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Geralt is exhausted, but he’s spent the better part of the day clearing out a nest of harpies, just to find an entire nesting ground for harpies nearby. It’s nearing dusk now, his arms are ready to fall off of his body with the weight of the day’s efforts, and all he wants is to collapse in a bed. Lucky him, he left Ciri and Jaskier in an inn, and they’re just on the other side of these woods. Not a far walk, even with Geralt as tired as he is.
As he’s ducking under branches, though, making his way through the forest, trying to find the main path again, he finds something he didn’t see on the way out. There’s an abandoned house.
Places with life in them smell and feel different than abandoned places; there’s just a different energy to them, almost like an aura of must. He can tell, even from the distance he’s at, that the little hut is unoccupied and has been for some time, even though the doors and windows look shut and locked. By the looks of it, the place hasn’t been ransacked or searched at any point.
Despite how worn out he is, Geralt hesitates. A house like this probably would have a few valuables inside, and with nobody left to protect them — it’s basically just free stuff, either for them to keep or sell for coin. Opportunities like this are few and far between, and it’s not like Geralt actually needs to sleep. If the house takes any longer than a few minutes to quickly search, he could just meditate for an hour or so, and he’d still be back at the inn before midnight. Jaskier will worry, but he worries regardless. Ciri’s there to distract and calm him, anyways.
Geralt decides, after just a beat of thought longer, to investigate the house. He breaks into a jog, as if to make up for the time, and shoulders open the door without a second thought for the latch. There’s nobody inside the building, not even an animal. He can hear a crackling, maybe—
And it’s immediately clear what that crackling is, once he’s broken his way inside and found a small fire against one wall. With a frown, he draws his silver sword. He takes a deep breath, lets his Witcher senses expand, and still, there’s nobody nearby. Whoever started this fire is gone, unless it’s enchanted, or an illusion, Geralt reasons.
He kneels beside the fire, checking the pot looped haphazardly onto the sticky spit above. The pot insides are gurgling; when he pries the lid off, he finds small bones inside. The smell is instantly recognizable as human.
Geralt gets to his feet and takes two quick, large steps backwards from the fire. The abandoned house, he realizes abruptly, is not an abandoned house, but a grave hag’s lair: he’s backed into a corner stacked high with rotting bones, still in their clothes, blue doublets and a red dress and a golden tunic, children’s and adult’s clothes alike. Some of them have the marrow already slurped out, tossed aside. The rest are lined up, waiting to be cooked and consumed.
There’s nothing left of the dead people’s belongings, though Geralt, now that he searches for it, can scent the long-gone smells of living people dying, the grotesque, bitter smells of the grave hag, and something— else. Something that reminds him of Jaskier, slightly, and Ciri even moreso, something fresh and wildflower-natural. It’s a fearful and musty place, still, and Geralt has no idea when the grave hag was last even here. The fire is still burning, but the monster’s already mostly dead; the scent throws him off.
Geralt follows the scent out the door on an impulse, silver still drawn. His exhaustion takes the second fiddle to his instincts, which are screaming at him to continue down the path to its end.
Even before Ciri— and it’s almost impossible to remember a time before Ciri, but there was one, nonetheless— Geralt has always had a soft spot for children. They’re innocent, even the nasty ones, victims at the whims of the world around them, largely unable to protect themselves. Vulnerable and wholesome little creatures with so many sour eyes turned to taking advantage of them. Geralt feels for these children, in danger of the world that was so unkind to him; he feels for their concerned fathers and desperate mothers; he feels for botchlings, for fuck’s sake. Children can be such tragedies in a world like theirs.
It makes Geralt want to do what he can to protect children, to go out of his way to help them, and that instinct has only gotten stronger since Ciri came to him. She’s only been at Geralt’s side for— actually, nearly two years, now, but Geralt sees her as a daughter, and he knows she sees him as a father. She calls him Father, and calls Jaskier the same; Yennefer is Mother, Vesemir and Lambert and Eskel are Uncles, and Geralt has a family. It’s maddeningly wonderful and he wants to protect it with his last and dying breath.
If anything happened to his family, and to Ciri especially, anything, he feels like he would go completely out of his mind. When he can, he tries to spare others that madness. He tries to help children. It’s all he can do.
Geralt is an excellent tracker, and, half-lost in thought, he finds himself in a graveyard before he expected to end up anywhere. The village’s cemetery is empty of living humans, it seems, for a moment, until Geralt sees something move at the far southwest corner.
Silver ahead, Geralt advances on the corner. The closer he gets, he can see the grave hag, can scent it on the air, along with the strongest that wildflower scent has been since the house, all along this trail he’s tracked. It’s coupled with a small and sluggish heartbeat. Geralt knows that sound: it’s an infant’s heartbeat, and not a healthy one.
The grave hag screams at Geralt. She’s gaunt and clearly hungry, but she tries to sink her teeth into Geralt, her tongue lashing out at the speed of light, trying to blind him. He snaps his silver sword up just fast enough to sever her tongue, and she shrieks; in seconds, she’s dead, her head separate from her body, rolling down the hill to settle against a gravestone.
Pocketing the tongue, Geralt turns to the wildflower scent and its heartbeat.
“Fuck,” Geralt spits, voice rough.
The grave hag is dead, and the infant is still alive, but only barely. Geralt sheaths his sword again, kneels in the dirt. Half-buried in the turned-up soil is an impossibly small baby, possibly even a newborn. Her legs are under the dirt, but she’s managed to shake her arms free well enough, though she’s barely awake. She’s whimpering softly, Geralt can hear now, but so softly, so softly he doesn’t even think a human could hear it.
She’s so weak. He can tell just looking at her; her pulse is thready and thin, and her breathing is shallow. But her heart is still beating and she is still breathing. She’s still alive, smeared in dirt, brown-haired and hazel-eyed.
Geralt starts to reach for her, then hesitates. A voice in his mind, that sounds more like Jaskier’s than his own, tells him to just pick her up, what was he waiting for. Her tan skin is smeared with blood, and he should check her over for wounds. Practical.
He picks her up. She squirms, for a moment, then settles, too weak to fight against him. Geralt wants to scream just looking at her, so close to death, and for what? A child to be a meal, to be born and suffer and die without ever feeling an ounce of joy? For that?
Geralt uses his gloves to wipe off as much blood as he can. He realizes that part of the red stain on her is a birthmark, marking part of her face, spilling down her neck and onto her chest like dark wine. She relaxes more the longer he handles her, until she falls into a shaky sleep, breaths rattling in and out as Geralt cradles her against his chest.
With a huff, Geralt gets to his feet. The village isn’t far, and he sets off at as fast a run as he dares, trying to remember where the gravedigger’s house had been. He had just intended to collect the contract payment for the harpies in the morning, but now, with a child clinging to life, he has more pressing concerns.
It’s clear she’s about to die, and yet, still, Geralt feels desperate to save her life.
The gravedigger’s house is still lit, smoke still pouring from his chimney, so Geralt bangs on his door. When the man opens the door, he’s bewildered and then shocked, taking in Geralt, soaked in blood, holding the bloodied, dying infant, tiny in his hands that now seem so much larger than they usually do.
“What happened?” the gravedigger demands. He pushes Geralt backwards, drawing his door closed behind himself. “My children haven’t gone to sleep yet, they needn’t see you in such a—”
“This girl is dying,” Geralt interrupts him. “Whose child is she?”
“What?” the gravedigger asks. He looks down to the child. “This isn’t a harpy child, is it?”
“Does it look like a harpy?” Geralt grits out. “There was a grave hag in your cemetery on my way back.”
“Oh, my—”
“I killed it,” Geralt says, “But it had bones in its lair. Has anyone been missing from town?”
“Oh, gods, yes,” the gravedigger tells him. “Asger, Frida, Johanne, and a few of the younger children, too, the blacksmith’s boy, and the glassblower’s girl, oh, her name was… Maja, maybe?”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” Geralt asks.
“We can’t afford to deal with both,” the gravedigger says. Practical, blunt. Geralt bristles all the same. “The harpies were more of a problem, coming down on all our—”
“How many children have gone missing?”
“They—”
“How many?” Geralt cuts him off. The gravedigger looks at his face, again, and pales a bit at what he sees there.
“Seven or eight, maybe, over the last couple of seasons,” the gravedigger says.
“And which one is this?” Geralt asks, motioning to the child in his hands, still as death. She’s still breathing, but just barely; he can still hear her weak heartbeat, fluttering so faint he can hardly even sense it, and every second wasted is making him more anxious for her survival. “Is this the glassblower’s daughter?”
“No, no,” the gravedigger says. “Maja was seven, maybe. This girl, I don’t know this…” The gravedigger trails off, looking away from Geralt’s face to study the girl’s instead. After a moment, he sights the birthmark and recoils, stepping back sharply. Geralt frowns at him, brow furrowing. “This— This is Signe’s newborn child.”
“Who is Signe?” Geralt demands.
“That twisted freak to the west of the village,” the gravedigger spits. “The witch whore, always wore those crimson shitrags and burned all sorts of unmentionable things and screamed nonsense at us if we got too close.”
Geralt grits his teeth. In his memory, he sees that red dress, crumpled around loose bones in the grave hag’s lair, and his stomach sinks. He forces down his burst of frustrated rage towards the gravedigger, instead asking, “Where is she?”
“Oh, she was one of the ones that went missing in the last few weeks,” the gravedigger says, red-faced. “Nobody much cared. Figured her child would’ve been dead by now, bastard infant she is. Cursed.”
“She’s a child,” Geralt snarls.
“She’s a curse,” the gravedigger argues back easily. “She should’ve been left in the woods anyways, and you’d do right to leave her where you found her.”
Geralt knows humans. Sometimes, they’re good, but he’s been alive for over one hundred years and met countless people who don’t care for the lives of children. Still, it can sicken him to witness. He tells the man, again, “She’s dying,” as if it will change anything, when he knows it won’t.
“Then she’ll die,” he says. “Simple as that, Witcher.” The man looks at him for a moment, too close, then says, “I thought Witchers weren’t supposed to feel anything. Just leave it and go. I’ll get your coin.”
Geralt doesn’t say anything. The gravedigger apparently takes this as acceptance and reopens his front door, only keeping it cracked two fingers’ width so Geralt can’t invite himself inside. He returns, too slowly, with a bag of coin, and Geralt snatches it from him, already turning to go.
“Does the child have family?” Geralt asks.
“No,” the gravedigger says.
“Would any mother take her in as—”
“No,” the gravedigger repeats. “She’s another mouth to feed, and a cursed child, Witcher. Don’t feel sympathy for the thing. She’d do better to die now. Take her back to the woods.”
A wave of rage washes over Geralt, for a moment. He and the gravedigger stare at each other for a long moment before Geralt growls at him.
“Rot,” Geralt snarls, and leaves.
The sun has nearly set, but there’s still some orange light left, and the moon is huge and full, shining bright in the clear sky. There’s more than enough to light Geralt’s furious path through the village, stopping at each house he can see with life in it. Hardly anyone answers the door; the ones that do take one look at him, disgusting and desperate, and the mostly-dead child in his hands, and turn them away. The inn draws closer and closer. Fewer and fewer houses are available for Geralt to ask at, and the child sleeps still, but her breathing is growing shallower. She’s dying, even as he carries her to try to save her, and he feels helpless to stop it.
The last house before the inn, the very last one, has a mother outside, holding a newborn baby to her bare chest. She doesn’t so much as glance at Geralt until he stops at her gate; then, he just gets a tired glance upwards.
“What?” she asks, exhaustion so clearly weighing on her. Geralt holds the baby forward, desperate, but the mother doesn’t move. “What is it?”
“She’s a baby,” Geralt says. “A child I found in the hands of a grave hag. She’s dying.”
The woman takes a few steps closer, eyeing Geralt cautiously before letting her eyes flick down to the baby. She frowns, standing back.
“That’s Signe the Shit’s cursed bastard,” the woman snarls, and spits in the dirt. “Freshborn and doomed. Leave it in the woods, Witcher, or take it to the Blue Mountains and make it one of your own. Isn’t that what you do with these things?” The mother studies him, then says, “Why don’t you just eat it, if that’s what you want? Nobody is going to take that thing, damned as it is.”
Geralt draws the infant back to his chest. For a moment, he feels like he ought to say something, anything at all, but there’s no words that come to mind.
The newborn in his hands starts to wake up again, whimpering quietly, too weak to cry. Geralt acts on instinct, turning from the mother and heading straight for the inn, instead. This town is useless and these villagers are even worse, but Jaskier is in the inn and he always knows what to do. Always.
Geralt expects Jaskier to be performing in the tavern on the first floor, but he’s nowhere to be seen, when Geralt crashes through the front door to the place. It must be later than he realized; when he stops and listens, he can hear Jaskier’s and Ciri’s heartbeats upstairs, and so he follows the sound, tracking them down to the familiar door he had left just this morning. He hasn’t got a key, so he knocks on the door, his coded knock for Jaskier.
“Get the door for your father, darling,” he hears Jaskier say inside. Ciri’s light footsteps run to the door, unlock it, haul it open.
“Hello, Father,” Ciri says cheerfully, looking up at Geralt before dropping her eyes right down to the baby in his hands. “What— What happened?”
“What is it?” Jaskier demands. Geralt lifts his head to find Jaskier standing from the rug by the fire, dressed only in a tunic, skin soft and pink, scrubbed clean like Ciri’s. His hair is damp, curling against his face; Ciri’s is wet and half-braided, dripping down her back. They both look bewildered, and Jaskier panicked already, worry on every bit of his face. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No,” Geralt tells him. He kicks the door shut behind himself. “Found a grave hag. She was about to eat this.”
“What is ‘this?’” Jaskier asks, drawing closer. He gasps when he sees the infant’s face, sees her blink unfocused eyes open to drift over him before closing again. “Geralt— It’s a baby. Is it a baby?”
“Yes,” Geralt says. Jaskier’s eyes dart up to his, find his desperate gaze and hold it. He knows Jaskier can see and feel the very real gravity in his words when he tells him, “She’s dying.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Jaskier demands, reaching up to take her.
“I don’t know,” Geralt tells him. Jaskier slips his shaking hands under her and removes her from Geralt’s hold, swiftly bringing her closer to the fire to examine her in the light. Geralt follows, Ciri at his heels, excitedly darting behind him, hesitant to get too close.
Jaskier curses softly when he lays the child on her back on the rug. He pushes her small curls of hair back from her face, matted with blood and mud and grave hag bits, examining her face. Without lifting his head, he sighs, thumbing at the edge of the birthmark on the girl’s face. He sets the back of his hand against her forehead, then leans down, pressing his cheek to the same spot. When he rises again, he’s frowning.
“Ciri, darling, will you get one of my sleep shirts and a pitcher of water, please?” Jaskier asks. Ciri runs to do as asked, and Jaskier lifts his head to look to Geralt. Already, Geralt can see steel resolve forming in Jaskier’s face. “She’s clammy, she has a fever. I can’t tell if she’s hurt but she’s almost certainly got an infection of some sort, and she’s all ribs, I can feel her bones. You can see it in her face, she’s dying.” Jaskier’s talking faster, pulse skyrocketing, rushing quicker and quicker. Geralt can hear it pounding through his body. “She’s hardly breathing. I don’t know what to— What to—” He makes a pained noise, then chokes out, “Geralt—”
“The gravedigger said she’d die,” Geralt says, almost too quiet for a human to hear. Jaskier hears him anyway.
“Who does she belong to?” Jaskier asks. “Is her mother gone? Is her father—”
Ciri returns with Jaskier’s shirt and the water, setting them down between the baby and the fire, and Jaskier falls quiet, if only for a moment. Jaskier soaks the corner of his shirtsleeve in the water and uses the edge of the fabric to start cleaning the baby, square by square of her filthy skin.
“Geralt?” Jaskier prompts. Geralt looks to him. He asks again, “Does she have any family left?”
There’s so much to say and explain, but, with Ciri looking up at him— with the way Jaskier is looking at him— fuck, even just looking down at the baby on the rug between them— he doesn’t want to bring that to them. He doesn’t want to tell his only family, look, the world is horrible and cold and cruel, and I know you’ve seen it, but it’s so much worse than you deserve. He wants to keep them untouched by it, by the way people in the village turned the child away. He wants them to stay good.
“No,” Geralt answers simply. Ciri looks back down to the baby, sighing, an orphan herself. Jaskier’s eyes linger on Geralt’s face, waiting for more. Geralt tells him, “Nobody could help us.”
The way Jaskier looks at him, doesn’t let him look away, tells him that Jaskier knows he’s not saying everything. He knows he’ll have to explain to him later, and their eye contact says as much. He also clearly knows that nobody would help them, and he’s already abandoned that as a plan and moved on, Geralt can tell. Still, Jaskier stares at him, waiting for Geralt’s confirmation, or for his approval, or something, Geralt doesn’t know. All he can do is give it, whatever it is. It’s only after Geralt nods once to him that Jaskier lets him sever the look.
“Then I’ll help her myself,” Jaskier says, unexpected but so expected. Like it’s that easy.
“Jaskier, she’s dying,” Geralt says.
He doesn’t really need to say it. It’s clear to all three of them that the child is dying, even without his reminders. She’s barely breathing, paler than she was when Geralt found her. There’s hardly any color in her face, in her lips. She’s not moving as much anymore, just staring up at Jaskier as he cleans her, bit by bit, checking every inch of her for a physical wound.
“Jaskier,” Geralt tries to say, again. Jaskier doesn’t answer this time, but Ciri does, settling at his side. Geralt tries to reach out to her, to turn her face away so she doesn’t have to see this child die, but she won’t have it. She pushes his arm from her and moves to kneel at the girl’s head, watching her face silently.
For a moment, Geralt hesitates. Then, he decides still to follow her, to kneel behind Ciri and let her take comfort from him when she wants it.
“What do we do with her?” Ciri asks the room at large. “We can’t just let her die, but… If she’s dying anyways, what do we do? Just make sure she doesn’t die suffering?”
Ciri is a practical child with mercy at the center of her heart. When Geralt looks down at her and is met with her intense green stare, already focused up on him, he can’t lie to her. He tells her, “Every creature dies. If you can show them m—”
“Stop,” Jaskier says. His eyes flash as he looks up to Geralt, snapping out, “Go impart your life lesson in the hall, if you’re going to do this now. I’m trying to save this child’s life—”
“She’s going to die, Julek,” Geralt tells him. It hurts, but it will save them a world of hurt further if Jaskier accepts this now instead of suffering with the child. Geralt knows him; he would suffer even long after she’s died. “We can’t—”
“We can’t what?” Jaskier demands. “I can’t let her die, Geralt. That’s what I can’t do.”
“She won’t live,” Geralt says. Jaskier’s jaw clenches, teeth gritting together. Geralt can nearly hear him biting his tongue hard between his back teeth.
“Not with that attitude, she won’t,” Jaskier snaps out. He points to one of the small bags he carries and says, “Hand that to me, please.”
Ciri moves before Geralt does, separating from him to snatch up Jaskier’s belongings as instructed. Jaskier digs through the bag one-handed, pulls up a glass vial and unstoppers the cork with his teeth. He holds the child’s mouth open with two fingers; Geralt watches, a helpless audience, as Jaskier pours half of the mud-murky juices down the baby’s throat.
“What is that?” Ciri asks.
“It’s magic,” Jaskier tells her. He motions to the bag he’s set aside and says, “These are the potions I use for you when you’re sick.”
Ciri takes the vial from Jaskier’s hands, sniffing the edge of it and recoiling, her face twisting up. “I remember this one. I hated it.”
Geralt remembers it, too. He remembers Jaskier brewing it desperately, trying to break a fever Ciri had caught at Kaer Morhen last winter and couldn’t shake. He remembers Ciri coming in and out of fevered unconsciousness, remembers Jaskier sitting at her bedside for days without leaving once, remembers how terrified they both had been for her, so strong and yet seemingly so fragile, in moments like those.
Geralt remembers, too, Jaskier two years ago, as soon as Ciri came into Geralt’s care, playing in taverns until his throat was hoarse to save up the extra coin for the books on brewing potions and medicines for children. Geralt cared for Ciri’s wellbeing and her training, but Jaskier was the first one to think of the small things — that Ciri would get sick sometimes, that she might get hurt in some small or minor way, that she would often feel sadness and anger and any number of feelings from the variety of young, raw emotions that Geralt felt helpless to guide her through until Jaskier offered his help.
In the two years since Ciri came into their lives, Geralt feels that he’s become far from helpless with her. Still, though, he feels like he’s somehow a step behind, watching her and Jaskier in the firelight, trying to save the dying child.
Jaskier kneels on the rug, still, lifting the baby again, stroking her throat and tilting her head to try and get her to swallow as much of the potion as she can manage.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then, just as happened with Ciri when she took the same potion, the child bursts into wakefulness, startled and wide-eyed and panicked.
“Oh, goodness,” Jaskier gasps. Her eyes land on him for the briefest of moments before she starts to scream, raspy and small but piercing and agonized all the same. Geralt feels sick wondering how long she screamed waiting for her mother or anyone to save her from the grave hag, from monsters she couldn’t even comprehend.
Jaskier tucks her against his chest, her face buried against his shoulder as he half-stands, shuffling himself closer to the fire. He sets the girl upright, one hand holding her back and her neck; with the other hand, he beckons to Ciri.
“Can I have my shirt, darling?” he asks. She scurries forward to hand it to him, kneeling up beside him to look at the baby’s face. Jaskier finishes cleaning the baby’s face off with the edge of his shirt. When she’s clean, finally, he frowns down at the damp shirt.
“I can hold her,” Ciri says. “For a moment.”
Jaskier nods, turning the child over into Ciri’s small hands. The child’s still whimpering, half-wailing, broken off, and so Jaskier moves quickly, tearing his shirt off over his head. He wraps the linen around the child, pulls her back against his chest, bare skin to bare skin, cradles her there. Miraculously, she starts to calm, just a bit, her pulse starting to pick up from its sluggish, thudding slog.
“Geralt,” Jaskier says. Geralt’s eyes snap up to his. “I need the blue potion in the green vial from my bag. The one with—”
Geralt already has the vial out. He remembers this one, too, one that Jaskier had shown Geralt the recipe for before lightly saying he’d hoped it would never be necessary. It’s powerful enough that his medallion can sense it; he can feel it, too, a charged and tiny thing in his hand when he passes it over.
“Ah,” Jaskier says. “Yes. This one. Thank you, dearheart, this should…” Jaskier trails off, tearing the stopper out with his teeth, again. This time it makes Geralt jump, a bit, reaching out to stop him, but it’s already done.
“Be careful,” Geralt murmurs. Jaskier’s eyes flick over him again, searching, before looking down to the baby once more.
“She needs this,” Jaskier says.
“What is it?” Ciri asks. Jaskier looks to Geralt.
“It’s going to pull energy into her,” Jaskier explains. “It’s— Ciri, darling, this is very dangerous, and she may not survive it. But it may be the only way to save her, do you understand?”
Ciri nods, eyes already rushing wet. “Where does the energy come from? Can I give her mine?”
“No, Geralt’s going to take you downstairs,” Jaskier says.
“No,” Geralt disagrees instantly. Jaskier’s eyes flash to his, but Geralt just says, “I’ll stay and give her the potion. You take Cir—”
“Absolutely not,” Jaskier says. “You don’t know the spell and, besides, if this goes wrong, we need you in one piece—”
“And not you?” Geralt growls. Jaskier doesn’t back down; if anything, he squares his shoulders, sits up straighter. “Teach me how to do it. I can handle it. Far better than you. What if this kills you?”
“This won’t kill me, Geralt, goodness,” Jaskier says, and his tone sounds like he’s trying to joke, but he misses the mark. None of them laugh.
“When you brewed it, you said—”
“The book said it was dangerous,” Jaskier insists, “Not that—”
“I’m not losing you over this,” Geralt snaps. The two of them stare at each other for a long, hard moment. Geralt searches Jaskier’s face and finds hesitation and fear in small parts, nothing that could be enough for him to use to convince Jaskier not to do this. More than the fear, he sees resolve and determination and conviction. Jaskier’s already convinced himself that this will work, and so that it’s worth doing. All Geralt sees is the ways this could go wrong, and if it came down to protecting Jaskier or this child, he knows the choice he would have to make.
“You won’t,” Jaskier says, though he has no way of knowing that.
“If he says it’s dangerous, maybe…” Ciri starts, then stops. She looks up at Jaskier. Her back is to Geralt, he can’t see her face, but Jaskier is looking down into her eyes and looking heartbroken. “Maybe you shouldn’t do it. What if you get hurt?”
Jaskier reaches out with his one free hand, cups Ciri’s chin in the crook near his thumb. When he leans in to kiss Ciri’s forehead, his eyes fall shut, tears slipping down his cheeks.
“Everything will be okay,” Jaskier tells her. They stay there, for a moment, before Jaskier lifts his head and looks to Geralt.
Geralt wants to grab the child from Jaskier and take her back out into the village. He wants to force someone to take her, a healer or the gravedigger or someone, anyone. He doesn’t want Jaskier’s stupidly romantic heart and foolishly impulsive snap decisions to kill him. He doesn’t want some potion and spell that Jaskier found in a sorcerer’s book to be the things that end Jaskier’s life. He doesn’t want to see Jaskier risk his life for this child that he doesn’t even know, but if he didn’t do it, he wouldn’t be Jaskier. Just like Geralt wouldn’t be Geralt if he hadn’t brought this child here in the first place, when he very well could have left her in the woods like the gravedigger had suggested.
“Can you do this?” Geralt asks Jaskier bluntly. From the way Jaskier looks at him, Geralt knows he’s not upset, not angry. Geralt has asked him if he can handle this alone and Jaskier will answer him honestly.
“Yes,” Jaskier says. There’s no evidence of dishonesty in his face, his voice. Just resolve, still.
Geralt stands and offers Ciri his hand. She looks to Jaskier, panicked.
“Go,” Jaskier says. “Count to two hundred and come back. It will be so quick, Ciri, darling, you won’t even realize.”
The child’s quieting again, pulse growing slow, breaths thinning out once more, weakening. Jaskier can tell, too, Geralt sees, because his grip tightens and he pulls Ciri in, kissing her hard on the cheek.
“I don’t want you to die,” Ciri tells him tearfully.
“Oh, no, no,” Jaskier rushes to say. He swipes her tears away, kisses her hand when Geralt helps her to stand. “I’m not going to die. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here waiting for you when you and your father come back upstairs, just you watch.”
“Okay,” Ciri says. She lets Geralt take her hand, lets him pull her from the room. It’s harder for him to leave than it is for her, but he knows he has to pull her out all the same, knows that he can’t look back or he won’t be able to go, and she needs him to. Jaskier doesn’t know the strength of the spell and the potion he’s about to use; Ciri can’t be near that, and Geralt doesn’t know how to perform it. Jaskier is the child’s only option, they’ve run out of time, and Geralt has no choice. Jaskier has decided to do it, and so he’ll do it.
Downstairs, the tavern is just as raucous as it had been when Geralt showed up. It’s noisy and distracting, but all Geralt can hear is Ciri softly counting under her breath. One number, a breath, then the next number, slow and steady as she stares down at the tabletop he’s sat her at.
“He’ll be okay,” Geralt tells her. He has half an ear on Jaskier upstairs; he can make out his voice, but not what he’s saying. Under that, Geralt can still hear his heartbeat and the baby’s, so he holds tight to that. “He created the potion for you years ago. He knows what he’s doing.”
Ciri doesn’t look up. “Neither of you should be ready to die for me. It’s not worth it.”
Geralt’s not sure what to say. It’s something that Jaskier would have an answer for, but Jaskier isn’t here. Instead, it’s Geralt and Ciri, only fifteen years old, practically an adult and yet still a child, especially to him.
“You’re our daughter,” Geralt tells her. She does lift her head, at that, and looks to him, green eyes shining with tears. “Of course we would die for you.”
Ciri doesn’t answer that, instead pulling herself from her seat across from him and sitting beside him instead, burrowing into his side. He wraps his arm around her and shields her, holds her and kisses the top of her head, buries his face in her damp, half-braided hair.
Upstairs, both heartbeats jolt. Jaskier’s slows, and the child’s rushes. Geralt fights the urge to run upstairs.
“Have you reached two hundred?” Geralt asks. Ciri lifts her head.
“I lost count,” she tells him. She looks panicked, for a moment, before she frowns and the emotion dissipates from her face. In its place is the same steel resolve Geralt had seen in Jaskier.
Both heartbeats even out, now. Jaskier’s is still too slow, sluggish in a way it isn’t unless he’s fallen deeply, deeply asleep, but the child’s is nearly normal, strong and— he hesitates to say, but— healthy.
“Can you hear them?” Ciri asks. “Should we call for Mother? We should’ve summoned her as soon as you came, she could’ve done something. There was no time, but there is now, I should— I should go get my charm, summon her, ask her to c—”
Jaskier’s heartbeat stutters again, Geralt removes his arm from Ciri’s shoulders, separates them enough to stand. Ciri cuts herself off, scrambles to her feet beside him. She runs ahead of him to the stairs, just barely beats him in the half-race back to their room, but she waits at the door for him, hand hovering near the knob.
Geralt knocks their coded knock. He doesn’t get an answer, but Jaskier’s heart thumps faster again, like he can hear it. Geralt shoulders the door open himself.
The first thing Geralt sees is that cobalt potion, as bright as lightning, spattered across the floor as well as the child and Jaskier both, staining them with startling pools of firebloom blue. Magic still crackles in the air around them, Jaskier slumped against the wall beside the hearth, but his eyes are open, fixed down on the child. She’s not screaming, but she’s not gasping for air anymore, either. She is quiet, laying against Jaskier’s chest, staring up at him silently.
Ciri pushes past Geralt where he’s frozen in the doorway. She runs to Jaskier’s side, falls to her knees beside him, and asks, “Father? Can you hear me?”
Jaskier lifts his head and tries to say something, but his voice rasps and he can’t make anything coherent come out. He looks to Geralt, and he unfreezes, crossing the room in long strides to bring him to Jaskier’s other side.
“It worked,” Geralt says, before he’s even realized it’s true. Jaskier nods, looking down at the child again. His pulse is still sluggish, but he’s only weakened, Geralt can tell now, not dying.
“I didn’t know you had such magic,” Ciri whispers. She leans into Jaskier’s arm, examining the side of his face for injuries like he won’t notice her doing it. “Does Mother know?”
Jaskier shakes his head. He motions to himself, shakes his head. Looks to Geralt again. For how much Jaskier talks in their daily lives— For how much he’s talked since he and Geralt met, almost thirty years ago— his body language speaks volumes, too, and his eyes, and Geralt can hear them as well as he can hear his voice.
“We didn’t know,” Geralt tells her. Ciri doesn’t look away from Jaskier for a long moment, brow furrowed, studying him.
When she does look away, it’s to spear Geralt with a bewildered, determined look for a split second before she asks, “What is he?”
Jaskier huffs. Ciri turns back to him, strokes the back of her hand against his cheek. He turns his face into her hand and kisses her palm after she turns her wrist. Geralt wants to hide them away again. It’s nearly time to start heading towards Kaer Morhen, anyway; arriving a few weeks early is hardly the end of the world, and Geralt is feeling, powerfully, that Jaskier and Ciri need to be protected now more than ever.
Still unable to speak, Jaskier doesn’t answer Ciri. Years ago, Geralt had asked Jaskier a similar question. For twenty years, he had watched Jaskier every day, without seeing him age a single one. The question of what he was was bound to come up eventually.
Geralt gives Ciri the same answer Jaskier gave him that day, when he had whispered an honest confession to Geralt under the emerald cover of trees, ensconced far away in the woods, where no one but Geralt could hear his admission.
“I don’t know,” Geralt says. “All he knows is his father isn’t his true father.”
Ciri turns to Jaskier with wide eyes.
“Are you human?” Ciri asks. “Are you fae? Are you elven? Are you a Source, like me? Do you know?”
Jaskier shrugs. He clears his throat, then manages, barely above a rasp, “I’m not quite that strong.”
Ciri’s hand darts down and wraps around Jaskier’s, over the baby’s back. She squeezes tight, knuckles briefly going white as she holds onto him.
“Yes, you are,” Ciri tells him. “No matter what you are, you’re strong.” She curls up against his side; at fifteen, she’s nearly fully grown, but she still fits there against Jaskier like she was born to, like pieces of a puzzle. When she lifts her head to examine the baby, she asks, “Is she alive?”
Jaskier nods. He lifts his head and meets Geralt’s eyes, as steady as he’d been when Geralt had left the room.
Years ago, Geralt would have denied he was capable of feeling fear at all. Now, he knows it was fear that made him doubt Jaskier’s ability to survive something like this, and yet he sees Jaskier now, powerful and whole. He knows Jaskier is strong as well as he knows he will never stop being afraid for him, or for Ciri, or for Yennefer or Lambert or Eskel or Vesemir. As human as he isn’t— as human as Jaskier isn’t, or Ciri, or any of the rest of them, all creatures warped by magic and forces beyond humanity— he still feels fear, because he still feels love.
Geralt kneels in front of Jaskier and Ciri. He settles his hand on the back of Jaskier’s, pulling his fingers away from the baby’s face so he can examine her himself. She’s still hot, but no longer clammy; the fevered heat has gone from her skin and left her gently warmed, like she’s been lying outside in the sunshine. The color has come back to her face, too, and her eyes are brighter, more focused. Geralt strokes his thumb down her small cheek, tracing the edge of the birthmark where it spills over her chin and down her throat. He threads his fingers through her hair, too, and finds it streaked with silver at her temples where it had been completely brown-dark all over before. His hand hesitates there, a small lock of hair curling soft around his fingertips, mostly brown and yet, here and there, shot through with shocking white.
“She looks alright now,” Ciri comments hesitantly.
“She’ll live,” Geralt tells her.
Jaskier clears his throat again, tries to speak, and still can’t. Ciri leaves his side to get him water from the pitcher between the room’s two beds. Once he’s drunk half the cup down, Jaskier can finally speak clearly, without gravel in his throat.
“She’s had a rough start,” Jaskier says. “But she’ll be just fine.”
“What do we do with her now?” Ciri asks.
Geralt looks to Jaskier’s face, expecting Jaskier to look back to him, but he doesn’t. Jaskier’s eyes stay down, focused on the child’s face as he tilts her to settle in the crook of his arm. From that alone, Geralt knows what he’s thinking.
Ciri can tell, too, and she quickly asks, “Are we keeping her?”
“We shouldn’t,” Geralt tells her, before Jaskier can say anything. “I have to keep the two of you safe as it is.”
Jaskier’s eyes flash as he sits up. “I am not your responsibility—”
“Yes, you are,” Geralt interrupts him.
“I am your partner,” Jaskier snaps. Geralt had been ready to cut him off again, but he doesn’t have a response to that. “For the love of— Geralt, what, do you see me as another child to look after?”
“No, but you’re—” Geralt starts to say, then stops. He had been about to say human, but they’ve just established how very not human Jaskier can be.
“I’m what?” Jaskier asks.
“Fragile,” Geralt lands on.
Jaskier glares at him, but it’s not heated. Geralt can see the understanding in his face, even through his agitation.
“We’re not helpless,” Ciri insists to Geralt. She’s angry, more than Jaskier is, as she pushes to her feet. “I’m not a child anymore.”
“Yes, you are,” Geralt says. He doesn’t stand, but turns to face Ciri as she glowers down at him. “And I have to protect you, no matter how strong you are. You both are,” he amends, before Jaskier can protest.
He doesn’t know how he can make them understand. Ciri may have abilities beyond that of an average human, but she’s still inexperienced and young and his child. Jaskier may not be completely human, but he’s still impulsive and breakable and his partner, as Jaskier said. Pieced together as it is, this is his small family, made up of people infinitely more delicate than he is. He’s already laced with fear every time he thinks of their eventual deaths, of the fact that he’ll likely live through them and long past them. He can’t stand their deaths coming a day earlier than they’re meant to. He can’t lose them before he’s taken every second of time with them that he can, and maybe that makes him selfish, but he can’t. He just can’t.
Unsure of how to verbalize that, Geralt says, “I can’t let anything put you at risk. If she draws attention—”
“Any more attention than we already draw?” Ciri demands. “Father is the most famous bard on the Continent—”
“Ciri, darling, thank you, but—”
“And you,” Ciri continues, over Jaskier, “are— are a Witcher. You’re the Witcher, you’re— You’re Geralt of Rivia.” She gestures roughly to the window, frustration evident in every tense line of her body. “Everyone knows who you are the second you walk into a town, and people know who I am the second they see us together. They hear other bards singing Dandelion songs about the White Wolf and the Lion Cub of Cintra! They want Father to sing in their taverns and they want you to slay their monsters and they wouldn’t want any of that if we didn’t draw their attention. All we do is draw attention!”
Even after she stops, Geralt finds it hard to look away from her. He does, to meet Jaskier’s eyes, desperate for any hint of how he should respond to this, but Jaskier’s just looking back at him, delight in his exhausted eyes, waiting for his response the same way Ciri is.
“She has a point,” Jaskier offers. It’s not the help Geralt was searching for.
“I still have to destroy the grave hag’s lair,” Geralt tells them. “I can go tomorrow and ask around again afterwards if the child has any family who would take her in.”
“Did the hag kill her parents?” Ciri asks.
Geralt doesn’t want to tell her all the townsfolk said about the outcast woman who had been this child’s mother, now nothing more than clothes and picked-clean bones in an abandoned house through the woods. Instead, he says, “Yes. She only had a mother, and I found her bones.”
Ciri’s heart trips. Geralt realizes too late he should have been more sensitive, maybe, like Jaskier is always telling him to be, but Ciri battles past it regardless.
“Did anyone say anything about any other family?” Ciri asks, still pushing. Geralt wishes she would drop it.
“Those I met didn’t speak fondly of her mother,” Geralt tells her. “She was an outcast. They saw her as a witch. Say the child’s cursed.”
The look on Ciri’s face had been exactly what Geralt was trying to avoid, and he hadn’t even told her the worst of it. Her heart’s racing in her chest now, faster than it even had when they were downstairs waiting. Salt is sharp in the room, but she’s visibly forcing herself not to cry. She turns back into Jaskier’s side, letting her hand settle over the baby’s chest and belly. The child’s so small, so new, that even Ciri’s hand can cover her entire torso.
“She’s all alone?” Ciri asks. It’s as much a statement as it is a question, despite the way she asks it. She’s seen through him already.
“Maybe,” Geralt says. “Someone may want her. Maybe a family in the next village will take her in.”
“What if she’s meant to be with you like I am?” Ciri asks, and it’s like a kick in the chest. He looks to Jaskier again, their eyes meeting. Jaskier doesn’t say anything, waiting for Geralt instead, but his eyebrows draw together and he’s clearly concerned, though not unkindly. Geralt knows already that Jaskier would have them raise this child as their own in a heartbeat, that he’s already attached, but that’s what Jaskier does. He gets attached to everyone and everything he meets: every person, every child, every damned creature from puppies to wargs, and would have half the Continent following at his heels like ducklings if Geralt didn’t stop him.
The problem is that it’s impossible for them to care for every unfortunate person they come across. When he can, Geralt leaves coin for widowed mothers, food for orphaned children. Vesemir used to tell him that the job of a Witcher is to protect the world, but never to be a part of it. Lambert still says that it’s better to teach a man to fish than to hand him a barrel of trout, though Geralt believes in doing both, when possible.
Geralt can’t raise every helpless child on the Continent. He can’t feed them all, he can’t house them all, and he can’t protect them all. If he could, he would, but he can’t, and so he does all he can before leaving them behind.
Once, he hasn’t done that, and the one time he didn’t is looking up at him, begging him to do it again.
And Geralt wants that. Gods, of course he wants that. Years ago, Geralt would have denied wanting anything, same as he would have denied feeling fear or love, and yet he feels those all the time. Now, though, he wants to help everyone he comes across. He wants to protect Ciri— and, more than that, he wants to be a true father to her, and not just a warrior-protector. He wants to have a family, and not just to look after, but to be part of.
Sometimes, if he thinks about it too long, he wants what Jaskier wants. He wants to go to the coast and find them a cottage and live there until Jaskier dies, and then maybe go himself. It’s selfish to want that, when he’s meant to protect people and to defend the Continent from monsters — but, then again, he figures, it’s selfish for him to want at all. He may as well go all in on it when he does allow himself to indulge.
And Ciri and Jaskier aren’t asking him to adopt every wayward animal and lost child on the Continent. They want to, he knows, and he often catches them embracing those they leave behind, offering them last-minutes treats and farewells even after Geralt has insisted they move on, but they don’t ask for more. They know how impossible it would be.
They don’t ask for that, though.
But they are asking for this.
Geralt considers this. No more than a moment has passed, and no more than another moment will, but he thinks seriously on this while Jaskier and Ciri watch him.
Ciri is fifteen years old, and needs only a few more years of training before she’s capable of taking her role as Queen, if she chooses it — or if there’s a throne left to take. Jaskier has taken to wildly speculating that Ciri will be some sort of monarch, a kind of empress when she takes her birthright back, but with things how they are, she will end up ruling over ashes and ruin.
If things go badly enough— Well, they’ll likely all end up dead. But if things go badly and they somehow survive, Ciri will have to live her life in hiding regardless, as would anyone in her life — Yennefer, the other Witchers, Jaskier, himself. If things go well — something Geralt has never once counted on — Ciri will rule and their family can finally rest and be free to do as they desire, beyond the confines of war and destiny and even polite society. They can just live.
Without them, Geralt knows, this child will not live. They can spend three weeks or more traveling through the woods to the next town to try and pass her off to someone else, but the longer they spend with her, the more attached they’ll become. All of them, he knows this, including himself.
Geralt looks down at the infant.
When he pushes past everything else — his dread at the idea of drawing unneeded attention to themselves, his fear of their pain if the child dies, his vexation at obtaining another mouth to feed, his trepidation of attempting to be close to another human, especially one so young and vulnerable, his hesitation to add to a family he already didn’t expect to have — all that’s left is her.
Without them, she dies, he knows, but more than that, he finds he wants to give her life. She has no family, hardly more than a month old. Her entire life lays ahead of her still: a life made of years upon years of love and pain and experiences and living, that she wouldn’t have had otherwise. As close to a child of his own as he can come, as close as Ciri has come to be to him. He knew he would never have biological children, being sterile, and never anticipated wanting it, and still, that’s not what it is that he wants.
Strange as it is — though he suspects Jaskier would claim it isn’t strange at all, and maybe that’s because Jaskier knows him as well as he knows himself (or better, it seems, at times) — he wants to take her in. Not because of destiny, or because of obligation, or because of any other reason than this: he sees an opportunity, and he wants it, and, for once, he thinks it might be alright to let himself have it. Selfish, maybe, but he hopes it’s in the right ways.
“The suspense is killing me,” Jaskier says, tense still, though he’s trying to bring levity back to the room.
Geralt doesn’t lift his eyes from the child’s face. She stares back up at him, muddied hazel eyes like bluebrowngreen sea glass, shining with unshed tears from her ordeal. It’s difficult for her to look at him properly, and even more impossible for her to know him, and yet he feels that all the same.
“Hmm,” is all that comes out. Geralt wishes he could put words to everything inside of him, everything he’s realized. He wishes he could tell Jaskier and Ciri how much they mean to him, right now, and that he wants to make them happy as much as he wants to keep them healthy and safe. He wishes he could tell them he wants that for this child, too, as much for himself and for her as for them.
“Geralt,” Jaskier says, soft. Nearly a whisper. Geralt can feel their eyes burning into his face, so he lifts his attention from the baby to focus on them instead. “Are you sure?”
“She has no one else,” Geralt says. Ciri melts into his front, wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him tight. Geralt rubs her back, looks past her to Jaskier. He reaches out and lays one hand on Geralt’s forearm, squeezes tight.
“She has us,” Jaskier tells him.
The baby makes a quiet noise, discontented, and Jaskier turns his attention back to her, tipping his elbow up as he drops his head down so her forehead presses neatly to his. He hums softly to her, and she quiets, listening to the rumble of his voice.
“This will be difficult,” Geralt says, to no one in particular. Ciri withdraws from him, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her wrists. “Raising a child this young— I’ve never done it.”
“Well, join the club,” Jaskier reminds him. He lowers the child again, now that she’s been soothed into sleepy silence once more. “The only child I’ve raised came with nearly thirteen years of experience and the ability to hold her own head up as well as swords, Geralt. This is entirely new to me, as well.”
“We can figure it out,” Ciri says. She leans in closer to Jaskier’s side, stroking her fingertip over the baby’s cheek. “I always wanted a sister.”
“A sister,” Jaskier says quietly. “Yes, I suppose that does make her your sister, doesn’t it?”
“Of course it does,” Ciri says, sharply, almost defensively. “You’re my fathers and this is your child, same as me.”
“Same as you,” Jaskier agrees. He draws Ciri in with a firm hand and kisses her on the nose. She wrinkles up her face, but still smiles at him. Geralt is overcome, watching them. Even moreso when Jaskier huffs a wet laugh and tilts his head back until the crown of it thumps into the wall, saying, “Fuck, this feels like a dream. Like I’ll wake up tomorrow and none of this will have happened, just— wishful thinking.”
Geralt hadn’t realized how badly Jaskier wanted this, but then, he hadn’t realized how badly he wanted this himself until just now. If it hadn’t been for Jaskier’s and Ciri’s presences in his life, he’s not sure he ever would have realized he’s even capable of wanting like this. He likes to hope so, but he’s glad his Path led him to them, all the same.
“Tomorrow,” Geralt says, “I’ll clear out the grave hag’s lair and start purchasing supplies for our journey to Kaer Morhen.”
“Already?” Ciri asks excitedly. “It’s time to go back?”
“We should get her there before winter truly sets in,” Geralt says. His moment of sentimentality and the decision to keep the child took nearly all of his emotional energy; all he has left is practiced practicality. “If we leave tomorrow, we can reach Dol Blathanna before the harvest ends and Ard Carraigh even before the first heavy snow.”
“I can’t remember the last time I saw Ard Carraigh not covered in snow,” Jaskier comments. He extends one hand to Geralt and asks, “Help me up, love?”
Geralt manages to get Jaskier standing without disturbing the baby too much, though Jaskier’s practically dead on his feet, exhausted and weakened by overwhelming magic. He stumbles into Geralt’s side when he tries to stand on his own. In the end, Geralt needs to support at least half of Jaskier’s weight to the bed, Ciri hovering at their sides.
“Do you think she’ll be alright in Kaer Morhen?” Ciri asks. “Uncle Vesemir barely likes me being there.”
“Nonsense, he loves you,” Jaskier admonishes her.
“It’s true,” Geralt tells her. “He likes you more than he likes me.”
“Which is still infinitely more than he likes me, so you’re all set,” Jaskier says easily. Geralt frowns at him, but Jaskier just continues with, “We have to name her if we’re going to keep her, you realize this, yes? We have to come up with something that matches her exceptional beauty.”
Ciri traces the birthmark on her face, the wine stain that spreads down to her chest. “I don’t have any ideas. My name just means lady.” She frowns. “Actually, can you rename me, too?”
“Nonsense, you have a lovely name that you give meaning to,” Jaskier tells her. “And if you want to change it, you can do what I did and pick one yourself.”
“Why don’t you just name her, then?” Geralt suggests.
“Because I already named myself,” Jaskier says. “I’ve named one person already, so, that means it’s your turn.”
“Father can’t name her,” Ciri complains to Jaskier.
“Hey,” Geralt argues.
“He’s named every horse he’s ever had Roach,” Ciri points out, as if Geralt hadn’t spoken. “You can’t trust him to name her anything but Roach.”
“She’s not a horse,” Geralt says.
“He has a point,” Jaskier says. “If it’s a terrible name, of course we won’t use it—”
“Hey,” Geralt says again, pointedly not smiling, as badly as he wants to.
“—But I’m sure it’ll be a lovely name,” Jaskier continues. He turns expectantly to Geralt. His face is all exhaustion — dark bags under his eyes, tired half-bleariness pulling on his mouth — but he still smiles up at him, trusting and anticipatory, hopeful that Geralt won’t fuck this up. “What’re you thinking, dearheart, hm?”
Jaskier’s bitter fear and sharp concern have shrunken so much now as to have disappeared completely from his scent, instead radiating the clean scents of soap and happiness. He and Ciri always smell like sunshine to him, a summery buttercup-warmth that means family to him as much as the crisp snowdrop-scent that accompanies his brothers on Kaer Morhen, as much as the perfume of lilac and gooseberries that surrounds Yennefer. His unnatural, inhuman kin, stronger than blood, made up of all variety of feral creatures and human-like people, and their natural wildflower scent of family.
“Roza?” Geralt suggests. He studies her small face, the little upturn of her nose and the bow-curve of her full lips and the dip in her chin, and he only feels more secure in the offer. He says again, “Roza.”
Jaskier hums, readjusting his hold on the baby so she’s almost sitting up, settled in the crook of his arm. He bounces her once, twice, examining her small face.
“Roza,” he says. “Cirilla, darling, what do you think?”
“It’s a flower,” Ciri points out. “Like you.”
Jaskier’s quiet for a moment. Geralt would make a comment about rendering Jaskier speechless, about achieving the impossible, but when he lifts his eyes from the baby, he finds Jaskier nearly overwhelmed by tears.
“Jaskier?” Geralt asks. Jaskier swipes under his eyes with the side of his spare hand.
“You’re right,” Jaskier says, “I didn’t even notice. Isn’t that lovely?” He looks down at the child again and repeats, “Roza,” one more time. Soft, contemplative. Tears roll down his cheeks, drip off the point of his chin. In tiny, round drops, they darken the shirt he’s wrapped the baby in, like dotted silk. Her eyes are unfocusing again, starting to close in long, slow blinks as she falls asleep. “It suits her, I think. Don’t you?”
“It’s very pretty,” Ciri agrees, “and so is she. And strong, you know, that R sound, people will respect her.” She strokes the baby’s hair back, away from from her eyes. Quietly, she says, “Princess Roza. Princess Roza of where?”
“Why Princess?” Geralt asks.
“If I’m to be a queen, she’s a princess,” Ciri reminds him. “But I don’t even know where we are. Never mind that these terrible people don’t deserve to be honored by her title.”
“That’ll be up to her,” Jaskier tells her. “But I consider myself to be a man of the world, you know.”
“You’re of Lettenhove,” Ciri says.
“Ah, in a way,” Jaskier allows. Quickly, he continues, “Regardless, she has a lovely name now, Geralt, thank you.” He looks down at Rosa, presses the pad of his thumb to the divot in her chin. “Did you start to say Roach and then change your mind?”
“Shut up, Jaskier,” Geralt growls without heat. Jaskier reaches up, cups Geralt’s face in his hand, draws him in for a kiss.
“Thank you for our baby,” Jaskier says, half-teasing. His eyes are far too serious, blue and bright and close, as they separate from their kiss. “She’s darling, albeit unexpected. Maybe this should be a gift you only give me once in a while.”
“Agreed,” Geralt says, allowing himself to smile. Jaskier saying Roza’s a gift, him thanking Geralt for her — it overwhelms him. He feels like he should be thanking Jaskier for all of this. After a moment of hesitation, he adds, “Thank you.”
“Thank you both,” Ciri says, sitting herself against the headboard in bed beside Geralt. Leaning her head on Jaskier’s shoulder, she says, “I’m going to teach her so many things. You can teach her arts and, Father, you can teach her how to fight, and Mother can teach her magic, I just know she’ll take to it, and I can teach her…” Ciri trails off, then says, “How to rule. Like Grandmother taught me.”
“And she will be as fair and just as you,” Jaskier assures her, kissing the top of her head. Ciri’s already falling asleep, worn out, the adrenaline finally seeping out of her. He sees Jaskier’s hand slip up behind her, sees his fingers start threading gently through her hair. She slackens, leaning more closely into him.
“Should I be up at dawn?” Ciri asks, yawning. Jaskier presses his cheek to her hair, looks up to Geralt.
“I’ll wake you in the morning,” Geralt tells her. “Just rest.”
Ciri nods, letting her eyes drift shut as she watches Roza sleep. Jaskier picks up humming again, the tune only half-familiar as an arrangement he’s been sorting out over the last couple of weeks. He nearly drops off himself before Ciri finally falls asleep, breathing and heartbeat evening out together.
Jaskier’s eyes flick up to Geralt’s, though, before Geralt can think him asleep, too. They dart down to Roza, in his arms, then back to Geralt, silent. Geralt stands and eases Ciri off his side, gingerly removes Roza from his arms. Jaskier rolls to the side and stands, using the table between the beds to steady himself. He only lets go with one hand to bunch the pillows and blankets up on one side into something resembling enough of a cradle cushion for Roza to sleep peacefully in, without fear of her moving or of Ciri rolling onto her.
Geralt tucks her into it while Jaskier makes his slow, tired trek to the second bed. The straw mattress creaks on the wooden bed frame as he collapses into it; Geralt can hear all the breath rush from his lungs in an exhausted sigh.
The spare blankets from the foot of the bed are unfolded swiftly. Geralt pulls two over Ciri, up to her chin, and brings the other two to Jaskier, draping them across his half-curled body in the bed. He takes an additional moment, then, to cup Jaskier’s head gently in his hands, to lift it up and pull the pillow under it more comfortably, to settle Jaskier back down so tenderly that Jaskier’s eyes on him nearly burn as he does it.
“Lay with me,” Jaskier asks, as Geralt hesitates between the bed and the fire. Jaskier pats the bed beside him. “It’ll keep just fine for a bit longer. Lay down.”
Geralt goes to him, lays beside him and gets comfortable before Jaskier shifts over and gets comfortable around him, wrapping himself up in Geralt until they’re tangled in each other and the blankets. It’s been years since Geralt has acted irritated by this. Now, it just brings him comfort, grounds him. He even sleeps, with Jaskier, like this, even when he doesn’t have to. He just likes to.
“What happened?” Jaskier asks, into the quiet broken only by the soft breaths of the children sleeping and the faint crackle of the fire as it pops.
“I found her in the mud,” Geralt whispers. He keeps his eyes fixed on a whorl in the wood above his head. “Mostly dead. The grave hag was waiting for her to die and rot, to eat her. And in town—” Geralt stops, then lets himself say, “They spit at her. Called her a bastard, said she’s cursed. Said her mother was a witch and a whore. Told me to eat her or take her to the Blue Mountains.” There’s a long pause before Geralt says, “I am taking her to the Blue Mountains.”
“To raise her,” Jaskier whispers. Geralt still stares at the ceiling, unable to answer. “To give her a life, Geralt. We’re doing the right thing.”
“What kind of a life am I giving her?” Geralt asks. “One where she’s spit on? Raised by a Witcher and hated for—”
“Stop,” Jaskier hisses. “Stop it. You don’t know what sort of a life she’ll lead. Even now, we go places and some people see you and cheer for the sight of you. You are a blessing, and so is Cirilla, and so is Roza. I wouldn’t trade a one of you for anyone else in this world, Geralt, and I mean that.”
“So many hate me,” Geralt protests, but it’s weak, and he knows it. “What kind of a life is that?”
“A life,” Jaskier whispers to him, “and a loving one. She has no true family left and so it’ll be us.” Jaskier twists, shifts against Geralt until he can contort himself to see into the other bed. Geralt moves with him until they can be comfortable again, tucked up behind Jaskier, the both of them on their sides. He takes Jaskier’s hand in his and lets Jaskier pull their joined fingers to his chest. He holds them tight over his heart.
From here, they can see Ciri and Roza, both sleeping soundly still in the bed beside theirs.
“The journey will be slow,” Geralt says. “Ciri can hold her and they can ride on Roach, but still, we’ll need to stop much more often.”
“So we will,” Jaskier says. “And we’ll get to Kaer Morhen safely and ride out the winter there, and afterwards, when spring comes… We’ll figure out what comes next.” Jaskier traces a long, swirling shape on the back of Geralt’s hand with his fingertip.
“It will be difficult,” Geralt warns.
“It already was,” Jaskier reminds him. “At this point, Geralt, frankly, I’ll carry Rozie in a sling day in and day out. I’m not leaving her.”
Geralt doesn’t say anything to that, because he feels the same way. Instead, he presses a kiss to the back of Jaskier’s head. They both know it’s an agreement.
“Rozie?” Geralt asks instead. Jaskier laughs, light and soft in deference to the nighttime quiet.
“Isn’t it darling?” Jaskier asks. “You really did choose a lovely name, Geralt, dear, I think it suits her very well.”
“Hmm,” Geralt agrees, just an edge too loud. At the noise, Ciri half-wakes, lifting her head to squint at them. The both of them hold their breath, unmoving.
Rather than wake further or speak to them, Ciri settles again, lifting her hand to rest over Roza’s belly. One of Roza’s small hands curls around Ciri’s index finger instinctively, gripping her tight as they sleep. As Ciri drops back off, she smiles, head half-pillowed at the side of Roza’s little bednest.
“Oh, I wish I was a better artist,” Jaskier exhales, barely a noise. Geralt thinks he’s the only person alive who could hear something said so softly, but then, Jaskier knows that: that’s why he knows he can speak that low. “I’d paint this, sculpt it. I suppose a ballad will have to do.”
“For now,” Geralt says, “just watch it.”
Jaskier hums, once, then starts humming again, the same song he’s sorting out. When he yawns, Geralt can feel his jaw crack. His heartbeat is slowing, the closer he gets to sleep.
“I meant what I said earlier,” Jaskier tells him. He tips his head a bit so he can look back at Geralt and explains, hushed, “I feel like I’m dreaming. I feel like I’ll wake up.”
Geralt pinches Jaskier’s palm, kissing him to swallow the disgruntled, surprised noise he makes at the small, sharp pain.
“You’re awake,” Geralt assures him. He rubs his thumb over Jaskier’s knuckles, soothes him, then kisses him again before confessing, “Sometimes I fear all of this has been a dream.”
“All of this?” Jaskier echoes.
“Everything,” Geralt says. “You, Ciri. Yennefer. Even the wars, sometimes, and my life, and I expect to just wake up alone in the woods, or still at Kaer Morhen. Hated, alone. The Butcher of—”
“Stop,” Jaskier says again, softer this time than before. “You’re not. You won’t. You won’t wake up.”
“Neither will you,” Geralt assures him. Jaskier nods, blue eyes still burning like white fire as he stares up at Geralt in the flame-lit darkness. They kiss again, softer, slower.
“Thank you,” Jaskier whispers. Geralt doesn’t even know what he’s thanking him for.
Rather than say the wrong thing, Geralt instead offers, “Someday, it won’t be like this. We could go to the coast. If you still wanted.”
Jaskier’s smile is blinding. He pats Geralt’s cheek, draws him in until their foreheads are pressed together and they’re sharing air with one another.
“That’s some time away,” Jaskier points out. “Us getting to take a break. You sure you know what you’re saying?”
Geralt smiles and says, “Yes.” Jaskier smiles back, so Geralt lets another moment pass before he points out, “We’re raising two children together now, Julek. Did you think I was going anywhere anytime soon?”
Jaskier hums again, turning back into his pillow, guiding Geralt to drape around him like a blanket, holding him tight until there’s hardly a spot that their embrace isn’t locked. Content, his heartbeat settles even further, his breathing calming even more deeply.
“I love you,” Jaskier says. He doesn’t look at Jaskier when he says it, but Geralt feels it all the same, from the way it rumbles in his chest under Geralt’s hand to the warm of his back to Geralt’s front, the way they’re tangled in each other.
“I love you,” Geralt replies, pressed to the crown of Jaskier’s head, nearly lost in his hair. “Sleep. Tomorrow will be long.”
“So worthwhile,” Jaskier breathes. He’s quiet for only a breath of time before he starts humming again, low and aimless, drifting and still never straying out of tune. Geralt closes his eyes to listen to it as Jaskier hums himself to sleep, their hands still tangled together, pressed over his steady heart.