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His boots stomped through the marshland in heavy steps, vapour of the poisoned water irritating his eyes during each footfall. The wolf had stopped him for only a moment, warnings bating on his tongue, and fear in each step. A palpable smell of unease leaked through his scent, and he almost regretted not striking him down on the spot.
“Is there no other way?” He’d asked, and Geralt wasn’t sure if he was clinging to past morals or just tired enough not to care.
“And then?” He’d asked, and there was no way to answer that.
“What’s she done to you?” He’d asked, awakening a pounding migraine as he fought against remembering. Stole something so precious, irreplaceable no matter Berem’s claims; it didn’t matter what happened later, what happened after.
Nothing mattered at all anymore.
Nothing ever would.
Blood littered the already cursed grounds, amusement flooding through the camp as the gaggle of hunters chortled at the misery of their lowers. The bleeding pup clawed at the trap in agony, whining as the men were slaughtered around her. The lone survivor of her litter stank of terror, her ashen fur stiffening as her little fangs split into a snarl.
He saw his own cub in her place, arm caught in a trap, teeth stained and set with sinew as she gnawed at it. One moment she was but a child, reaching for a blunted sword and straining to hold it with her non-dominant hand. The next she was as he knew her, but startling pale, coated in a fine layer of frost that slowly threatened to turn her face purple. He nearly threw his own steel sword when he saw it next, gripped so tight in his hand that the worn glove had bled through.
There was no time to stop and feel the pain crawling from his limb like a poison, and the cold seeping into his bones made it hardly register. Liquid dribbled down the blade, and he sheathed it against both his teachings and his better judgement. The crone crooned in her home, voice echoing as though they were in a cave; Berem left hesitantly at his suggestion. Her familiar form met him face-to-face, hive buzzing in her vacant eye, hunched over and rubbing her spindly fingers tips against each other.
She called him desperate and afraid, filled with sorrow and a contempt for living past this point. His death at her hands would be painful, or so she claimed before Berem snapped at her with his teeth and drew out a screech. The ashen-haired pup followed him dutifully, but neglected to stay within a safe distance, instead nipping at the Weaveress’ heels. She ran from the three, practically on all fours in her desperation as her time grew short. His steel ran her through just as the birds began to spill out around her misshapen body, his silver took the final blow, solidifying her as no more than another dead monster.
He forgot them as his injured hands searched her body with desperation, tearing apart her home when the medallion remained unfound. Shelves were torn off the walls, floorboards coming up under his fingers, boxed turned to splinters as they hit the floor, contents spilling against his feet. His medallion- Her medallion shone brightly in his hands, caught between the two as he lowered himself to sit before his knees gave out.
It idly shook between his fingers, or so he’d have thought were his arms not shaking wildly. He pressed his forehead to the warm metal, tears he wasn’t sure could even form welling in his eyes. They had raised her to be strong, in the very place they had all grown from boys into men, and that had left him petrified when he thought of the future. He’d never felt greater relief, not in all his decades of living, than when it became clear that Ciri would never be a Witcher.
She would never earn her own medallion, but her eyes would remain her mother’s beautiful sea green with her father’s hardened stare. She would never have rocks thrown at her in the streets, nor be denied good pay thanks to the two swords on her back. She would never be a monster like him, and there was nothing he ever wanted more for her. Still not quite human, but human enough for a world outgrowing the services of mutants.
She would’ve never had to feel what he did now, the slow heartbeat thrumming in his chest as his blood cooled. He knew it was there, and yet it felt like nothing sat within his chest as sorrow overtook agony, and his own self-preservation cooled into quietness. It was hardly a Witcher’s death, and yet it felt fitting for someone so devoid of humanity to be ripped to pieces by all he’d ever sought to protect the world from.
A monster for a monster.
The door shuddered under an unseen force, and a webbed hand slammed into the inside wall beside the open window frame. A nail clawed at the leather holding his scabbards to his back, hissing filled his ears and he counted every beast he heard until they faded into the background. The field smelt inexplicably of sulphur and a haunting grudge that made the air heavy and almost hard to inhale. Still, he remained unmoving, mind caught in a waking dream of his daughter; through the haze he heard her huffing laugh and the blink as she shaped reality to her liking.
It wasn’t hard to imagine the circlet on her head as her father’s broken voice asked Geralt never to return. Yet he could also almost feel the silver of the sword he’d meant to give her, engraved beautifully as proof of her prowess. It didn’t matter to him what she wanted to be, all that he wanted was that scar to meet the sun once again, the light to make her pale hair glow as she stood tall. The moments they’d spent together, laughing and making memories, he’d trade them all away if only she were still alive.
And as if to answer that unfortunate call, the door shattered into the splinters. The monster gave the neglected silver sword a wide berth, and could afford to as the Witcher waited for nothing but the end of his pain. The corpse-eater inhaled deeply, as if taking in the scent of despair in the air, tasting it with inhuman excitement. Berem had long since fled with his pup, and there was nothing to stop it as its spikes flared, and the pack bayed like hungry wolves.
He was going to die; the thought almost made him smile as his eyes drifted shut.
“Oh, Wolf,” A woman whispered in his ear, warming the shell with her breath as her shadow cast over his own, “Well isn’t this sad…?”
The creature snarled at them both, ignoring the new presence in favour of tearing apart its least favourite person. It snaps its teeth close to his arm, a mere arm’s length from mauling the despondent man before it.
Unseen, the shadow snapped her fingers, and the nekker promptly burst like rotfiend’s might, gore splattering the cabin’s partially destroyed interior. He opened his eyes, drawing his forehead away from the memento to stare thoughtlessly at the monster’s corpse.
“There we are,” she said with cold satisfaction, “It’s quite rude to interrupt a lady, now isn’t it, …Master Witcher?”
“Well, what are you then?” He asked slowly, barely holding in a tired sigh.
“Irrelevant,” she replied simply, stepping in front of him and showcasing a familiar outfit. She knelt down to look at him, and it was Triss’ face staring back at him. Her brows were furrowed, eyes scrunched with sympathy that didn’t quite match her expression; the eyes were the wrong colour.
“A doppler,” he guessed, but knew it wasn’t quite right.
She smiled a little too widely, her shape seemingly vanishing for a moment as it caught a hint of the shadows. Yennefer stood idly, hand poised impatiently on her hip as the other brushed through her black tresses; again, the eyes were wrong. Again, she knelt before him to peer closely at his face, and then let a hand rest on his head that felt heavier than it ought to.
His eyes narrowed, gaze flitting from her borrowed form to the door coated in blood from her victims. A realisation crept through him slowly as the silence stretched, and when he turned he saw the entire bog was bloodied and wrought with empty skins of the creatures that had once threatened him.
“So, are you here to kill me?” He asked coldly, “Can’t say I recall slighting…whatever you are…before.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” she said in her voice, “In fact, I would seek to repay you.”
He blinked, and she chuckled.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure gratitude is quite rare for you, my dear,” she crooned, hair brightening to a wine red as it curled around her shoulders. He could smell something on her breath that he couldn’t quite identify; it burned his nostrils when she drew close.
“Oh?” She stopped short, freckles blooming across her cheeks, “Not familiar to you?”
“None of your business,” he said through gritted teeth, averting his gaze.
“Very well. Perhaps I can prove my sincerity then, hm?”
He glared with a silent question.
“Clever, as expected of such a fragile soul,” the shadow said, unseen hands brushing across the uncovered skin of his neck, “You expected to die, wanted to, even.”
She leaned in close, enough that their noses nearly bumped, “Is that really what you want, Geralt?”
He wanted her to leave him be, but that was clearly not an option.
“I can do that,” she assured, “Just tell me. Clear as water, what want flows through your soul?”
He flinches as she responds to his thought, though it would stand to reason a Bruxa-like creature would have a power like that. She wasn’t, though.
“Correct.”
He shuddered, then stilled when her lips met his forehead. His hands itched for a weapon, but his limbs were heavy and still, the silver seeming further and further away each time she whispered.
“A witch,” he finally said, and she sat silent for a long moment. He heard her change forms, eyes growing wide as her hair grew choppy and blonde, and a woman’s ghost from long past stood before him as though perfectly preserved in time. It was-
“Renfri…”
“If it suits you best,” she crooned, laying her arms atop his shoulders and loosely holding his neck with ice-cold limbs like a spectre’s, “You do miss her terribly, don’t you? No…”
She held his face in her hands, “You miss what she saw in you.”
“Stop…” he growled lowly, and she gasped in utter horror with that same expression as when he ran her through. It takes all he has not to flinch, but she smells blood in the water.
“You were afraid to love her, just like everyone else. She was without flaw, untouched by the evils of the world; yet that made you yourself afraid to even accept her gaze. It was warm like a hearth, and soft like down, and you were afraid to hurt it with your disgusting, inhuman hands.”
Her voice twists, and he refuses to look. He knows what she looks like right now, feels the medallion thrumming in his hands as its not-owner sits beside him and pulls him into a side-hug. His heart thunders sharply in his chest, shuddering like a scared rabbit when its about to faint. Similarly, his body felt caught in a trap, exhausted from fight after fight and long nights spent without sleep for fear of seeing her cold, dead face like a confirmation. Her breath was warm where her touch was cold, his own exhales visible in the dim light left from sundown.
“It’s okay,” she promises, trailing a finger down from his eye to the bottom of his cheek, then letting it drop into his lap, “I see right through you, Witcher.”
A tear traces the icy cold she left, following the path until it lands squarely on his leg where her finger still lays. It warms the frost on his cheek, and soon the tears won’t stop, long and harsh as they fall in large droplets. His eyes burn, and he almost fears he’ll die of dehydration at this rate.
He blinks away a few, then shuts his eyes tight when he sees her ashen hair hanging in his field of view, Ciri’s gentle visage fawning over him as he cries with her ghost. It was foolish to fall for this manipulation, this creature was no angry ghost, but it was no hungry vampire or unusually cruel doppler either. Perhaps a man would’ve died by now, his body frozen in tired agony as the image of his lover whispered sweet nothings in his ear; perhaps he would’ve preferred that.
“You wanted it for her so much it hurt, and you had just managed to forget your longing, too. So many years you’d spent wondering, dreaming even. Not sure if it kept you going, or if it was the reason behind your misery…”
Stop.
“It was obvious what a cursed man would want so badly.”
Please, stop.
“The end to his curse.”
His head is throbbing.
“To no longer be a mutant.”
His skin is burning.
“A freak.”
He can’t breathe.
“A monster.”
Her finger wiped the tears from his face, but they stubbornly continued to flow.
“Your greatest wish. Do you see it now? It must be obvious, hm?” The wine-haired woman appears again, putting her hands on his and squeezing tightly, “Tell me.”
She coaxes his finger open, the medallion practically stuck to his palms with sticky half-dried blood. She doesn’t reach for it, and he relaxes despite himself.
“Look at me, dear,” her dead eyes meet his, unnaturally green as they bore into his own.
Her smile is soft and wrinkled with age and sleepless nights, “You know who I am, love.”
His eyes are still blurry with tears, like an old memory it surfaces and pulled through the filter of his unrecognisable youth before the pain and the trials and everything.
It was his mother’s face.
She cradled his head in her hands, rocking them back and forth as he stares forward with a dazed look. She’s humming something vaguely familiar, with half-formed lyrics he almost knows.
“My love, I owe you everything, do you understand now?” Visenna murmurs into his hair, “The least a mother can do…is give it all back.”
She tilts his head towards her own and slowly reaches her other hand towards his hands, pulling the medallion away by its chain at a snail’s pace, waiting for him to jump. He doesn’t, can barely even feel it leave his numb hands, can barely even hear the metallic clink of the links as she breathes out promises.
“There we are. All you are is poured straight into here,” she gestures to the pendant with a few taps to its surface, buzzing idly in her hand, “It is unfortunate, but you won’t be able to take it with you, my sweet.”
His hand shoots out, grips her arm tight, and she frowns like a disappointed mother would to a toddler caught out of bed.
“Geralt,” Visenna croons, nearly singing, “Tell me your wish. Tell me and you’ll have it.”
His lips move to form the first syllables, and she yanks at a lock of his hair.
“Your wish, boy,” she demands, “That girl is not what you really want, do you think I can’t tell?”
Ciri- He wants- Their medallion, it-
She sighs deeply, and leans into him as he leans away.
“My dear, sweet son,” she says, lips quivering as her eyes form the beginning of tears, “No one can bring back the dead. Not even me. And I think you know exactly why.”
He wants- He wants this to stop-
“Oh my love, let me make it simple for you. You’re already so eaten up inside, is it so hard to imagine someone loves you?” She asks, folding her own hands over the medallion in her lap.
“You won’t even notice its missing,” Visenna promised, “Just give it to me, and I’ll change your life for the better, you’ll see!”
Give it back- Please-!
“Don’t you want her to live?”
His thoughts quiet.
She frowned, her expression the picture of utter despair, “I had hoped to keep this from you, but you’re such a good boy, aren’t you? Selfless and noble and far more a man than them.”
She holds him close, the pendant unguarded in her lap. It doesn’t draw his eye, though, not when her hair brightens like his own and those same eyes (The colour is nearly right? He can’t tell anymore) stare back at him.
“She did not die because of you, you must know that, dear, but…” Visenna bites her lip, smearing red paint on her teeth, “If you were, then perhaps…?”
“Perhaps I could change fate just a tad, for my one and only son.”
Ciri could-
“Yes,” she assures, “Yes, yes, yes, my love.”
A sob breaks through his throat, and she shushes him lovingly. The tears finally stop, and he sees her clearly again, face warm and familiar in his mind. She leans in close, her breath stinging his ear as she leaned in close enough that he could hear every single syllable form in her mouth.
“Now… Tell me your only wish.”
It feels like death approaches as he opens his dry mouth to reply, words choked out between each desperate breath.
“I- I w-want-”
“Go on,” she urges, “Tell Mama the one thing you truly want, Geralt.”
“I want to be human.”
He croaks out in a whisper, and she tugs him close and holds tightly, hand brushing through his hair. Her voice is slick with satisfaction as the world goes still.
“Perfect.”
-
He blinks, holding out his hands in front of himself and seeing nothing but darkness. The stars shine brightly overhead, and he feels his hair stick to his neck with sweat, feet blistering from a long day on the road. The trees are taller than tall, utterly towering over his smaller form, and every shadow seems monstrous as he breaks out of the brush and back onto the path. Someone is holding a lit torch high, and he squints at them before they begin to sprint towards him in a mad dash.
“Oh sweet Melitele,” she sobs, dropping the light and throwing her arms around him, “I thought I’d lost you, love!”
Her wet cheeks dampen the back of his shirt, kisses pressed into his long mop of hair as she holds him close and rocks him in her arms. She pulls him back and sees a freckled woman with wine red hair, curled and wild as it trails down to nearly her waist. Her eyes practically glow in the barren torchlight from the dirt road below, greener than anything he’d ever seen.
“Gods, tonight has scared me stiff,” she decided with a shake of her head, “Now I don’t care what I’m doing from now on, you can’t hold my hand, you keep hold of my skirt, understood, Gwyn?”
He blinked for a long moment at her, suddenly coming to the realisation that ‘Gwyn’ was his name.
“Gods help me, if Korin could see me now,” she murmured, “Gwynweddien Caedess, get your damn head outta the clouds!”
“Sorry,” he said quickly, frowning as his words came out slurred, “I understand… Mama.”
She smiled tiredly, but warmly, “There’s my clever boy, eh?”
Visenna settled him on her hip, and rewarded him with a kiss on his head when he automatically gripped her clothes to steady himself.
“There we are, love. Little spooked, weren’t ya?” She asked rhetorically, lifting him until his head rested on her shoulder, looking back into the pitch dark and not even spotting her footprints in the sheer blackness of the night, “Shh, that’s it, nothing scary out there. Nothing your Mama can’t take, right baby?”
He curled closer to her warmth, and tried his best to stay awake as his small body went limp with fatigue. He hummed in answer, and she hummed back in contentment, patting his back in a steady rhythm. Each footstep matched the movement, lulling him asleep as he watched the empty path stretch out behind them. He was afraid he’d wake and find himself there once again, despite her promises and platitudes and love.
But she just held him closer, softly singing a familiar tune too quietly for his dulled hearing to catch the words. It didn’t matter, though, not when he felt the promise in each word she murmured into his hair.
“You see,” she’d say to the sleeping boy in her arms, “Such a beautiful wish.”
Her lips curled into a smirk as she passed the notice board, pointedly ignoring the request for a very specific witcher as she dutifully carried her son home.
“You’ll want for nothing, never come to harm nor hurt, not so long as I live and breathe,” she promised, “You deserve all the love I can give…”
“For setting me free.”