, have you seen the hair on her head? Ciri immensely envies that volume), and she must have been an outstanding sorceress at some point. Plus, she’s someone who will be around from time to time, thanks to her ties with Geralt, which makes her someone that Cirilla feels is “safe” to grow close to.
Unfortunately, the foggy, complicated nature of her relationship with Ciri’s father figure — a category which he is firmly lodged in, thank you — is exactly what makes her so hard to like and categorize. The two are entwined for her; she cannot open up to someone or something if she does not first decide if it’s good, bad, friendly, unfriendly, relatable, alienized, and, most importantly, what role it will play in her life. Therefore, since Yennefer is currently categorized as uncategorized, Ciri is hesitating on how much she should trust the ex-sorceress.
Considering the fact that she just tried to sacrifice her to an ancient demon witch, she’s leaning towards caution.
Then again, she did profusely apologize for it. And she changed her mind right before she actually carried it out. So there’s points there for trying, Ciri supposes. Plus, Geralt didn’t immediately try to kill her after he deduced what was happening, which is one of the sincerest compliments he can give to anyone.
Cirilla has to make a new category, just for her. A “Not as Awful as you Could Have Been” category, with room for her to be relocated as Ciri sees fit in the future.
Once Geralt disposes of their attackers and affirms that, yes, Ciri is his (in exactly those words), he tells her that she needs to return to Kaer Morhen. She’s not terribly upset about that, seeing as she’s navigated there enough times now that she could practically do it while asleep. However, what she is upset about is the fact that she’s being accompanied back by a band of people that she does not know in the slightest, save for the one there that she knows all too well.
Judging by the pensive look on his face as he stares at her, he remembers her too. Possibly not all that fondly.
And, well, maybe “upset” is the wrong word to use. Confused would likely work better. Or curious, anxious, a fair bit concerned. All more accurate, but “upset” encompasses each of them nicely.
“Jaskier, take her back and keep a close eye on her,” Geralt instructs, much to Cirilla’s displeasure and Jaskier’s surprise. The bard agrees nonetheless, and Ciri finds herself wondering what graces of the Continent put them back on speaking terms. Last she’d heard of the bard, he was rather plainly heartbroken and causing Geralt to spontaneously freeze up with a couple of bitter songs. Now Geralt’s letting him babysit her? Unbelievable.
Since neither of them can argue with the forceful, impatient, ‘you will do as I say’ - type look that Geralt levels at them, both Cirilla and Jaskier find themselves riding side by side on their way back to Kaer Morhen, with a band of people she doesn’t know trailing behind.
And by Melitele’s bosom, it’s shaping up to be a very awkward ride.
Luckily for her, the bard has a natural aversion to silence that’s stretched for too long. They’re barely out of Geralt’s inhuman earshot before he caves.
“It’s nice to finally meet the girl who broke into my room a while ago and left it a wreck,” he sputters in one big rush, as though he’d been holding it like his breath for quite some time now. “I’m Jaskier.”
“Cirilla," she replies, "Or Ciri, if I like you well enough.”
The bard mumbles something about “like father, like daughter.” Ciri takes it as a compliment.
“So, Ciri…lla,” he tests, shaking his head when he stumbles over it, “Sorry. Your dear guardian has been calling you “Ciri” for the past three hours. Got used to it.”
Gracious as she is, she decides to have mercy on him. “Just Ciri is fine for you too,” she smiles.
And Geralt says that her grandmother didn’t raise her with enough manners. Cirilla is the shining example of grace and kindness, thank you very much.
Jaskier sighs in what’s clearly relief. His shoulders relax somewhat, and — unlike the dreadfully solemn Witchers that she’s been spending so much time around lately — he seems to lighten his tone with playfulness and grace. “Well then, Ciri, what do you have that’s got an entire Continent and the Deathless Mother after you?”
“I’ll answer that when I figure that out for myself,” she sighs, “because, honestly, I haven’t the faintest idea. But I do know that I have Elder blood, and that there’s an abnormal amount of Chaos in me. Or at least according to Yennefer, there is.”
“Right. And I’d trust that witch about as far as I could throw her,” the bard mutters bitterly. (She notes that he says nothing about the other part of that sentence.)
There’s a lot of information to be learned from Jaskier, Ciri realizes. He’s much chattier than both Geralt and Yennefer combined. If she pushes in the right way, she may finally get the much-needed backstory between him and Geralt. She has been waiting on that since the inn, after all. Gods know that Geralt himself won’t leak a word of it to her, not after the incident that night.
And, well, she is a teenaged girl. Gossiping and extracting information is what she does best (provided that she’s not trying to get it out of Witchers with the social graces of a mushroom, of course).
She tilts her head to the side, as innocently and curiously as she can. “You don’t like Yennefer? Why?”
A slight hurt flashes over the bard’s face. “She… well, let’s just say we have a complicated history.” He frowns. “All things better left in the past. Nothing worth worrying over.”
That’s a lie if Ciri’s ever heard one. Even her horse chuffs their disapproval— who knew that this animal could have more brainpower than not one, not two, but at least four of the adults presently in Ciri’s life? After all, it’s incredibly frustrating to have both bard and Witcher be equally as dodgy about their past. At least Yennefer truthfully and directly answered most of the questions that Cirilla had for her!
“Well, what about Geralt then?” she pushes further, “I was fairly certain you hated him after those songs you sung in that inn. How did you end up here after all of that?”
Jaskier winces openly this time. “I… may have ended up in prison. Was wasting away in there. Had to turn to the rats for company and a singing encore. Geralt must have heard from Yennefer that I was there since she ended up saving me first, then abandoned me to go find him. And then he came and got me because he figured she’d gone off the deep end and— oh, did I even cover Firefucker?! He’s this mage that controls… well, fire. Really fucking nasty piece of work, that one.”
Ciri blinks at the sudden influx of information and noise. After the past few months with Geralt and the other Witchers, she hasn’t heard that many words come out of any one person that fast in a long time.
This Jaskier is starting to distinctly remind her of a lark. So much potential for a gorgeous song, but also very prone to making an incomprehensible jumble of chirrups and squawks when provoked. Not sure she wants to set his poetic side off by comparing him to a songbird, so she stays quiet about her new connection.
“We’re acquainted,” she says cautiously, “He’s the reason that I’m here too.”
“Yeah, well…” Jaskier laughs bitterly, “He tortured me, burnt my fingers, and likely broke my fucking lute over my own head. Probably would have done worse if it wasn’t for Yennefer, which means that I unfortunately owe her big time now.”
Guess that makes two of them that the sorceress has saved from the one they derogatorily call “Firefucker”. Jaskier gets another point in Cirilla’s mental tally for the shared experience.
Not to be distracted or to let the bard derail the conversation, Ciri asks, “But why would you volunteer to help Geralt find me if you despise him so much?”
“Well, I…”
He pauses. And deflates. Then frowns and opens his mouth like he’s going to say some very choice words, before closing it again with an audible click of his teeth. The wind rustling the forest around them seems to mock his struggle.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? Him and… you and… probably Yen are far more important than me in the grand scheme that Destiny’s cooked up for all of you. I’m just here for the ride. To joke, flirt, sing, and be eventually tossed away when my existence isn’t convenient anymore.” He sighs wearily, with the weight of unloading more onto a young girl than he probably wants to, just because she’s the first to ask or care. “I came to save you with Geralt because it was important. Gods only know why he chose me, but here we are.”
Ciri feels… well, she feels a lot of things, since that is a lot of words, but the core of it is a blend of sympathy and empathy for Jaskier. Clearly, he’s not over whatever hurt Geralt (and maybe Yennefer? She’s not sure yet) inflicted upon him many years ago.
And as for Destiny? As far as she’s concerned, Destiny can go fuck itself. For putting her here in the first place. For taking everything from her.
But since she’s a good girl in the presence of a stranger, she seals all of that bitterness away for later, when she’s running the training course again until she can finally get it right in one go.
“Geralt doesn’t make much sense to me either,” she admits after a deep breath, “But I’m sure he helped you out of that place for a reason. Maybe he wants to make up for whatever happened between you?”
“If that’s the case, he’s doing quite the awful job of it,” huffs Jaskier.
Just by the exhaustion in his voice, Ciri can tell that she’s so, so close here. It’s just a matter of choosing the exact right things to say before the thin dam stopping the story that she’s been trying to get ahold of for months from breaking through. And she thinks she knows what might do the trick, manipulative as it may be.
“I wasn’t lying that night when I said he missed you,” she says softly. He throws her a dubious glance, and she nods to back it up. “Really. He sat there and forced himself to listen to your songs, despite how terrible it was clearly making him feel. He said he wanted to hear you out because you deserved it, but I think he was doing it to make himself realize how much he actually regretted hurting you.”
The bard’s eyes soften, and he looks at her like she’s just offered him the world. Perhaps she has, in his eyes. A world where a dense, stubborn, and rather emotionally inconsiderate Witcher actually cares about people who were once his friends. It must seem to be an impossible reality to him.
“Your music was very pretty,” Ciri adds, more sincerely than she had expected. “I think your singing made me a little cross with him too. For being an idiot.”
There’s a long pause from Jaskier’s end, and Cirilla swears she can audibly hear the sweet sound of his resolve crumbling. This is it; the moment she’s been waiting on and deprived of for a good few months now. She will finally get the much-needed context of things that happened before she was born.
The forest holds its breath as she does, completely unprepared for an avalanche of a rant to start spilling from the bard’s lips.
“Do you know what he gave me after years of not seeing him, of loathing his very existence, of drifting and bouncing from tavern to inn to castle lamenting about all the ways he broke my damned heart?!” he explodes, all of it coming out in a slightly hiccupping rush, “A hug. Just one. And I had to go to him for it. The bastard just stood there with his arms open, expecting me to fucking forgive him after the BAREST apology and two seconds of consideration!”
A couple of birds in the vicinity actually squawk and fly off into the sunset-lit sky after his initial yelling. Ciri simply sits there on her saddled horse, slowly blinking as she tries to process everything coming out of the Jaskier’s mouth.
She is fairly certain he hasn’t stopped to breathe once. He’s got to be more inhuman than any of the Witchers.
“Then he hits me with the “I need you”, which, to be fair, I’d been expecting because he only fucking cares for me when I’m useful to him apparently, but could he have chosen any better way to say it? I’m telling you, I went weak in the knees, Cirilla, because that emotionally stunted idiot either had too much or too little idea of what to say to me. And I, the fool, fell for it, because come on, it’s Geralt of fucking Rivia, a man that I cared for once upon a time, and that little dying part of me that still cares is the one that leapt for joy and took over my stupid brain the moment I saw him. But then I find out that he needs my help literally chasing after Yennefer again, the same reason why he fucking abandoned me in the first place! So be very glad that I’m a weak-hearted idiot, because if I had a modicum of self-respect, I would have left right then, meaning Geralt wouldn’t have learned about Yen’s connection to Voleth Meir, and you’d probably be dead right now!”
For the first time in two or three minutes, Jaskier takes a deep, gasping inhale. Ciri simply stares at him, dumbfounded, and practically no closer to her original goal. What she does have is an oddly intrinsic understanding of Jaskier’s inner monologue and why he detests Geralt so much at the moment, and yet is so willing to forgive him. Which, insightful as it may be, is not all that useful at the moment.
If only they’d sit down and actually speak with each other. She’s certain that it would solve a lot of their problems.
“So…” she says, mouth forming words that don’t actually come out because her head is too busy trying to comprehend all of what’s happening, “What even started this in the first place?”
Jaskier blinks. “Oh. That. Well we were friends for, like, a good twenty years and we went gallivanting around the Continent. He killed monsters, I wrote songs about it. Good deal.”
“Uh-huh. And why did that stop?”
“Wild dragon hunt. Yennefer got too friendly for her own good. Geralt went running after his new on-again-off-again lover. Pick a reason, really.”
“And you didn’t follow him?”
“Ah. I tried. We had a screaming match on top of a mountain and he basically told me to go fuck myself because I’d done nothing but annoy him for years. And he left me with no way to get down.”
Ciri winces. “Yeah, I can… see why that would cause some conflict.” She can also see why that would absolutely shatter somebody. Especially if they were in love.
The bard nods. He falls oddly and uncharacteristically quiet, letting the sounds of crepuscular forest life fill the void of solemn silence. Perhaps he’s exhausted his vocabulary for the day.
Well. Cirilla finally got the story she needed. The background behind how these three dysfunctional adults are connected.
It’s… left her quite unsatisfied, to be honest. In fact, she wants to meddle and change the ending of it. She’s holding a lot of metaphorical power here, now that she’s pressed some form of confession out of all of them. It’s up to her how to use it.
Against her better judgement, she asks Jaskier another question. “Do you… think you could maybe forgive Geralt if he said the right things to you?”
He ponders this, and sighs.
“I want to say no for the sake of my pride. Truth is, I think I’m so far gone that my idiotic, infatuated brain has already started to forgive him. Though a proper apology would help things along and I’d appreciate it very much.”
Ciri nods. That’ll have to be where she begins. Fixing… whatever is meant to happen between the Witcher and his bard. She does still need to decide whether to put Jaskier into the “Uncle” category or the “Possible Secondary Father Figure” category. She’s already labelled him with a plethora of smaller categories, like “Uses Lots of Words”, “Emotional”, and “Has a Good Chance of Not Spilling Secrets to Geralt”, though that last one may have to be reconsidered in the future.
In the meantime, they still have another few hours of riding until they reach Kaer Morhen, and as quiet as Jaskier may be at the moment, she knows he won’t stay that way for terribly long. Besides, she might get bored without a conversational partner, now that she has one that is A) actually good at conversation, and B) someone she considers herself comfortable talking with.
“So, bard,” she starts, hoping to bring some levity back to their talk, “What other songs have you written?”
At once, Jaskier seems to re-inflate. “Ah, more like what songs haven’t I written, my dear child! Just recently, I made one about the ups and downs of prison life that the world has yet to hear. It’ll be the masterpiece the Continent needs to reconcile its problems and bring peace to the people!”
Oh. Now Cirilla can see why Geralt might snap about this one being annoying.
Still, it’s an endearing in a way, and it certainly doesn’t excuse breaking the poor man’s heart over it. Leave it up to Geralt to be that stupid and generally unaware when it comes to his travelling companions.
“Are you really that uninspired that you must sing of prison?” she teases, eyebrow raised. “I thought bards were meant to wax poetic about the nicer things in life, like the moon or their lovers. I don’t see where prison fits into that agenda.”
For a moment, she’s worried that she shouldn’t joke so lightly after he’s just shared twenty years’ worth of bitterness. Luckily for her, he seems delighted at the opportunity for banter.
“Uninspired? Me? Darling, I was spinning nothing more than nods or small smiles into heart-rending songs before you were even born, and people adored them. You should be awed by the fact that I can draw inspiration from a place so miserable as a prison and manufacture it into a powerful allegory through singing alone.”
She shrugs and smiles. “Maybe. But dainty, young girls like me don’t like to hear of such dark things…”
She won’t mention the fact that one of her favorite lullabies as a child was one about ghouls in a cemetery. Or the fact that she’s seen and experienced things far worse than prison. Gods, if doing something so blasé as spending the night in a jail was the lowest part of her life, she’d be a much happier child.
Jaskier sniffs. “Of course, I do sing of other things. There are a fair few popular love songs that were first sung by these lips.”
“But are they any good, is the question.”
“Of course they’re good,” he sputters, “Multiple caught on like wildfire around the Continent. I still find people who will come up to me on the street and ask about them.”
Obviously, Ciri’s messing with him. She knows that and she’s fairly certain that he knows it too. It’s fun to watch him scramble to defend his pride.
“Then you’re the romantic fool type of bard, I presume?”
He opens his mouth, then closes it immediately after. For a moment, she’s worried she may have actually struck a nerve with that one, but he eventually scoffs lightly and grins. “I won’t deny that one. The feeling does happen upon me every so often. But I will have you know that I’ve written many successful tales of adventure and daring battles.”
“From your time with Geralt,” she presumes, smiling when he nods defeatedly. “Honestly. As boring as he is, I doubt that anything about him was ever popular or decent.”
Jaskier gasps. “You’d say that about your own guardian? I can’t believe you were a princess once, being the feral child that you are. And, I’ll have you know that all of my best songs had him involved in some manner.”
Ciri almost takes that in stride without giving it a second thought, before realizing the comment meant that Jakier had, in fact, written multiple songs about the Witcher. The idea intrigues her more than their backstory ever did. Now she needs to know what kind of songs he’d made for Geralt. For… research purposes. In the name of meddling— erm, fixing their lives.
All in all, he’s still a romantic fool of bard, though. No matter how much he pretends he’s not. Even her horse can sense that, displaying it with an annoyed snort and flick of their mane.
Finally, she manages a comeback. “If you have so many “best songs”, how come I’ve never heard any?”
“Because…” Jaskier pauses, thinking, and suddenly looks a fair bit more amused with this conversation. “Well, let’s say that my name and presence may or may not be banned from Cintra. The court especially. But I assure you that you’ve likely heard my songs somewhere, even if I was not the one singing them.
There’s a story there, one that Cirilla desperately wants to hear. But alas, she files it away for a later time.
“I don’t know,” she hums, “There’s only so much music a girl can hear when she’s sneaking out of a castle to go play with normal children.”
The bard laughs. “I… get that, believe it or not. But, not to lose this topic: if a princess like yourself has such refined taste, then what exactly do you listen to?”
“Exactly that: things of refined and noble taste.” She grins at the mock-hurt expression he throws her way. “But when I was not being a princess, I’d hear people play plenty of things. I distinctly remember the prettiest tune of pale hair in the moonlight being snatched away by the jaws of death.”
Even now, she can remember how fantastical and lovely it sounded, floating from inside of a tavern and to where she sat playing cards with her old secret friends. Although the lyrics were unquestionably bitter and forlorn, the song had made itself at home in her young heart.
Jaskier eyes her from the side. “I now understand how you ended up so feral. Was it perchance called “My Darling Torn From Me”?”
“…Yes.”
At that, he starts laughing so hard that his horse nearly spooks. “Ah, I remember that one! I wrote it after an especially bitey griffin took a good chunk out of Geralt’s hair. You should have seen him for weeks afterwards; he cut the rest of it at his jawline so that it evened out.”
Both of Ciri’s eyebrows lift now, and not in a mischievous way. “You wrote that?”
“Well, yeah. Ask your Witcher about it if you don’t believe me. And while you’re at it, see if you can get him to cut it like that again. Quite the look on him, if I do say so myself.”
She scrunches her nose at that, not particularly wanting to think about the bard longingly staring at her guardian for an extended period of time with the same half-dreamy look in his eyes that he has now.
“Fine. I might have heard one song from you,” she huffs, much to Jaskier’s delight. “But how about “A Lycanthrope’s Dance”? Or “Her Sweet Kiss”? You can’t have made them all, bard.”
“True. But you did just list another two that came from my creative genius.”
Ciri gapes at him. There is simply no way in all of the gods.
“Let’s see…” he mutters, ticking things off on his fingers, “The lycanthrope one was based off of an actual fight, exaggerated for artistic flair, of course. And as for Her Sweet Kiss…” He winces. “Well, let’s just not talk about where that one came from. But I swear to you that I did write them both.”
“Ugh, fine. How about “Wooden Lover”?” She tries, now determined to prove Jaskier wrong.
The bard smiles again. “Darling Ciri, that one is obviously about a leshy. Come on. “She barbs you with her tendrils of passion, sedates you with the thorns of her bliss. Watch now, run now, she’s pulling you closer. Pray you can escape the trap of her kiss.”? I don’t know how much more straightforward I could make that!”
Fair point.
“It could be about an obsessive ex-lover?” she tries weakly.
Jaskier sighs and simply rolls his eyes. “If I had my lute and if my fingers worked properly, I’d play the rest of it for you and let you hear how obvious it is. Though, I will be fair in saying that perhaps part of it stemmed from resentment I held for a certain woman at the time.”
“Whatever,” Ciri sulks, arms crossed in petulance. “Stupid bards and their stupidly popular songs.”
“You really are a younger, brasher version of your father,” he laments.
She, surprisingly, doesn’t mind so much when Jaskier refers to Geralt as her father. Back at the beginning of their travels together, she despised when people would assume that they were related in any way besides happenstance. Eventually, she got used to it, and she’s now realizing that she’s actually become quite fond of the idea.
At this point? She’s alright with thinking of things that way. Makes everyone that much easier to categorize, after all. Geralt can be the father she never got, and gods know that the rest of the Witchers (save for Vesemir; he’s closer to a grandfather in this scenario) already act enough like uncles. Maybe not her uncles, since she was never really close to any of those, but she considers them to be more like the concept of uncles. Like what she’d hear from her old friends, or what she’d read about in books.
Now that she’s met them, Jaskier and Yennefer can be included in all of this too. Once she finally figures out where they fit, but that hinges almost entirely on Geralt and how stubbornly he keeps his head lodged in his arse.
Is it okay for her to cobble together an entire family for herself, made out of desperation, dreams, and wistfulness? Is it even possible?
She doesn’t care. She’s going to do it regardless of what the universe thinks.
Unfortunately, the universe must care just as little for her feelings, because little floating embers drift into the air in front of her before she can even respond to Jaskier’s comment.
Ciri wakes up in Cintra, and it’s a poisonous paradise.