Archive of Our Own ^beta

The bell over the door jingled and a gust of icy wind blew into his shop, making Szymon look up to see a small, ashen-haired girl march in, pulling along a much larger man who was immediately identifiable by his golden eyes and two swords as a witcher. The witcher had hair of the same colour, though Szymon was fairly sure he’d heard witchers were sterile, and he didn’t seem at all enthusiastic to be here.

“I would like two pairs of ice skates,” the girl declared with an air about her that made it clear she was used to being obeyed. Her bearing was almost regal in the way she tilted her chin up, which was a sharp contrast to her clumsily-stitched leather jerkin and trousers. After a beat, she added, “Please.”

Szymon looked up at her father (probably?) and received the tiniest shrug in return.

“I can make you the boots, but you’ll want the blacksmith for the blades,” he said, already looking at the pair’s feet to estimate their size. “For you and your witcher, I presume?”

The girl nodded and then said, “This is Geralt of Rivia, and I’m Ciri.”

“Well met,” Szymon replied. “I’m Szymon. Shoes off, and I’ll see if I have anything I can alter to fit you or whether I’ll have to start from scratch.”

They both took off their boots, and Ciri turned to Geralt and said, “Oh! We should get some for Vesemir too.”

“If you wanted Vesemir to get ice skates, you should have brought him. I don’t know his measurements. Besides, you won’t convince him to go skating with you,” her father said, his voice a low rumble compared to hers.

“Yes, I will,” Ciri said, and Geralt slumped a little, as if he had been hoping she wouldn’t call him on the lie. Szymon had met Vesemir once several years ago — he was also a witcher, but shorter than Geralt and much older. He didn’t seem like the ice skating sort, or one who could be easily convinced to do something he didn’t want to do, but these two clearly knew him much better. Just from the look of him, Szymon wouldn’t guess Geralt could be made to do anything he didn’t want to either, but he was getting the impression Ciri had him wrapped around her little finger. Even witchers were not immune to the power of a daughter, he supposed.

For all that he had grown up on a mountain where it snowed in the winter, Geralt had never learnt how to ice skate or had any desire to. It was a terrible way to fight monsters — they had been taught to lure them off frozen lakes if possible, given the dangers of the ice cracking — and therefore it was a useless skill. He could have gone his whole life having never strapped blades to his feet, but Ciri had somehow convinced him. Well, the “somehow” was mostly just asking repeatedly and saying how very terribly much she would enjoy it. The way her face had lit up and she had jumped into his arms, kicking her feet as he lifted her off the ground when he agreed was almost enough that he didn’t regret his acquiescence. Almost.

Ciri was already skating in circles like she was born to do it by the time he decided he could no longer pretend to still be putting on his skates. It was the most graceful he’d ever seen her, and as he watched, she twirled herself around as if it were the easiest thing in the world. He knew even before he stepped onto the ice that it wasn’t.

She skated over to him as he stood up, saying authoritatively, “You need to hold onto my hands as you step out onto the ice because it’s very slippery.” He had to hunch down to do so, being so much taller than she was, and almost landed on his arse with his first step. Ciri displayed a surprising amount of strength keeping him upright, and as she coached him on how to move forwards, he felt progressively steadier until she let go of him entirely, still skating backwards with ease as she cast a critical eye over his form.

What happened next was Ciri drilling him into the ground, shouting instructions to correct his form while she performed the things she was ordering him to do perfectly. When she began to shiver, he suggested they return to the keep to warm up, but she refused, insisting that Geralt wasn’t good enough at skating yet. Geralt could spend far longer in the cold than she could, so he tried to humour her, following her every instruction as best he could. He privately thought he was doing pretty well for someone who had never skated before, but he didn’t dare say it, in case Ciri got it into her head that they needed to do even more difficult skating moves — he wasn’t afraid of the work, but her teeth had begun to chatter. When she began having trouble getting out sentences because of the violent chattering, he called a halt and chased her around the lake until he caught her and lifted her off the ground. It was difficult to skate with a wiggling child trying to sabotage him, but he got to the bank and made her return to the keep with the promise that they could come skating again another day. It was, he could grudgingly admit, good exercise for her, as long as she also focused on her swordwork.

Once they were sitting in front of the fire in dry clothes, her drinking hot milk and him drinking mead, Ciri turned to Geralt and said, “You didn’t enjoy me shouting so much at you, did you? That’s what you’re like training me. You’re too harsh and it’s not fun. And you don’t tell me when I do it well, not enough. You were pretty good at skating by the end of it, but I didn’t tell you.”

There were many things he could say in response: that training wasn’t meant to be fun, that Vesemir and the other trainers had done far worse than shout at him when he was a boy, that discipline was an important part of learning — but as he looked at her, dwarfed by the pile of furs she had wrapped around herself and with a nose still pink from the cold, he didn’t want to. He thought of Lambert: constantly furious at Vesemir and all the dead men who had beat them and let their friends die. Who had made them monsters.

Ciri didn’t have to be a monster. He wasn’t preparing her for the deadly trials they had undergone when they were not much older than she was now. He would never send her to face Old Speartip just to see if she would survive, and she wouldn’t be laid on Sad Albert to scream and shake for days as poisons melted and reformed her from the inside out.

He could stand to compliment her more, he supposed. It wasn’t something he was used to doing, but she was a quick study and deserved praise. He didn’t mention it to Vesemir, a little uncertain about what he would say, but from then on he tried to be gentler. He told her when she did well, and didn’t bark his critiques as often, instead making the effort of correcting her in a calmer voice. When he praised her, she soaked it up like a flower with sunlight, beaming with pride, and he could never resist smiling back at her.

When she next dragged him to the lake, they spent the time racing each other and spinning around in circles together, Ciri not barking at him at all.

“See?” she said as they put their boots back on afterwards. “You had fun, didn’t you? You’re allowed to have fun.”

“Yeah,” Geralt said. “I did.” She gave him the tightest hug she could manage (not very tight at all) and he hugged her back gently and pressed his lips to the top of her head. He had never thought of Ciri as his daughter, unlike Yen, but perhaps he could start.