Chapter Text
They had been on the Path for about two months when Ciri is separated from Geralt.
It’d been completely undramatic in a way, at least initially. There’d been no monsters, no bandits or wicked sorcerers to blame, just Ciri being tired and frustrated of being looked upon as if she’s some defenceless and innocent child. It’d been months of Geralt leaving her behind while he went out on hunts as if she needed to be protected from the horrors of the Path.
So, one night she disobeys Geralt’s orders about staying in the clearing where they’d made camp while he’d gone out to set up rabbit traps for their dinner. She tries to follow him, to prove that she could be of use too by returning with a rabbit of her own, but it is still early spring and dusk enshrouded the forest in darkness quicker than she’d anticipated, which meant she quickly loses sight of the witcher’s trail among all the tall trees and thick moss covering the forest floor.
Ciri has been lost in the woods before while running away from Cintra and Nilfgard, and she’d brought the sword Geralt had gifted her when they’d left Kaer Morhen so she could defend herself on the Path, so she doesn’t panic. Instead, she tries to use the stars to navigate her way back to camp like Geralt had tried to teach her these past weeks. But she’d never gotten good at distinguishing the star signs from one another, not beyond the one that was a smaller cluster of stars supposed to be the seven cursed sisters and the one looking like a wheelbarrow, and Ciri fears that she might be getting more lost than she had been initially by heading in what she thinks is south-east.
“Geralt?” She calls into the trees, unsettled by the unnatural silence around her which is only disturbed by the creak of tree branches complaining in the wind and the fluttering of bird wings. There’s no answer and she turns on her heel as her heart stutters with fear, hoping to be able to retrace her steps back to camp.
Then she’d come across a beast. At first, she’d thought it to be a hurt animal by the heavy breathing and pitched whines coming from the undergrowth, and she approaches it carefully because while not used to the wilderness yet, she isn’t stupid enough to not know danger lurked around every corner. The creature leaps out at her — a warg, too big to be a wolf — and Ciri barely dodges its wicked fangs by diving out of the way and running away as fast as her legs can carry her.
It chases her through the trees and further away from camp. The animal is hot on her heels, snapping at her feet with powerful jaws that’d crush her bones if they caught up with her. She has nothing to defend herself with against the beast either, having dropped her sword in surprise when the warg had leapt at her, leaving her with but the small dagger strapped to her hip that’d only serve to make the oversized wolf more angry than inflict actual harm.
Adrenaline has her heart beating like a rabbit’s in her chest as she runs, jumping over rocks and branches littering the ground nimbly like she wouldn’t have been able to only a year ago, Lambert bullying her through that obstacle course being her saving grace right now. If only she hadn’t dropped her sword, then she could have —
Ciri only glances behind her for a second, but it’s enough for her to miss the mudslide that makes her boots disappear from underneath her and sends her tumbling down a steep hill and into the river down below.
The warg’s angry howl at having lost its prey rings in her ears as she’s carried down the ice-cold river, but Ciri is no longer concerned about the beast as she struggles to keep her head above water, the undercurrents keep pulling her below the surface. Spluttering and gasping for breath, she collides with a log and grabs onto it in desperation, barely holding on with fingers that are quickly turning stiff and blue from the frigid water. Through sheer willpower she doesn’t let go, although she has no concept of time as she clings onto the log being tossed ruthlessly between rocks and lumber, the dips and waterfalls of the river unforgiving as it trashes her makeshift float around. It feels like she’s been clutching onto it for hours when the currents slow into a languid stream, exhaustion wracking her limbs as she hauls herself onto land on her hands and knees, still coughing up water that's lodged itself in her lungs.
Ciri is freezing and soaked through, and she knows she can’t stay wherever she’s been washed ashore. Hunger is gripping her now too, making her fatigued as she’s becoming all too aware of the empty pangs in her stomach reminding her that she’s not eaten for hours.
On staggering legs, he tries to retrace her steps, to follow the river back upstream on foot, but the last drop in the river is too steep and too high for her to climb and she’d be asking for a premature death if she tried to scale the tall mountain shoulder. So, she follows the escarpment into the woods in hopes it’ll at some point dip enough for her to manage to crawl up it, to no avail as the brae seems to go on for miles and miles.
For a brief moment, Ciri is tempted to give up; to sit down and cry from exhaustion, to wait until Geralt finds her and proves to her he’d been right about her not being ready to venture out into the wilderness by herself – that she’s indeed the defenceless child she desperately tried not to be. She’d even happily take his soft concern and disapproval without comment or snark, just nod dutifully and promise she wouldn’t defy his orders like that again.
But then, she stumbles upon a clearing. A clearing where someone had set up camp, a dead firepit sitting in the middle, surrounded by a bedroll unfurled on the ground and a pack resting next to it. It doesn’t seem abandoned, the firepit still spitting small, pitiful plumes of smoke as if it’d been put out not that long ago, but Ciri can’t see or hear the sound of any people nearby either.
“Hello?” She calls quietly as she steps into the clearing cautiously, prepared to run at any moment if anyone actually responds. “Is there anyone here?”
But no one answers, the forest is as quiet as before, but this time Ciri feels emboldened as her growling stomach drives her further into the clearing and sneaks a peek into the pack sitting next to the firepit in hopes that there might be food there.
There’s nothing extraordinary inside; the pack’s contents mostly consisting of clothes and blankets, and no food. Though, reaching into the bag, she feels her hand brush against soft material at the bottom underneath it all – fine silk, she realises, which is unusual for travellers out in the woods like this, though it’s too dark and the material too far down into the pack for her to see exactly what it looks like. Then, amidst all the silk, her hand grasps around something solid and she pulls it out; it’s a small clay jar about the size of her fist. Curious, she removes the lid to smell its contents and it smells like food; like herbs, spices and garlic, and something else she can’t place.
However, before Ciri can identify the scent, there’s the snap of a branch close by and the sound of soft footfalls approaching. Scrambling to her feet and without thought of hiding the evidence of her snooping in this person’s belongings, Ciri dives into the hollow of a tree, underneath the roots of the large oak towering protectively over the clearing like one of those treant creatures Geralt had once told her about. Peering out of the small gap between the roots and the ground, Ciri is only able to see a pair of large boots step into the camp and towards the pack she’d just so unashamedly snooped into.
The person kneels by their pack and curses, the sound seeming to reverberate through the clearing and shatter the quiet Ciri didn’t even realise had fallen as she hides with baited breath. The stranger – undoubtedly a man judging by the size of him – starts to pull his belongings out of his pack to see if anything is missing, and curses again, this time loud enough for Ciri to hear the incensed, “ Son of a whore! ”
Feeling her heart skip a beat, Ciri crawls further back into her hiding spot while still clutching the stolen jar with white knuckles. Just then her stomach rebels on her by growling loudly in protest at its lack of food, making her freeze in place.
Again, she holds her breath, and for a second she thinks she’s gotten away with it when she hears the man’s voice once more, this time much closer; “You know, if you are intending to steal someone’s food, I’d advise you to at least steal something that’s edible. Or at least find a better hiding spot.”
Heart now in her throat, Ciri looks desperately down at the jar in her hands that had smelled like garlic and spicy herbs. What is it then, if not food?
“It's a healing salve,” he continues, as though hearing her unvoiced question. “It might quell your hunger, though I doubt it’d be worth it for the stomach ache it’d also give you.”
He doesn’t sound hostile or unfriendly, she thinks, but Ciri has been tricked before thinking back to the doppler that’d stolen Mousesack’s face. She remains deathly still, not daring to move. If she’s lucky, he’ll give up when he realises she won’t come out. He’s too big to fit between the roots of the oak anyway, so the only way for him to get her is if she’d come out willingly.
“Here,” the man says, when he gets no response from her. “I’ll trade you for it.”
A small pouch is tossed right outside the opening of her hiding spot, its contents spilling out – food – as if in silent peace-offering. Her mouth waters at the sight and smell of it, and it’s so tempting to accept the small gift to fill her growling belly.
Peering out between the roots once more, she sees the tall silhouette of the man seated a safe distance away on a tree stump, as if giving her space to come out if she dared to. It was a simple yet gentle kindness that made Ciri trust that this man didn’t mean her any harm, and while Geralt would probably scold her for her recklessness, she pokes her head out of her hiding spot to retrieve the small gift he’d offered.
As she reaches for the pouch of food in exchange for the jar, their eyes briefly connect across the clearing; green meeting striking blue that shines despite the gloom of spring night. Those eyes seem to twinkle knowingly, though there’s no trace of malice or deviousness there, which makes Ciri release a breath of relief she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding.
It’s easy for her to drop the jar after that, though she doesn’t forget to snatch the pouch with her as she crawls back into her hiding spot inside the hollow of the oak. Clutching the gift close to her chest, she examines its contents properly; dried jerky, heavily salted by the looks of it. Ciri is hungry enough to take a tentative bite of one, throwing caution to the wind and not much care for the possible consequences of the food being poisoned. Immediately, she notices that it tastes exactly like the same type of jerky Geralt always keeps in his pack too, and Ciri feels like she could cry all over again with the pang of regret and longing it leaves in her chest.
“You can come out, you know. I’m not going to hurt you,” the stranger tells her after Ciri has shoved down another two pieces of jerky, having not moved from his seat on the stump.
While he’d been kind to her so far, Ciri knows it’s foolish to blindly trust this man who she’s never met before. She’d relied on the kindness of strangers in the past, but by doing so she’d been taught several painful lessons about the cruelties of life, which in turn had left their mark on her childish naïvity and faith in people . And surely Geralt must be out looking for her by now, so this time she won’t need to possibly endanger herself for her own survival.
Geralt would come for her, she knows it.
“Suit yourself,” he says when she doesn’t respond, seeming unbothered by the silent rejection.
He sits for a while longer, and Ciri knows he is watching her just as closely as she is watching him – as much as they’re able to see during the black of night anyways – until he gets to his feet, yawning dramatically as he stretches. “Just don’t kill me in my sleep, if you’d be so kind,” he tells her, walking the few steps it takes him with his long strides to get to his bed roll and tucks himself under the covers. “Good night.”
Ciri sits and listens for a long while, waiting, although not entirely sure for what. Maybe for this strange man to fall asleep, though she suspects he won’t be sleeping a wink that night with her still lurking so close by. Ciri waits for hours until her eyes start to slip shut with exhaustion despite the frigid night air of spring curling around her ankles, and her clothes still damp from her dip in the river.
By the time she awakens from her involuntary nap – with a jolt when her head lolls uselessly against her chest like a puppet with no strings – the first lights of morning have started peaking in through the vines and roots of the old oak that had housed her overnight. The forest is quiet around her and she risks slowly crawling out of her hiding spot, only to find that her good samaritan has packed up camp and left while she’s been asleep, though leaving her another gift of jerky and a blanket right outside the tree’s entrance.
Ciri feels an odd pang of bitter regret at that, at having been left behind without a word of goodbye, though she’s not entirely sure why. It’s not like she’s entitled to feel that way after having rejected the man’s kindness out of suspicion – healthy suspicion, but suspicion nonetheless.
Gathering the kind gifts in her arms, she starts walking, trying to retrace her steps and find her way back to her and Geralt’s camp, but seeming to only get more lost in doing so. She considers backtracking and trying to traverse the steep hill, but she knows that even if she could manage to climb that last waterfall, the river had been part of a larger network of bodies of water and it’d be hopeless trying to find the right vein to follow back to her and Geralt’s camp.
So, Ciri walks for four days, following the edges of a beaten path she’d stumbled upon – but not on it, in fear of who she might encounter – but unable to recognise any of the landmarks along the way. She sleeps in tree hollows and underneath cliff overhangs, wrapped up and protected from the elements in the scratchy blanket the stranger had given her. The jerky lasts her for two and a half days, though she eats it sparingly and lives off foraging when she can, mindful that she might not be eating sustainable food like it for some time.
All the while, she wonders if Geralt is searching for her as she does him; if he tried to track her and lost her scent when she fell in the river. Ciri knows he’s probably worried sick and that she will get an earful when they reunite after he’s stopped fussing over her well-being. She really hopes the Witcher is okay. Strangely enough, she also feels her thoughts drifting to the stranger in the woods, wondering where he’d gone off to. The grudging bitterness of not having been told goodbye – and perhaps a wish that he’d taken her with him to keep her safe – still lingers, but she pushes it to the back of her mind, knowing that it’s silly to feel that way over someone she doesn’t even know the name of.
Eventually, she comes upon a small settlement that smells like fish and saltwater, and is bustling with life. It’s with a dejected feeling she realised that it’s a fishing town, meaning they’re close to the sea and she’s walked westwards instead of eastwards towards Carreras where she and Geralt were originally headed.
Once again, she wants to curl up and cry, but she can practically hear her grandmother reprimanding her from beyond the grave about her lack of decorum not fitting for a princess. A princess would think about solutions to her predicament, not just see insurmountable problems. So she swallows her tears and locates this town’s notice board, hoping that perhaps there’s some witcher contracts there, that maybe it’d attract a familiar face – even if it’s Lambert of all people – but there’s nothing beyond menial work, which Geralt or any of his brothers wouldn’t even spare a second glance.
Ciri’s stomach rumbles threateningly then, reminding her that she’d only lived off the forest and jerky for the past few days, so while the baker isn’t looking she risks nabbing a small and steaming loaf of bread, the smell of which made her mouth water. But while the baker doesn’t notice her, someone else does: a young town guard with a rusty sword strapped to his hip and an older looking fellow, a guard too by the crest on his jerkin, with a meaner set to his mouth than his colleague.
“Oi! You there, what do you think you’re doing?” The young one exclaims as he spots her slipping the loaf into the makeshift bag she’d made of the stranger’s blanket.
Immediately, Ciri starts running. She weaves between shoppers and vendors alike, ducking under stalls and around street corners, following the sounds of seagulls and scent of saltwater down to the harbour. In a town such as this, she might be able to lose them among all the traffic of bustling sailors and crates being loaded on and off ships.
At the harbour, it’s not as busy as she’d hoped. There are people there, but it’s a lot more open than she had anticipated with few places to hide. She cowers behind a crate with the makeshift bag pulled tight to her chest. Ciri knows it’s not an ideal hiding spot, knows she’ll be detected at any moment, but she needs to catch a breath and come up with a plan, an excuse of some sort so the guards don’t throw her in jail for a single loaf of bread.
A voice separates itself from the rest of the buzz of the harbour and for a brief second her heart flutters as the hope that Geralt is nearby passes through her, but is quickly crushed as it’s too loquacious to be the witcher’s rough growl.
“She’s there! Get her!”
Yet, it’s familiar all the same and her eyes are drawn to a tall figure standing haggling with a merchant. While his features and body are obscured by a nondescript cloak with its oversized hood pulled up, Ciri still recognises that melodic voice and the blue flash of eyes underneath the dark cowl. Before she can give herself time to doubt her actions, she scrambles to her feet and runs to him, practically throwing herself at the stranger from the clearing as if they’d known each other their whole lives. It’s undoubtedly a foolish risk to trust him to protect her, but he’s been nice to her before, and it is better than wherever these guards are about to take her.
“Father!” She exclaims, infusing all her feelings of longing after Geralt into the statement. It’s easy to sound desperate when it’s all Ciri has been feeling these past days.
The stranger blinks down at her and her arms wound tight around his waist, his features wrapped up in confusion before he glances up to see her predicament. His eyes widen at the sight of trouble, flickering with distrust. For an awful second Ciri thinks he’s about to throw her to the wolves as a hand lands heavily on her shoulder and pushes her away, but instead of revealing her bluff, he kneels in front of her while still keeping a firm grip on her.
This up close to the man, Ciri is struck by his large, kind eyes, but moreover the unnatural, almost ethereal quality to them; his pupils larger than usual and the blue of his irises turning almost black around the edges, making his eyes appear almost a vivid vitriol.
“There you are! I’ve been searching everywhere for you, darling,” he exclaims, loud enough for the guards to hear. “I’ve told you plenty of times before, you can’t rush off on your own while I’m not looking as much as your heart yearns for trouble.”
His acting is surprisingly good, the concern he’s laced his voice with filled with the stern kind of warmth Eist would usually reprimand her with. Even more surprising is how easily he's gone along with her little lie as though he’s used to vowing excuses and theatrics on the spot in order to help others, no questions asked.
“Sir, is this your daughter?” The young guard asks as he catches up to them, his run slowing down into a jog before stopping completely a few feet away, a frown etched onto his smooth features. He can’t be much older than Ciri by the looks of it, his face still holding onto some stubborn baby fat around the cheeks and his skin irritated with razor bumps and spots.
“Ah, yes. What can I help you with, officers?” He asks, getting back to his feet and adjusting his hood so a little more of his face is showing, but doesn’t fold it back entirely. It’s as though he doesn’t really want to be seen. Ciri understood all too well, wishing she had her own cloak to hide her blonde hair with, but it’d been abandoned at her and Geralt’s camp along with the rest of her belongings.
The older one comes in tow, breathing heavily yet somehow managing to look sceptical between the two of them. “I struggle to see a resemblance.”
Ciri can understand this. In the harsh light of day, they carry little resemblance to each other. He is so tall she has to crane her neck a little to look at his face which is all sharp features and angles. He’s also surprisingly lean with a rich brown hair colour and a matching, thick beard that could rival Lambert’s own. He is wearing muted colours underneath the cloak, plain breeches with an off-white chemise tucked into it that has a plunging neckline revealing a hairy chest.
Nothing about the man should give Ciri a reason to pause, yet there’s something familiar about those large blue eyes of his that make her feel like she’s seen them before. It’s an old type of familiarity, like a long-since forgotten memory itching in the back of her brain, but she can’t put her finger on it. The only thing she knows is that those eyes make a sense of comfort settle in her chest; making it easy for her to put her trust and faith in the hands of this man even if they don’t know each other.
“Takes after her beautiful mother, as you can see. You’re not the first, and likely not the last to notice, my good man,” the stranger says, placing a hand back on her shoulder. His words are companionable, though there’s something dangerous and weary in his tone, barely perceptible yet still there. “Now, officers. You didn’t tell me; to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
“She’s stolen a loaf of bread off the baker. It can’t be tolerated,” the younger guard squeaks, attempting to sound authoritative but failing miserably.
Ciri looks up at the stranger with big eyes she knows always made Eist and Mousesack let her get away with the most mischievous contrivances. “Yes, but I was so hungry. Jerky is hardly filling, father,” she pretends to complain, using her most put-upon voice in hopes the stranger takes the hint that they’ve already met before. That he’s already been kind to her before.
It has its desired effect as his eyes gleam immediately with recognition, his hand twitching a little where it’s resting on her shoulder. His easy smile gets a little edge to it, his lip curling back to reveal perfectly straight, white teeth as he pretends to scold her, “Darling, we spoke about your thieving ways . First that poor fellow’s camp and now this. What would your mother think? We’ll have to have words when we get back home.”
“Of course, father,” Ciri replies, hanging her head in faked guilt so the guards don't see the self-satisfied smile threatening to pull at her lips at having somehow managed to pull this off.
The stranger’s attention turns to the guards who are watching the whole display. “Can I pay the baker back? I’m afraid the wife would not be pleased if I returned from a day at the market with only a loaf of stolen bread and no daughter. You know what they say: happy wife, happy life.” The shaggy-looking man looks practically pained as he says it, but thankfully the older guard doesn’t seem to notice the stranger’s discomfort as he laughs heartily.
“Aint’ that right.” The guard seems more at ease immediately, fooled by the man’s bluff. What an idiot. He shrugs, his body relaxing as his face splits into a charmed grin, revealing several missing teeth of his own. “I will let her off with a warning this once if you pay the baker what is owed, but don’t let me catch her doing that again, sir. Your wife will hear about it.”
The younger of the two guards looks between Ciri and the stranger hesitantly, eyes distrustful. “Lieutenant, I don’t think –”
“Trust it won’t happen again, my good man,” Ciri’s fake father replies quickly to the older lieutenant, effectively shutting the younger guard up, reaching for his purse. “Now, how much do we owe the fellow?”
Ciri watches the guards walk away with the man’s money, the younger of the two being pulled away by his lieutenant with some protests, feeling a little smug for having gotten away from the encounter. Who knew she was an aspiring actress? Maybe after all this destiny and saving the world debacle is over with, she could attend Oxenfurt university. Maybe she’d study music too, for the hell of it. Her grandmother would probably be rolling in her grave as she never seemed to enjoy the arts much – gods know why, though Ciri suspects it has to do with her mother’s betrothal because that’s the last time any bard from outside the walls of Cintra were invited to play at court. Queen Calanthe was paranoid of everyone after that night, allegedly.
Destiny has a way of dashing her hopes quickly however, as she feels the stranger’s hand slip from her shoulder and is propped up on his narrow hip instead. The cheery and companionable persona he’d portrayed to the guards falls away too as he frowns down at her. “So you are the little cretin who crashed my camp.”
Immediately cowed, she kicks at some pebbles that’d wedged themselves between the planks of the docks. “I didn’t – Yes, I’m sorry about that,” she says, finding herself unable to meet his eyes. “But I was telling the truth just now. I was starving and I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Most of us don’t,” the man answers cryptically and starts walking away.
Ciri is suddenly filled with fear as she watches the stranger leave. Something within her is screaming not to let him go again; he could keep her safe. He could help her find Geralt. She rushes after him.
“Thank you for the jerky,” she says, clutching onto her makeshift bag still full with the bread that was going to taste a little more bitter now than before. “And the blanket. As well as helping me with those guards. I am not sure what would have happened to me there.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Can I come with you?”
“No,” he says, not sparing her a glance. “You already owe me five coppers for the bread you stole, and I can’t imagine it’ll be less expensive to have you follow me around. More mouths to feed and all that. As you kindly reminded me, you’ve already made a substantial dent in my jerky supply.”
Ciri has to run to keep up with his long strides. It reminds her of having to keep up with Roach’s steady trot, the man keeping a disturbingly similar pace to the horse. “I won’t be a burden, I promise! I can fish and make traps for food. I won’t be in the way.”
“I highly doubt that, princess.”
The words send another jolt of fear through her, though for different reasons than before. Princess . He said it so casually, but he doesn’t seem to have recognised her as the Lion Cub of Cintra. He couldn’t possibly have. Nilfgaard may have taken Cintra but has yet to breach the borders of Sodden, so few people this far north know she is still alive. She is being irrational, he had used nicknames for the guards too, that is all it was. Ciri decides to plough on.
“Please,” she begs, planting herself in front of him to act as a physical barrier, forcing him to stop. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Melitele’s tits , you’re persistent. Isn’t your…” His left hand does something complicated in a strange flourish, as though grappling for the right word. “... actual father, here somewhere?” It doesn’t sound like the word he’d been searching for, the common honorific somehow sounding foreign in his mouth.
“I was with him,” she admits, thinking about Geralt because he is the closest thing to a father she has now. “But… we got separated.”
The stranger raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “So, now you’re looking to adopt a new one?”
“No, but I… like I said, I have nowhere else to go. It’ll only be until I find my father again, then I won’t bother you anymore.”
Maybe it’s how pathetic she sounds that makes the man sigh rather dramatically and look towards the skies with an air of someone thrice his age. “This is some well-deserved retribution shit then, I take it?” He mutters resignedly to the heavens, almost too quiet for Ciri to hear. “One annoying tit for another annoying tat?”
Ciri scrunches up her nose, confused. “What?”
“Never you mind, princess,” he sighs again, massaging his temples with his knuckles as if he’s getting a headache – and she notices his right hand is wrapped tightly in gauze and bandages, but wisely keeps her questions to herself about it. “Fine, you can come. Just – don’t be in the way.”
She beams up at him, relief flooding her for reasons she can’t quite put her finger on. “My name is Fiona,” she says, the lie rolling off her tongue without any conscious effort.
“Hm.” The stranger’s grunt reminds her too much of Geralt, and she really hopes he’s okay. “Julian.”
“Julian,” Ciri repeats, rolling the foreign name over in her mouth. It doesn’t quite suit him, she thinks, but she decides to keep that opinion to herself. After all, who is she to pass judgement on someone else’s name and character when she doesn’t even know them?
“Well?” Julian calls ahead, having started walking back towards the market and away from his new charge without her notice. “Are you coming or not, princess?”