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i.
It was a full month before the Casterlys returned to Cintra, and Ciri practically killed herself from boredom six separate times in the intervening months — it got bad enough, to the point that even Grandmother noticed, remarking over breakfast, "Oh thank fuck, Joanna Casterly and her brood are back, you go bother them now," while Ciri nearly vibrated out of her seat in excitement.
She managed to get ahold of herself by the time Ella Casterly strolled past the castle gates, where Ciri was waiting for her, and they exchanged mockingly low curtsies while Eist watched them with a bemused smile.
"How was your trip?" she asked blandly.
Ella looped her arm through Ciri's. "Fine," she replied with equal blandness. "Mother found me a new music instructor," she added with a grimace.
"This is because she hates you," Ciri told her. Ella answered with a philosophical shrug.
They were quiet for a time, walking past the training yards, where soldiers sparred and grappled. Lieutenants Colter and Zaid were practicing with live steel — Ciri watched them because she liked Zaid's footwork, light and clever. Ella watched them too, but that was because Zaid wasn't wearing a shirt, and Ella was a pervert.
"I think my music instructor is the one who wrote the song," Ella said abruptly, when they were rounding the laundry, steam and clean lemony scents wafting from the vents. "You know, the one about the witcher."
Witchers were a perilous topic in Cintra — Grandmother got a pinched look about her mouth every time she heard the word, like she was contemplating war, or possibly some sort of mass execution. So naturally, Ciri was obsessed with them.
"Oh?" she asked with deliberate ease. "That's interesting. I think there was a witcher at my parents' wedding," she added lightly. Oneupmanship was the basis of hers and Ella's friendship.
"Really?" Ella said, sounding appropriately impressed. Ciri preened. "Maybe it was the one he wrote the song about," she added, grinning. And then, "Do you want to meet him?"
Sometimes, Ella did things like this — shockingly generous, like she could see everything Ciri wanted, could scoop it out of her head and then lay it at her feet. Ciri stared at her, blinked.
Ella frowned, glanced away. "Look, if you don't want to—"
"I do," Ciri said in a rush. "I do, very much. Take me to him," in that tone that sometimes came out of her mouth when she wasn't thinking, that made her sound worryingly like Grandmother.
But Ella only rolled her eyes. "Sure, sure. Kitchens first, though. I want pie."
ii.
He was younger than she expected. His hair was long, dark and wavy, past the collar of his doublet, and he wore it like a woman, loose about his face, falling into his eyes. Bent over a lute, picking out erratic notes, she could see no more of his face, despite the sunlight flooding into the terrace garden through its balconies and half-open ceiling.
"Master Julian?" Ella called out the moment they stepped out into the garden. "Are we disturbing you?"
He looked up at once, an easy smile on his face. "Lady Ella," he murmured. "Not at all. Come in, please." His eyes — blue, she noted, though darker than her own — came to rest on her. He didn't speak at all, and the way he watched her was almost birdlike, curious and old, like he wasn't just looking at her, but right through her, like he was seeing her through a thousand mirrors, through all the things she had been and would be. "Hello, princess," he said to her.
She could feel Ella still beside her in surprise. Her gaze flickered between them. "You know the princess?" she demanded.
"No, no." He was still watching Ciri, with that curiously gentle smile. "But I knew her mother. I'm sure you get this a lot, but you have her eyes, you know."
Ciri knew — but she didn't mind hearing it again. And she liked that there were still people who remembered the color of her mother's eyes. Sometimes it felt like Calanthe had cut a Pavetta-shaped hole into her heart, like she had forgotten her dead daughter entirely, like it was up to Ciri now, to do all the remembering, or her mother would just... fade away, like a ghost.
"Thank you," she said. she walked forward, and Ella came along too, picking their way though the flowering pots and the vine-hung trellises. The air was thick with the scent of flowers in bloom, of dark soil and growing things. "How did you know her?"
"I was at their wedding."
Ciri gaped at him, forgetting to play it cool. "That was you," she breathed, shocked.
"That was me," he confirmed.
"Did you meet the witcher too?" Ella asked, because Ciri had been shocked into silence, and Ella was in fact, a very, very good friend.
"I did indeed. I could tell you the story, if you promised to tell no one else."
iii.
"How was your day?" Calanthe asked Ciri over dinner.
She shrugged - at which Aunt Brigit frowned, but didn't say anything. You didn't lecture about breeding and table manners with Grandmother around; she'd laugh you out of the house. "Okay," she told Calanthe. "I met Ella's new music instructor."
Calanthe snorted. "Poor man."
"Ella likes him," Ciri said with a shrug. "But I'm going to steal him away."
"I thought you two were friends," Eist teased, grinning, and Ciri promptly stuck her nose up in the air, and said, "It's complicated," because it was fun to say, and it made her feel grown-up, but mostly because if she didn't steal Julian away, she would never hear the stories again.
iv.
But in the end she didn't have to sacrifice her friendship with Ella — Lady Casterly and Grandmother decided the girls could share music lessons, and so thrice a week, Ciri would be accompanied by her guard to the Casterlys' sprawling mansion just outside the castle walls, and she would pilgrimage six storeys up to the terrace garden, where Master-Julian-"Call-Me-Jaskier" taught them how to play skipping songs and dirty sailors' ditties instead of arpeggios, and told them secret stories about monster-hunting, and incredibly dangerous balls, and a witcher whose name he never spoke.
v.
"Do you think they were in love?" Ella asks Ciri, ensconced under the blanket fort they've made in her rooms, candlelight filtering in a muted gold under the covers. Their right hands are grasped together, and Ciri counts one-two-three-four, before trying to pin Ella's thumb under hers. They struggle, furious, and Ella wins when she tickles Ciri tog et the upper hand.
"Cheater!" Ciri whisper-shouts.
"Am not!" Ella snaps at her. Wiggles her hand. "Again?"
"If you're not going to cheat, maybe," Ciri relents, mulish. "You think the witcher was in love with... who? Yennefer?"
Ella counts it out, and their thumbs circle each other, wary like wolves. "No," she murmurs. "I meant Jaskier and the witcher."
Ciri's eyes flick upwards, startled, and Ella crows, "HA!" winning again, but Ciri is barely paying attention.
"Jaskier? And the witcher?"
"You know, like Lord Harrington and his 'special friend'."
Ciri blinks at her.
"You don't know," Ella realizes, after a beat. "You don't know?"
Ciri scowls. "If you're only going to make fun—"
"I'm not! I'm just— I'm surprised! They're, you know— Together. Like that."
"Like... Grandmother and Eist?" Ciri asks doubtfully.
"Like that."
"But the witcher can't be, you know— 'like that'. Remember Renfri? And he told us, Jaskier told us he was— he and Yennefer were— their relationship was—"
"Obscenely biological?" Ella supplies darkly, and Ciri giggles. This is why she likes Ella — she's clever, but never mean.
"Yes," she says, eyes glittering in the dark. "That."
"I don't think it's one way or the other. That's what Tia Maria says, anyway." Tia Maria is seventeen, and beautiful, and married to Ella's older brother. She is the wisest person they know. "But I think it's Jaskier who was, you know, in love with the witcher. That's why he, like, left. Don't you think?"
Ciri thinks about it. About loving someone so much, and never being loved back. She has no concept of it — the only people she loves are Grandmother and Eist and Ella, and they all love her back. She tries to imagine them not— not doing that— her hand tightens helplessly around Ella's. "Oh," she manages. "That's— awful."
"It's tragic," Ella corrects her.
"There's a difference?" Ciri demands, irritated.
Ella sighs, and then yawns hugely, setting Ciri off too. "You have no romance in your soul," she says, curling down into a pillow. Ciri sprawls out next to her, staring up at the blue-white canopy of sheets.
"Not really, no," Ciri agrees. Ella's hand is a little sweaty against her palm, but she doesn't feel like letting go. "Thank the gods."
Interlude I: Calanthe and Eist
Calanthe sighs, hands on her hips, staring down at Ella and Ciri, curled up around each other like mismatched parentheses. Sunlight slants over their collapsed fort, and on the pillows, honey-gold hair tangles against platinum locks.
"We need to get that girl a boyfriend," she mutters darkly to her husband.
"I think that horse left the barn a while ago, dear," Eist says, patting her ass gently. "Come on, let's get you some breakfast."
"I'm going to kill Casterly," she bitches fitfully, storming down to the dining hall.
"Certainly, darling. Right after breakfast."
It's her kingdom, goddammit, she'll murder who she bloody wants, bloody Eist isn't going to make her bloody stop—
vi.
For two whole years, Jaskier-"Call-me-Master-Julian-in-front-of-your-bloody-parents!" refuses to teach them his best, most famous song. 'Your royal grandmother will have me hung my balls in the town square, you lunatics!' he hisses at them, but Ciri has understood that Jaskier shows his love by way of rampant disrespect, and so she smiles sweetly up at him.
"Please, Master Julian? We won't tell anyone!" Mocking insincerity is how Ciri shows her love. She's very charming.
"Bloody right you won't tell anyone," he mutters angrily, tuning his lute with remarkable violence. "Because I'm not going to teach you."
But they must look especially pathetic that morning or something, because he takes one good look at Ella and Ciri's hangdog expressions and says, "Okay look, I wrote another song about— about him" — and he doesn't even have to say whom — "maybe you'd like to—
"Yes," they chorus at once.
vii.
"Jaskier was definitely in love with the witcher," Ciri says to Ella, after class.
"Yup."
viii.
"How are your music classes going, sweetheart?" Eist asks her, after court that day, an unbearably long day where Grandmother opened up the castle doors to the common public, arbitrating disputes and answering to pleas. There's been a drought in the east, and one of guilds has been dodging their taxes, and Grandmother's face is stuck in her war-or-possibly-mass-execution scowl.
She shrugs. "Ella and I are learning a new song."
"How nice," Eist murmurs, and actually means it.
"It's called Her Sweet Kiss."
"Oh?"
"Ella's very good at it."
Grandmother chokes on her wine.
"I just bet she is, kid," Eist says, calmly rubbing his wife's back.
ix.
It's the fall after she turns eleven, when the dreams start. She's running through a dark forest, leaves and branches rubbing against her calves, her mouth full of bitterness, and cold air slicing likes knives at her face. Something is after her, something wet and growling and full of rage— she runs faster, and the thing grows closer— "Where are you?" she screams in the dream, every time, her eyes straining to see someone who never appears. "Where are you?"
She is grateful, when she wakes up, because she always wakes up before she can die.
x.
"Hello, princess," Jaskier says. His lute is nowhere to be seen, and he has abandoned his usual chair by the winter roses to lean by one of the terrace garden's many balconies. Many times now, Ciri and Ella have tried to make sense of the numbers — if they've counted the years right, he should be only a decade younger than Grandmother, but even now, bathed in harsh, wintry sunlight, he looks barely older than his two pupils.
Ciri's gaze moves uncertainly between Jaskier and his empty chair. "Are we— Isn't there class, today?"
"He's leaving us," Ella says mutinously, from a dark, shaded corner on the terrace, where they raise the night-blooming plants. An enormous, half-embroidered cloak lays spread on her lap, needle flashing as she works on it. A dragon, Ciri can see. A golden dragon. The one story Jaskier refuses to talk about.
"Ella..." Jaskier says, like they've talked about this before, and Ella makes an angry slashing motion through the air, like, fine, whatever.
Sometimes Ciri wonders how she and Ella ever became friends — they're so incredibly different. Ella is delicate, and lovely, her nails are always clean, and she smells like pretty things, roses and vanilla and honey. Ciri is still in the pants she wears when she plays urchin in the streets. There's a bug-bite on her thigh that itches like anything, and a streak of soot on her cheek she's only been smudging darker all afternoon. Eist says it's because they balance each other out — which is such a load of horseshit, Ciri thinks. Ella only gets meaner when Ciri's around, Ciri only gets more stupidly reckless. They're terrible for each other.
"You're leaving," she repeats. Heat crawls up her throat. "You're leaving?"
"There's a war coming, Ciri—"
"We're going to win—"
"No," Jaskier cuts in, gentle but firm.
"Yes," she snaps, "Eist's gone to get us ships from Skelligar—"
"Nilfgaard has not lost a battle yet—"
"They haven't fought Cintra yet!"
Jaskier pauses, and thens miles. His elbows rest on the balcony railing — everything about him is warm and easy and relaxed, like he isn't— like he isn't abandoning them, like he doesn't even care—
"What?" she demands, when he does nothing but— but smile at her, so like that first time she saw him, like a gaze from across a thousand mirrors. "What?!"
"Ferocious," he says, admiring. "Geralt would've loved you." His words are quiet, but the air is cold and still. His voice carries perfectly through the garden.
The flash of Ella's needle stops at once. "Geralt?" she repeats.
Jaskier's eyes close, and he sighs. "There are... things I haven't told you two. Your grandmother the queen, gods keep her safe, would have had me killed if you'd mentioned any knowledge of the incident even in passing so I— Well. What's done is done."
"His name was Geralt?" Ella persists.
"His name was Geralt. Is, in fact. He is still alive, last I heard."
"He was your... friend."
Jaskier laughs, hollow. "Not quite, no." He turns to Ciri. "Geralt always had a terrible sense of duty—he'll come to Cintra, to keep watch over you, now that war knocks at your door."
"To keep watch over- me? I don't understand." She looks to Ella, desperate in her confusion. "I don't understand," she tells Jaskier. "Why— Why would he come for me?"
"Your are bound to him, by the Law of Surprise," Jaskier tells her, baldly, the truth unvarnished. He continues to speak, before she has recovered from his brutal honesty - "When he comes, go with him. He'll keep you safe. Geralt of Rivia — will you remember the name?"
"You're still leaving— I don't understand why you're— Stay," she says, a shake entering her voice. Ella tosses the cloak aside, and comes to her side, grabbing her hand tightly. "Just stay!"
"I— I can't," Jaskier says, his expression crumpling too. "He's going to come, I need to leave before he— You're young, you don't understand, I have to keep myself away from— Or I won't be able to stay away, I won't—" He cuts himself off, mid-ramble, shaking his head as if to clear it, and then strides forward, sinks to his knees in front of Ciri. It's startling as it always is, to realize how much taller he is than her. He takes her face between his hands, and his eyes are terrible and intent. "Repeat his name after me. Geralt of Rivia."
"Geralt of Rivia."
"Remember these things. White hair, yellow eyes, a double-sword scabbard on his back. A horse named Roach. He is taller than Eist, and broader too. He wears black, and a silver pendant of a wolf around his neck. Will you remember?"
"Yellow eyes," Ciri repeats, wavering. Jaskier's face blurs in her vision, and she blinks hard, wetness sliding down her nose. Jaskier's hands are cool on her cheeks. "Tall," she says dutifully, "broad. Roach. Wolf pendant."
"Good," he says. "Good girl."
"Stay," she whispers, and he taps their foreheads together gently. "Please stay."
xi.
"You could've made him stay," Ella says. Ciri doesn't know how long it's been, siting here in the cold garden.
She looks at her friend. "I tried," she replies.
"You're the princess," Ella spits. "You didn't try hard enough."
Her gut twists. Ciri doesn't know how to tell Ella, that when it comes to the things that really matter, princesshood matters not at all. Doesn't know if Ella will believe her.
xii.
"Your highness," Ella says, dropping into a perfectly correct curtsey when they next see each other.
Ciri grits her teeth, and looks away.
xiii.
The dreams grow worse, like the music, or maybe Ella, had been the last crumbling wall in her defenses, and now they're here for her, and hungry, beasts that want to suck her down, devour her, marrow and bone, eat her whole — she wakes up screaming every morning. Outside, the war rages hotter.
Interlude: Calanthe and Ella
"I need you to be brave now," the Queen says to Ella —
of course she says it to Ella, who else would do this, who else would sacrifice so much, who else would risk her life so willingly for Ciri? Someone who loved her, and Calanthe might hate it, but the girl loves Ciri, and that love is the shield that will keep her girl safe
- "because who are you?"
"The Lion Cub of Cintra," Ella replies, the witcher's eyes hard and curious on her back, with a perfect little quaver in her voice.
It is the last thing Ella will say to Calanthe- "Can I say goodbye to my friends?"
But Calanthe hears what she means — "Can I say goodbye to Ciri?" So of course Calanthe allows it. Her love is the vanguard that will keep Ciri safe - Calanthe wants it to burn as hot for as long as it can survive.
Queen of many, grandmother of one, Calanthe thinks, fear thrumming like wildfire in her breast. No child of hers will die again.
xiv.
"Your highness," Ella says, and her curtsey is deliberately perfect.
Stop it, Ciri wants to say. Don't do this. The other boys in the square snatch hungry glances at Ella — with her perfect green gown and honey-golden hair, she is prettier than any girl they'll ever talk to. But Ella's eyes are only for Ciri, and Ciri's eyes are only for her.
Her fists curl helplessly against the cool, dark cobblestones of the street. She nods once, gracious, regal. But still Ella looks at her — there is something in her eyes, bleak and empty, like she wants to reach out too, across the yawning abyss between them, the three feet of space between them, hold her hand again, hold her again—
But then her gaze slips down, and the moment is lost. She leaves, in a rustle of velvet skirts, honey and vanilla and nothing Ciri can— will ever have. Her mouth tastes bitter, like a nightmare.
xv.
When her neck prickles, mere seconds later, and she looks sharply to her left — there is a man, watching her, Ciri thinks, and for a brief, electric second their gazes meet. But then he's turning around, walking away, and Ciri stares at the empty spot he's left behind.
Her heart is hammering in her chest, and she has no idea why.
xvi.
In three days, they reach the castle gates. The Casterlys' mansion burnt down yesterday. Ella is dead. Ella is dead. Ella is—
"Find Geralt of Rivia," Grandmother whispers to her, when Ciri kneels by her deathbed.
"No," Ciri says, sick to her bones—
"He is-"
"No," she begs—
"—your destiny," and Ciri wants it to stop, wants it all to stop, wants people she loves to stop leaving her, wants people she loves to stop dying, wants to scream until her throat runs blood —
— so she does.
xvii.
She has run this path so many times.
SO many times, but not like this, not with the air sweet in her lungs, and the long grasses gentle beneath her feet, with the whole world curving around her, cool and welcoming, tenderly holding her safe, and when she throws herself into his arms — tall, she remembers, and broader than Eist, a warm silver pendant pressed to her cheek — something slots into place just beneath her ribs, some hollowness finally filled out and at peace.
"People linked by destiny will always find each other," he murmurs above her, and she can feel the steady rumble of his voice all through his chest.
She pulls away — he's handsome, she supposes. If you went for that sort of thing. "Sure," she says. "If you say so. Look, we need to find someone."
"What?"
"Whom," she corrects patiently. "My music teacher."
Geralt of Rivia looks at her strangely. "I see."
She rolls her eyes. "I'm sure you don't."
"No, I do. I just, I have to ask — and this is completely unrelated, but were you dropped on your head a lot as a child?"
Ciri gasps, outraged, and punches him directly in the gut — which doesn't go very well, because "Ouch!" she yelps, pulling her aching fist back to her chest. She stares in patent disbelief at his stomach. "What are you made of, rock?!"
Geralt, infuriatingly, smirks.
"Gods, I cannot believe Jaskier fell in love with you," she snaps, and then blinks when she realizes what she just said.
Geralt's brow furrows in confusion. "You... know Jaskier?"
"I told you, we have to find my music teacher."
"Your music teacher, who was Jaskier?!"
Ciri frowns. "The baby-head-dropping bit — you had a lot of experience with that, did you?"
Geralt sighs and scrubs his face.
This is going to be a beautiful relationship, Ciri can already tell.
xviii.
It takes Geralt three whole days to mention Jaskier by name again. Ciri knows, she's been counting. They're heading north — always north, as far north as they can go — and Ciri is developing bloody saddle sores on her bum. Roach isn't exactly built to carry two people, but Geralt won't let her take a horse of her own, because he is a stupid, stupid man.
"I don't know what— what Jaskier told you about, uh, our— our—"
"Look," Ciri says, turning a splotchy, unattractive pink, "I don't really want to know."
xix.
She takes pity on him over supper, dragging her bread through the last dregs of stew. "He never even spoke your name," she says abruptly.
"What?" he asks, but he knows what Ciri's talking about — his hand is white around the handle of his spoon. Terrible dice player, this one would make.
"He never said your name. Until the day he left, I didn't even know you were named Geralt. But he told me to watch for you, when Nilfgaard started drawing closer to Cintra. He told me to— to go with you, if you came." She looks down at her bowl. "He said you had a very keen sense of duty. He said— he was so sure you'd come."
"I did."
Ciri looks up, startled.
"Ciri, I did. I came, of course I came."
She shakes her head — no, he didn't. No. She lived through that nightmare, and all of it all alone, and he never— he never—
"Ciri," he says, urgent now, and his hand covers hers, enormous and reassuring. "I saw you in the courtyard. You were in pants, and that cap. You were playing with your friends, a girl curtseyed to you, 'Your highness,' she said—"
"Ella," Ciri says, choked. Her vision swims and blurs. "Her name is— her name was Ella. You... came?"
"I came."
xx.
"What did he tell you, then?" Geralt asks her, much later that night. They've taken one room, and Geralt has made his pallet on the floor, Ciri notices, between the bed and the door. 'He,' she notices Geralt say too — here, again, he too doesn't say whom, doesn't need to.
She wriggles to the edge of the mattress so she can see Geralt, with his enormously muscled arm tucked under his head, looking tired but peaceful.
"He told us stories about you. And about Oxenfurt, and Lettenhove, and his sisters, and court — but mostly. Mostly about you."
"Tell me one of his stories."
Ciri makes a face. "Your were there for all of it, weren't you? You'll get bored."
Geralt chuckles softly. "Jaskier... saw things differently," he says. Jaskier saw me differently, Ciri hears. "Tell me," he says. Tell me about him, Ciri hears.
So she skips the one about the djinn, and the one about the selkie too, all the good elf stories and the truly horrifying thing with the shtriga — she starts with the first day they met, rambles about Jaskier idly, tells him the other stories instead, about teaching bratty, noblemen's sons in Oxenfurt, the time he trained a monkey when he was twelve, the girl he fell in love with at a tourney in Redania. When she pauses, sure that Geralt by now has been bored to tears, he says, "Go on," so soft, like he can't get enough, like he'll never have enough, and her heart aches for him. She goes on.
xxi.
Ciri wakes up before him, the next morning, stumbles over his pallet and out the door, grey morning light snaking its weary fingers into the boarding house. On the tavern floor, there are few customers, mostly hungover. A table in the corner is fully occupied, and the barmaids move quickly between the crowd there, and the kitchens. Ciri watches them curiously, the riotous color of their clothes, the faceprint on the women, the nimble, quick-fingered men. Merry laughter rings them; there are cases stacked beside the largest man — instrument cases.
One is open; there is a minstrel sitting a little off to the side, the youngest of the party. She's rubbing a smudge off the fretboard, testing odd notes, tuning the strings. Ciri wanders over to her, watches with poorly-hidden longing. When she looks up at Ciri, she smiles. "Any requests?" she asks, and her voice is lower than Ciri expected, earthy somehow.
Ciri shakes her head. Bites her lip.
The minstrel cocks her head to the side - abruptly, Ciri is reminded of Jaskier, birdlike, strangely fragile. "I'm Ana. And you're...?"
"Ciri."
A smile, that curls the edges of her pink, soft mouth. "Do you play, Ciri?"
"Yes," Ciri breathes out, and takes the lute reverently, when Ana hands it over. She plucks the first few chords, hums the opening lightly. Ana catches her eye, wiggles on her seat, a strangely box-like rectangle, and sets up an easy percussion to Ciri's strumming. They run through the first stanza, just humming gently, as more and more instruments come out of their boxes.
When she sings the opening lines, she is accompanied by nearly a full set, Ana's rasp setting off her tenor. On a storm breaking on the horizon, her voice breaks too - she has never done this without Ella, without Jaskier; it feels wrong, it feels like betrayal, and the hurt sinks into her voice, trembles through, tell me love, tell me love, how it that just?
But the crescendo builds, ratchets higher, carries her through bridge and chorus and verse, and the words spill out of her throat like blood from a wound, like rubies in the water — she'll destroy, Ciri sings, with her sweet kiss, the story is this.
Her heart is pounding when she finishes, and the troupe erupts into cheering and laughter, ruffling her hair and thumping her back. "Beautiful," Ana says, and Ciri surrenders the lute to her. "But not, I think, your song."
"No," but it not Ciri who replies. She whirls out of her seat, and— "That would be mine."
"Jaskier!" Ciri exclaims, and then he's entering the tavern proper, and catching Ciri when she leaps into his arms with a laughing, "OOF!"
He puts her down gently, hands on her shoulders. "I heard my song all the way from down the road! What the hell are you doing here, kid?" he asks her, smiling.
"We've been traveling north," Ciri tells him, before hugging him again, impetuous, and he is warm and solid and so alive.
"We?" Jaskier asks above her, and — oh shit.
"Jaskier," comes the greeting from a- a shadow really, by the stairs, and it's amazing, isn't it, how someone with Geralt's bulk can make himself so totally invisible, so easily fade into the background. She wonders how much he's heard.
"Geralt," Ciri says carefully. "I want to be quite clear — this can't possibly in any way be blamed on me."
But Geralt doesn't seem to be listening to her — or, for that matter, in any way aware that she is alive. Figures, Ciri thinks, and goes back to Ana.
xxii.
"Kid," Geralt says, when Ana has wandered off to get herself a pint. "You can't wander off like that, alright?"
Ciri scowls at him. "What am I, your prisoner?"
But he just looks weary, bone-tired still. "Just... tell me where you're going? I woke up, and you were gone; it was..." He grimaces slightly, and Ciri knows it then, has spent enough time with Calanthe to know he will never say he was afraid.
"Okay. Next time," she agrees, and that's all it takes. He squeezes her shoulder, quirks a half-smile. "That was you, singing, earlier?"
She nods.
"It was good. What was it?"
Guiltily, her eyes flash to Jaskier, who's sat at the bar, leisurely chatting with Ana. He's got her palm open, and spread on his own palm, tracing her palmlines while looking into her eyes, hooded and dark — Ciri flushes in embarrassment, and looks down. Chatting UP, Ana, apparently. A year and a half, Jaskier spent in Cintra, and that whole time he was practically ascetic. It doesn't slip her notice that the only thing that has changed is, now, Geralt is around to watch Jaskier reel Ana around his pinky.
"It was..." Geralt pauses. "It was one of his songs."
Ciri's hands twist nervously in her lap. This is not her secret to tell, she's sure.
"It was... He wrote it about me?"
Ciri tightens her jaw, afraid she'll say something she shouldn't.
"Geralt," comes a hard, angry voice. "Stop interrogating the kid, you jackass."
"I wasn't aware that's what I was doing," Geralt says tightly. Ciri inches away from them.
"Shocking, really," Jaskier drawls back, the snarl in his voice barely masked. "Because you're usually so self-aware."
Ciri tiptoes miserably out of her chair, and back to the bar. Ana pats her hand awkwardly, and orders them both bacon and eggs, biscuits and mashed potatoes drenched in gravy, a jugful of sweet, watered-down plum wine. "Together, were they?" she asks Ciri, who sighs.
"I don't know. I don't know if they knew."
"Ah," Ana replies. Ana is clearly very wise.
xxiii.
It's lucky thing she's in the stables when she spots Jaskier, trying to hitch a ride with a farmer headed east. "You're leaving," she says, incredulous.
"Ah, right. Ciri, look—"
"You're not leaving."
"I'm... not?"
"Geralt lent me his dagger. And if that isn't enough— You want to take your chances with Geralt's sword?"
Jaskier makes a really sad face. Sighs, all heartbroken, like something out of a play, or a really bad romance novel. "I'm sure Geralt would be more than happy to use his sword on me."
Ciri gapes at him. "Oh my GOD, Jaskier!" she shrieks. "I don't want to KNOW these things!"
"What did I- I just said Geralt would be happy to use his sword on— OH MY GOD, CIRI, I DIDN'T MEAN IT LIKE-"
"LA LA LA!" Ciri shrills pointedly, fingers stuffed in her ears. "I CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING!"
"You really shouldn't say these things in front of children," the farmer adds.
"Oh, shove a cock in it," Jaskier mutters irritably, which is when, yes, footsteps, a door swinging open, and then there's Geralt, snarling, "WHAT is that godawful racket for, NOW?!"
"HE said YOU wanted to use your SWORD on him!" Ciri cries immediately.
"Snitch," Jaskier hisses at his former pupil like a bitchy thirteen-year-old.
Geralt blinks. Turns to Jaskier. Blinks some more. There's a bizarre pink flush creeping up his neck. "Well," he says, sort of strangled, and then clears his throat.
"Wait," Jaskier says slowly. "You do want to use your sword on me?" He sounds disgustingly hopeful. Ciri wants to punch craters into the moon.
"Oh my," says the farmer.
"I know, right?" she mutters. Finally, someone who understands.
xxiv.
When Ciri returns to the bar, Ana puts the lute in her hand. "So, whaddaya wanna learn, kid?"
"Well," Ciri tells her, "my bodyguard is defiling my music teacher in my bed, so. Something about existential nihilism would be good."
"I got something for existential nihilism, girlie, but it ain't a song. And you're too young for whiskey."
"Natch," Ciri grumbles.
"Which is why..." Ana signals to the barmaid, who places a cool, tiny clay tumbler in front of Ciri. "Ice-cold honey milk. Go on."
Ciri sniffs at it dubiously. And then pauses when—
"Oh GOD, YES- Yes, FUCK-" comes a muffled voice from upstairs. Something thumps against a wall above them. And then again. And again. A shower of plaster dust shakes loose from the ceiling, and into Ciri's bacon.
They both stare at the ruined bacon in a moment of horrified solidarity, and then Ciri turns to Ana, desperate. "Are you sure I'm not old enough for—"
Ana knock back her beer. "Yup," she says grimly. There's a foam mustache on her upper lip. "'Fraid so."
Ciri sighs, and chugs her honey-milk in one, which is, in fact, astonishingly good. Ana pats her back. "Attagirl."
The ceiling moans at them, and Ana pokes sadly at the bacon. "Ain't love grand."
Epilogue: Jaskier and Geralt
They lie athwart the bed, panting, drenched in sweat. Geralt's head is on Jaskier's stomach, and there are fingers being lazily carded through his hair. He at the opposite wall, feeling a little dazed.
"So that was..."
Geralt grunts in agreement.
"We really do need to talk, you know."
"Can I just fucking bask here, for two whole minutes."
"Ooooooh, bitchy," Jaskier jibes, but stays obligingly quiet for a while.
"Did you leave Cintra because of me?" Geralt asks eventually, and the hand in his hair stills.
"Yes," Jaskier admits.
"Why?"
"I knew you would come for Ciri, and I thought— I felt it would be best to— to put a little space between..." He sighed. "I don't have a lot of control where you're concerned, as you might have noticed. And you didn't want me around, so."
"That's not true," Geralt said immediately. "I always- I always want you."
Geralt can feel the eyebrow being arched at him - he doesn't have to look up. "Not what you said the last time we chatted."
"I was— I'm bad at being... left behind. I don't- My mother-"
"I know, Geralt," Jaskier cuts in gently.
"She hurt me, and she left, and I wanted to hurt someone, and I couldn't hurt her so—"
They're quiet again, for a while.
"You know," Jaskier says, "if this is an apology, it's not going so well for you."
"It's not," Geralt says, too-sharp, and he can feel the way Jaskier stiffens underneath him, the firm, pale lines of chest goes still and tense. He has to look up now, so he levers himself up on a forearm. "What I did was-" He shuts his eyes, and bile rises quick and heavy in his throat. "That doesn't get walked back. That doesn't get forgiven. I know I don't deserve it - I'm not going to- to insult you by asking for it."
"I see," Jaskier says, too even. "So this was... what, exactly?"
"I told you. I told you, I always want you." And he can no longer look Jaskier in the eye. His courage fails him; he looks away. "I didn't know you... It's not just you; i have barely any control when it comes to you too."
Jaskier's heartbeat flutters at that, like Geralt has surprised him. He looks up, drags his gaze all up that beautiful body, pale and long and finely made, marked with his hands and his mouth, stretched out and bare and all for him, and hunger beats fiercely in his belly again.
"I thought you were in love with her." Jaskier doesn't say her name either; doesn't want her name in this place, this place that is only theirs.
"I thought that too. But when you love someone, you miss them, don't you? You miss them when they're gone."
"Yes," Jaskier manages to whisper. His throat feels tight, choked on all the words he's too afraid to say.
"I didn't miss her," Geralt whispers, confessional.
"Oh."
"I missed you."
"Geralt..."
"I missed you," he insists. "And I'm- fucking god, I'm sorry, I'm so goddamn sorry, I-" He chokes, jaw clicking shut harshly, but the words have left him already, and he's hollow inside, bleeding where the apology has clawed out of his gullet.
"It's okay," Jaskier says, so achingly soft, and Geralt has to shut his eyes. "It's o-"
"It's not," Geralt snarls. "Don't- Don't minimize what I- I don't deserve it-"
"Sure, maybe, but guess what?" There are hands touching Geralt's face, and he opens his eyes into an ocean-blue gaze, into irises the color of an endless summer sky, sunlight blazing through bottle glass on a brand new dawn. "I get to forgive you if I want. I get to keep you if I want."
His throat is scorched dry, a desert without rain. "I..." he manages, before trailing off again.
Jaskier is starting to smile a little.
"I don't understand what's happening here."
"No," Jaskier says fondly. He kisses Geralt's brow, and his temple. The gossamer soft skin at the corner of his eye, the line of his jaw. "You wouldn't."
"Jaskier?"
"You get to keep me too, that's what happens."
Geralt blinks. Swallows heavily. His right hand finds Jaskier's left and they twist together, tangle and grasp, desperate. "I get to keep you too," he repeats, hoarse, hungry, yearning, and relief saturates his voice, soaks his tongue, milk and honey like the rivers of Heaven; his cup runneth over. He tugs them close, slots their mouths together. His kiss is sweet.