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witch-and-her-witcher · 2 years

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‘not wanting to let go’ hugs for the fam please 🥺

two ghosts | Yenralt, Ciri's POV, PG-13 only for swears, 1,700 Words

"Suck ... My ... Fat - Ah! Yes!"

Aggressive clacking of buttons fills the room. Paired with the intensely focused gazes of the two teens donned in headphones, bathed by the TV's glow in an otherwise dark bedroom, it's the most common scene for Friday nights in the off season.

"Ciri, left!"

Ciri pivots her player, but only in time to see the opposing shooter before her screen flashes. "Mother fucker!" The controller is tossed onto the soft bedding. It's only moments later that Dara becomes overwhelmed by the other team and joins her in equal dismay.

The duo pulls their headphones off.

"Well, that sucks," Dara laments.

Ciri rubs the back of her neck with one hand and pushes the other up to stretch her back. "I think we have another twenty before the next game starts." Her anger dissipates as quickly as it flares, realization of how long they've been playing in her stiff joints and empty stomach. "Wanna go down to the kitchen?"

Opening his mouth to answer, the other teen pauses. A dull plink plink catches both of their attention. Dara cocks his head to the side, Ciri scrunches her brow in concentration.

Plink. Plink plink.

"Is that coming from outside?" Ciri turns the TV off to cut out its light from the glare of her window and flops down on her stomach to peer out into the back yard.

Dara stretches out beside her, elbows pressing against each other's. "Oh, shit, is that - "

They see the dark clad figure just as he pushes back his hood, the shock of silver hair catching in the moonlight. A cupped hand releases whatever was held previously, and he squats to pick through the rocks that line the meticulously maintained garden path.

Ciri inhales sharpy.

"Is that - ?"

"My dad."

If Dara has to witness her dad's vodka fueled crooning's that lead to a night spent sleeping curled on the lawn furniture without a response from her mother, Ciri might die of embarrassment. Her dad straightens, no sway in his movements she notes, and his face is screwed up with determination with the next rock he hurls just next to her mother's bedroom window.

A resounding thunk echoes this time.

The response can be heard inside the house, teens peering over their shoulders as the door at the other end of the hall can be heard getting cast open. If Ciri thought the tone in the opening of the door was aimed at her, she would be diving for cover. As it is, her father knows what response he will elicit and has had decades of practice being the subject of her mother's ire.

There are no other sounds in the house - her mother always seems to float just above the surface of the ground, grace and elegance bundled up in the body of a middle-aged hippie. She doesn't look anywhere close to her age, claiming her homeopathic remedies are the cause - although, her dad used to shoot Ciri a knowing wink back before ...

Dara and Ciri turn their attention back out the window.

"I don't think I've seen your dad before," Dara says, assessing the tall, lithe man with currently only one of his many scars visible, the one that runs down the side of his face. "What did you say he does again?"

"Traveling salesman," Ciri lies easily.

"Are traveling salesmen always so ... jacked?"

Ciri shrugs. Her dad is standing, feet squared, face just as determined as earlier. Maybe the conversation they had leaving the gym the other day, when he joined her during her off season work out, stuck with him.

"Ciri, I think I fucked up."

"So? Fix it."

"I don't know if I can."

"Have you actually tried, dad? Really tried?"

They both knew the answer: the rest of the car ride home, or to her home rather, was silent.

When Ciri's mom had asked for a divorce nearly a year ago, her dad had taken off on a contract to a distant land without so much as cell reception, let alone the infrastructure to deliver divorce papers. Six months later, he returned: a sulking, brooding, occasionally drunkenly sobbing mess. Visiting him at Uncle Jaskier's was about the most depressing shit Ciri had seen, so obviously devastated by the split but frozen by his own stubbornness and inability to act in the ways that really mattered, for the people who really mattered.

Her mother is standing, arms crossed, storm of dark curls and youthful almond skin radiant in the moonlight. There's a distance between them that may seem inconsequential, but Ciri knows it's like a vast chasm. Equally tight-lipped, it's the little moments that Ciri has noticed the hollowness in her mother: the longing stares towards the empty spaces her father used to fill like his chair in the library, the forlorn sighs followed by hours with fingertips dug into the garden soil, and the prolonged times spent locked away in her bedroom.

"She's really letting him have it," Dara whispers, eyes darting to the side, "Are you okay?"

Ciri nods. "This is the most they've talked since she kicked him out." Her dad has remained in the same position, aside from the slight sag in his shoulders: worn down. Ciri knows it's not from the heated words, but from the lack of them for so long. Her parents have never been perfect, but they worked, they loved - when they had their heated arguments and got passed whatever issue hung between them. It was the lack of anything spoken between them, the lack of love, the months leading up to her mom kicking him out that did the most damage. Ciri had felt it, seen it, but distracted herself with school, sports, friends - anything else.

Anything that didn't remind her of the empty feeling house. Like living in a house with two ghosts, floating in the same space without any notion of the other.

Her mother's arms dropped to her side, no longer wildly gesticulating along with her words. Her dad takes a tentative step forward. Ciri chews her bottom lip. If they knew they were watching ... But that's what he gets for throwing rocks at the window like a teenager.

"I'm sorry."

The words are audible in his deep expression, the change in her posture like a coat of armor shed.

Another step forward, this one not as cautious.

He's close enough now that when her mother reaches out and slaps both open palms against his chest, he can pull her into him completely. Arms wrapped tight around her mother's small, wracking frame and head tucked safely under his chin.

Ciri gulps and spins away from the window on to her back. She didn't realize her heart was racing until now.

Dara whistles low in astonishment. "So ... Do you think ... ?"

The teen shakes her head, pressing the heel of her palms against her eyes. She doesn't want to get her hopes up. To have the house full again, her family full -

"Wanna kill some fucking zombies?" she asks, shooting up.

Dara smiles. "Hell yeah."

The teens stumble down the stairs to the kitchen in a barely awake stupor, stomachs growling and noses following the scent of breakfast.

Ciri squints, rubs her eyes, and squints harder.

A boyish grin is on her father's face where he sits beside her mother, elbows on the counter, head ducked but tilted towards her like there's something amusing about the way she gingerly sips from her mug of coffee.

"Good morning," her mother greets serenely.

Dara grunts his best polite response, drawn towards the freshly cooked sausage on the stove top and too familiar in the home not to help himself.

Ciri raises an eyebrow at her parents, hands resting on her hips. Like hell they're breezing over this.

As always, sixty percent of their words are unspoken between each other, but shared looks. A few moments pass and then her dad is filling his mouth with a fork full of food, staring contently at his daughter. A small smile and wiggle of his eyebrows as he chews, the give away.

"Your father will be visiting more often," her mom announces with finality.

"About damn time." Ciri lets her long legs carry her behind her thick-headed parents, wrapping both of her arms around their necks and pulling them closer to her. Her dad pretends to choke on his food from the hold, but both of them place a hand on the arm hooked around them.

Ciri was afraid this embrace wouldn't happen, both of them had drawn this out passed the point of dramatics. She doesn't want to let go again, ever.

As they've done since she was young, her parents turn to place simultaneous kisses on either of her cheeks while Ciri scrunches her nose in mock disgust. Her mother's perfume, the soft scratch of her father's stubble. Home.

"Dara, you'd better not think you can eat all of that while I'm distracted," Ciri shoots, cracking one eye open to glare at the boy trying to sneak the last of the sausage onto his plate. She gives them both one last squeeze before releasing her parents. "Although, I guess i can just steal some of yours - " Ciri snags a piece of toast from her dad's plate before he can swat her away and jumps just out of his reach.

"Geralt, you'll need to make more," her mother says with a slight eye roll, "They've been eating us out of house and home."

Us. Ciri's heart dances.

"What do you expect, Yen, they're teenagers. My brothers and I never stopped eating at their age."

Her mom snorts, a sound the walls of their house haven't heard in a while. "Just at their age?"

Ciri takes her dad's seat as he rises to return to the stove, purposefully leaving his half-eaten breakfast behind for her. It doesn't feel real yet, but she imagines with each visit it'll start to set in, until they aren't visits anymore and he's back with them completely.

Her dad ropes Dara into helping him cook, who looks even more bewildered standing beside the "traveling salesman" now that he's in a tight-fitting tee that reveals the rest of his musculature and work souvenirs. It's a terrible cover story, they really should think of something better.

Sighing happily, Ciri rests her head on her mother's arm. Yeah, it'll set in, but it doesn't need to be quickly.

--end--

Well. That took a life of its own, blame Harry Styles!

#touching ask meme #maureen asks #yenralt #witcher fan fic #modern au #my writing #ciri #dara #family ❤️

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