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It starts with the arguing.
Ciri disagrees with him on nearly everything, and Geralt bites his tongue because swearing at a child is still frowned upon on the Continent. She drags her heels when he urges her to keep pace, snaps back when he tells her to mind her footing, and goes stiff and sullen the moment he brings up food.
“I’m not hungry,” she insists, arms crossed tight over her chest.
“You haven’t eaten since morning.”
“I’m fine.”
She is not. He knows it. She knows he knows it. That does not stop him from having to practically force bread into her hands and watch until she takes a few reluctant bites, as though sustenance itself offends her.
It worries him. It annoys him. Both at once.
When they stop to water Roach, he notices the stain at the back of her dress. Small. Rust-colored. Easy enough to explain. He assumes her moon blood has come and gone poorly managed, that she is embarrassed and uncomfortable and too stubborn to say anything about it.
Every time they near a settlement, Ciri stiffens. When he reaches for Roach’s reins, she grabs them first and pulls the mare off the road, toward the tree-line, toward open ground and distance.
“We can stop here,” he says once, gesturing toward a modest inn at Dowarren. Light spills from its windows. Smoke curls from the chimney. Safe enough.
She shakes her head hard. “No.”
“Ciri.”
“I don’t want to.”
“A bed and a proper meal would be really nice tonight,” he says through gritted teeth.
“I have a bad feeling about that place, Geralt. We should camp.”
He studies her for a long moment. She will not meet his eyes.
He entertains it.
He entertains it because it costs nothing. Because it is within his control. Because he tells himself that listening to her instincts is better than dragging her somewhere she clearly does not want to be.
That does not stop the irritation from settling deep in his chest.
So now he sits on a fallen tree, oiling his sword, even though he could easily afford them a room and a hot meal. The fire crackles nearby, small and low. Night presses in.
Ciri sits closer to the flames, perched atop her bedroll. Her face is twisted into some unreadable expression, brows drawn tight, mouth pulled thin.
After a while, she shifts closer to him.
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Nothing comes out.
Geralt keeps working at his blade, though his attention is already on her. “Just say it,” he mutters. “Whatever it is.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hm.”
“I know I’ve been a pain in the arse—”
“Language.”
She huffs weakly. “I just… I don’t know.”
Geralt regards her with a glance before returning to his sword. Better to let her finish her ramblings.
“I know I’m not the best travel partner—”
“Not by a long shot.”
“And I don’t always listen.”
“You don’t.”
“Like when we’re at an inn, and you have to leave for your contract, y-you say to lock the doors and not leave the room under any circumstances.”
“Is that what’s been weighing on you?” he muses. “Disobedience?”
“Not entirely.”
He pauses, just long enough to really look at her. Ciri’s lip quivers in the faint firelight, her hands wringing together as if she were rubbing at an invisible stain.
A sudden dread grips the pit of Geralt’s stomach, though he betrays none of it. Silently, he sets his sword down beside him and turns to her.
“Ciri.”
Her fractured gaze traces shapes in the dirt.
“Cirilla, has someone hurt you?”
His voice is gruffer than he intends. A part of him wants her to scoff, to roll her eyes and tell him he is jumping to the wrong conclusions again. That he need not worry so much when it comes to her.
Instead, there is only her uneven breathing, and the low crackle of the fire shrinking behind them.
Deep down, he knows he must tread carefully. Like the hare he hunted the night before, Ciri is a wild thing. Startle her, and she will bolt, disappear into the warren of her own mind where he cannot reach her.
Yet worry tightens at the base of his throat, and against his better judgment, he snaps,
“Look at me when I am speaking to you.”
He regrets it at once. Her head jerks up, fear and guilt laid bare in her emerald eyes, and the sight of it strikes him like a blade.
“Are you very angry with me?” she asks quietly.
No, child. I am angry with myself. For once again, entrusting your safety to my absence like I did years ago.
He shakes his head and moves closer, sitting directly in front of her and trapping her line of vision. Her gaze burns where it meets his, bright and unflinching. Like staring into the sun.
“Who?” he asks.
Her face crumples. Tears spill freely as a sob tears from her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she chokes. “I should have listened. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was hungry, and I wanted leftovers. I know better—”
The words tumble over one another. If not for the subject matter, they might be mistaken for the babble of an overtired child. Geralt wishes, with everything in him, that they were.
“Ciri,” he says, gentler now but no less firm. “I am not angry with you. But you must tell me who hurt you.”
He waits. He lets the silence settle, lets the fire hiss and fade while her breathing slowly steadies.
“I… I can’t,” “I- I can’t!” She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head as if she were trying to dislodge the memory from her mind. “If I tell you, he’ll hurt you too.”
The words are barely audible. Geralt hears them all the same.
“Little one,” he murmurs, resting his hand atop her head, grounding her. “You know very well that a common man cannot hurt—”
She shakes her head again, faster now.
“He won’t hurt you the way you hurt monsters,” she says. “He’ll hurt you… differently.”
Something in Geralt goes very still. Suspicion hardens into certainty, and anger rises hot and sharp beneath his skin. His mind supplies images unbidden: methods, outcomes, how long a man might beg before the fire takes him.
He pushes it aside. There will be time for that. He has to remind himself of the present, of the little girl in front of him who, in her naivety, let herself suffer because she thought she was protecting him.
His hand slides to her shoulder, steady and warm.
“How did he hurt you?” he asks softly.
Ciri looks down at her hands and takes a shaky breath.
“He… he used his hands.” Her mouth twists, as if there’s something bitter coating her tongue.
Geralt nods, forcing himself to breathe evenly.
“Where?”
She flushes, heat blooming across her cheeks. After a moment, she presses a hand to her chest, then gestures briefly and vaguely between her legs. She glances up at him, measuring his reaction.
The witcher looks away. He stares into the fire, watching the last embers collapse in on themselves.
“The blood on your dress,” he says carefully. “Was it your moon blood?”
“My what?”
He closes his eyes and shakes his head. To think, all this time, she was hurting and he didn't know. Didn't notice. He leans forward, presses a kiss to her temple, and draws her into his arms.
“Nothing,” he murmurs. “You mustn't worry about that.”
“You’re not angry with me?” she asks, uncertain.
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“Not at all.”
She melts into his embrace, arms slipping around his neck. They sit together as the fire finally dies, her heartbeat fast and uneven against his chest, his slow and steady by comparison.
She does not know his teeth are clenched, or that his thoughts are sharp enough to draw blood.
“Ciri?”
“Geralt?”
“Was it the innkeep?” he asks quietly. “At the settlement by the creek?”
She pulls back just enough to look at him, something wary flickering across her face.
“Will you go back to him?”
He presses a kiss to her hair, though his eyes flash dangerously.
“Not now,” he says. “Later. When we have reached Kaer Morhen. When you are safe.”
She makes a small, broken sound and hides her face against him. He strokes the back of her head, slow and steady, as one might soothe a frightened animal.
—
The fire has long since gone out by the time Ciri curls back into her bedroll. Geralt rekindles it with a careful Igni and settles beside her.
He does not sleep.
As he watches her breathing even out, grief settles over him, quiet and heavy. The kind that comes not from loss, but from failure.
The kind only a father feels, when he realizes some wounds are carried long after the fire has burned away.