i.
Ciri is thirteen and she is running, running from someone through hills and woods and forests, only half-aware that this also means she is running towards someone as well, because, well, such is the nature of running. She has cuts on her clothes and bruises on her body, but she has to run, cannot stop now, even though she feels as if her body would be a fabric, tearing itself in two, or rather, a material not yet sewn properly. Unfinished. Incomplete.
Perhaps that is exactly why she is running.
And because Geralt is well past thirteen, he stops in the forest, waiting, practising patience, only for Ciri to run into him, into his arms and heart – conjucting as the spheres did eons ago.
First conjuction.
Then chaos.
ii.
Geralt is almost ninety, but doesn't feel too wise as he tries to grasp Ciri's hands with his bloodied hands to lead her to Roach. She is not in shock, but pale with disappointment – paler than the face of the moon reflecting back on the snow before them.
„But it was true love" she whispers as they step out of the damned gates, leaving Nivellen with his grief and anguish. Geralt's eyes are like great pits of nothingness, all black and void. He smells of death. It should frighten her. He should frighten her, but something else does, instead. He knows that. There are tears in her voice, but her eyes are dry as she repeats herself. „True love. Wasn't it, Geralt?"
He doesn't answer. Instead, helps her on the saddle, the movement easy and natural – she, above, divine-dainty, clinging to his shoulders. Still a child who is looking for reasons behind the cruelty of fate and men.
His hands leave red prints on her pearlwhite dress. Will it always be like this? He wants to spit the thought out, but it's already taken a form in his mind, stubborn and stale. They are setting out for an even colder place now, where warmth and wistfulness are great luxuries of weakness.
She should cry while she can, he thinks.
Instead, Ciri squares her shoulders and falls silent for a long time.
iii.
Ciri is fourteen and as the pendulum hits her, again and again and again, she falls, and falls and falls.
It feels like longer fall each time.
But every time she does, she gets back up again.
iv.
Geralt is nearing ninety but looks not past thirty-five when Triss sits down across her in the great hall of Kaer Morhen. Looks him dead in the eyes, posture straight and intentions clear and says:
„You cannot keep avoiding it" her voice is tactful.
Geralt, who thinks Triss is referring to Yennefer and grief and loss again, sets down his cup and thinks he'd rather swallow his own sword whole than have this conversation.
„Triss - " he begins, his mouth curling unpleasantly upwards, showing the white of his sharpest tooth. But he orders his voice to be as soft and mild as he can muster. „Let it go. Please."
Her gaze is ironlike.
„She is dangerous, Geralt. There is something in her that is… ancient. And I'm not sure you are aware how dire the situation is"
Suddenly, the hall feels stuffy, all-too-narrow. There is an alarm going off in his head.
„What" he hears himself say, but it feels as if a stranger would talk instead. It's hard to move his mouth. He understands now. The dreams, the screams – the terror in Triss' eyes when he returned.
He knows what Triss will say before she opens her mouth. The serene sorrow in her eyes say it all.
„Cirilla is a danger. To herself and others. Geralt – " Triss stops because there must be something feral in his eyes, something that she cannot stand to see after all of that happened.
„What are you suggesting?" he cannot keep the ice out of his voice anymore.
The sorceress bites her lips. Then looks him dead in the eye.
„Sometimes loving another person means you must save them from themselves." she stands up, and Geralt knows she is leaving, leaving for a good while now. „Whatever the price."
v.
A riddle. Geralt of Rivia is ninety years old, but looks just a step after thirty. Ciri asks about it, this trick, curious and smiling. Asks if what she has read and heard is true. And if so, which part of it is true, which is false.
It is nearing spring, the smell of rebirth is strong in the air. They are outside. Geralt has just finished showing her the basics of handling a sword with an injured arm.
„How long does it take? The trial?"
„Which one?"
„There are more than one?"
Yes, he says and doesn't add – and there were even more for me, Cirilla, until I lost the color of my mother's eyes and hair. Until I've bled dry and screamed for mercy and received none.
But this is not a talk fit for the lazy morning sun. Not right for Ciri, all-limbs and all-smiles as she asks her questions, as if she could and would learn it, just as easily as she had learned how to properly hold a sword even when blindfolded. She asks. He replies. All his answers remain short and unadorned, but she understands. The trials are over now, and survival is a thing of hope.
„Do you ever feel old though?" she asks finally and looks up as she throws down the weights he used for mimicking an injury on her arm. The sun adorns her from behind so that she practically glows, all ashen white and naive bravery. „Not physically, but, you know. Inside."
She hooks her arm in his as they walk back, something very few people would wish or dare to do. He wants to look into her spring-green eyes and say something more this time, something that will remain, but Ciri spots Lambert on the stairs above them, mocking or teasing, so the wave of her hand turns into something much more vulgar very fast, and Geralt finds himself unable to speak, reluctant to break her joyful attention and energy, so he stares until his eyes hurt, feeling bitter and feeling something much larger than himself, the walls of Kaer Morhen, or all the vast lands of the Continents could handle.
vi.
„Mine" says Vereena in the white garden, already dying, dead, gone – but still looking at Nivellen, all twisted, bloody and raw. Aching. Monstruous.
vii.
„Why do you want to blame yourself for everything?"
He is standing at the threshold of her room – he just saved her from certain death, but gratitude isn't what Ciri feels. She feels robbed.
This is a fight, but like no other that Geralt has ever had. There are silverwhite strands of hair all over the stairs, where Ciri went to cut her hair as a strange act of rebellion; where the wind has scattered the strands of to lines of great poetries could be written. Well. Blessed be the meek and the patient. Or something. He feels like strangling somebody.
The walls of her room are cold, but not as cold as her eyes.
„I want it to be my fault so I can fix it." she says, eyes wet with unshed tears and untold grief. Her eyes are crystalclear without the curtain of her hair – he can basically see what she is feeling. It's a dangerous sight. „Please. I want to be like you, Geralt. I meant it."
Very softly, very slowly, Geralt untangles the knife from her hands and says:
„You don't."
viii.
Distance lessens the nightmares, but it doesn't dissolve them completely. On days when the trainings don't exhaust her, or Jaskier isn't with them to sing a lullaby at the table, or she cannot fall asleep even when reading Brother Adalbert's Bestiary, she wraps her blanket around her and tiptoes to Geralt's room.
These are rare occasions. This is the third.
He opens the door before she could knock or slip in – strange eyes all alert and sharp. He must have heard her from the end of the corridor.
„Cirilla" he says, voice low and even. There is an unsaid „we've talked about this" between them, hanging heavy like a dead man on a noose.
„Please" there is nothing more to say. Another request. And Geralt, just like all those previous nights, all those "very last, truly last" times, as if commanded, opens his door to her. This is something he can still grant.
His room is very modest, scarce, even. His swords lie in the far left corner, as if guarding the space near the hole that is supposed to be the window. Next to the bed, an old, rickety nightstand cradles a solitary candle, and all kinds of wonders that Ciri can mostly name now: a bottle of dwarven spirits, some blackened greenish blood that looks it came from a ghoul, and roughly cut-up pieces of mushroom.
„You are making black blood."
„Correct" there is a shadow of a smile on his face. Ciri knows he is proud. „You know the proportions too?"
„1-4-2."
„Alright. Let's see how you'd make it."
Ciri's shocked, but she throws the blanket on the bed, uncaring how the walls emit the unmitigated winds of every kind of cold. Geralt hands her a mortar and a pestle without asking, and then sits on the bed, statue-like. He doesn't even look at her, but starts to mend what she can guess is his glove.
It's like a ceremony, this process of work, instictual and orderly. Soothing in its circularity. Him, darning cloth and her, mixing ingredients. The world outside so dynamic, so restless – and the world inside so peaceful. She snorts.
„What's so funny?" Geralt asks, without looking up from his glove. Ciri has noticed before how every part of his hands are covered in smaller-bigger patches of scars reflecting, of course, his whole body, equally afflicted by the trials of time. Even if she'd turn blind, Ciri would know Geralt by his hand, the great gash on his right palm or the small wound on his left thumb. She'd know him by his thrice-broken ringfingers and his sinewy-strong wrists. That is something no one else could mimic, the scars. And though she has not seen them all, she is certain she would know Geralt anywhere, anytime – by touch alone. Forever? she asked in the forest. Forever, he promised. You. Me. Infinity.
„This" she says, spreading her arms. The ingredients are mixed, but they will need to sit for six hours before the potion itself becomes digestible, and even then, only to witchers. „You mending your gloves against monsters and me mixing potions. Against monsters, mind you. In another life, I'd be sewing your shirts against the sun and you might be stirring soup for dinner."
Something flashes over his pale face, a shadow of something unrecognizable. An echo of a feeling. It could be the play of the candlelight.
„You" he says carefully, grinning into the words. „wouldn't do anything, your highness. You would be served."
She raises her chin up, but she, too, has to smile.
„Indeed."
But when she looks back at him, his face is serious again, all sharp lines.
„Let me see that potion."
She sits down next to him, on the bed that is almost never used, examines her work, smells it, stirs it, nods when he is done.
„Here" after placing the mortar back to the nightstand, he places his glove, and his hands onto her own ones. The cloth is warm and thick and Ciri hears her heart in her ears, deafening, darkening the rest of the room. His hands cover hers in its entirety – and though her hands are not as scarred, the pads of her fingers are becoming harder and harder each day. No more delicate hands to hold soft silk with. Goodbye, sweet princess. Goodnight. She is glad, in a way.
But it's not about that.
She almost became a witcher today. Or so she thinks. Geralt thinks something completely different. And though he seemed so full of fury he looked like he'd never speak again, his fury was never directed to, but for her sake. It's a nice contradiction.
She could say it to him now. You are a great, but nice contradiction.
But instead, she hides her face onto his shoulder, onto the rough linen smelling of dust, cutting wind and him. She puts her head so close as if to hide onto his eversolid, allfundamental form, to merge together so he would see what is unintelligible in her, all things and everything. But there are limits to everything, even to him and her, yes, even, even to - . So she closes her eyes and whispers, muffled;
„'m sorry."
As if it was prewritten, he wraps his arms around her, all-enveloping tot he point of suffocation that Ciri translates into security and says,
„I know."
ix.
„There is a price to everything" Yennefer says in the garden, kneeling next to her, trying to comb her short hair out of her face as she heaves from the aftermath of the spell. The world: a vertigo. „You know this."
Ciri is sixteen and there is blood dripping everywhere: down her face, chin, dress, the blackened ground. She spits once as a practicality, twice for luck.
„Let me try again."
Yennefer doesn't even shake her head, just tilts it as a practised refusal.
„I can do it."
„Don't have to."
„I want to."
„No. Magic isn't about dare. It's about aim."
„What's the difference?" asks Ciri, rubbing her eyes to get the blood out. Now, the world is red. It's a familiar sensation.
Yennefer thinks about it a bit, smiling at her as she does.
„Intention."
ix.
Geralt is past ninety but does not quite feel it in his soul.
„You know" Jaskier says, as if they had been talking for a long time now, when in reality, he just appeared from the back. He points at the dark-light pair of Ciri and Yennefer, one of them taller than the other, their scissoring movement resembling willows near a lake. Even from such distance, Geralt can tell Ciri is laughing, her head thrown back, her outline dizzy from the joy she casts.
Autumn is nearing, the solemn light tells it all.
Jaskier stays silent. A rarity. A flare for dramatics. Geralt sighs.
„No. I don't know. Do tell."
The bard scoops closer, conspicuously conspiratory.
„She is in love."
Geralt grunts. Yennefer is in love, that is true. But that is no secret.
„That's why she cut her hair. Also. The frequent silences. Haven't you noticed? Geralt –"
He stands, abruptly. His world: a vertigo.
x.
„Mine" says Geralt in the middle of nowhere, after a great betrayal, looking at Yennefer, but not quite seeing her, not seeing anyone really, but thinking of Ciri, all raw and aching and monstruous.
