All Previous Disclaimers Apply. I also do not own the lyrics for the song "For Always" - Original music by John Williams, Lyrics by Cynthia Weil. No profit is made from the use of the lyrics.
Author's Note: It's been so long since I was able to write! I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter as I'm still trying to get into the swing of things again. And I'm pretty certain it's been so long that no one will read, but it feels good to write anyway. If anyone does read, I hope you enjoy. If you could leave some feedback I would appreciate it! I do not have a beta reader so all mistakes are mine. If you see some please point them out so that I can fix them. My editing process is usually pretty brief because if I don't post quick after I write I tend to question myself too much and then nothing ever gets posted!
"Pick your ass up again, little wolf!" Lambert called merrily, laughter in his voice, as Ciri once more tasted the bright, biting cold of the snow when she fell off The Pendulum for what felt like the three-hundred thousandth time. It was frustrating as hell trying to get through it, knowing that none of the witchers would treat her as anything approaching a threat until she could run it as perfectly as them. She was determined that she would be able to do it by the time that Geralt and Yennefer were ready to take her on The Path. At first it had seemed like an unobtainable goal, because they were talking about needing to leave as soon as possible so that other dark entities, human, Elder, and beast alike, would not sense her and try to find her, therefore taking the lives of more witchers than the world could afford to lose. She'd been packed and ready to leave since the afternoon after Yennefer had erected a new medallion tree for the lonely men whose numbers had been so devastated…by her.
She couldn't help the guilt she still felt deep in her gut every time she thought of Voleth Mier. She couldn't believe that she'd been so easily tricked, that she'd let the fantasy of living in an ideal world blind her to what was actually happening. When Yennefer and Geralt had saved her and they'd come back to Kaer Mohren she'd felt the shame pierce her like a knife. So many brave men that the world did not appreciate as they should dead because of her. She'd tried to be brave in front of them, but when she'd finally been alone she'd emptied the contents of her stomach into the chamber pot and spent the night curled into a trembling ball in front of the fire. Geralt and Yennefer had taken her into their arms the next morning when they found her and insisted again and again until she started to at least believe just a little that she hadn't been at fault. And for the first time since her grandmother and Eist had been killed she'd begun to feel like things might just be okay.
It also helped that she was no longer considered the most useless inhabitant of the kaer. Lambert and Coen didn't laugh at her nearly as much when they had the bard to laugh at. And they could see how hard she was working when the bard had made himself less than useless. Nothing he had done the night of the attack had helped in any way. He hadn't been needed to escort her to the witchers. Aside from the fact that nothing had happened, the dwarves and she herself would have been more than enough to take anything on. He didn't train with them and if he had even a child would have been better in a fight. His voice, when he tried to entertain them at night, was high and tight and annoying. He sweated in a disgusting way, fear of the strong men around them, she was sure. And he behaved as if she should consider him an equal. A bard, a coward, and a drunk…equal to the lion cub of Cintra, the Child Surprise of the White Wolf? It was preposterous. She knew that if she had been treated with such familiarity around her grandmother the strong queen would have had him whipped and thrown out of the castle.
"At least I even got half way through," She smirked as she stood, wiping the snow from her mouth and spitting out a small bit of blood from the cut on her lip that had reopened with the fall, "Better than that useless bard could have ever done."
It wasn't a surprise to her when Lambert bent in half laughing. It had been one of their favorite past times in the last few days, since Geralt and Yennefer had discovered the bard's body and for some reason had decided to stay until he'd had a proper burial and they'd all had time to "properly mourn" him, as Yennefer had told her. She didn't understand what there was to mourn, but she wasn't going to argue with the further time she had to train with as many witchers around her as possible.
It did surprise her when Lambert was sent through the wall of the stable without a hand laid on him. He started cursing a streak and Ciri dipped into a defensive stance, pulling her dagger from the hidden sheath at her back, looking around frantically for whatever enemy had attacked. Her eyes didn't find the soldiers of Nilfgard she expected nor an Elder mage. Her eyes instead found Yennefer.
Subconsciously, she'd always known that Yennefer was one of the most powerful women who had ever lived. She'd known that Yennefer had lived longer than her beautiful face and shapely body made it seem and that she'd trained and honed her skills for years, in training, as a court mage, and as her own employer, tending to the needs of anyone who would pay her for them. She'd seen glimpses of Yennefer's power and her control over her chaos. She'd seen her in happiness, sadness, determination and resignation. But, she had never seen her in rage. Her purple eyes were shining and the power of her chaos was swirling around her, lifting her cloak, melting the snow around her with pure energy.
"That is enough." For all her rage Yennefer's voice was low and soft, a growl, but there wasn't a person in the courtyard who didn't hear her. Witchers twice her age were frozen in the middle of their sparring. Vesemir himself was standing with his arms crossed, a satisfied look on his face. He made no move to protect her as Yennefer stalked toward her like a large cat, all danger and coiled muscle. She was so shocked by the turn of events, seeing the woman who had become almost a mother to her moving toward her with the rage in her eyes directed at her, that her mind and body went almost numb. She came out of her defensive crouch and dropped her dagger.
"If Geralt won't do it I will." Yennefer hissed, her hand stretching toward Ciri. Ciri felt her mouth go dry and she tried to scramble back to hide in the underbelly of The Pendulum, but tripped over an uneven piece of dirt and fell flat on her back, losing her breath for a moment.
"Useless?" Yennefer said as she crouched over Ciri, no sign of sanity in her eyes, "Useless?!" It was almost a screech as she reached her hands toward Ciri and placed them on either side of her temples, almost touching, but not quite.
"You spoiled, selfish little bitch! Learn who you call useless!"
Ciri felt her body go tight and her back arch as her vision went momentarily white, then dark.
"Learn, Cirilla, of a man who may not have been royalty, but has proven himself again to be of more worth than you have ever shown."
Ciri saw it all in flashes.
She was in a tavern where Geralt was given ale watered down with piss, rancid stew, and mouldy bread, all of the other patrons glaring at him as if he was less than a shit stain on their boots, growling that animals should not be allowed to eat where people ate. She was at his side as he left yet another village, one of hundreds, thousands, she knew, and the people jeered and threw stones at him hard enough to draw blood and break his nose, after they'd told him that he was lucky to get the few copper coins they'd thrown in his face instead of the gold pieces they'd agreed to before he'd killed their monster. He was already injured, limping, blood slowly seeping from beneath his armour, but they didn't care. He was an animal to them. And, lest he make the worst of the stories real to them, he could do absolutely nothing about it. She could feel the pain in his heart that he would never say, never show on his face. It was crippling and a wonder he had never ended his own life under the weight of it.
And in the next town. There was more mistrust in the villagers' eyes, more sneers, more whispers. Everything they served him was at least a day stale, but at least it wasn't rancid. Their hate was palpable, but this town was one of the better that he'd visited. The pain was still deep, but in a town like this he could push it down and try to ignore it gnawing away at him. And there was entertainment, at least, a young man, not much older than Ciri was now, singing and playing a fairly expensive lute. To Geralt's untrained ear he was more talented than many of the other bards found in the ass end of The Continent. His fingers moved swiftly, his voice blended with the instrument, didn't fight it. There was a touch of Elder gift in the voice, if he wasn't wrong.
And he approached him after his set, which the villagers were no more appreciative of than they were of Geralt in their tavern. There was no fear in his scent, no anger, no hate. Just surprise and curiosity. He stuck like a barnacle, no matter how Geralt tried to shake him off. Insulting him, physically attacking him even. And somehow, as they travelled, his chatter became the background noise that Geralt depended on to keep his sanity. His songs were nothing like the truth, but they did get people singing along, and somehow, somehow, the next time they passed through that tavern, the people threw coins at them both. And, after only three years, whether he was travelling with Jaskier or not, there was still mistrust, and Aldermen still tried to lower his pay, but in most towns they no longer threw stones, and in some they even threw him copper bits. After ten years, he even had some people approach him to ask him for stories of his victories, offer to buy him an ale. And he was told every winter that things were similarly happening for his brethren.
"He was ever by Geralt's side, even when Geralt thought he didn't want him." Yennefer's voice whispered in her ear, " When Geralt claimed you as his Child of Surprise at your parents' betrothal dinner, he was there."
The vision of Geralt faded and suddenly Ciri was next to a noblewoman, being protected from flying debris as a woman who looked very much like her lifted into the air with power she didn't understand. Her mother, she knew. She could barely remember her, but when she looked into that face she saw her own reflected it, just as she always had when she studied Pavetta's portrait, finding herself in the curve of her mother's lips, the color of her eyes. She tore her eyes from the mother she barely remembered and looked up to see Jaskier covering the noblewoman she was crouched beside with his own body, grunting with every piece of broken furniture that struck his back, but smiling through the pain, assuring the woman again and again that he was fine and that he would protect her from all harm. Somehow, the smile on his face and the laughter in his eyes, despite the obvious pain, made her believe him.
"He also had his own commitments in his life. To his family, to his students."
A shift and she was in a field where people called Jaskier "My lord," and whispered how no other Viscount that they could remember had ever lowered himself to bring in the harvest with them.
Another shift and he was bringing food and medicinal tonics to a small village struck with a wasting fever, tending to the sick with his own hands and weeping as he sang some of the children to their deaths.
She watched as he pretended he didn't know that one of his students did not have the money for a hot meal, much less for a replacement instrument for the one that had been destroyed in a tavern brawl. Watched as he carefully picked out the best dulcimer money could buy and pretended that he'd had it stored as he had never learned to play it. Watched as he made the student believe that she was the one doing him a favor by coming to dinner with him as the other professors, mostly Valdo Marx and his cronies, did not like to dine with him.
"And when Geralt treated him as the lowest of the low, he remained ever faithful."
The vision shifted again and she watched as Geralt almost killed the man who had unfailingly stayed with him and believed in his innate power and goodness with a wish. And how Jaskier had forgiven him without a thought after it was resolved.
Another shift and she was there when Geralt broke his heart on the top of a mountain, when all he'd been trying to do was make the man think of something other than his own hurt.
"Even broken-hearted he became what those who had no defender needed him to be."
Another shift and she was standing with frightened elves as he used his ridiculous way with words and a charm that only he seemed to possess to made guards face him as the elves were quickly and silently taken to a ship that would take them to a place where they wouldn't have to worry about the Pogroms against their people. She was right next to a young child a grown human man had struck across the face for no reason splitting her lip and making her nose bleed, when Jaskier knelt to her level and whispered how everything would be alright, wiped the dried blood gently away from her face, and made her giggle as he produced a small flower and a sweet from his ridiculous hat. She felt her breath catch when he threw himself in front of a teenaged elf even as a drunken guard was preparing to cut him down. He made the guard laugh and gave him what she knew to be all of the money he had for food for himself for the guard to look the other way.
Another shift and she stood next to the mage that had taken him and broken his lute to try to make him say where Geralt would have taken Cirilla. She knew, inherently, that he knew everything. Could see his thoughts in his mind's eye where he pictured the kaer as Geralt had described it to him when he was drunk, saw the map exactly there in Jaskier's head. And heard him scream when he once again played the fool. She felt his panic at the thought of his death, the pain in his hand at the burns, the even sharper pain of knowing he would never be able to play as he once had. She felt him almost give in, and then picture Cirilla and Geralt, all of the elves the Sandpiper network had saved, and even Yennefer, and strengthen his resolve. She saw as he tried to protect Yennefer even as she was trying to protect him.
She was in the great hall, watching herself, possessed and killing those who had only ever cared for and protected her. She felt Jaskier's despair as he realized that there was nothing he could do, or could have ever done, to help. She felt the shard of monolith go through him more than he had, she realized, wishing she could fall to her knees and stop the blood that began seeping from the wound.
And she was in the dark, cold room as he lay, knowing that his death was swiftly coming, but unable to work up any more despair or concern. He was singing, nearly a whisper. She had to lean over him to hear.
"And for always...forever...
A thousand tomorrows may cross the sky.
And for always...and always...
We will go on beyond goodbye."
That song! She gasped and scrambled back away from the cot until she had pushed herself into the cold, smooth stone of the wall. She set one hand to her suddenly pounding heart and buried the other in her hair, gripping it so hard she was afraid she would tear it out. The tears came to her eyes unbidden and poured down her face before she could get control over them. How the hell did he know that song? It was one of the very few memories she had of her mother. Being rocked as a fever worked its way through her body, her mother's sweet voice singing that lullaby exactly.
"Here is what you don't remember, Cirilla." Yennefer's voice was no longer whispering to her, but had steel in it as the scene changed again.
"I…" Jaskier announced proudly to the bower where her mother, large and round with Ciri in her belly, and her ladies sat, doing their needlework, "I have written a lullaby for the baby!"
"Oh! Please do sing it for us, Dandelion!" Pavetta's voice was so young, so hopeful, "I must learn it before the baby comes, after all."
She saw, as Jaskier began to sing, the conditions that Calanthe had put on him to come back to Cintra's court after the mess Geralt had made months earlier. He had to go by a name he didn't use when he was travelling with the witcher. And if he ever so much as breathed the witcher's name or his connection to him Calanthe herself would run him through, slowly, and watch him bleed out. He'd been happy to agree and even more happy that Pavetta didn't seem to put him together with the bard who'd been singing at her betrothal feast turned wedding night. And even though he could have made ten times as much in any other court, with a queen who didn't despise him and actually allowed him to sing his most popular tunes, he came back every mid-winter after he'd finished teaching an autumns-worth of classes, and stayed from just before Ciri's birthing day until it was time to meet Geralt again in the spring.
"I close my eyes
And there in the shadows I see your light.
You come to me out of my dreams across the night."
She watched, tears streaming down her face, how he made Pavetta feel as if she had at least one friend who could not and would not be cowed by her mother. How, as she began to suspect that Duny was not the man she thought he was, she had at least one person she could confide in. She watched herself grow with Jaskier there. He had been the first she walked to before walking back to her mother. No one could calm her like he could, not even her mother or father, and she always seemed the happiest when she was on his lap, singing the lines back to him that he sang to her. She felt a sob tear out of her throat when he tucked her in the horrible night the news of the death of her parents had reached the palace. She could hear Calanthe raging through closed doors even as Jaskier held her close, singing to her songs of the White Wolf, songs that would get him killed if Calanthe heard them, even as he wept bitterly for his lost friend.
And she watched him beg as she herself, five years old, screamed for him to come back to her even as Calanthe forced him from the palace at dagger point. She looked crazed as she screamed for him to never come back, knowing that Ciri was one step closer to Geralt with her parents gone and that Jaskier believed the animal to be a good man who could protect and love the princess. She could remember now how she had cried herself sick, wanting her Dandelion with her. The devastation on his face, his desperate begging to be allowed to stay in Ciri's life, and his determination not to go even when Calanthe stabbed him deep in his thigh in her anger, broke Ciri's heart.
"Cirilla. My Ciri." She could feel now how much she'd loved him as she watched her younger self run into his arms while Eist disarmed her grandmother, "Know that I love you. I will always love you and I will always do anything in my power to be there for you. Stay here now. Be a good girl. Someday Geralt will come for you and we'll be together again. My wolf cub." His whispered words in her ear calmed her as he handed her off to Mousack and limped his way out of the palace for the last time, only turning back once to wave and give her a smile that never reached his tearful eyes.
He felt so hollow, so empty, she realized when he finally saw her again and she didn't even recognize him, even when he tried to sing to her the songs that had made her giggle as a child, to tell her the stories that had always made her look at him with wide-eyed wonder. She had made him feel that hollow and that empty with her rejection of him. Between her dismissal and Geralt's casual disregard for him it almost wasn't a wonder that he hadn't told anyone when he'd been wounded.
She was abruptly torn out of the memories and visions that Yennefer had given her and felt air rush back into her lungs, and her body go limp as the chaos released her. She could remember it all now. How much Pavetta had come to depend on him and love him, like a brother. How much she had loved him. And how empty she had been when Mousack had worked some sort of Druidic magic to make her forget. She'd tried for years to fill the hole not having him in her life had felt. Friends, tutors, governesses, but she had never again felt a connection with anyone as profound as the one she'd made with him in her early life.
"Maybe it is better that he died." Yennefer spat at her as she stood over her, her chaos finally calming, her anger turning to exhaustion, "You and Geralt broke his heart more thoroughly than the idea of his death ever could have. I'm not sure he would have survived it even if he had lived."
Yennefer stepped away and sagged with the release of the emotion that she had been keeping so tightly held as she worked her chaos in and around Ciri's mind. So fast he almost couldn't be seen, Vesemir was at her side, supporting her and walking her slowly back to the keep.
"Call Jaskier useless again and you'll deal with me as well, pup." He growled from deep in his throat, and she somehow knew instinctively that he and every other witcher in the courtyard, perhaps in the keep, had seen and heard everything that Yennefer had shown her.
There was nothing she could do, she realized. Nothing at all she could do now that he was already dead and gone. Alone. He had been all alone. She curled onto her side, wrapped her arms around her middle and brought her knees up to her chest. The tears were warm and bitter as she lay in the snow.
As she wept she wondered if she would ever be able to stop. Wondered if she even deserved to be able to stop. And then wept all the harder when she realized that the answer would forever and always be…no.
