Chapter Text
Ciri woke to the feeling of pain in her wrists and something hard at her back. Her head was pounding. Everything ached. It felt like she was sitting up, but she'd never liked to sleep like that. And she didn't remember going to sleep.
Something's wrong. Something's wrong -
There were voices. Loud and angry. Well, one was angry; the other wielded a kind of anger that Ciri knew was trying to cover up fear.
"-let us go! I don't know who you think she is, but you're wrong. She's my daughter!"
"Yeah, you said that. Doesn't look much like you, does she?"
"Which I've always thought was a great shame, but what can you do? Look, gentlemen, we were lost in the desert, we just - ow!"
Jaskier.
Ciri jolted into full awareness like she'd been hit round the face. She snapped her head up and opened her eyes to find she was inside a building.
It was, in some ways, an unspeakable relief. We made it out of the fucking desert. A building meant shade, it meant people, the opportunity to find food and drink. It meant they might actually survive this.
They were in a large room with a high ceiling and walls made of a sandy coloured stone. It was a pub; men were drinking at the tables and there was a bar on the far side. Something about it struck her as familiar, something about the stairs and the windows.
Fuck. She'd seen a vision of this room when they were in the desert. One of her visions of Falka had happened here. What had Falka called it? Something about a possible future, depending on what Ciri decided to do...
The massive counterbalance to the good news of no longer being lost in the desert was that Ciri was tied to a fucking post, her hands bound behind her back. There was a young man equally trussed up to another post in front of her, and behind him an older, long-haired man was standing and shaking out his hand.
As if he'd just struck someone out of Ciri's sight.
Anger began to churn in her stomach.
She couldn't see past the post and the man tied to it. Catching Ciri's look, the young man raised his eyebrows.
"So you're alive, blondie," he said quietly. No one seemed likely to overhear; there was conversation and unpleasant laughter coming from the gathered men. "That'll cheer your friend up. I think he thought you might be dead."
There was a kind of amused interest in the guy's voice rather than concern, but fair was fair. It wasn't like they knew each other.
Her friend. Ciri strained to see round the post, but she was too well tied; the rope bit into her chest as she struggled to see Jaskier.
They'd not talked about this. Of all the things they'd discussed in the desert, getting immediately captured when they were on the verge of getting out wasn't one of them. They'd been so focused on getting towards people for the sake of survival that they'd really not taken into account that the people they found might be complete bastards.
He'd called her his daughter. Well, Ciri could play along with that.
"Father?" she called out. The man standing on the other side of the post looked round sharply. A bounty hunter, she thought, taking stock of him quickly. He wasn't a soldier, and there was nothing to suggest he was Nilfgaardian, but he still had a dangerous look.
"Essi!" Jaskier called back with audible relief. "Are you alright?"
Ciri kept her face as steady as she could, but there was a second when the name threw her and from the look on his face the young man tied up opposite her saw it. Fuck. She didn't know where Jaskier had got the name from, but he'd probably been planning what to do while Ciri was passed out for fuck knew how long.
"I'm fine," Ciri called back. Which wasn't entirely true; the pain in her head was easing but in its place hunger and thirst were reasserting themselves, and her muscles felt stiff. They couldn't have been here too long; outside the windows, the sun was still high, and the men were drinking but didn't seem drunk. This was a break, then, before they were taken somewhere else.
It was the somewhere else that worried her. The bounty their captor was chasing could have been placed by pretty much any leader on the Continent, and there were no good options. Some, though, were definitely worse than others.
She thought again of Tor Lara, of Vilgefortz so calmly pursuing her and Jaskier up the tower and what it meant that he'd found them and Geralt hadn't. She didn't know what he wanted from her or what he believed she could do. Or what he'd do to her to achieve it. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.
Fuck, she just wanted her family back. Her whole family.
But for now, she had to look after the part of it she still had.
"You keep your fucking mouth shut," the bounty hunter said, and drew back his leg. Ciri didn't see the kick land, but she heard Jaskier grunt, and her anger began to twist into something dark inside her. "You're not on the fucking bounty, so I'd keep my mouth shut if I was you, or I'm going to start thinking you're not worth the trouble of keeping alive."
A deep, terrible sort of hatred burned within Ciri then. In some ways, it was a hatred that she thought might have been with her for a long time. For years.
She'd felt it a lot in the desert, especially in those strange visions where Falka had spoken to her. Or, as Jaskier kept reminding her, something that claimed to be Falka. Ciri still wasn't sure if the whole thing had been a series of dreams, or visions born out of her power. Certainly Jaskier had never heard more than Ciri's side of the conversations, and he tried to hide it but she knew it had begun to scare the shit out of him.
And for good reason. She could almost still feel the curl of fire beneath her skin. Jaskier had pulled her back before she went too far, before she'd finished healing him, but still - she could feel it now, what Yennefer had meant all those months ago. Fire magic took something. Her powers felt weak, drained and hard to grasp, like she was trying to cup water in her hands only for it to keep disappearing back into the sand.
But magic wasn't the only defence Ciri had. She was also a witcher, and the bounty hunter had her fucking sword hooked on his belt. The sword Geralt had given her, the one Jaskier had cut his hand saving when Ciri had dropped it in Tor Lara.
Geralt might be - Geralt might be dead. She might have lost him forever. That grief had haunted her and Jaskier on their long trek through the desert. They hardly spoke about it, but it wove around both their necks, choking them like a noose. They feared for Yennefer too, with no way of knowing what had happened to her after she ran back to Thanedd, and the uncertainty of that was awful. But thinking of Geralt was somehow worse, because that did in some ways seem certain. He had sent them away to face Vilgefortz, and he would have done anything in his power to keep him from coming after them. Ciri knew that with all her heart. Geralt would never have walked away from that fight, would never have let Vilgefortz pass willingly.
It was hard to believe he could be gone. Despite knowing it was probably true, she rebelled against the thought every time it threatened her. But if he was, there was no fucking way she was letting the only thing he'd given her that she still owned stay in the hands of some kidnapping shitstain.
A shitstain who was threatening to hurt Jaskier. To kill him.
Geralt and Yennefer might be dead. Jaskier might be the only family she had left in the world.
And it had felt alien but not wrong to call him Father.
"Talk to him like that again and I'll kill you," Ciri promised him. It was easy to ignore Jaskier's hissed "Essi!" when he was still out of sight; she stared fixedly at the bounty hunter instead. She felt that her hatred alone should have been able to kill him; it felt deadly enough.
And the man had the fucking nerve to just laugh at her, echoed by the others at his table, and go back to his drink.
At least he left Jaskier alone.
But shit, they were in trouble. Near as he was to getting himself impaled himself on Ciri's sword, the bastard had made a good point. Jaskier wasn't part of Ciri's bounty. That meant there were, she figured, three ways this could go. First, the guy intended to take them both to whoever he was delivering Ciri to, hoping there'd be a bit extra for an unexpected second prisoner who clearly knew Ciri. Second, he might intend to split them up, perhaps knowing somewhere he could take Jaskier to sell him for who the fuck knew what kind of purpose. Third, he was going to get fed up before completing either of those plans and kill Jaskier outright.
Yeah, absolutely none of that was happening. Not on her watch.
But she needed a plan of her own.
The young man was still watching her, and he looked more intrigued than ever.
"He might not believe you," the man said quietly, "but I do. You want your chance to kill him and get out of here?"
Ciri ran a considering look over the room, then over the young man. He did look like he could be a fighter. Definitely something scrappy about him, something of the survivor in his eyes.
"You got an idea?"
He did, as it turned out. The plan - antagonising the bounty hunter until he got close enough to Ciri for her to palm his knife - did nothing for Jaskier's mood, and he was swearing up a storm by the time the young man had cut himself free. Before he could turn the knife to Ciri's bonds, though, their plan stopped mattering much at all because absolute fucking chaos broke in.
Ciri couldn't count the fighters. A handful of them, all young as far as a glance could tell, but the room erupted into shouts, laughter, and the sounds of steel and death faster than even she could track. And she was still tied to this fucking post - or she was, until the bounty hunter dove for her.
Protecting his investment, she supposed, or if nothing else imagining he could use her to barter his way out. His fucking mistake; Ciri had more to protect than he did.
He sliced through the rope around her chest. The second he did, she surged to her feet, slamming her entire body weight into him and crashing them both towards the wall. He impacted with a grunt but her hands were still bound; he seized a handful of her hair and yanked her head back. She twisted, drawing a knee up to slam into his crotch, and he gave a brutal scream of rage and pain but didn't let go. Even as he hunched forward, he slammed her forward into the wall, a move that crushed her ribs and bounced her head against the stone.
Blinking against spots in her vision and the fierce pain in her head, Ciri tried to turn - only to suddenly find his grip was gone. She pulled back, desperately wishing her hands were free, and heard a wet, fleshy noise.
Jaskier was there. He was holding the hilt of Ciri's sword, which was currently sticking out of the bounty hunter's back.
"Oh, gods," Jaskier said in a faint, sickly voice. "That's a lot of blood."
Well, he wasn't wrong. Ciri stared with wide eyes because if Jaskier had ever fought before, ever killed someone in his life, she didn't know about it - but there was no time. "Jask, my hands."
"Right. Right. Oh, gods. Okay, I would be sorry except you smashed my kid's face into a wall, so. Oh, gods, how does Geralt do this?"
He managed to keep up the litany until he'd pulled the sword out, maybe in a deliberate effort to drown out the noise it made. The bounty hunter was making little gasping, whimpering noises, and the moment the sword was free he slumped to the ground.
Jaskier made a sort of whimper in the back of his throat too, but he didn't freeze up. He looked to Ciri and she turned to give him her back, taking the opportunity to review the rest of the fight as best she could. The new arrivals were definitely winning, and they were clearly there for the other captive, calling out greetings to 'Kayleigh' as they fought with the confidence of those who knew they were going to come out the victors.
It took a few seconds longer than she'd expected, probably because Jaskier was being incredibly careful not to cut her with the blade, but then she felt the snap of freedom as the last fibres were sliced away.
Ciri shook the remnants of the rope from her wrists as she spun round and took the bloody blade Jaskier was only too happy to relinquish to her.
He looked like shit, and she had no idea how he'd got free in the first place, but they were both alive and unbound. It was a decent start.
Jaskier's eyes kept darting down to the man on the floor. He wasn't quite dead. Jaskier, presumably without really intending it, had stabbed into his stomach. It was a good strike, definitely taking him out of the game, but an unintentionally cruel one. He could take a long time to die that way.
There was a part of her that was tempted to let him. He would have condemned her to something worse.
But Jaskier wouldn't want her to. Neither would Geralt. Even Yennefer, she thought, would tell her not to, though she suspected Yennefer would've done it herself if she was in the right frame of mind.
It was a mercy killing, in the end, to crouch over the bounty hunter and cut his throat. A little like when Geralt had had to end Roach's life to spare her pain, though without anything like the same compassion and grief.
But it mattered. Somehow, in some way, it mattered that the first time Ciri ever chose to kill a man was to end his suffering.
When she stood back up, Jaskier's face was a maelstrom of emotion. A heartbeat later, though, she actually saw the way he shoved it all down, instead gesturing slightly helplessly into the room.
"Are we... on anyone's side here?" he asked, ducking as a plate soared over his head and smashed into the wall. "I'll be honest, I'm kind of lost."
"Pretty sure we're on the side that's against the assholes who captured us," Ciri said. She felt surprisingly calm, or maybe it wasn't surprising; it was the kind of focus she'd felt fighting the aeschna with Geralt, the calm of the fight. "But I'm also pretty sure they don't need our help."
Even as they watched, the newcomers were subduing the last of the men. Brutally, at that - the room was a mess of blood and viscera and body parts. They were fierce fighters, this group. One last sword thrust, in and then drawn out to the side in a spray of blood, and the last body fell.
In the relative calm that followed, some of the Rats started looting the bodies of the dead; others turned to look at Ciri and Jaskier.
"Uh," Jaskier said. "Hello! Thank you for that, unless you're also now intending to kill us, in which case I retract my thanks and am actually quite offended."
Ciri would have closed her eyes if it wasn't excruciatingly dangerous to do so. Seriously, he'd been on the road with Geralt longer than she'd been alive; she was beginning to see why Geralt claimed to have spent most of that time dragging him out of trouble.
Thankfully, the woman at the front of the group looked more amused than anything. She also looked familiar.
"I think we're good," she said, taking a quick scan of Jaskier before her eyes settled on Ciri. "Hey, trouble."
"Oh, come on," Ciri said, the memory slamming into her. Gors Velen. She gestured with her sword, but there was no threat in it. "You owe me a purse of coin."
The woman laughed. She was, infuriatingly, gorgeous in her amusement. "We just saved your life," she pointed out. "And your friend's. I think we'll call it quits."
"And we are incredibly grateful," Jaskier said, coming over close enough to put his index finger on the flat of Ciri's blade and push it gently downwards. She sighed and let him do it, and some combination of their behaviour drew away the remaining tension from the room; the woman wasn't the only one who laughed this time.
"I'm Mistle," she said. There was such interest and open curiosity in the way she looked at Ciri. "And you hold that sword like you know how to use it. Want to stick around for a drink?"
Being the focus of her attention felt intoxicating. She was interested in Ciri. Intrigued, curious. And Mistle, in turn, intrigued Ciri. All of them did. There was such casual ease in the way they lounged around in the aftermath of the fight. They all looked young yet seemed to be led by no one but themselves. They were taking whatever was valuable, which meant this was how they made their money. Thieves. Bandits, maybe.
It sounded a lot like freedom. Like not being tethered by a destiny that caused you so much pain.
But it hadn't only brought Ciri pain. It had also brought her a family, and while she didn't know if they were all alive, she still had hope for them. And she still had Jaskier.
"I can't," she said, not without a thread of genuine regret. But Jaskier was beside her, and there was such concern in his face, and when she let herself lean into him his hand came up to her shoulder, always ready to support her. "We need to figure out a way home."
"Oh, shit," Kayleigh chimed in. "He actually is your dad? I honestly thought you were bluffing with that asshole before."
Jaskier made a vaguely strangled noise. And Ciri...
Ciri thought of a lot of things very quickly. She thought about how Jaskier had shaken her awake just before dawn that night in Loxia, and how he was the one who'd thought to pack the food and water that might have ended up saving their lives in the desert. How he'd tried to talk her into running away from Aretuza, but followed when she went towards it instead. The way he'd stood between her and Vilgefortz in Tor Lara and fought him even after Vilgefortz broke and lacerated his arm, even though he would have known there was no chance he could survive against a man neither witchers nor sorceresses could stop. How he'd tried to give her more than her share of water as they walked in the endless dunes, which had lasted until she threatened to pour the flask out on the sands if he wouldn't split it with her.
And there were happier times too. Meals shared around campfires as they travelled with Geralt and Yennefer. Singing together, their voices raised as they walked along countless roads. Teasing Geralt as a united force, drawing out smiles he couldn't quite manage to hide. Seeing Jaskier and Geralt sit side by side in the night, the way they'd look at each other when they didn't realise she was watching, and know she was part of something that felt right.
"Yeah, he is," Ciri said, and found it was the easiest thing in the world to say. Jaskier's weird noise took on a new pitch, and she kicked him in the foot. The sound cut out, and Mistle laughed again. "Excuse him. It's sort of a new arrangement."
"Okay," Kayleigh said, drawing out the vowels and turning away with a dramatic pivot. "Not even gonna get involved in that one. Let's grab the good shit and get out of here, guys."
Mistle's face held more regret. "Might see you around one day, then, trouble?"
And Ciri had the strangest sensation, for a moment, of destiny stretching out along two different paths. Different futures, like Falka had said. Like there was a road untaken where she'd walk out of here by this woman's side.
"Yeah, maybe," she said, but she felt certain it wasn't true. Without knowing how she could be so sure, she knew she wasn't going to see Mistle again.
And she seemed to know it too. With one last, lingering look, Mistle turned back to her friends, and Ciri turned to Jaskier.
He really did look a mess. With his lute lost in Tor Lara, his leather coat abandoned in the desert and the bag he'd carried now missing too, he was a good match for Ciri - both of them down to nothing but their shirts, trousers and boots. Ciri had her sword back, and with any luck Jaskier still had the pocketful of coin he'd had the sense to grab from the cabin in Loxia. They were going to need to figure out something new for his arm; the bastards had even taken away the sling they'd fashioned out of strips of his coat.
And she didn't like the way his wounds were looking. Resorting to fire magic in the desert had been dangerous, she knew, and if Jaskier hadn't stopped her when she had, hadn't unknowingly banished that vision of Falka, she understood that it might have consumed her. But part of her wished she hadn't listened and had at least finished healing him. Burning out the infection had saved his life, but the break was still barely healed and the gashes had started bleeding again; she could see the red spots through the bandages that had once been the lining of Ciri's jacket.
Still. He was alive. They'd kept each other alive, and they were free, and they were out of the fucking desert.
And Jaskier was looking at her like she'd lost her mind.
"Oh, shut up," Ciri said, even though he hadn't said a word. "I've got two fathers. You're not that special."
Exactly as she'd predicted, Jaskier gaped at her for a long, wordless moment and then threw his good hand in the air. "The things I have to put up with," he said as though very hard done by, except that when he lowered his arm it landed on Ciri and squeezed her into a sideways hug - tight but quick like he thought she wouldn't allow anything more than that.
After she'd just said he was her father. Honestly. He and Geralt were as bad as each other.
"Come on," he said, letting her go. "We should probably get out of here before this lot. I imagine people are going to wait until they're long gone before they come asking questions, but we don't want to be here when they do."
Once again, a good point. Ciri retrieved her scabbard from the bounty hunter's body and strapped her sword back on, and with a final nod of farewell to the Rats they stepped out into the sunlight together.
It was bright and hot and unwelcome on Ciri's sunburnt skin, but they were in the streets of a town. Still full of dangers, and clearly she was as hunted here as anywhere else, but it offered them a much better chance than they'd had before.
"How did you get free?" she asked. The question had been nagging at her. "Weren't you tied up too?"
"Oh, I was," Jaskier said, wincing. She remembered his sounds of pain suddenly, and it made her almost wish she had let the bounty hunter die more slowly after all. "And with no respect to the already injured, I can tell you. I pissed him off while you were still asleep, enough that he threw one of those clay pots at me. Missed, thank fuck, but broken pottery is sharp enough to cut through rope if you're patient."
"I'm not sure if that's really clever or really stupid."
"Yeah, that's the grey area I live in. Geralt always..."
He trailed off like the thought had caught up with itself. His eyes flickered closed, and for a moment his thoughts seemed to hurt more than his arm.
"Do you think they're alive?" Ciri said quietly. It was the first time she'd asked outright since the first day in the desert.
Jaskier's hand found hers and squeezed.
"I don't know," he said. His voice was steadier than it was when she'd asked back then. "But I believe they are. And I believe they're looking for us. And that they won't ever stop."
Ciri breathed in deeply, and nodded.
"Then we'll keep looking too."
She leaned into his side again. Let herself rely on him.
"Together."
No news came to Brokilon for days. No word of the world beyond the forest, of what had happened at Thanedd or what had become of the people there.
Geralt lay in his bed of wood and moss amongst the trees and wondered if this was how death would take him after all these years. And if it really mattered any more if it did.
His memories of what happened after the fight were fractured, but he remembered the sight of Vilgefortz walking away down the beach, leaving Geralt trembling and powerless on the sand. And he remembered Tor Lara exploding, the way ancient stone had crumbled away, leaving a monolith exposed to the sky.
All he had, lying there in the forest, was memory. Regret and fear strong enough to choke him. He remembered the last time he'd seen Ciri and Jaskier. They'd been so close to getting away; they'd found a boat, they might have made it. And then his medallion had reacted to Vilgefortz's approach, and he'd known the only chance the other two had was if he stood and fought.
He'd believed he could win. He really had. But Vilgefortz's power was beyond anything he'd anticipated.
They hadn't wanted to leave him. Ciri had tried to refuse, but he'd seen a pained acceptance in Jaskier. If it had just been him alone, Jaskier might have tried to stay. But with Ciri to think about, for once, he hadn't argued.
"Never lost, always found," Geralt had said to Ciri, and then he'd looked to Jaskier. "I promise," he'd added, and hoped that Jaskier understood that the words were for him too; that they were a family, all of them, always.
He wished now as he'd wished then that he could have kissed Jaskier. That he'd done it before, any of the times he'd thought about it and tried to pretend he'd never thought it at all. Too much risk, too much vulnerability; so much to lose that he could not bear to be without.
Now, perhaps, lost anyway. Because of Geralt. Because Geralt had failed.
And in the end, in that last moment, there had been no time. Not to thank him for taking care of Ciri, or to tell him how much he meant to Geralt, or even to say goodbye. Just one last look and the comfort of seeing them turn and run together, and the desperate hope that they would find somewhere safe.
Now he was stranded in Brokilon, and there was no sign of them. With every hour, that hope grew thin and deepened his despair.
Each day his lungs laboured and every breath hurt. Every attempt to heal him failed. And yet still he lived.
And then, at last, Yennefer came.
She brought with her confirmation of what Geralt had feared to hear.
"She was in Tor Lara," Yennefer said, and she was crying. The world ripped apart under the weight of their shared grief. "I searched the ruins and found no sign of her. But she's been... I've heard word of her."
"She's alive?" Every word hurt, but he had to know.
"Yes. Yes, but... They're saying she's on her way to Nilfgaard. Emhyr's put out word in celebration of her arrival. She'd never go willingly. Vilgefortz must have taken her."
No. After everything they'd done to try and keep her safe - he'd failed. More completely and terribly than he could have imagined. Whatever dark fate they'd tried to protect her from all this time had found her after all.
And there was worse to come, because what Yennefer hadn't spoken of hung between them like the downswing of an axe.
"Yen," he said, and managed to reach for her hand.
But though his mouth worked to speak, he found the words wouldn't come. Because if Vilgefortz had overpowered and taken Ciri, if Nilfgaard had her now... What would have become of Jaskier?
"I don't know." Tears spilled down her cheeks freely as Yennefer shook her head. "I don't know what happened to him, Geralt, I'm so sorry. But when I searched the tower, I found..."
Words failed her too. They'd come to mean so much to each other, her and Jaskier. Geralt never could have imagined it years ago, but they'd all changed so much. They'd become a family.
Instead, Yennefer reached for something out of Geralt's sight.
The moment she showed him, he wished she hadn't. He would never be able to forget the sight of it.
A lute case. Crushed and deformed so badly that the instrument inside would be in splinters.
Geralt closed his eyes and turned his head away. Tears leaked from behind his eyelids and trickled into his hair.
"He's not dead," he said, as if by his will alone he could make it true. "He can't be."
"I don't believe it either," Yennefer said, and suddenly her hands were on either side of his face. He opened his eyes to find her staring at him, her ferocity returned, her gaze full of fire. "I won't believe it. Nor do I believe Ciri is beyond our help. They would have fought to stay together, Geralt. They could be protecting each other."
It was a faint thread of hope. Nothing but the last note of a song left to tremble into silence until even the echoes died.
But if Jaskier was here, he would say that a song could last forever.
"I will find them," he ground out, and refused to let himself believe anything else. "I will find them both."
And as Yennefer healed him, he didn't let himself think about Ciri captured or hurt. He thought instead about her laughing, light and free, in the houses they'd hidden in during those long months on the run, and the way she'd danced in the firelight on her birthday.
He didn't let himself think about Jaskier hurt by Vilgefortz as Geralt had been, left broken on the ground to be buried under countless tons of stone.
Instead he thought about Jaskier sitting beside him on a mountain, in forests, in so many taverns that they blended together in his memory. About two decades' worth of days walking side by side, days that were lighter and more full of happiness than any of the ones that had come before.
He gritted his teeth against the pain and vowed that he would give everything he had left to have any of those days again.
Never lost. Always found.
He would see his family whole again.