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Training Ciri shouldn’t have been so hard. She was a fantastic student, pushed herself so hard that no one else needed to, and even enjoyed the work. No, she wasn’t what made training so hard on Geralt; it was the memories of his own training.
He never thought about it after it was over, save muscle memory and the occasional story between the other wolves. But now that he had Ciri… the memories of belts and evenings without supper and wooden canes suddenly seemed horrific rather than a bonding memory with his cohort. He’d gone all these years thinking that was just the way it was, that he deserved it, that there was only one way to train an unruly and explosive little brat like himself. And every time he watched Ciri fumble and explode in nearly the same spot he had decades before, he flinched. No harm ever came to her, he made damn sure of it, but he was still prepared for a blow.
After a few weeks of this realization, he told Ciri she would need to focus on controlling her chaos for the time being.
“You said it yourself,I need to be able to protect myself. That making me better and faster and stronger is how you’ll protect me. How am I supposed to improve if I don’t train?”
The guilt trip almost worked, but Geralt needed a break, needed to think, “You can drill at the end of the day if Yennefer hasn’t completely drained you. But only if Cohen agrees to supervise.”
Ciri scrutinized him before falling in step next to him toward their dinner, “Why not Lambert?”
“He’s more childish than you,” Geralt snorted.
“And Vesemir?”
Panic flooded Geralt as he did his best to keep his posture neutral, but every fiber of his being screamed not to let him near Ciri, “No.”
“Why not? He trained you. And Jaskier said he saw you cut through forty soldiers without breaking a sweat.”
Geralt took a deep breath and forced a smile, “Jaskier’s full of shit. Cohen only.”
Ciri rolled her eyes but muttered a begrudging, “Fine,” before splitting off to dig into dinner.
When he mentioned the schedule shift to Yennefer, something sad and lonely crossed her features before she masked it with a surprisingly kind smile. He hadn’t expected her to take issue, but he was almost angry that she seemed… understanding? Empathetic?
“Must be harder for you,” Yennefer’s voice would sound condescending to someone who didn’t know her, but Geralt heard the melancholy edge, “I have no memories in this place and still it aches.”
All he could give her in response was a grimace and terse nod.
It was slightly comforting knowing Yennefer was at least in a similar position, but she seemed just fine. The other wolves seemed just fine. Hell, he was the only one of them to take issue with anything they’d been through. From the trials to the disgusting way Vesemir mourned his lost ability to inflict the same soul-crushing pain on more innocent boys, Geralt seemed to be the only one concerned with the way anyone was handling, or better yet not handling anything.
That night he sat on his bed, polishing his swords as he tried to wrap his mind around how he’d got there.
Sometime after midnight, his door was shoved open by Jaskier holding a bottle of something far too strong for a human and managing to yell at him while still whispering, “Right. Put the perfectly sharp blade down before I use it on you. I swear to fuck if you scrape that whet stone more time, I’ll lose the one fucking marble I have left. And I need that one! It makes me money!”
Stunned out of his meditation-like repetitive stupor, Geralt carefully set his things aside as Jaskier made himself at home on Geralt’s bed, “Didn’t know anyone could hear.”
“Yes, well, these doors are shit, and I’m right across the hall,” Jaskier waved his hands as if Geralt should have caught on by now before uncorking the bottle and holding it toward Geralt, “What’s running round in that big boarish head of yours?”
Geralt gave him a sad excuse for a smirk and took the bottle, staring at it as he whispered like he was giving some heinous confession, “I’m… I can’t imagine intentionally harming Ciri.”
Jaskier raised an eyebrow with an air of cautious optimism, “That’s good.”
He didn’t understand. Not that Geralt should expect him to, but they hadn’t spent as much time together recently. It used to be easier to talk like this with Jaskier, the bard was able to put together the broken fragments of a sentence Grealt couldn’t bear to say aloud much faster when they’d been attached at the hip.
Frowning as he took a pull from the bottle, Geralt slowly dug the words out from where he’d buried them long ago, “But no one thought twice about beating or starving us… for the same mistakes she makes. She’s just scared…” Geralt took a deep breath and slowly forced it out, sneaking the words in on his exhale as if his pride and fear wouldn’t notice that way, “ We were just scared…”
For a long time, neither of them said a word; they both just stared at the bottle in Geralt’s hand. The air was thick and breathing too deeply felt dangerous somehow, like a sigh could break watever fragile balance they’d set up. Geralt’s mind raced, as it had been all night, reminding him of horror story after horror story that had been so normalized he and his fellow wolves had laughed as they exchanged them over meals. They almost made him sick as he imagined any of those words coming out of Ciri’s mouth.
Finally, Jaskier spoke up, his voice soft and careful, “Is that why she’s training with Yen more?”
Geralt found himself nodding before he realized, an odd tightness behind his eyes and in the back of his throat, “It made sense before. We were nightmares, but Ciri can be worse, and I couldn’t dream…”
“You didn’t deserve it either,” Jaskier reminded him, taking the bottle from his hand and taking a conservative swig before cris-crossing his legs.
“Deserving and not deserving makes no difference. Shit still happens.” Geralt grumbled, reciting a line he’d rehearsed plenty of times before, only now it felt hollow. He didn’t believe it anymore, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
The soft, almost proud smile Jaskier wore when Geralt risked a glance toward him was confusing, but the bard’s words were far worse, “We finally tricked you into giving a fuck about yourself,” When Geralt frowned harder at him, Jaskier continued, “Hell, Geralt, you called yourself a tool- no! Weapon when I first met you. It has taken decades to humanize you to yourself. Decades and a daughter apparently…” he trailed off with a shrug and another sip from the bottle.
“I thought I was a selfish twit,” Geralt huffed, reaching for the bottle before bringing one foot onto the bed to rest his elbow on his knee. He didn’t think Jaskier was wrong, but he didn’t want to accept it either. Too much about how he moved through the world would change.
“You are,” Jaskier smiled, giving a fervent nod, “You’ve great range.”
Rolling his eyes, Geralt couldn’t stop the tired smile spreading on his face, “Don’t sign me up to give a monologue.”
“Now that I have the idea…” Jaskier gave him a mischievous wiggle of his eyebrows and dodged a light backhand to his shoulder.
The liquor was starting to do its job, Geralt's limbs feeling heavier and his mind foggier. He took another long bubbling pull from the bottle before setting it on the floor, Jaskier giving a sigh of relief. It was a satisfying enough explanation for why the training grounds bothered him all of the sudden, but as he stared at a hole in the hem of Jaskier’s trousers, something kept eating at him.
“I can't trust the people I called family,” the whispered words were out before he realized he’d spoken. Something in him calcified and died as he said it. He’d been thinking it for weeks, especially since Vesemir’s latest stunt, but it felt final, speaking the fact into existence.
Geralt could just barely see Jaskier nodding his head as he spoke, “Me neither. Rotten, isn’t it?”
“Fucking brutal.”
“Yup,” Jaskier popped the ‘p’ and rested his chin in his hand, staring at the same hole Geralt had been staring at, “What are you going to do about it?”
The question pulled Geralt up short, “The fuck can I do?”
It had been a long time since Jaskier looked at him like he was a fucking idiot, but it still had the same effect, “Tell them? Ruin their week? Lay down rules?” As he made his list, Jaskier shuffled till he was laying diagonally across the bed with his head on the pillows and somehow he still had the effect of making Geralt feel like a dimwit, “For fuck’s sake, Geralt, that's your daughter . You focus so hard on protecting her from armies and monsters, don’t forget about your own family just because no one else has given a fuck all these years.”
“They wouldn’t starve-”
“You just said you can’t trust them. Why defend them?” Jaskier was staring him down with a challenge in his eyes and Geralt couldn’t argue with the logic.
Sliding his hand down his shin and resting his chin on his knee like he did when he was a boy, Geralt closed his eyes and whispered, “We were raised to need him. It’s a shitty habit.”
“I know,” Jaskier let out a long sorrowful sigh that reminded Geralt he really did know, “Maybe talk to Lambert first?”
Geralt shook his head and felt a little dizzy for it, letting himself plop over onto his side so he was curled into the little triangle of space Jaskier had left him, “He’s too angry. Probably accuse me of mutiny… Eskel would have understood.”
Jaskier’s hand flopped to his side and clumsily found its way to comb through Geralt’s hair, “Yeah?”
“You would have liked him,” Geralt mused, again feeling that enraging sting behind his eyes, “He’d have already torn into Vesemir. Was always ready for a fight…”
Voice softer, almost like he was singing a lullaby, Jaskier hummed, “I probably would have.”
For a moment Geralt thought he’d be okay, he thought he could tell Jaskier just how betrayed he felt by the people he thought he could trust the most. How Vesemir was supposed to protect him and how he’d broken the promises he made when Geralt was too little to understand he couldn’t keep them. But all that came out were soft stuttering breaths and tears rolling down his face.
Continuing to run his fingers through Geralt’s hair, Jaskier whispered, “Let’s sleep. You’ve done enough thinking for one night.”
Geralt sniffed and raised his head with an embarrassed grimace and nodded. Instead of a pillow, Geralt laid his head on Jaskier’s stomach, letting the bard’s slow and rhythmic breathing in tandem with the steady thrum of liquor in his veins lull him to sleep even if he dreaded the morning.