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Ciri wakes up at the crack of dawn to train. The days when she’d need to be poked and prodded to get out of bed are a distant memory, a remembrance from a time when there were good nights, safe and warm nights that left her not wanting to leave her bed for sword practice.
These days, she’s religious about it, Yennefer suspects out of a mixture of a need to improve herself enough to actually feel safe and because she only attempts to sleep out of necessity, dreading the dreams every night. She doesn’t stop her, instead carefully watching her movements, trying not to let herself ache too much at the sight of the ghost of the man that taught her.
When Ciri is practicing magic, it’s easy to be proud of her, of her strength, of her stubbornness—when she’s training, it’s hard to blink enough times to chase away the ghost of her teacher, who should be standing in front of her to lead by example, or hang back to correct her stance.
She remembers Geralt shuffling out of bed when the sun wasn’t even up. She would open one eye, curse him under her breath and turn around. He’d kiss her head and proceed to wake their daughter to drag her into his maddening practices.
Ciri slips away from her own bed just as silently as Geralt used to. Yennefer usually pretends to be asleep, though she can feel Ciri’s eyes on her for the few long moments that she spends standing next to her, watching, before finally going.
Those early hours in the morning, sometimes Yennefer can still feel a phantom kiss on her head.
When she has a nightmare, Yennefer tends to thrash in her bed, sometimes to scream. It’s embarrassing and inconvenient, but her body seems to want to throw everything it has in its attempts at an escape, and she can’t do much to oppose it.
Ciri, on the other hand, is silent. Her nightmares are quiet, they sneak up on her and seem to want to choke her. She lies very still, as if frozen, as if afraid to be seen, and only the furrow in her brows and the hard lines on her face betray what she’s going through.
Geralt used to be the same way, quietly drowning next to her and only letting her know because they would lie so close together that it was impossible to miss the tension in his muscles. The first time it happened, Yennefer remembers lying still, unsure of what she was seeing, at a loss as to how to intervene anyway. She pretended to be asleep when Geralt woke up on his own, taking an infinite time to regain his breath and eventually shifting towards her, gently gathering her in his arms and burying his face in her hair.
Sometimes, she and Ciri share a bed as well. It has happened out of necessity, because inns only have so many rooms to go around and nights outside can be cold, but a few times Yennefer has purposefully asked for a room for one, having noticed Ciri’s agitated sleep and wanting to offer her comfort where she could, without forcing her to ask.
Yennefer wakes her from nightmares the same way she would Geralt, with a gentle and rhythmic touch as she waits for her to come to without having to be yanked back to reality. Sometimes, Ciri looks immediately relieved to see her, just as soon as she puts her in focus. There have been times, though, when there was a moment of disappointment, her face falling just as she realized. Yennefer tries not to take it too personally.
Ciri always curls up next to her anyway, pressing herself against Yennefer and holding onto her like a lifeline. Yennefer remembers seeing her do this with Geralt, from even before a time when the kid trusted her enough to seek comfort from her as well. She remembers doing it herself, those times when a nightmare left her enough of a wreck to forget about pride and sink into Geralt’s chest instead.
As she holds Ciri now, she has the distinct feeling that she will never have enough arms to truly protect her.
She can recognize the self-deprecating look. She has never liked it on Geralt to begin with, but on the face of such a young girl it’s downright unsettling.
“No,” Yennefer says, curtly, returning her full attention to the food that she is trying not to let the fire burn to dust.
“You—you don’t even know what I was going to say!” Ciri protests, clumsy like Yennefer just made her trip and fall on her face. It would be funny, generally speaking, but at the moment she is only focused on not letting her daughter launch herself into a conversation that is only going to upset them both.
“Yet I know I’m not going to like it.”
If she didn’t know any better, she might think that the seconds of silence that follow mean that she has won the exchange.
“I just think that we should consider—” Ciri eventually says, slowly. “That it might be best to consider going our separate ways.”
Yennefer snorts. “As I said—no.”
“You can’t just—”
“Yes, I can.”
Ciri looks and sounds rather enraged.
Good, at least she doesn’t look so beaten, so convinced of her own worthlessness to come up with such an idiotic proposal to begin with.
“This is my life,” Ciri says, tightly. “And I think that I should be doing it on my own.”
“You would be killed in two days,” Yennefer counters, derisively. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, as she knows that the girl is tough and resourceful, but the path of truthfulness is not always the best way to win an argument.
“So be it then!”
The words seem to echo in the silence, and Yennefer slowly turns to her, her expression no doubt reflecting the cold fury in her chest. “Don’t you ever let me hear you say anything like that again.”
Ciri falters a little under her glare. “Sorry,” she says, a little too quickly to be properly thought out. “But, listen—I’m dangerous. Everyone around me dies. I thought that Geralt might—” She chokes, and Yennefer’s head gets lighter for a few moments at the mention of him. “Everyone around me dies,” she repeats then, her voice quivering. “Please, just leave before you are next.”
“Life is unfair for everybody,” Yennefer says, evenly. “You are not cursed, or a danger, you just live in this shitty world and you have to play by its shitty rules.” She takes a breath, her stomach churning as she takes notice of the tears in Ciri’s eyes. “As for him, witchers die young. I for one think that swapping chasing monsters down sewers for the cause of your protection is a pretty good deal. Now, mages on the other hand—” She throws a lopsided smile her way. “—we have the nasty habit of living long lives and making ourselves a nuisance. I won’t be going anywhere.”
“I don’t think it was a good deal,” Ciri says, shakily. She has managed to keep the tears at bay for the time being, but she can see them filling her eyes to the brink. “And I think you are wrong, I think it doesn’t matter who you are, you will die if you stay with me.”
“I can assure you that, wherever he is, he has no regrets.” She isn’t one for spirituality and afterlives, but most days the thought of him just being gone rests too heavy on her shoulders, and she would never inflict it on Ciri. “As for me, I just will have to prove you wrong then, won’t I?”
She looks like a kicked puppy. So much hurt should never be allowed to exist on the face of a child.
“Come here now,” she says, making a vague gesture with her hand. “It’s chilly and the food is almost ready.”
Ciri readily scrambles on her feet only to curl up at her side, her arms wrapped around her middle so tightly that it’s uncomfortable. Yennefer doesn’t protest.
Yennefer hates the damned horse. She has no idea why literally every horse that Geralt has ever had since she’s known him has been such a temperamental asshole, if he seeks them out or if they find him, but she has learned how to live with the fact that she is never going to like any of them.
This latest beast has become even more insufferable since her owner died, and though Yennefer can’t exactly blame her she has had enough on her plate to have no patience to spare for a damned horse.
Luckily enough, Ciri seemed happy to take care of Roach herself. Yennefer didn’t question it, mostly relieved to not have to avoid bites and kicks and trusting that Roach probably likes her daughter better than her at least.
She is still surprised to find Ciri standing in front of her, petting Roach’s nose absentmindedly as she chatters away about something in a soft enough voice that Yennefer can’t pick up on the words from her position.
She can’t help wondering if it’s an habit, and before she has even pondered the question she swallows around a whole mouthful of grief, because Geralt used to talk more to that horse than to both of them combined, he always adored each and every one of his damned temperamental rides, and maybe Ciri just figured that Roach would miss the talks, that she would feel lonely now that no one was coming to gossip with her anymore.
Yennefer walks away with her eyes burning and crushing sense of emptiness in her chest.
Ciri speaks in hums sometimes.
Before, it was amusing: she remembers joking about it, lightly chastising her about picking up bad habits and glancing at Geralt, who would roll his eyes with a fondness mixed to pride.
Now—some days, it makes her sad. Ciri hums in lieu of an answer, and just as the smile is forming on Yennefer’s lips, amusement and fondness resurging at the reminder that she’s theirs, the grief will hit her in the stomach, remind her that these little reflections of him are all that’s left of her lover.
Other days, it makes her angry. Irritation rises up her throat, burning like acid when she tries to swallow back a sharp remark, an order to respond properly or not bother at all, a snappy request for a clarification—it wouldn’t be fair, to take it out on the child.
But gods, sometimes she’s so much like him that it’s hard not to.
+1.
Ciri’s grief comes covered in spikes, and Yennefer can’t help wondering if she’s responsible for this bad habit worming its way under the girl’s skin.
She was always closed off, always holding her dead close to her chest even when she woke up shaking from a nightmare and she’d accept refuge in their arms, but—Yennefer sees so much anger in her, sees the way that she flares up at the mention or reminder of Geralt, the way that she won’t talk about it, will pretend to be too strong, too independent, too ready to go out in the world by herself to be broken up over the loss of yet another parent—
Yennefer tried, she truly did. After the first adjustment period, cut as short as she could manage, she tried to nudge Ciri into talking, to offer a shoulder, even if that came at the cost of acknowledging what happened herself. She doesn’t think she can call herself a great mother, but she will always try to be a decent one.
Still, it didn’t work. She was met with resistance, Ciri closing off before her eyes, growing angrier the more Yennefer tried to push. They ended up screaming at each other. It was not the last time, and each fight gives her the unpleasant sensation to be looking at a distorted mirror, at a little girl that should have been better and instead might grow up to be just as bitter as she is.
She wants better for her daughter, but she can’t deny her her right to be pissed off, after everything. And it’s hard not to get pissed off right back, because she’s trying and she wasn’t supposed to be doing this alone anyway.
At the end of the day, she can only hope that the way that they curl up tightly around each other after they’re done screaming means that Ciri too understands that they share that anger that they keep throwing at each other, that Yennefer loves her more than anything and that she never meant for her to learn this from her—she wishes she could teach her how to do grief right, she really does.
As she never figured it out herself, she supposes the best thing that she can do is trying to smooth the spikes.