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The pyre upon which they’d burned Vesemir’s body was empty when Geralt returned at the start of winter, the grey stone cold and brushed smooth by the ever-present wind.
He and Ciri had been the first to arrive at Kaer Morhen, Geralt not wanting to risk running the treacherous approach too late at the end of Ciri’s first year on the Path. It was also the first year in decades that Geralt had entered the old keep and not been greeted by the man who’d been like his own father, and the wrongness of this sat heavily on his shoulders.
And so Geralt had left Ciri to warm herself and rest a while, while he set off along the mountain path which led to this place. Vesemir would no longer come to greet him, but he would go to greet Vesemir. As he rounded the bend he almost expected the scene to be as it was when he’d left the funeral: the flames licking high into the night sky.
But of course the fire, and his friends and Vesemir himself were all long gone, and Geralt was alone in the indifferent, cold light of an overcast day. The wind whipped at his hair and tunic, already carrying the bite of winter. There was a smell of snow on the air.
It hurt: it hurt more than he’d thought it would, this cold clean nothingness halfway up a mountain. “Ves-” he began. It came out as a croak; he cleared his throat and tried again. “Vesemir,” he said. It felt entirely inadequate. Now that he was here, he had no idea what he’d wanted to say.
He approached the stone; ran his hands over the smooth surface. It was cold. Suddenly there was nothing in the world Geralt wanted more than to feel his father’s warm hand land heavy on his shoulder. What are you sulking out here for, he’d say. Come, supper’s ready.
There was a burning, aching feeling in his chest; an awful hollowness which was quite unlike potion toxicity or ordinary hunger. He regretted that there was nothing in his pack which he could swallow to soothe the pain; no white honey or golden oriole would help this.
He’d been pushing down this feeling frequently over the months since Vesemir’s death. Every so often - often at the most mundane moments - the old man’s face would bob up in his mind. He’d be washing out a cooking pot or brushing down Roach, and suddenly there was a glimpse of Vesemir, smirking over a Gwent hand. Admonishing Ciri to be more careful as he cleaned her scraped knee. Nodding over a book in front of the fire in the library.
Geralt had furiously shoved away all these thoughts, because first they’d all been on that mad rush against Eredin and then because he and Ciri were properly reunited, and there was so much to do; he couldn’t stop because if he did then what if he couldn’t start again? And Ciri needed him. As much as she needed anyone these days, at any rate.
But now the whole winter stretched before him, and in that moment he found he’d come to the end of his ability to ignore just how much it hurt. Grief washed over him in a huge wave, relentless and unstoppable; he turned away from the stone, unable to look at it anymore. His knees gave out and he slid down until he was sitting on the ground, huddled pitifully in on himself like an injured animal.
He screwed his eyes tightly closed; pressed his hands against his face. His heart thumped painfully hard, as if it were trying to crawl up out of his throat. He wanted to scream, or vomit, or open one of his own veins. To purge himself, lance this horrible feeling like a boil, for there was nowhere else for the poison to go but further down inside his own body.
The blood rushing in his ears blended with the howl of the wind through the mountain pass, and it was this along with his own distraction that meant he missed Ciri’s approach and startled at her voice.
“I cry for him sometimes, too.”
Geralt’s eyes flew open to find Ciri kneeling before him, concern written clearly on her features. She reached out and touched his shoulder, gently; Geralt couldn't feel her touch over his layers of clothing. He reached up to place his much larger hand over hers; his fingers were trembling.
“I can’t cry,” he rasped.
“You can if you want,” Ciri said. “It’s just us here. It’s safe.”
Geralt shook his head with a grimace. “No, I mean I can’t. Not physically able.”
Ciri scoffed. “You don’t believe that nonsense? Everyone can cry.”
“Not after the Trials.”
“You’ve tear ducts, haven’t you?” Ciri said, sounding exasperated. “Otherwise your eyeballs would be all dry and shrivelled up.”
“Ciri,” Geralt growled in warning, and she subsided. Geralt curled back into himself, elbows on his knees and the heels of his hands pressed over his eyes. His head was throbbing.
“I’ve got the fires going in the keep,” said Ciri, softly. “Come back with me, Geralt. I’m freezing.”
Her hand had felt warm to his touch before. Geralt raised his head to look at her again. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
He forced a smile - undoubtedly it looked like a grimace - and got painfully to his feet. His head swam and little stars appeared in his vision; he had to bend over with his hands on his knees until it cleared.
They headed back down to the keep slowly, Ciri keeping a hand at Geralt’s elbow as if he needed guiding like a skittish horse. On another day he would have told her to leave off, but she was sniffling and blinking rapidly and so Geralt himself left it alone.
In the kitchen the fire was crackling merrily away. A bottle of white gull and two mugs stood on the table. “Spirit room’s as well stocked as always,” said Ciri, gesturing to these. “But there’s no fresh food. Obviously,” she said, the last word coming in a whisper.
Because Vesemir had always seen to that. Geralt swallowed. “We‘ll go to the village tomorrow. First snow’s not yet arrived.”
“Alright.” Ciri clattered around for a few minutes, shedding her outer coat and rearranging a few odds and ends. Geralt sat at the table and tried to relax his stiff muscles one by one.
Geralt had started on his drink by the time Ciri sat down, but she raised her full mug in a toast anyway. “To Vesemir,” she said, and Geralt clinked his mug against hers. She brought the mug to her lips, but didn’t seem able to drink it. Her lips wobbled in a tearful smile.
“He thought the world of you, you know,” Geralt rasped. His throat felt tight.
Ciri nodded. “Before - before,” she began, and Geralt nodded to show he understood what she meant. They’d not discussed it before, those awful moments when he’d been frozen in impotent rage in the courtyard - though he couldn’t move, he had heard almost everything. Vesemir’s last words had been worthy ones.
“I know,” Geralt said. The tears welling in Ciri’s eyes spilled over; she swiped them away with a quick, sharp movement. The sight of Ciri’s tears, too, pained him; he looked away, aching with guilt.
They drank their gull in silence for a while.
“I never told you,” Ciri said. “What happened with the White Frost.” Her face was set in that determined expression she often got when she was about to do something brave, or stupid, or both.
Now Geralt was curious, in spite of his pounding headache. “You needn’t, if it pains you,” he said, although he was hoping she wouldn’t stop.
It had been so miraculous, so inexplicable. She’d fallen back through the portal, seemingly lifeless - Geralt had thought his own heart would stop - only to stir in his arms and laugh in a bewildering triumph. The memory made the terrible feeling blocking his chest feel even worse. But he had lain awake so many nights wondering: how?
“It’s hard to explain,” Ciri said, looking down at the mug she cradled in both hands. “That place… it wasn’t like any world I’d been in before.”
“How do you mean?”
“It was… less of a physical place. It was more like a dream. Or a feeling.”
Geralt had no idea what this meant. He nodded for her to go on anyway.
“It was cold.” Ciri wrapped her arms around herself and gave a hollow little laugh. “Obviously. But also in myself. I was sort of in every time and place of my life at once. All the very worst things that’ve happened,” she whispered. Geralt didn’t speak, afraid Ciri would just clam up again if he did. But he could well imagine what some of those very worst things would have been.
“There was… a threshold, I suppose you could say” Ciri went on. “I knew I had to cross it, to get to the Frost on the other side. That was where they were.”
She was silent for a long moment. The fire crackled and popped. “So you crossed it?” Geralt prompted quietly.
“Yes. It was hard,” Ciri said. “Like walking into a strong headwind. But once I’d made it there, I came to understand… it was like everything was music, and I was part of the tune.”
Geralt stared. “I don’t follow,” he said helplessly.
Ciri shook her head. “I’m not sure I do either. But I could control it, by controlling myself. My own thoughts, feelings.” She took a long gulp of the gull.
“What did you think of?” Geralt was desperately curious, though he understood very little of this story so far.
The smile Ciri gave him was like the sun coming out. “You,” she said. “And it was like… the frost melted. And then I was waking up on the floor of that tower.”
Geralt’s grip on the handle of his mug was so tight it was painful. “What do you mean, me?” he demanded.
“Not everything has been awful,” Ciri said with a smile. “Like when you came with me to bury Skjall.”
“He was your friend,” Geralt said. Whether the boy had been more than that, he didn’t know. But he’d died trying to help Ciri: surely the whole sorry incident was yet another awful thing to add to her tally.
“You could have said we didn’t have time,” Ciri said, and it was true, they really hadn’t. The Wild Hunt had been snapping at their heels.
“But it was important,” Geralt said. “He was important to you.”
Ciri nodded, her eyes soft. “And when we trashed Avallac’h’s lab!”
Geralt felt a laugh bubbling up, in spite of himself; when he let it out it sounded hysterical even to his own ears. “We shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“Maybe,” said Ciri, “but it meant the world to me that you did it with me.”
Something was straining inside Geralt: a seam creaking under pressure. His eyes felt very hot.
“And do you remember,” Ciri giggled, “our snowball fight -”
Geralt put his mug down with a clank and buried his face in his hands, as if he could hide from the onslaught of the dam breaking.
“Geralt?”
Geralt opened his mouth - I’m fine, he meant to say - but to his horror a sob came out instead.
“Oh, Geralt.” Ciri got up and came round the table to sit next to him on the bench. “It’s alright.”
Geralt shook his head, closing his eyes tightly against the howl that was threatening to escape him. He reached blindly for Ciri and drew her to lean against his chest like she was still a little girl. “Ciri,” he whispered into the top of her head.
Ciri squeezed her arms tightly around him. “Papa,” she said softly, and the last of Geralt’s reserves evaporated. He rocked her back and forth with him as he wept, hot tears spilling over his cheeks and down into Ciri’s hair.
The weeping was worse, somehow, than either bleeding or vomiting: now that he’d begun he was unable to stop himself. His breath came in convulsive gasps. His head throbbed.
He last remembered crying like this as a scared little boy, before the Trials. He’d truly thought that he no longer had the capability. He remembered Vesemir’s hand on his shoulder all those years ago, his gruff voice telling Geralt that there was nothing to fear. That poor child - and this made him think of how Ciri had been, such a helpless, terrified little thing.
“I’d do anything for you,” he managed to get out between strangled sobs. It was not dignified. He didn’t care. “Anything.”
Against his chest, her face hidden, Ciri nodded. She was sniffling again now.
Geralt was sorry: he was sorry to have caused Ciri such pain, and he was sorry for that little boy that he’d been, and he was sorry that he’d been unable to prevent Vesemir’s death. He wept for what felt like hours, for all the days that had been and for those which would never be again.
At length the tears slowed and Geralt regained control over his own breathing. Ciri was on the cusp of sleep, he thought: breathing slowly against his chest, her arms slack around his waist.
“My girl,” he whispered to her. He felt wrung out and exhausted. “My own girl.”
Ciri murmured something and snuggled in closer to him, and the pain in his chest was perhaps not quite as bad as it had been.