Chapter Text
A day and a night he'd spent in the back of the merchant's cart and yet no amount of rest would put Geralt at ease. The venom of the ghoul brought with it agony and delirium — he couldn't separate one from the other, not with how readily the ghosts of his past came to haunt him as he drifted between this world and theirs, the stench of death-rot and magic in the air.
The last he'd opened his eyes, he resolved to keep them that way. Or die trying. He prefers physical torment to the anguish his dreams brought him, those.... visions. Of hair the color of flame and an inferno waiting to consume him.
"It's time for you to find what you let go of."
Visenna's words sting worse than any poison in his veins ever could. (His mother's tincture might have saved him the worst of it, but Geralt would never know.) They are not the same. It might have been choice that led him away from his child of surprise and choice that had his mother hand him over to Vesemir, and it, too, is choice that will lead him to Cirilla. He won't easily be rid of the mantle of destiny weighing so heavily on his shoulders, but he'd never been one for such... formality; he'd chosen to return to Cintra, because it was the right thing to do. Just as Calanthe had chosen to betray him. Just as he'd chosen, again, to find the princess. so many years later than he should have.
In the middle of a war.
Having only caught a glimpse of her.
And, now, with a limp. with no idea whether she even lives.
He might have let go of her, but the thought that he could be too late... Cintran corpses from queen to commoner. Dead more common than the living. One look, from fifty feet away, and Geralt knew that he'd never forgive himself if she were dead when he should have been protecting her. He cannot picture the life the law of surprise had thrust in his path — would Calanthe have tried to make a knight of him? Even through the pain, the thought elicits a snide hum. Would he have lived in Cintra, playing father to a child only his by some ancient rule?
Not just a child. A girl.
A girl in a whole new world of danger, on top of the perils girls already face — ones he'd seen everywhere, always, no matter how young or old, pretty or ugly, rich or poor they were. Ones he's sure Nilfgaard is more than capable of. And he'd lost her. He'd let her go thinking it would be better for her — what life could he offer a child? — without even bothering to meet her. Know her life. Her name. He'd let her go thinking, at least that child will be a prince born to parents who love him, who will put a sword in his hands and teach him things that i never could. And then, finally, enough time had passed for him to question his choice and seek out the child — and he'd gone to her only to lose her.
The only thing that gives him hope, no matter how infuriating, is that Calanthe would sooner have killed him and Mousesack both than hand over her granddaughter — what, then, might she have done to keep her out of Nilfgaard's clutches?
He can only hope that it was enough.
The state he's in excuses him from keeping up much with the merchant— Yurga's chatter. Ever since he woke up, it's been easier to stay awake and lucid, even though by all rights he should be as dead as the bodies Yurga had been trying to bury. Geralt has no time for dying, anyhow. There's a battle at Sodden Hill. If Nilfgaard had captured — he stumbles over her name, even in his own thoughts. Cirilla.
If Nilfgaard had captured the princess, she would either be there with whoever led their armies north — it's the better option of the two, if she'd been taken at all — the other being that she's been taken south to the emperor. Geralt would lose ground checking Sodden Hill, but the place pulls at him even though he knows he'll regret riding there in this condition. He only holds so much stock in superstition, in passing feelings of urgency; however this pull comes from instinct, from something deeper he cannot explain.
She must be there. It's too close to let a wound stop him, and it wouldn't be the first time he'd done something that could get him killed just to try and save someone else.
He can't let her slip through his fingers again.
The merchant seems to content himself on the idea of a witcher convalescing in his home, which makes him one of the odder people Geralt had met of late. He would pay him more mind in other circumstances, but he already plans to leave as soon as he can put something in his stomach and get his bearings. They break the treeline and all Geralt can think of is how much time he's already lost.
He tightens the dirty bandage on his thigh while they come to a stop. Yurga's wife approaches them but appears not to notice her husband's guest, too glad to see him returned to her. "I met a girl, an orphan. I found her in the woods nearby."
"The girl in the woods will be with you always.
She is your destiny."
It could be a coincidence. It could be that the words only come to him because Renfri had visited his dreams the night before — words he had turned over and over again in his mind for decades. It could be that whatever orphan Yurga's wife found is warm and safe in their cabin, and that Geralt is ill and a fool for imagining that the only things between him and his destiny are a light drizzle of rain and some trees.
And yet, that same instinct driving him to Sodden Hill burns in his chest. He has this unshakable feeling that, for reasons beyond his control and beyond his understanding, the world is folding in on itself, growing smaller — Cirilla, lost in the vastness of it, could somehow be anywhere he looks on the horizon. She is, a part of him knows it.
He doesn't get very far into the forest. The voices of the merchant and his wife are lost to the mist, and soon so is his conviction that she has to be there. that would be... Geralt marvels at himself — what had he done to warrant such an easy resolution for his worrying? He'd abandoned her. why would fate do anything but spit in his face, as it had plenty of times before?
As he turns back, the weight pushing down on him is almost suffocating.
There's no hesitation as he starts towards the treeline. That is, until he hears footfalls behind him, landing in the moss and yet ringing louder than his own heartbeat. It's instinct that turns him around, and it's awe that keeps him rooted to the spot when he lays eyes on her.
No vision of his mind's creation could have conjured her up. She is the spitting image of Pavetta, if Geralt could ever have imagined such a slight and melancholy woman as her barreling towards him through the woods or playing in the streets with city urchins. No, her energy is all Calanthe, as is the way she stops a few feet away to measure him up before she comes any closer.
He hadn't thought of what might happen next. He had thought to spare her — before he even knew her — from being lashed to a mutant, a butcher, a man with rough hands not fit to hold something so precious as a child of his own. He had not prepared himself for the possibility that he would watch relief spread over Cirilla's face like sunlight, as if he deserves to be the one bringing it to her.
She knows me.
And still none of it is real until he has her in his arms. Safe. Alive. it's then that he realizes he'd been short of life even before the ghoul tore into him — he's never been more startlingly certain of anything in a hundred years. No one has ever clung to him like this before, nor has he held anyone so tightly or so dumbly, as if he has no idea what else to do but hold her, wrapped up against him. Until she pulls away to look at him again.
If she didn't surge forward again the moment she could, he might've thought he had been squeezing her too much. Because he doesn't know what else to do, he feels himself follow her lead, closing his eyes as if that might help him process what was happening. It only makes the task harder — he knows he'll never forget the sight of her running to him but now the moment is crystallized in all other senses, too: the pattern of lace on the hood of her cloak pressing into his arm, the frantic beating of her heart, the sweet-soft smell of her hair as he takes what he imagines has to be his first breath since he laid eyes on her.
With that breath, he finally finds the air to speak. Geralt smooths his hands up and down her back as if to soothe her, but he wonders if it isn't more to soothe himself. She's latched onto him as if she's scared he might disappear; he touches her like he can't believe she exists. "I promise i'll keep you safe," he starts, voice low. Then he says aloud what he should have done all those years ago. "I'm not going anywhere."