oh god and a continuation, angst version:
they have a very happy few years together before whispers of unrest in the Baltics reach them. There’s to be a war, they say, with more and more countries taking sides. It isn’t long before their country joins the fight, and Geralt being Geralt, he enlists. People are dying, he’d tell Yennefer and Jaskier when they try to dissuade him, and they’d respond AND WE DON’T WANT YOU TO BE ONE OF THEM.
But he’s determined, and it isn’t long before he’s off to basic training. He passes with flying colors—unfortunately for him, it means that he’s sent right to the front as soon as they can get a train out, but the good news is that his superiors notice how good he is with horses and have him join the cavalry, rather than the infantry. It’s marginally harder to die on a horse, after all.
Meanwhile, at home, Jaskier and Yennefer are contributing to the war effort any way they can—Jaskier ends up spending most of his family’s fortune, actually, buying supplies for the soldiers at the front. All he can think is that any one of them could be Geralt, and he’ll do everything in his power to keep him safe, to keep him alive until he can come home.
Yennefer begins work as a codebreaker/spy with some secretive government agency. She buries herself in work so that she doesn’t have to think about it (any of it). The hours are long and the work is hard—more often than not she winds up sleeping at the office. She and Jaskier hardly see each other anymore anyway, and when they do, they’re both too stressed and off kilter without Geralt to get along. To say their relationship is strained is an understatement.
There’s one extremely tense week where they don’t get a letter from Geralt—and he’s meticulous about it always, never misses a chance to send word, so they can only assume the worst. But they never get official confirmation, and the waiting is almost worse.
Imagine their surprise when the dreaded knock at their door turns out to be Geralt, unharmed—and with a little girl holding his hand, to boot. He looks a little rough for wear, but he’s blessedly alive. There are definitely many years shed and no small amount of yelling—you bastard, how could you do this to us, making us so worried—and then they finally get to the question of what the hell he’s doing with a strange girl who looks like she doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.
Geralt explains that he rescued her—her name is Cirilla, and she’s from a little town in France that got caught in the crossfire. She’s the only survivor, and Geralt couldn’t just leave her there—not when it was their troops’ fault in the first place. She doesn’t speak the language, but she’s clinging to Geralt like she’ll die if she lets go.
And then it’s the three of them learning how to fit together again, in the wake of how much they’ve all changed, and learning how to fit Ciri in as well. It’ll be different, and difficult, but they’ve been through rough times before and come out okay. As long as they have each other, it’ll all be alright.