Trying out a new pairing for day four of @bamf-jaskier‘s Witcher Femslash February! Previous parts here:

Apart, Burned, Battle

Ciri ties the bandage around the cut on Cerys’s arm, pulling the gauze tighter than she means to—then relents, and redoes the bandage at a more comfortable tension. Her hands are shaking and she tries to stop them, but it’s no good.

“Are you done your fussing now?” Cerys asks, grinning lopsidedly at her, and Ciri feels fury flood through her.

“Don’t you dare look at me like that! That was the most foolish—reckless—absolutely pointless display of idiocy I’ve seen in my entire life.” She can hear Yennefer’s voice in her inflection, and thinks of the tirades Yennefer went on whenever Ciri did something to worry her—all that imperious anger to cover over how vulnerable her love for Ciri made her. Ciri understands it now, and almost wishes that she didn’t. “You could have been killed.”

Cerys laughs, incredulous. “Says the girl who did a backflip off a ten-foot wall last week.”

“That’s—different,” Ciri says, stalling awkwardly before she says too much. She doesn’t want to offend Cerys’s tender pride, but it is different. Ciri is different. Cerys is strong and brave—utterly fearless, really—but Ciri isn’t like ordinary people. And she knows her limits, unlike Cerys.

Cerys, true to form, rolls her eyes. “Different, my eye.”

“It is,” Ciri insists. The words, now that she’s started speaking them, are hard to stop. Maybe it’s the adrenaline of Cerys’s close call, maybe something else. “It’s different because—because there are people who need you. If I died, sure, there are a handful of people who would mourn me, but it wouldn’t matter, not like it might have once.” And she’s grateful for that, glad to have renounced all of that for the life she has now. She’s had enough of destiny for several lifetimes, but Cerys is just beginning to achieve the extraordinary things she was born to do. “But you have to be careful. Skellige would be lost without you. And I—I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

For day six of @bamf-jaskier’s Witcher Femslash February, I wrote more Yenfri, following on from yesterday’s ficlet. I am giving myself a lot of feelings about this canon divergence AU and I might try to write more of it sometime, maybe. Previous ficlets here:

Apart, Burned, Battle, Wound, Visions

They make a good team, Yennefer reflects. Killing Stregobor was almost laughably easy, between the two of them. Remarkably efficient, too, really—to settle Renfri’s vendetta and sever Yennefer’s ties to the Brotherhood with a single act. Elegant, really, in its simplicity.

They’re in hiding now, of course. The Brotherhood of Sorcerers doesn’t take kindly to people murdering one of their senior members. But Yennefer isn’t worried. She can handle herself, and with Renfri at her side, she’s fairly confident they’ll be just about untouchable. She’s wasted too many years squandering her powers on the undeserving. Now she has a chance to find out what she can achieve as an equal partner, and she’s not going to pass that chance up. They’re not going to pass it up. The thought brings a smile to her face.

“What?” Renfri asks, glancing at her suspiciously. She’s been uncharacteristically quiet since they returned. She wept like a child in Yennefer’s arms that first night, Stregobor’s blood still drying on her hands, but since then she’s been distant, holding herself in reserve. For days now, she’s been wandering around the safehouse like a mere shadow of the fierce girl who held up Yennefer’s carriage on the king’s road.

It’s day eleven of @bamf-jaskier’s Witcher Femslash February! Previous ficlets here:

Apart, Burned, Battle, Wound, Visions, Together, The Lodge, Adore, Frenemies, Transformation

No substantial warnings for this one, I don’t think? Just Yennefer in a formless void, reflecting on Tissaia.

After the fire, Yennefer is nowhere for a while—no longer on that stone outcropping at Sodden, but not anywhere else, either. Around her is only cold, and silence, and stillness. She cannot see, but her mind’s eye is clear. She drifts, remembering things—

Leaving home in Tissaia’s little horse and cart, full of dread and possibility. Turning around to watch her house disappearing around a bend in the road, until at last Tissaia snapped at her, “Eyes forward, piglet. Don’t look back.” And she didn’t, not for long.

The ache she felt, waiting up for Tissaia’s knock that did not come. Such a desire to be special, to be wanted, to be something more. And later, in the Tower of the Gull, the look of pride on Tissaia’s face, while around them pure magical energy swirled around them like motes of golden dust.

The touch of Tissaia’s gloved hand on her cheek, the smell of their sweat and blood as they leaned close. There had been a moment of terror when the fire began to pour from her and she looked down to see Tissaia standing there, but she’d said, No, not her, to the fire, and it had obeyed.

More Yengilla for day twenty-five of @bamf-jaskier’s Witcher Femslash February. Previous ficlets here:

Apart, Burned, Battle, Wound, Visions, Together, The Lodge, Adore, Frenemies, Transform, Blind, Nilfgaard, Graves, Disguise, Water, Lightning, Music, Beauty, Hands, Aretuza, Swords, Wedding, Crown, Flowers

General warnings for the misery of Aretuza, but nothing more terrible than what’s already in canon.

What did they learn, Fringilla wonders. It’s her first night in Nilfgaard, and she’s lying awake, staring at the ceiling because she cannot sleep. Perhaps it’s the small hours of the night turning her maudlin, or else the day’s upheaval has made this feel like a time for summing up. She thought she would feel wiser by now, more in control of her own fate. What did Aretuza teach them, really, in the last four years?

That power has a price. No one learned that faster than she did, Fringilla thinks, flexing her newly restored left hand. Yennefer was there to comfort her in those first weeks, promising her that everything they suffered would be worth it once they were powerful sorceresses with court assignments and influence in the world. Fringilla believed her, too, and resigned herself to paying for the freedom she could never earn.

That power is a finite resource, a zero-sum game. Yennefer told her what happened to Anica and Doralis and Lark, whispering the truth in an excited rush against Fringilla’s shoulder as they lay side by side in bed on a long, quiet, sleepless night much like this one. Fringilla wept for those girls she couldn’t quite call friends. “Why doesn’t anyone stop it?” she wondered, tears dripping down her cheeks. “Why would they?” Yennefer asked, too thrilled at being let in on this secret to understand Fringilla’s grief. In the years since, whenever she caught sight of the glow of Aretuza’s great waterfall, Fringilla has been reminded that others lost control so she might gain it.

That no one will help them, not in any way that counts. After the others carried Doralis out of Tor Lara, Yennefer had appeared in the door of Fringilla’s room and said, “How does it feel to be in Tissaia’s good graces now?” Fringilla said nothing, because despite the gleaming bottle in her hands, despite that tangible proof that she might actually be able to do what she had come here to accomplish, she had never felt further away from attaining her goals. She understood then—in a way that Yennefer apparently did not—that no one at Aretuza cared about training the adepts, but were only waiting to see if they’d succeed.

Some Cirys for day fifteen of @bamf-jaskier’s Witcher Femslash February! Previous ficlets here:

Apart, Burned, Battle, Wound, Visions, Together, The Lodge, Adore, Frenemies, Transform, Blind, Nilfgaard, Graves, Disguise

Some topless kissing and a little bit of daredevilry here. Also some spoilers for the end of The Lady of the Lake.

“Come on,” Cerys says, tugging Ciri by the arm toward the cliffs. “There’s something I want you to see.”

With a wicked sidelong grin, Ciri breaks out into a run. Soon they are neck and neck in a hectic race—how well matched they are, Cerys thinks as they pelt toward the edge of the earth. How lucky she is, to have found someone so perfectly her equal. How natural it is to love her, like breathing or the beating of her heart.

When they near the edge, Cerys digs in her heels, pulling Ciri to a stop beside her, but she tugs too hard and they tumble into a heap on the hard ground, laughing, breathless, giddy with exertion. Cerys can’t resist kissing her then, and they stay like that, tangled together, in the warm embrace of the midday sun, for a long time. Cerys can’t tell anymore whether her pulse is racing from their run, or because of the thrill of Ciri’s lips against hers.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?” Ciri asks after a while, as her nimble fingers undo the ties on Cerys’s shirt.

“You imp,” Cerys says, tangling her fingers in Ciri’s hair to guide her lips toward her bare breasts. “There’s a grotto.” She shivers. “Down at the base of the cliff.” She gasps. “But it’s easier to reach by sea.”

“Well, in that case,” Ciri says, releasing Cerys and getting to her feet, “what are we waiting for?”

Before Cerys can do more than call her name, Ciri has taken a running leap off the edge of the cliff. For a moment, Cerys hangs in weightless shock as she watches Ciri jackknife into a dive and disappear from sight. She hears a splash and, a moment later, a piercing shriek. By the time she is peering over the edge of the cliff, Ciri is treading water in the choppy sea, grinning up at her through the strands of ashen hair plastered to her face.

“You damn fool witcher girl!” Cerys shouts, but she can’t muster any real consternation. Given the choice, she’ll take this wild, reckless, laughing girl any day over the pale shadow who fell out of thin air into Kaer Trolde and announced she’d come from another world. That girl had said goodbye to everyone she ever loved, and had gone in search of other realms in the hopes she might outrun her love for them. This girl—Cerys’s Ciri, her fierce and fearless companion—is learning that looking to the future is a way of loving those she’s lost, too.

“Come down here and say that to my face!” Ciri calls, heedless of the ache in Cerys’s chest. “The water’s fine!”

Day five of @bamf-jaskier‘s Witcher Femslash February. This one got a little long, but honestly I would really love to write more of this! Previous parts here:

Apart, Burned, Battle, Wound

One of the horses shrieks and the carriage lurches to a stop. Outside there is the rumble of low, hostile voices. Yennefer sighs impatiently. Brigands never seem to tire of waylaying royal caravans, even though it never ends well for them, in the long run. This is why Yennefer prefers to travel by portal. But royal instructions must be carried out to the letter, regardless of what Yennefer wants.

The door to the carriage is wrenched open, and before the cuthtroat can say, “Your money or your life,” or whatever trite threat he was planning to make, Yennefer knocks him to the ground with a flick of her wrist. One of his comrades rushes up to take his place, and she flings him head over heels into the underbrush.

When no one else steps forward, Yennefer steps out of the carriage and surveys the scene. There are two more men on horseback blocking the road, one struggling to control the frightened horses, and another up on the coach box, holding her driver at knifepoint. The footman lies bleeding on the road—not dead, but not getting up anytime soon.

“You can desist now,” Yennefer says in a bored tone, “or you can find out what happens to people who annoy King Virfuril’s royal mage.”

The remaining brigands glance at once another, and then they all turn to look questioningly at someone Yennefer can’t see. The person who steps into view around the side of the carriage is not who Yennefer expects—no hulking highwayman, but a girl barely older than an Aretuza adept, with hair growing out unevenly from an unfortunate close crop. From the way the other bandits’ eyes follow her, this child is evidently their leader. She’s certainly dressed for it—Yennefer has to admit that in her leather cuirass and side-swept cloak, the girl cuts a rather dashing figure. And the sword she carries looks wickedly sharp, even if she seems hardly old enough to wield it.

Day twenty-one of @bamf-jaskier’s Witcher Femslash February isn’t technically about swords, but it does involve a dagger! This is more of the Yenfri partners-in-crime AU that nobody asked for! Previous ficlets here:

Apart, Burned, Battle, Wound, Visions, Together, The Lodge, Adore, Frenemies, Transform, Blind, Nilfgaard, Graves, Disguise, Water, Lightning, Music, Beauty, Hands, Aretuza

No real warnings for this one, I don’t think.

Renfri has been in a strange mood all morning. She’s been stalking around Yennefer’s workshop since breakfast, touching things she knows better than to touch, apparently unable to settle down.

“If you’re going to stomp around like a spoiled princess,” Yennefer says, without looking up from the ingredients she’s preparing for a spell, “I’d prefer you did it somewhere else.”

Yennefer regrets the words even before she’s done speaking. Alluding to Renfri’s royal upbringing is one of the easiest ways to draw her ire, and it works like a charm. “Fine,” she snarls, and leaves through the door that’s enchanted to let out into the forest, slamming it behind her so hard the vials on Yennefer’s workbench shake.

Nohorn pokes his head in from the other room and says, “Any casualties?”

Yennefer shoots Renfri’s second-in-command a poisonous glance. Now she’s going to have to run after Renfri and apologize, all because she can’t stop herself for going for the throat, even when she doesn’t really mean it.

She finds Renfri by the river, crouched down to check the fish traps Nimir and Vyr set up there.

“I thought you’d be glad to be rid of me,” Renfri says, without looking up from the swirling current.

Yennefer sighs. Renfri really is such a child sometimes—though Yennefer hardly has room to talk, given her own trouble controlling her temper. Still, someone has to be the bigger woman, and she supposes this time it’s going to be her. “You weren’t really stomping around all that loudly,” she says, and, well, it’s not her best apology, but it’s a start.

Renfri, however, chuckles, and gets to her feet. “Yes, I was.”

“So are you going to tell me what’s the matter?” Yennefer hates this. She much prefers it when the two of them work in almost uncanny harmony, and they don’t have to have unseemly conversations about their feelings. She suspects Renfri prefers it that way, too, but nevertheless here they are.

“Nothing.” She closes the distance between them. “It’s stupid.”

“I’d believe that from Nohorn, but not from you.”

Renfri rolls her eyes. “It’s just . . .” She blows out a breath. “It’s been a year, and I thought I should do something to mark it somehow, so . . .” She’s holding out a parcel, Yennefer realizes, long and narrow and wrapped haphazardly in rough cloth.

Only Renfri would think to commemorate their murder of Stregobor with a present. Yennefer bites her lips to keep from smiling, not wanting to insult Renfri any further but unable to quell the warmth that unfolds in her at this brave and bloody-minded girl.

“Oh, fuck you,” Renfri says. “I told you it was stupid. I’ll take it back.”

Day twelve of @bamf-jaskier’s Witcher Femslash February! Previous ficlets here:

Apart, Burned, Battle, Wound, Visions, Together, The Lodge, Adore, Frenemies, Transformation, Blind

No real warnings for this one, just Fringilla navigating court life and thinking about Yennefer.

Fringilla has never been so far from home. She’s never been so far from everything familiar. For a newly-minted sorceress ready to make her mark, it should be no challenge. But if that sorceress is, at heart, a shy girl who enjoyed a sheltered upbringing, it might be.

It’s true that Fringilla is no longer the naïve girl who ruined her hand because she didn’t know how to control her power. She could turn King Fergus’s entire royal retinue into wild pigs without batting an eye, but knowing that doesn’t make conversation with them any easier. The young king is blundering and imprudent and he surrounds himself with courtiers who are just as asinine as he is. The younger nobles fall all over themselves to impress him, and the older advisors—the ones who know better—stay silent and contemplate assassination behind closed doors, though none of them have the guts to follow through. Fringilla tries to tread the line between tact and sycophancy, and too often her carefully-constructed counsel falls on indifferent ears.

Tired of being ignored, Fringilla takes to channeling the most fearless person she’s ever know. The girl who, half-dead from blood loss, wouldn’t give up trying to move her stone. The woman who remade herself on her own terms and took what she wanted, the consequences be damned.

What would Yennefer do? she asks herself, when the king and his lackeys are planning their next feast instead of listening to her briefing. What would Yennefer say? she thinks, when yet another cowardly minister hedges his bets on the side of egregious policy.

And the thing is, it works. Fringilla can feel herself growing bolder. People sit up and take notice when she speaks now. She gains a reputation for not suffering fools lightly. She begins to make a difference—small things, at first, but now she doesn’t leave every royal audience roiling with impotent rage. When she consults with the Council on her progress, they no longer look pinched with barely-suppressed disappointment.