Chapter Text
She’s not exactly sure what to expect when she arrives at Kaer Morhen. The keep looks like it always does; simultaneously breathtaking and battered, a hulking, battle-scarred sentry surrounded by riotous summer green. But that’s the outside; the inside will likely look the same, she knows – a homey sort of crumbling – but with Cirilla there, now….
Ciri, she reminds herself. Jaskier had told her the princess hates being called by her full name.
Despite her trepidation, though, she enters the gate all the same.
Vesemir, Coën, and to her surprise, Geralt, are all gathered in the entryway when she marches inside. Vesemir is the first to speak, as usual.
“Lady Yennefer,” he says, complete with a small bow, and she can’t help the way she snorts.
“How many years have we known each other, Vesemir? I don’t call you Witcher anymore. Do me the same favor and drop the title.”
Vesemir laughs, though she catches the way his eyes flicker to Geralt. “You haven’t changed. I’m glad.”
She hums and tips her head in acknowledgement. “Coën,” she greets the Griffin as well. He nods politely at her, and then she’s turning to Geralt.
“Geralt.” She takes a moment to look at him, even knowing that the likelihood of visible change is slim. “I assume we’ll be having that talk, then. I didn’t expect you to be here.”
He nods. “I won’t be for too long,” he says, and it’s sincere, though it sounds a little sad. “The Path will call eventually.”
She smiles at that. “Yes, it will. Now, where’s this child surprise of yours?”
Geralt answers, “Sleeping,” but halfway through the word there’s a shriek, and they all turn to the stairs.
There’s a sleep-ruffled, blonde girl barreling toward them. Toward Yennefer, specifically.
“Yennefer!”
She opens her arms just in time for Ciri to crash into them. Despite her confusion, she squeezes back when Ciri’s arms tighten around her waist.
“I didn’t think you knew me,” she murmurs, and when she looks questioningly at Geralt, he shrugs.
“You’re in my dreams,” Ciri says, as if that’s entirely normal. “You and Geralt.”
“Oh.” Yennefer doesn’t know what her face does, at that moment, but from Geralt’s expression it’s complicated. She takes a breath, then smiles, tugging Ciri away from the hug but keeping her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “Let me look at you, then. I’ve not had the blessing of dreams to acquaint me.”
Though she’s not entirely certain there’s any context in which prophetic dreams are a
blessing.
She doesn’t say that, though.
Eventually, she takes Ciri up to her room – already prepared, of course. Vesemir is nothing if not efficient, and always hospitable, despite his grumpy looks.
“So will you teach me?” Ciri asks, as soon as they’re alone, and Yennefer wonders if there’s a reason for that. She pushes it aside.
“I will try,” she says. “Tell me about your magic.”
Ciri frowns. “I…don’t know much,” she admits, beginning to fidget with her hems.
Yennefer is unsure, but reaches out to grasp Ciri’s hands in hers all the same. It clearly comforts the girl, if the relieved breath she takes is any indication; Yennfer’s chest aches faintly.
“Let’s start at the beginning then, hm?”
Yennefer doesn’t know how to bring up the talk she and Geralt need to have. Unlike Jaskier, she’s not blessed with emotional timing.
So instead of trying to find the right moment, she just…picks one. It’s after dinner one night, Ciri already long gone to bed, and so she just follows Geralt up to his room instead of going to hers. Geralt allows her in, and follows when she perches at the end of his bed, pulling up a chair to sit in front of her.
“So, Jaskier said that you’ve learned how to use your words.” She keeps her tone cool, but she’s fighting a smirk, and she can see the recognition in Geralt’s eyes when he finally looks at her face.
He gives a self-deprecating chuckle, hands fidgeting slightly in his lap. “I’m trying,” he says.
It’s…a refreshing response, really. Geralt is usually a man of black-and-white, yes-or-no. An in-between answer – a declaration of attempt, instead of a surety – it’s a sure sign of the growth Jaskier had promised her Geralt had gone through.
She notices the silver studs in his ears for the first time, too, and thinks about the other things Jaskier had told her about last winter.
“That’s an improvement,” she says, as neutral as she’s able, and Geralt shivers just slightly, more of a minor twitch.
“Thank you.” He pauses. “I…. Don’t really know where to start, though, if I’m entirely honest.”
She considers for a moment, crossing her legs and leaning forward on them. She sees the way his eyes go distant for a split second as her scent wafts toward him, and fights a smile.
“Then I’ll start,” she offers. “I didn’t know, when I was looking into the wish, who Stregobor was to you.”
Geralt swallows visibly. “I never told you.”
“No, you didn’t,” she agrees, and this time it’s her turn to sound self-deprecating. “But I am generally brighter than the average drowner, Geralt. I could have put two and two together. I didn’t mean – nor want – to rub that trauma in your face like that. It wasn’t my intention, but my intention matters little knowing now how much that must have hurt you. And I am sorry for it.”
There’s a pause, a moment where Geralt is clearly processing that, and then suddenly he blurts out, “I was afraid.”
She raises a brow, a silent request to go on, and Geralt takes a sharp, shaky breath before a slower, deeper one.
“When you said you were looking into the wish. It….” His eyes flicker away from her, and then back. “I was afraid that if you looked too deeply, you’d want to unravel it.”
It feels as if something squeezes her chest, almost stealing her breath for a moment. “Oh? And if I had?”
Geralt swallows again, audible this time, and looks up to the ceiling. “...I didn’t want to lose you, Yen. Don’t. ”
The squeezing worsens. “Geralt,” she says, and she keeps her voice soft, gentle – the kind of voice she reserves for frightened children and animals, usually. “Look at me.”
Love nearly slips out at the end, and she thinks maybe she’s been spending too much time with Jaskier again.
It takes a moment for Geralt to do as she asked, hands clenched on his legs as he clearly struggles – afraid or unsure, she can’t know without reading his mind, and she won’t, not right now. Eventually, though, he does manage to look, and she can see his jumping pulse in his throat, the way his pupils are just slightly too wide, how his jaw is clenched.
Afraid, then.
“I had no intention of unraveling the wish,” she says, still in that same tone. “I have no intention of doing it now.” Even if I could, she thinks, even for the sake of the others, I wouldn’t. She doesn’t dare tell him that, though – the depth of the power that wish contains, or its consequences. The fact that she would have to admit her selfishness, too, stops her.
“Oh.” Geralt clearly chokes on the word, breath stuttering. “I – “
“Hush for a moment.” Her tone sharpens slightly, but only just, and Geralt’s mouth shuts with a click. A smile flickers over her face before she can completely control it. “I have no desire nor plans to unravel the wish that binds us together, Geralt,” she repeats, hoping he understands how much she means it. “And more than that, even if I did, it is not a wish that makes me return to you. Nor you to me, I am sure.”
Geralt’s lashes flutter minutely, and his lip almost trembles. “Yen,” he murmurs, and that name, the one he gave to her, it makes her heart skip. She smiles, and she knows it’s warm and rare, a smile that rarely graces her face anymore.
“Come here, you buffoon,” she says, opening her arms.
Geralt falls to his knees from his chair, and she just reaches out to him, hands landing on his nape and his jaw. “I am sorry,” she repeats. “I never meant to make you feel as if I was not a certainty in your life.”
“ I’m sorry, ” Geralt blurts out, voice tinged with desperation. “I never meant any of it. Not a single word. And it’s not what I meant, it doesn’t matter what I meant, I said it all the same, and I want to make it up to you. Please.”
She laughs, almost more of a huff of breath, stroking over his face. “Geralt, darling,” she says, almost cooing, and she has definitely spent too much time with Jaskier, “In nearly a decade, I’ve heard you sincerely say the words I’m sorry to a small orphan and your horse. Yet here you are, on your knees as if I would demand supplication from you, apologizing as if you may never have another chance.”
Geralt presses his nose to her wrist, and she can feel how he’s trembling finely. His eyes squeeze shut. “I don’t,” he mumbles. “You deserve better.”
“Maybe I do,” she says, though she doesn’t agree, “but what I do and don’t deserve has very little to do with it. I’ve chosen you, and Jaskier has told me all of the gory details of the last year, love. You’ve suffered enough. Come here.”
She pulls him forward, letting him slot between her legs, head resting on her thigh. She strokes over his ear, pets through his hair, and feels the way he slumps into her, tension flowing away.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, clearly exhausted, and the squeezing in her chest returns.
“I know.” She hums, near-silent, and scratches lightly at his scalp. “And you’re forgiven.”
She spends most mornings left to her own devices after breakfast, while Ciri trains – or sleeps in, as the case may be.
The girl has a lot of nightmares. They’ve improved, according to Coën, but she still suffers. The Witchers allow her her late mornings and impromptu naps because of them, and Yennefer finds herself – shocked, really. Though she doesn’t know why, once she thinks about it a little more deeply; harsh though they may be, the Witchers have always cared fiercely for their own.
She wonders if the terrors are just from the trauma of Cintra’s fall and everything that followed, or if they’re connected to the magic, if they’re prophecies themselves. She knows that prophets are often driven mad by what they see, but Ciri is just a child, not the prophets they speak of in temples and brothels; part of her almost hopes that it’s just the trauma. She also knows that that hope is likely in vain.
Both those hopes and knowledge both linger at the back of her mind, every time she sees the bags under Ciri’s eyes, each morning the girl misses the communal breakfast. And all of it, the nightmares and the visions and everything else – it worries her.
She already thinks of Ciri as a daughter. The child she never got to have.
It aches, somewhere in her gut, how strong that feeling is. It frightens her, makes her feel crazy, like she’s losing her carefully-crafted control.
But then Ciri smiles at her after managing the most basic of elementary magic, something most mages could do in their sleep, but progress all the same – quicker than Yennefer’s progress ever was – and she feels that squeezing, trembling thing bloom into something terrifyingly like
love.
The bat falcon, familiar as her own palm, arrives on a particularly cold morning.
The summer is coming to an end, the weather trending toward the chill of fall. Vesemir has been preparing to make the last large supply trip before winter, helped by Coën, planning to go down to Ard Carraigh mid-season before the snows begin, and they’ve been discussing what Yennefer’s plans are regarding Ciri for the winter.
Of course, the arrival of Triss’ message turns all of their tentative planning on its head.
Yennefer –
There’s trouble in Sodden. The rumors of a Nilfgaardian attack aren’t just rumors anymore, no matter what the Northern Kingdoms and their treaty negotiations in Cintra would have anyone believe.
There is only one way to pass through to the North over the Yaruga, at least with an army: Kite Hill in lower Sodden. Vilgefortz has gathered as many of us as he could convince to head them off, and Foltest has promised the Temerian forces, but we need more.
We need you, Yennefer. Please. It’s time to come back.
Tissaia needs you. I need you, too.
– Triss
She goes to trace over the looping, blood-red ink of Triss’ signature, and finds her hands are shaking slightly. If she strains her ears, she can hear Coën laughing, Ciri’s voice just behind. Her chest feels somehow simultaneously full and barrenly empty.
“I have to go.”
She holds Triss’ letter out to Vesemir, feeling irrationally like a child asking a parent for permission. The elder Witcher takes it from her, though, and reads it quickly; his expression when he finishes is grim.
“Of course,” he says. “I’ll tell Ciri and Coën.”
She nearly sags in relief, and gives in to the urge to hug the old man. If he’s shocked by it, he doesn’t show it, and just hugs her back, exactly as strong and steady as she expects. It soothes something small and terrified in her, something she doesn’t want to examine too closely right now.
“Be careful,” he murmurs into her hair. “You have a family here.”
“I know,” she murmurs back. “I will.”
When she has the strength to pull away, he lets her, expression gone back to that same careful neutral it always is – but this time she swears she can see the worry behind his amber eyes. She thinks about how he sends his…his pups, Geralt and Lambert and Eskel and even Jaskier, out to the Path each year, and never knows if they’ll return.
Her chest aches. She’s becoming adjusted to the feeling.
“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” she promises.
The portal opens with a quiet whoosh, Vesemir’s medallion jangling softly as it jumps, and then she’s in Sodden.