#pre-

Sometimes, Jaskier misses his jail cell. The guards had been tasteless, tactless bastards, to be sure, but Martin and Polly had been good little gentlemen and even better companions to him, tiny and furry though they were. He hopes that they’re well. They listened to his songs and his words and his pain. With them, he could speak about his heartbreak until he made something useful out of it, or at least was able to put his own stupidity out into the air —how foolish he’d been to fall for two immortal beings who, even now, regard him as a plaything at best. Even now, he wishes to talk to the little mice. Tell them how terrible it is, to watch the people he loves love each other and hurt each other and ruin each other right in front of his eyes. Just as in the cell, it might give him a bit of peace while Geralt and Yennefer bicker.

“I lit an entire army aflame, witcher, for fucks’ sake, I can handle this.”

“Hm. And then right after that, you lost your magic. You’re still weak.”

“Gods, you’re insufferable. Don’t you hear yourself, you self-righteous prick?”

The witch and the witcher. As gorgeous as they are powerful, as lovely as they are dreadful, as pretty as they are petty. Jaskier admires them from his stump across the large clearing, memorizing the sharp planes of an especially frustrated Geralt’s face and the unfairly lustrous swish of Yennefer’s hair as she turns away from him, groaning with irritation. They’re awfully beautiful. He has and will again go on about it in the future when they decide to behave less fucking immaturely than the skinny, nervous seven year-old beside him. The past few weeks hadn’t exactly been quiet between the two, but such a squabble was inevitable. If they don’t argue over some trifling bullshit at least once every two weeks, he’s convinced they’ll explode. And probably take it out on him again. He sighs, turning to look at Ciri, who watches, just as fascinated. 

The poor thing.

Four parents dead, and all she has left are these two, who, while certainly good people at heart, have clearly never had decent examples themselves of how to parent or be parented. She has him too, he supposes. An uncle, of sorts, or perhaps a kindly older cousin, like the ones he’d grown up with in Lettenhove. Not an outsider or a stranger, but not quite a mother or a father either. He can’t replace the parents Destiny decided to gift her —he doesn’t fuck about with Her or Her wishes anymore, gods know he’s learned his lesson on that particular front— but at the very least he can show them how it’s done. Lowering his voice to a stage whisper, the kind Geralt would hear if he wasn’t so occupied with his grunting, he nudges the girl’s shoulder.

“And they call me dramatic.”

She huffs out a giggle, tiny but genuine.

“No, really. I swear on my lute, I punch one alderman, and suddenly I’m making a ‘fuss over nothing,’ and being called ‘bard’ again instead of my name!”

“But aren’t you a bard?”

“Yes, but that isn’t the point. The point is that even with all that power between them, a witcher and an ex-court sorceress, they can’t solve a minor disagreement! Either they skipped their etiquette lessons, or both Kaer Morhen and Aretuza are woefully inadequate educational institutions —I’ll have to teach you myself once we get to the Blue Mountains.”

Remembering his own classes on the subject, Jaskier can’t help but smile when Ciri groans. He’d spent more than his fair share of days hiding from his own private instructor, avoiding all talk of how to run a household, conduct business, and behave himself in public around people of every station. And all that as a two-penny count’s son. A princess, and more than that, the only princess of Cintra, would have had far more to learn, with far stricter teachers than old Garam. Even as young as she is, there’s no possible way she escaped it. Not with a pout like that.

He’ll teach her to hone that too. She already has the face for it, round and cute as a button, but the art of big, sad eyes is one he excels in, and he’d be remiss to not pass on his knowledge. Especially when, more likely than not, she’ll be aiming them at the very same target. Geralt, for all his many foolish pretenses at stoicism and apathy, already melts into a puddle around Ciri and would certainly fetch the moon for her if she asked it of him. Not that she would. She’s too good for that, always calm and placid, so much so that it worries Jaskier more than a little. The dear girl had lost everything in the space of a few weeks and she’d yet to even cry about it. Geralt and Yennefer might appreciate that, but Jaskier knows better. It’s unhealthy. For anyone, really, semi-immortal or not, but for a child without even eight winters to her name… he likes it even less.

“Well then. Tell me, Fiona, which lessons did you enjoy in Cintra?”

Immediately, her eyes lit up, pale eyebrows shooting up her forehead. They’ll have to dye them soon, but not yet. Let the girl get used to her new name, start processing all that has shifted in her life before changing her appearance.

“The sword lessons!! Grandmother and Grampa Eist gave me a big, big sword for my last nameday!! It’s only wood, but it’s tough, and I already learned the first forms.”

“Knowing the Queen and King, I believe it. They were some of the finest warriors alive.”

“Yeah! Grandmother was too busy to teach me herself, but Grampa’s really good too! His sword is really heavy though.”

“Yeah? What other things did they teach you?”

She’s happy to ramble on about it, and Jaskier lets her, interjecting with careful hums and nods and chuckles and questions where appropriate. Talking puts some life in her sallow cheeks, when she goes on about learning to read at Moussack’s knee until she graduated to asking him to pull the heavy tomes down from the palace library for her. He encourages it with appropriate nods and noises, drifting his senses back to the pair behind him. And, oh, what a blessed fucking surprise!

“I can light a simple fucking campfire! Just because you finally decided to take Ciri as your daughter doesn’t mean you have to mother-hen all of us to death, Geralt!”

“I’m not mother-henning, just let me handle it! Why does this even matter to you?”

They’ve graduated from an argument to a unnecessary, vicious row. 

“It doesn’t!”

“Like fuck it doesn’t! One Igni and the problem’s solved, but here you are, dragging it like a corpse!”

“Oh, I’m the one dragging this out? You kicked your feet for so long avoiding your Child Surprise that I’m hardly shocked Destiny killed her whole family —it was the only way to make you take responsibility!”

He focuses back on Ciri, who, thank the gods, is still talking about her life in Cintra. The last thing she needs to hear is her new mother being cruel or that her father hadn’t exactly wanted her in his life, albeit for his own reasons, right and wrong. 

“Sometimes I could sneak out to play in the square, but Ser Danek would always drag me back to the castle before I was done. I miss him.”

“I know, dear heart. But it’s always good to have things you miss. It means you have things to love. What else do you miss?”

“Oh! I miss Grandmother and Grampa. And Moussack and Ser Lazlo and Marina and all the horses! Grampa never let me go see them alone, but they’re so big! And I miss the food…… I don’t like being hungry.”

As if on cue, her stomach rumbles. A sad, tiny little sound, and all Ciri does for it is tucking a skinny arm over her belly, shushing the noise with a finger pressed to her lips. And Jaskier’s heart breaks. Geralt and Yennefer keep screaming in the background of his mind, over petty shit, all while their little girl hasn’t eaten since the gods know when. Immortals. They forget about lowly humans and their needs, always either pushing them past the limit or dropping them like deadweight, but Jaskier won’t let them do either, not with him and not with her. So, he does what he does best. He talks. Asks Ciri more questions, takes over the conversation when their companions get too loud, and keeps her as distracted as he can while he reaches for his own flint and steel. 

Quickly, he arranges the wood and sends Ciri for Geralt’s saddlebags. There won’t be much, mushrooms and dried meat, but he has his spices and there was a patch of wild onion less than a minute’s walk back. Three strikes light the tinder, and by the time Jaskier has a pot perched on top of a makeshift spit, the damned campfire burns as brightly as any other he’s made for himself in Geralt’s absences. Ciri returns, trotting back with a skip in her step, promised pack in hand. He pours in his waterskin, emptying it, and hands Ciri a small scarf.

“Alright, dear. We’ll eat soon, and though I can’t promise it’ll be anywhere near as good as Cintra’s best, I’ve made enough trail stews that you should be able to at least get it down. But I need you to do one last thing for me.”

Ciri nods solemnly.

“Good girl. Just outside this clearing, you see that big tree over there?” He points to the one in question, with the creeping vine crawling over it. “About five trees in that direction, you see some hollow green shoots on the ground. Those are wild onions, and you have to pick them —but don’t eat them. Bring them back so I can look them over.”

“Okay.”

Her eyes slide over to Geralt and Yennefer, still screaming at each other, then back to him. Clever girl. Of course she’d heard them, and figured out what he’s trying to do by sending her away into the woods —another thing to scold the pair for. He nods at her, pressing the scarf further into her little hands.

“Go. There’s nothing in the woods that can harm you, not with those two here, no matter how foolish they’re being now.”

Blessedly, she accepts it, leaving Jaskier to deal with the couple of the hour. Yennefer’s skirt flares out just as her hair does, but it’s less pretty, with a hungry girl in the woods. Geralt’s jaw tightens, and he can’t find the line of it as handsome, not when Ciri just shushed her own rumbling stomach like the noise would get her punished. Stalking across the clearing should alert them, or at least make them stop for long enough to look his way, but instead they escalate in their usual way, stepping closer until the spittle flying from their mouths hits the other’s cheek. He thinks of the mountain. He thinks of the mountain and how they ruined each other so fucking quickly, dissolving their relationship like it meant nothing at all, and throwing the remains at his chest. Two people this fucking old ought to know better. But instead, they just make the same mistakes for longer.

By the sound of it, the water hasn’t boiled yet, but he has. 

This time, when he puts himself in between them, he reaches out only with his hands —already burnt and broken as they are, easy enough to sacrifice— and not his heart. He knows better now. Never again will he stand outside a shattered window and struggle not to weep. He won’t be sent away down a mountain, alone in the cold with every rock digging into his feet through his thin soles along the way. Before either of them can stop him, he puts one arm across Geralt’s chest and a hand at Yennefer’s shoulder. 

“Shut the fuck up. Both of you.”

For about a second, it occurs to him that he ought to be more cautious, saying that to a powerful sorceress and a witcher, both of whom have cast him aside before. He tells the thought to fuck off and turns to level a glare at Geralt, who flinches.

“You. All those heightened senses, and yet you can’t figure out that the witch here is trying to heal herself and prove her worth, after, as you put it so delicately, losing her magic. She lives and dies on Chaos. But you don’t even try to understand her pain. And despite how fucking poorly it’s gone for you in the past, in case you don’t remember your idiocy in Rinde, you just keep making decisions for her safety, disregarding her wishes entirely. I don’t care about your intentions, and neither does she.”

Yennefer huffs, turning her face away but not breaking out of his hold. 

“And you. Yes, Geralt has been supremely irresponsible about Ciri. But if that was your issue right now, you would have had the sense to not scream it at him right in front of her. Do you think she needs to hear that? So she can feel unwanted and unloved? But instead of facing the actual issue of your power being gone, you deflect away from your own weakness, treating whoever you hurt in the process as collateral damage for your own pride.”

He steps aside, gesturing towards the fire he’d lit all on his own, no magic or cantrips required. The whole fucking situation is proof that sometimes all you need a simple person and their pracice, tools, and love.

“There’s your fucking fire, so you can stop using it to cover your own asses. Now, your little daughter is hungry, and she’ll be back any minute. Geralt, go find a rabbit to feed her. Yennefer, magic her up a bowl and a spoon if you have the strength.”

Amazingly, then don’t protest. Yennefer scoffs at him and Geralt swears under his breath, but they separate, off to their assigned tasks. Excellent timing, when Ciri comes running back with both little hands full of onions for him to clean so they can make a proper soup out of it all. Yennefer produces three bowls and three spoons, since only Geralt has his own, and though it takes her longer than it should, it lines up well with Geralt’s return, skinning a fat hare as he walks over. Jaskier takes the carcass, butchering and cleaning out the insides as fast as he dares, with his shaking hands. Within the hour, Ciri’s eating like she hasn’t been fed in days, and Jaskier relaxes, looking to the other side of the fire.

The witch and the witcher. What fucking fools, both of them, sat on opposite ends of a log, eating silently. Jaskier watches them again, how they chew their food just a little too long, shrink into themselves in between bites just to puff back up before retreating again. In between them, he can see where their boots still touch. But he’s fine with that. Time and heartache have taught him wisdom, but more importantly, they taught him patience. He waits until Ciri hands him her bowl, asking him to tuck her in, and she sleeps peacefully in his bedroll with his red coat pulled up to her chin, dwarfing her little body. He waits some more, watching the fire dwindle into embers, for Yennefer to speak.

“Jaskier. We’re… we’re sorry.”

“You can apologize to her tomorrow.”

“Not the point, bard,” Geralt says, lip twitching downwards and knee pressing closer to Yennefer’s thigh, “You shouldn’t be the one looking after her.”

“Someone has to.”

It hurts, even though he’s sure Geralt doesn’t even realize what he’s said. But he keeps his eyes on the dying flames, trying not to see Yennefer return the witcher’s touch, shuffling over on the small log. Brown wood, gray ash, yellow fire. All are safer to look at than Yennefer’s black hair next to Geralt’s white, or the way their hands press against each other, warm brown and ghostly pale. Geralt tries again.

“You’re good at it. Better than either of us, with children, and Ciri needs your help.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

He forces enough levity into his voice to make it convincing, trailing it into a yawn. Ciri needs his help. That’s not what Geralt had said, when he’d swept him up and away from the jail cell with his sad yellow eyes and soft voice, but it had always been like him to deny any mention of dependency after the fact, no matter how much proof existed of it. Beside him, the witch nods, and they’re off to their own pushed-together bedrolls, leaving Jaskier to doze with his head pillowed on his pack, letting the embers soothe him to sleep.

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