where did you come from, baby dear?

[blacklisle]

accidental child acquisition meme

For all your "whoops I guess I have a kid now?" needs. Did you always want to be a parent? Did you swear you'd never ever be a parent? Doesn't matter now.

Possible scenarios include, but are not limited to:

• Left on your doorstep with a tearjerking note
• Wandering around unsupervised
• Entrusted to you by a friend/stranger/enemy
• Has apparently adopted YOU
• Product of your past indiscretions
• Product of your PARENTS' past indiscretions
• Summoned from another dimension
• Rescued from a mad scientist's lab

The kid in question can be whatever character tags yours, or you can enlist that character to help you wrangle your new NPC rugrat. Suit yourselves. Have fun!

Comments

[morethandestiny]

The reassurance does help a little, and Ciri nods as she accepts the waterskin, trying to unknot some of the tension wound up in her shoulders. Zola had been right, after all: Nilfgaard had completely overlooked the small farm, tucked away in the forest, and there was no reason to suspect anyone could possibly know where she was now.

Though that does raise the question of how, too, did Geralt find her?

Watching the fire is a small distraction, until staring too long brought back the memory of Cintra going up in smoke, screams and the sharp tang of spilled blood. Shaking her head, Ciri casts for something else to think about.

"... What does it mean, that you're my destiny?" she finally lands on, the question she had been meaning to ask for weeks now. "Grandmother never told me anything about you until -- until Cintra fell. I don't understand."

He's a Witcher, taking her to a Witcher fortress. Does that mean her destiny is to become a Witcher too? What would that even mean?

[chaffed]

A mistake, or is it in fact destiny. Geralt isn't as sure anymore. The knowledge of Ciri has eaten away at him for years, damned fool for himself for staking a claim for which he didn't understand. Hoping to have walked away with something far more meaningless, because back then he didn't believe in the law of surprise. He didn't believe in destiny. He still isn't sure, all the ways and means they'd ended up together. It sits wrong in his stomach to think that free will has no part in it. And yet...

Geralt doesn't respond immediately. The journey of expressions crosses his face as he stares into the fire, brows furrowed something serious. "It means..." His hands splay out, still leaned on his knees, to try and fill the gap in for him. He has nothing. Fuck.

"It means a long time ago I helped your father and your mother," the witcher's voice moves slow. Careful, more careful than he normally is. In the case of this child. "Our fates became tied. And in that anything would happen, I would help you too."

[morethandestiny]

Ciri sits up with her back straight, attention fully snared now, her pale eyes wide and luminous in the firelight. "You knew my parents?"

It does at least go a long way toward explaining why Grandmother never told her anything. Any mention of Mother only made Grandmother hurt and angry, and no one else seemed inclined to dredge up even the smallest memory of her lest it turn the Queen's mood. Far too young when they were lost to have even the slightest recollection, all Ciri even knows about them is their names, and that she bore some resemblance to her mother.

Still, even answering one question raises a dozen more to follow, and Ciri is almost tripping over herself to get them out.

"Did you know them very well? How did you meet them? What did you help them with? Why did you never come to see me in Cintra?"

[chaffed]

Geralt shouldn't be surprised she'd ask more questions, but he does continue to look slightly taken aback. The intricacies of how and why Geralt got tangled up in Cintran affairs is a complicated one. Far less profound in his opinion than what a small princess might imagine it to be.

"We weren't close," the witcher dispels outright. "I was there when your father and your mother wed. I saved his life, fighting on his behalf."

He dared not to tarnish Queen Calanthe's name. It embittered him to have known her, and no doubt part of his curiosity troubled to wonder how much of her resilience to bending to fate had resulted in Cintra's downfall. For Pavetta, for Ciri.

"Your grandmother wanted you to have your birthright, and I agreed and kept my distance. A witcher's life is no life for a princess."

And yet, here they are.