It's Geralt of all people who breaks the silence between them. Ironic, really, that the man of so few words finds them when nobody else can. After all this time, after everything that happened, it falls to him to speak, to comfort, do to something, when nobody else knows how.
His daughter and his brothers had told him she had yelled, throwing the witch's blade as the two witchers shoot up in their beds. His girl, his strong, beautiful, brave girl, had had a few precious moments of lucidity in the midst of her docility, and with it, she had saved them, imprisoning the demon in her mind.
The time between Yennefer's betrayal and the hard, frantic ride to Kaer Morhen do not make sense to the witcher. From the moment he holds his sword to her throat to that where he pushes her off him as he seeks out his girl, time doesn't add up. That's why he's tried so hard to fill in the blanks, why he asked the two of them, and his father, what had occurred in their perspective. They could handle it, they were strong, and his daughter had made sure they had survived the battle, but coming to his daughter to ask what had happened to her was something he wanted to avoid for as long as possible. The last thing Geralt ever wants to do is hurt Ciri.
"Asking how you are is a stupid question," Geralt begins. He hears his daughter inhale, but he cannot see her, she's facing away from him. "so, what are you feeling?" He thinks that's the best way to go, honesty and bluntness.
Everard had told him the ivory-hilted blade had sat in the wall with a satisfying clunk as Ciri had yelled at them to get back, get to Vesemir, get help, before the demon had taken her again, her face falling slack before falling sly, emerald eyes glowing a horrific shade of neon.
His girl, his brave girl, had fought the demon, and she had won, but it had came at a cost. She's only just recovered enough strength from her fainting and vomiting spells she'd had once they returned from the mysterious sphere. She's not strong enough to walk the keep, so she doesn't know about the destruction and the bodies of the basilisks. Geralt hopes they can rid the bodies and scrub the blood and fix the tree and the walls and the tables before his girl is well enough to start her training again. The last thing she needs is more pain.
"I-" Ciri's voice is tired and soft, it doesn't speak of thirst or gritty like she'd swallowed sandpaper. Geralt had heard her speak in many ways, loud and relieved when they'd met in the forest, monotone and untrustworthy before Nivillen, tearful and shaky once they'd left, strong and stubborn when they would train and spar, angry and bitter when Geralt had denied her the mutations. But never like this, defeated and exhausted, it chills him. "I don't know," she pauses, pushing a lock of hair from her face. It's undone and falls in curls and waves, she hardly ever wears it down, it makes her look younger and more like the Princess she is, especially with the clean white linen tunic she wears. "I don't know what to feel, what to say." Now, Cirilla turns towards him, her legs folding up behind her.
"I understand." But he really doesn't, he doesn't understand it all. He so wants to, he wants to take that pain he sees in his daughter's eyes, he wants to hold her against his chest the same way he felt when they reunited in Cintra. Will she smile if he gives her a few of her favourite strawberry jam cookies? Or will a blade do it? Will she allow him to come closer, hold her and protect her from a world that hunts her for reasons neither of them understand?
By the time Vesemir had came to Everard's room, Ciri -was she still? Or would it be more accurate to call her Voleth?- had gone. She was on her way to the medallion tree by then. Was he there then? Going up the mountain, coming into the courtyard?
Trapped within her own mind, Geralt doesn't know what she was forced to see, and it startles him. No, it scares him. His daughter is so strong, so brave, whatever that demon had forced into her mind had hit below the belt. Ciri had survived the Cintran slaughter and weeks on the run, her night with the beast and the vampire, months with unruly witchers and the betrayal of Yennefer, she had survived it, and had never reacted as such.
"How many?" She looks up at him, eyes tired, but set, as if she's resigned herself to a horrible fate.
Ah. He supposes she wouldn't know what she did after the last monster was taken down by Coën.
He knows what it is to be resigned here. Just days ago, Geralt had walked cautiously around the keep, thinking that this next turn would be the one where he would find his girl on the ground, used and eliminated due to the demon's influence. Maybe Yennefer would have gotten to her again, lead her by the hand to her death in exchange for chaos.
Geralt's fist clenches. He's so furious with Yennefer. How dare she. How dare she do that to him? To them?
The battle had begun after Voleth had refused his offer of himself as a sacrifice to save his child. Witchers crowded around her, swords at the ready, after Jaskier had ran inside the room and told them about what Yennefer had done, about how her deal with the demon had lead to Ciri being possessed, and of how the girl clearly didn't want to do them any harm, with how she had broken out of her trance and yelled to alert the witchers of the danger.
Thankfully, all the swords were pointed at Voleth, and not Cirilla. He didn't know what he would have done if Ciri hadn't saved his brothers, and the vengeance had been turned upon her instead.
Ciri had had moments of lucidity, where she had managed to push the demon to the back of her mind, enough to ask him to help her, to warn a brother of an incoming attack, or a weakness in the basilisk, but he didn't know what the girl had been through in the moments where her body was not her own. When she herself had been locked inside her own mind like a bluebird in a golden cage, he had been too busy trying to figure out a way to free his girl.
He cringes as he steps forward, watching her neck as she moves her hair. He remembered the sick crunch when she had been forced into submission, when it looked like a black, shadowy hand had grabbed her hair and forced her back. Vesemir and Gwain had heard too, for they took a moment to stop fighting their shared monster to see the source of the noise, before coming back to reality.
"None." Geralt comes back to earth, realising that she was still waiting for an answer, loathe to leave her waiting for words like he had in those first couple weeks on the winter road. "Do you not remember what happened, after Yennefer?"
"No." she whispers, fiddling with her fingers, looking down in shame. "I don't remember much from being on the road until I fell into you." Ciri pauses, licking her lips, looking up. She meets his eyes, and she looks tired. "I only remember parts of the fighting."
"Would you like to know?"
"Well, after Yennefer came into the room, she tried to give you a potion, clear the demon from you that way. All the monsters were dead by then, my brothers all coming over to see what she was doing."
"It didn't work, clearly." Geralt walks towards her, and takes her weight as he sits beside her, his girl leaning upon his shoulder. He holds her steady, holds her strong, he will be strong so she can be weak, so she can be vulnerable and upset and frightened. Lord knows she must not have had the chance much since the slaughter. "Then she had an idea, cut her wrist and let the demon come to her instead, leave you alone."
"And that didn't work as well."
"No. It was a foolish plan. All that happened was that she fainted from blood loss quite quickly after."
Ciri chuckled humourlessly. "Sorceresses are always self centered like that."
"Indeed. I don't know what you said, what you did, but you whispered something, and then there was a loud noise. Horrid, really, even for a witcher." He nods. "A large, black figure appeared in front of you, it was shadowy, as if it was a ghost. You looked over at the room, yiur eyes were black, like all the other witchers, and suddenly you woke them all up. Even Marek, with his lack of face-" he notes that Ciri winces as if she was struck. "And Timron, with his no legs, Roose and Lukas, you brought them all back. Even Eskel and Remus, several others, too. They just appeared out of thin air, from boots to head. You brought them back."
"What? How? They weren't there." Ciri is surprised.
"You don't tend to obey the laws of the world, sweet girl. The word impossible doesn't seem to hold weight with you."
Ciri chuckles, her eyes filling with tears. She sniffles, burying her face into his shoulder.
He holds her, calms her, runs his fingers through her knotted blonde hair.
"Thank you, little wolf," Geralt says, once she's pulled back. He's lay a hand upon her cheek, comforting her as much as he is cleaning her cheek of tears.
"Bringing my brothers back. Thank you."
"It seems rather undeserved, when you consider I had no idea or no control over it."
Ciri closes her eyes, hiding back in his hair.
"You looked back at the shape, and it disappeared. You fainted into my arms. We thought everything was okay when you woke up, because Yennefer was healed, too, and you were free, before all the doors and windows slammed closed. Fires burned out, the lot."
"Yeah, I remember." She settles into his shoulder. "She came back for me, and I portaled us to-" she sighs. "somewhere."
"Yeah," he shuffles. He wishes he could say something to comfort her about the wraiths, what they said to her, but he finds none. "Yennefer's fine, by the way, you healed her when you healed us."
"And her magic, is that back?"
"No." He whispers, "she still knows all her spells, but she tried to light the fires and couldn't. She was upset, but she's not the priority anymore."
"I don't think I can let her go with the knowledge she has, about you and about here."
"What?" Ciri pulls back quickly. Geralt's shoulder is cold, he wishes she was still where she was. Her eyes are wide, disbelieving, bright emeralds in a sea of coal. "Are you kidding? You're letting her stay?"
"She told me she helped you make a portal in Nenneke's."
Ciri hung her head. "About what happened there-"
"Shh, it doesn't matter." Geralt soothes, bringing a hand back to her face. "She took you from me, but we are together now."
"When you were asleep, two days ago."
"And that's that, then? She's staying here?" Ciri sounds nervous.
"To be no more than a tutor to you. I don't trust her, you don't trust her, my brothers don't trust her, but she told me that she helped you with a portal, and that's more than what Triss ever did. I'm told a portal I'd complex magic, too."
"But-" she starts. "You can't-"
He frowns. "What's wrong?"
"You don't understand what happened. When she took me away, we ended up at Goldencheek's house, you remember, the wife that saved me? The husband that saved you?"
"Geralt, the fire man-" she swallows thickly. "the fire man got them. Got them all, her, her husband, and the two boys." Cirilla reveals.
Geralt allows himself a moment of grief for four lives so needlessly wasted. For the two boys who were all in all innocent, yes, he knows one of them caused his girl a bit of bother, but children should never die in their parents' war. He grieves for a woman so kind to open her heart to Ciri for no other reason than that she wanted to. And he will grieve for a long while a man who was so generous and honourable that he qiuld save a lowly witcher and put up with his sharpness and hostility just because he felt it was the right thing to do.
"After I found them, Yennefer-" Ciri takes a calming breath, sniffling as more tears come to her eyes. "Yennefer told me they were keeping you hostage in Cintra. Hurting you. Torturing you, because of me." she reveals.
Geralt says nothing, just stares at this child. This sweet, beautiful, vulnerable child who had been betrayed by everybody in her world apart from a sweet farmyard mother and a handful of mutated witchers holed up in a crumbling castle.
By the gods, how could he be so blind? How could he have fallen for Yennefer's charms so easily that she could disarm him and illusion him into thinking she had his child's best interest at heart? Surely it was because Yennefer's one mission since he had known her was motherhood, and now she had an opportunity, she does this?
As he looks at her now, all he feels is rage for the woman. Her deception aches in his bones, the depths of it startling him. He knew she had trapped Ciri and was going to lead her by the hand to the demon, but somehow this -as small of a sin as it was in comparison to that- was worse. Yennefer had messed with Ciri's mind, told her that he was in danger because of her, manipulated her and deceived her. All for what? Nothing, in the end.
"Ciri," he starts. But he finds that he doesn't know how to finish the sentence.
It seems like he doesn't have to.
The girl sniffles and wipes her tears, a fruitless task as more simply streak her cheeks, before crawling over to him and placing herself into his lap, curling into his chest and neck. His arms bound around her, warming her and keeping her safe.
"I don't want her to be with us." she sniffles. "She betrayed us, everybody always does."
"You have me, Ciri. And my brothers and Vesemir and Jaskier, you should know that I'm not going to forget this. What she's done, to us and you. I promise, I won't forget this. And I will keep you safe from her if she tries anything."
"Infirmary. Jaskier took her there after you healed her. Stitches."
"So, you promise not to fall to your knees to her if she flutters her lashes again?"
He chuckles. Ciri bites a grin, looking so conflicted with her red eyes and her wet cheeks.
"Promise. Me and you against the world, pup. I'll keep you safe. From monsters and men and mages alike."
"I don't want her to be with us, but if you think it's best, then you need to play bodyguard. I won't trust her again, you do understand that?"
"Of course." He wipes her cheeks again. And thankfully, they stay dry.
Ciri cuddles into him. "Rest some more, sweet girl. When you feel up to it, you can come downstairs and meet the brothers you helped."
"As long as they're not all like Lambert." Ciri yawned. "Can't handle another arse in this place."
Geralt laughs. "You can see Remus throwing him off a snowplough if you like."
Ciri smiles. And closes her eyes.
"You'll be here when I wake up?"
"I will, little one. Rest now."
