fic: let your dreams take wing

[vvitchsdesire]

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Title: let your dreams take wing
Fandom: The Witcher (TV)
Relationship: Yennefer & Ophie, mother-daughter.
Rating: G
Wordcount: 2476
Summary: The knife the assassin threw never reached Yennefer and the baby - it slid by them, cutting a few strands of the baby’s hair, but leaving her otherwise unscathed. The knife fell, uselessly, to the ground, and Yennefer’s legs gave out as she clutched the child, falling into the sand like a puppet with its strings cut.

chapter three, yennefer has some dragon issues

previous chapter | you are here

Ophie was burning with a fever, and not one of her spells and herbs and other usual tricks seemed to be doing what she needed them to do.

It had been a few years since the Rinde disaster, and since then the two had wandered around, staying weeks on some towns and months on others; lately, however, they had been staying near Hengfors, Yennefer doing spells for a living and Ophie, fourteen and growing like a stalk, picking up odd jobs around, mostly sewing. Yennefer hadn’t known when she learned how to sew, but figured it was probably during their eight years or so of travel, when coin was scarce and they had to make sure the clothes lasted.

(sometimes, during their travels, she meets Geralt. Ophie would always find some entertainment for herself - the innkeeper’s children, talking excitedly with a bard, listening to old women tell tall tales and myths, and Yennefer, after a quick fight with the witcher, would fall in Geralt’s bed. If she makes sure to leave before he can wake up, is it anyone’s business but her own?)

But that had been long ago: now Yennefer could put a permanent roof over Ophie’s head, her little magic shop was booming with business, and Ophie was sewing. Or, at least, she was: Yennefer had been doing lunch while Ophie finished the last touches on a dress, and then the world tilted, her little girl gasping for air, clawing at her throat, letting the cloth fall to the ground, eyes bugged out, terrible rasping sounds coming out of her throat.

If Yennefer wasn’t any faster, Ophie would’ve choked to death, and she would have never forgiven herself for it. Instead: she ran to her daughter, assessed the scene, and put her in the deepest healing sleep she could manage, sweat pouring off her skin like a fountain as she struggled to make Ophie sleep deeper, deeper, and deeper .

That had made Ophie stop gasping for breath, but made the fever start in its stead: Yennefer levitated her down to the bed and started grabbing herbs, started remembering spells that had been long forgotten.

Nothing worked. Herbs crumbled when they came in contact with Ophie’s tongue and spells deflected like arrows. Yennefer started turning to the myths, the fantastic, and as she read about how a dragon’s heart could cure anything, a knight stumbled into her closed shop.

“We are closed.” She said, not even bothering to raise her eyes from the books she was reading. The knight looked like a thing any strong wind could knock down, wobbly, as if learning to walk.

“I need your help.” He said, and she rose her violet eyes, bored, ready to tell him to fuck off. “King Niedamir sent out a request for parties to kill a dragon…”

Yennefer tuned him out, merely nodding along as she went. What were the odds that, when she needed a dragon’s heart, one would all but fall in her hands?

Yennefer asked the woman next door (no children, husband off to war in Nilfgaard, a mercenary) to take care of Ophie for a few days, and the woman, seeing the color of the gold being offered, barely noticed as Yennefer sew a spell in her skin to prevent her from doing Ophie any harm.

She kissed her daughter’s forehead goodbye, the heat burning her lips to a boil, and prayed that this would work.

 She looks at Geralt, and then at the bard whose name she forgot. Yennefer was sure he was the one who taught Ophie how to sing Toss a coin to your witcher all those years ago, and she needles him for it. Discreetly, of course.

“And where’s the girl? Didn’t think you would be the type to abandon a child.” Geralt asked, subtle as the sun during noon. Yennefer smiled sweetly, too much teeth to be friendly, and the bard huffed, trying to hide a shiver, muttering something or another about insane witches .

“I don’t recall it being any of your business, witcher.” Yennefer replied, before taking her leave, deciding to go back to the knight’s side.

At night, Yennefer gave the knight a quick spell to think he slept with her, and she then portals into her home. Ophie, still under the magical sleep, seemed tranquil - but the red tint of her cheeks, more pronounced in candle light, told Yennefer that she wasn’t as peaceful as she hoped. Putting away a strand of brown hair from the girl’s face, she felt the stickiness of sweat on her skin, and decided that she should change Ophie’s clothes.

She was careful doing so, magical spells doing most of the work Yennefer did not trust her hands to do as she digged around the drawers for clean clothes. She soon found what she wanted, and had the magic change Ophie’s clothes as well.

Yennefer didn’t dare touch her, afraid that, if she did, her little girl would take a turn for the worse and die before Yennefer could even do anything about it. She still did not know what to do to make sure Ophie lived a long life, unafraid of death as Yennefer was. 

Ophie was going to grow old and die, one day, and Yennefer would stand in her funeral and watch. She couldn’t find a djinn, and she still had found no way to give Ophie a magical talent. If maybe she spoke to...

“You got sloppy.” Chided Tissaia, as if a ghostly apparition, and Yennefer twirled around, hands in claws, ready to throw in something to make the headmistress go away. The much older woman, sitting content on a chair, reacted in no way Yennefer could see. “Hello, Yennefer. It had been… A while.”

She ignored the fake politeness, the almost frozen tone of voice: Tissaia, of all people, had found her, and had been standing in Ophie’s room for who knows how long. Had she noticed, Yennefer wondered, how the girl resembled Queen Kalis just the tiniest bit? Would it doom her?

“What are you doing here?” She hissed, trying to protect her daughter from view. The woman tilted her head, like a curious owl, but no emotion whatsoever showed in her face. Typical . 

“Word got around that you had a child. One gets curious about the means.” Rising from her seat, Tissaia looked around the room, doing a small, slow and tortuous circle, touching, carelessly but full of carefulness, the little trinkets Ophie had gotten from their travels around. “If my math is correct, wasn’t she born around the time you left Aedirn?”

Yennefer’s hands formed a fist, her jaw clenched as thoughts went around in the speed of light: if Tissaia knew the truth, what would she do? Yennefer was ready to kill for Ophie, but would Tissaia go gently into the long night? Could Yennefer even manage to surprise the headmistress?

No. Yennefer was an accomplished mage, that was the truth, but one did not age as much as Tissaia without being able to survive murder attempts, not in their profession. What she could do, then, was to try and get the woman on her side.

“I found her after I failed to save queen Kalis.” It wasn’t a lie, not really; it was more of a stretching of truth, as thin as a spider’s web but just as strong. “And I don’t think Virfuril would be pleased if I came back with a child.”

Especially so when he tried to kill the baby.

Tissaia, meanwhile, stared at her carefully, moving closer to Ophie. Yennefer tensed, teeth pressed so hard one against the other her jaw was starting to shoot in pain. 

The woman stared at her daughter for a moment so long it seemed the world was holding its breath (or maybe that was just Yennefer), before nodding.

“Yes, I don’t quite think he’d be pleased.” Letting out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, Yennefer nodded weakly. “A life on the streets, depending on the public opinion of magic to survive, however, doesn’t seem like it’ll suit her.”

“I think I know what suits my child, Tissaia.” The answer gets a noncommittal hum from the woman, who went back to her seat. “What are you doing here? Or, better yet: what do you want from me?”

“We have an opening at Aretuza. Perhaps you would like the position.” Tissaia said, hands in her lap, eyeing the girl, still asleep in her bed. “Your girl could be a student there, too.”

“She can’t do magic, and I won’t let her become of the eels at the bottom of the well.” Yennefer growled, and Tissaia shook her head.

“A pity, then.” Tissaia replied, before disappearing; Yennefer’s knees buckled at the same time, grabbing her daughter’s hand and clutching it, almost as if that, if she let go, Ophie would be taken by the headmistress.

By the next morning, the knight had been murdered, and Yennefer destroyed a tree in her anger. The Reavers gave her a passing glance, the bard screamed way too loudly for such an early hour, and Geralt simply raised an eyebrow at her - probably the most emotion she got out of him in literal years. Yennefer ignored him, more worried about the dragon - she needed the heart, and her ticket to it had been murdered in cold blood.

She was sure it was that Reaver, the one with the nasty tongue - Boholt, if she recalled correctly.

No matter, not right now. Shaking her head, she undid her tent, deciding that if she couldn’t get someone to dirty their hands for her, she would kill the dragon herself .

They’re walking again, Yennefer more marching than walking, stomping the soft earth behind her feet like it is for blame every single one of her problems when Geralt came after her, grabbing her arm like a doll.

His hand burns her through the thick clothes, and Yennefer hissed at the touch, separating herself forcefully from him. There’s a small interrogation, Yennefer confirming it wasn’t him as she keeps marching forward, barely listening as he speaks.

“What even do you need a dragon heart for?” He asked, baffled by what she spoke, and Yennefer whirled, using a sharp nail to stab at his chest, punctuating her every word.

“Isn’t it a cure-all? My daughter is sick, and nothing works. Let me have this.” She hissed, not raising her violet eyes to meet his golden ones.

Geralt put a hand on her shoulder, and Yennefer looked at him.

“I’m - I don’t want her to die. She’s just fourteen, she barely lived.” Yennefer said, and Geralt hummed, vaguely understanding. At least she hoped he was. “I don’t know what overcame her, it was… Too sudden. One moment she was fine, the next one she was gasping for breath, and it was horrific to watch her suffer.”

Geralt stared at her for what seemed like a small eternity.

“Let me guess. Spells don’t work and she’s on healing sleep.” A blink, and then when Yennefer was silent, he kept speaking - probably a decade-shattering record, all thanks to her. Bards would sing about this moment. “She’s got magical overload. Jaskier gets that if he is around me too much. Let her rest without magic for a while and she’ll be fine, the fever will break, and for the breathing, make her inhale some hot water fog.”

Pause. Yennefer looked up at him, mouth opening and closing, mind forming half-baked questions that Yennefer wasn’t sure if she wanted answered.

Still - did it matter? If he had an answer, then fine. It just meant that her quest for a dragon’s heart was foolish, but she was already here, and Yennefer wasn’t a quitter. Usually.

“You make a more wonderful mother than I’d ever make a father.” He let out a longing sigh, looking away, into the green of the mountains, as if his eyes saw something else other than the forest. “Maybe I should give you my child to raise.”

The sound of a bard stopping to play his music too suddenly played in her ears, and she looked at Geralt - really looked, trying to connect dots - for a long moment.

“What, now?”

“ Fuck .”

“Oh, so you - you , of all people!” Yennefer whisper-shouted, as they made their way back to the dwarves, Geralt’s patron and the bard that seemed to accompany him everywhere, “Have a Child of Surprise and have not met him yet?”

“I don’t want children. I don’t think a child is suited for this kind of life we lead.”

“Really? How funny of you, then next time, don’t invoke Law of Surprise and expect a field of wheat. What did you think would happen, really?”

The bard popped in between the two, one arm around Geralt’s shoulder. He kept a careful, respectful distance from Yennefer, which was probably because he recalled how she had tried to extract a djinn from him. At least he wasn’t as dumb as he looked to be.

“Say, has anyone ever told you two that discretion isn’t your forte?” Geralt grumbled in response, and Yennefer seethed quietly, deciding that the next time the bard woke up, it would be with actual crow’s feet on his face.

After the whole dragon business - and after Yennefer got her revenge on Baholt -, she went back home to Ophie. With trembling fingers, she portaled them away to a deserted place, into a deserted home, and then, after laying down Ophie in an ancient bed, making sure there wasn’t more magic than normal in the air (every spell she did took around two to five hours to clear up the air and go back to normal magical levels; the simpler the spell, the lesser the time) before dispelling the healing sleep. She had heated water the normal way for the first time in decades, and gently raised Ophie’s thin body (too thin) to allow her to breathe the vapour easily.

She waited for what seemed like a lifetime and a half, but was probably just a few minutes; when Ophie opened her eyes, slowly, she smiled.

“Hi, mom.” She greeted, voice raspy from being asleep for days. “I feel kind of sluggish today…”

She yawned, and took a deep breath, stretching her body.

“What happened? Where are we? Last thing I remember was…” She put a hand to her throat, looking around, and Yennefer petted her daughter’s hair.

“You’re safe now, sweetling.”