Chapter Text
Blaviken - 1231
She first sees him on the last day of the season with no rain. It’s the sticky kind of hot, stenches rising from the ground like the putrid filth this town is, rotten and rotting and wrong. A few more weeks and the sun will burn through the ground and into the core, soles and souls weak and paining from the same warmth they begged for months ago.
These damned people have no idea what they want. So, she takes another drink of the piss ale put in front of her, counting down the days until another thunderstorm can cover her skin with bubbles of rain.
He looks like he’d been in that future storm, though: white hair loosely sticking to his cheeks, sweat or blood soaking through the black shirt hanging from his frame. He drags a corpse behind him as he walks through the streets, people parting like he’s an omen rather than a man.
Perhaps it’s the medallion around his neck that scares them off, a snarling wolf eyeing all who watch for too long.
For this reason alone, she doesn’t look away even as he sits beside her in the tavern.
Her people talk to him, curse at him— jeer at him and call him names. There’s that thunder again under her skin, that crackling sky waiting to break free. How pitiful, she thinks, that those who follow her are so quick to judge others as equally cursed as she.
Her chest is heavy with frustration. She can’t be blamed if some of it leaks into the scowling twist of her lips.
“We don’t want your kind here,” they say.
“Mutant son of a bitch,” they say.
She bristles. It’s not all so different from what the world tells her— the way the universe glances down, just to the left of her existence, and whispers that she’s not wanted not trusted a mutated evil freak—
“Can you not leave it alone for a moment?” She snaps and, well. That’s that.
She turns to the man— to the witcher with blood still tangling the ends of his hair— and finds herself smiling. She finds herself joking, offering breakfast and beer.
She speaks to him. She makes him laugh.
But, then, a young girl. A child with forced words and a smile stinking of a sorcerer approaches the witcher. He follows her without a glance back.
It’s funny, this silly little tingle in her chest as the witcher walks away. She wants him to look back. She wants to speak with him, to offer him a deal before the sorcerer can.
She wants to make him laugh; she wants to sink her hands into his chest.
But all she does is watch, eyes wide as she wraps a cloak around her shoulders and follows him through the town.
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When she’s alone, she thinks of the sun. How perfectly round, how flawlessly shaped. She thinks of the moon, the rise and fall of it each night.
She thinks of the two together. The eclipse. The Black Sun and its prophecies.
When she shuts her eyes, she thinks of blood in the streets and a blade in her hand— of the end of the world and a smile on her face.
She doesn’t want the world to end, not really. Still, the prophecy hangs like a chain around her neck. It blinds her, gags her, shrinks her existence to only this.
She thinks of murder and gore on her fingers. She thinks of death and dying and living forever in horrible tales.
She thinks of what she might do to stop such a thing.
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She would not do what the sorcerers did.
In her heart— more than in her mind or dreams— she sees the princesses they took and killed, dissected and studied and left in pain. She feels their screams clawing across her arms and hands; she hears their blood dripping onto stone floors. The shade of every tower is etched into her being, if only because she is the worst of them all.
Other princesses were taken and slaughtered; she escaped everything but her own damned curse.
When she lets herself remember the past, it’s her stepmother’s voice that grates across her ears— calling her cursed, calling her damned, calling her evil and wrong and a freak and—
And she thinks of the sorcerer her mother turned to, a horrid man who introduced himself as Stregobor. Even now, she can feel his assassin chasing after her, though she only knew him for a moment. Only long enough to know the feeling of his hands— unwanted, unclean, uncaring— across her body; then, to know the feeling of his blood across her skin.
Stregobor hired someone to kill her once. She knows it’s not long before he hires someone again.
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Then why is it such a surprise to see the witcher leaving Stregobor’s tower? Was it the kindness in his eyes back at the tavern? Was it his gentleness with the girl who led— tricked— him here?
Or, perhaps, it’s the things they share that draws her towards him. She knows of witchers— of their mutations, their hatred, their loneliness, their lives.
They’re not so different, she and him. She wonders if the witcher knows that.
She watches as he wanders in the opposite direction of the sunset, the dropping disc of light pressed to her back as she follows him into the woods. It holds her in the shadows, whispers her name and her fate.
Blood and horror and monstrous acts— she knows what witchers do and, she supposes, it makes sense why Stregobor would ask for one.
Still…
The witcher had smiled with her. He’d laughed. He’d come into town to sell a kikimore, nothing more.
There’s a moment when the witcher glimpses over his shoulder, and she craves the golden color of his eyes. It floods her body, running down the edges of her skin onto the brown earth.
She knows better than to believe in anything other than herself but, still, a part of her wants to believe in him.
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He is Geralt. She is Renfri. Such human names for such unusual people.
He says her name with a certain kind of tenderness. She tries to do the same with his but it twists up into a question at the end.
It’s easy, once she knows his name, to offer her story in return. Words run from her lips, vulnerable and hurt, her arms hanging loosely at her sides— I’m not a threat, see, I’m wide open for you to cut down . She talks of the attempts on her life, her voice running to the edge of her tongue as though thinking it can jump out from her mouth and be free. She doesn’t tell him everything— some pains are only hers— but she tells him enough. Enough to make him understand. Enough to describe Stregobor as a monster.
And witchers kill monsters.
But Geralt does not listen. He hums and says halfway meaningful things— he calls her princess and asks her questions— but he does nothing to show that he truly hears.
Renfri wonders if he’ll listen when she’s wrapped her body in the blazing streaks of bloodshot revenge. She wonders if he’ll listen to the monster everyone says she—
But Geralt doesn’t call her a monster. He warns against it in low tones, says murder is how she confirms their ideas. And it sounds so nice, so easy, to lay down the blade and move on from this pain. It sounds like a generous offer— perhaps more generous than she deserves.
And she finds she wants to believe him, if only for a few moments. She wants to pretend she can be more than a monster, more than a curse. She wants to play along because Geralt looks at her like she’s human— he says her name without drawing his sword, he turns his back without fear— and it’s been so long since she’s felt that sort of trust.
All other thoughts are absorbed into this one, and she finally says Geralt’s name as though she’s sure of it.
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The dull tinges of the day belatedly fade, and Geralt takes her into his arms without fear. Walls in Renfri’s mind slowly break, letting him in— letting herself out.
She’s more than a monster when she’s with him, when he laughs and holds her like she’s something precious. Like, maybe, she’s still the princess she could have been— gods, she could have been so many things— or like, maybe, she’s just a normal girl born under a normal sun. He says her name in prayerful whispers, rolling her beneath him and over him, their skin touching in every place and in every way. A calloused hand through her hair, catching on tangles and they both laugh. She’s more than a monster when he kisses down her collarbone, when her fingers trail down his spine. She’s more than a curse, more than a monster—
But that doesn’t mean she isn’t angry or afraid. Because, eventually, the darkest point of the night advances— as dark as she imagines the black sun to be— and Geralt falls asleep beside her, and she is alone again.
She turns on her side, her fingers brushing gently through pale hair. He’s a flash of sunlight and she is just the moon preparing for an eclipse.
Geralt won’t kill her— he’s too noble for that, too good without recognizing his own goodness— but that doesn’t mean Stregobor will stop. There are always other witchers, other assassins, other sorcerers and mercenaries willing to dirty their hands with the blood of a girl they barely know. What does her story matter if the pay is high enough?
Hands across her body again, parting her thighs and holding her in place. Blood over her skin but it still doesn’t ease the trembling.
There will be others. There will always be others.
Unless Stregobor is stopped.
Renfri stands, a kiss left on Geralt’s temple before she packs her things and leaves.
She turns back only once, smiling at the color of Geralt resting in the dirt.
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Renfri wasn’t always alone in this blood-soaked world.
There was once a young woman of nobility. A green-eyed girl, eyes wide apart like almonds, tripping over her tongue and blushing each time she said a word wrong.
She was lovely, Renfri thought. She was special.
And Renfri was there when the sorcerers found her. She was there when it was revealed the girl was born under an eclipse.
The same eclipse that began-- and ruined-- Renfri's life.
She ran to Renfri but the sorcerers caught her with a jagged knife in her back.
“She would have killed you ,” they told Renfri. They lied so easily. “She was dangerous.”
And Renfri was useless— was helpless, was weak— as they dragged the corpse away, scientific words across their tongues, talk of dissection and autopsies and everything but the burial she deserved.
Renfri had promised this would never happen again— not so long as she lived with the power to prevent it.
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Renfri counts the seconds like someone awaiting execution. It’s bitter cold and the roads back to Blaviken are filled with wild white daffodils.
The town rises before her like something dead emerging from a grave— all browns and greys, blacks and bruise-blues.
Her daggers are friendly weights against her palms. The air clears her lungs. She tries to take strength from the flowers, from the steady budding of the trees.
Eventually, as the people begin to wake, she enters the town square and looks for her men.
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There’s blood in the streets of Blaviken but she was not the one to spill it.
“You chose,” Renfri says, choking on the words. Geralt stares across the town square at her, looking as though he had no other choice— looking as though he hadn’t just murdered the men Renfri once knew as family.
Would he kill her next? Could he?
Blood sticks to the witcher’s cheek and Renfri’s struck with a memory— one not kind enough to be far-off or distant— of rubbing her lips against that same face. He’d tasted of mud and sweat and she’d grinned.
She thought his returning smile had been in companionship. Now, she only fears he’d been mocking her.
There are people huddling near marketplace stalls, clutching their chests even as their eyes burn with interest. All waiting for a show— the freaks crossing swords.
Geralt asks her to let Marilka go, Renfri’s knife close to splitting the vessel that would leave her as lifeless as Renfri feels. He raises his hand, twists it into one of those witchery spells.
Spells don’t work on her.
“Silver does, though.”
Geralt acts as though he doesn’t believe her— and it must be an act, it must be a lie, it must be every false pretense that someone could ever truly see her as her and not as—
A monster would kill Marilka. A monster would murder this child.
But Renfri’s seen too many girls die for a sorcerer’s war, and she’d promised to protect the rest.
So, that means she tosses Marilka aside. It means she aims her blades for Geralt instead.
Flashes of silver. The embrace of her armor. The witcher’s blade swinging over her head with all the burden of the crown she might have worn. The air sharpens into the sour taste of decay. It’s in her hands when she switches blades behind her back, in her blood as she handles her sword like it’s a hammer meant to crush.
It’s in her chest when the witcher stalls, a look of mercy and pity in his eyes.
Then, there’s nothing left.
Nothing but her blade tearing through Geralt’s throat.
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At some point, it didn’t matter who she was fighting; they all met the same fate. Her sword through their ribs, their necks, their spines. For one particularly reckless guard, she aims a bit high and plants the end of her dagger through his jaw.
She calls Stregobor’s name as she cuts through his tower. His guards— brainwashed or bought— have fallen. There’s no one left to stop her as she drags him, trembling, out. His hands and fingertips flash with useless sparks.
Magic doesn’t work on her, and Stregobor’s hands fall from his wrists so nicely when she separates them with her sword.
From there, the rest is meaningless. Why focus on how he begged with the same tongue that ordered her death? Why think of his pale hair staining red, his eyes widening to the point they might have burst? It’s only the taste of hatred in the back of her throat, strong as bile and sharp as steel. It’s her hair tangling as the wind picks up, her cheeks flushing as rage blinds her with nothing but a terrible red haze.
When it fades, it’s to the sight of Stregobor impaled upon one of his own guard’s spears. She only knows she put him there because his eyes are still open and staring at her.
The whispers start slow, a frightened wave pressing to the sand. The townsfolk, the audience, murmur to each other. Renfri vaguely remembers screaming, people begging her to stop. Don’t they know she did this for them? Stregobor was a bastard, a manipulator who’d sacrifice any of them before himself. A monster, a beast, a fucking worm bleeding out on the streets as he deserved, choking on his blood the way all those girls once choked on fear, the way Renfri cried herself to sleep each night the first year she was on the run, terrified he’d find her once her eyes were shut. Never again, he’d never hurt her again, never hurt anyone else, never—
“Butcherbird!” The villagers call, sounding as though they’d been shouting it for longer than just this one second Renfri’s heard. Something wells up, hot and thick in her throat. “Fucking butcherbird!”
She turns to face them, and it’s only then that she sees the stones in their hands. In the hands of the innkeeper who’d always kept a room open, just for her. In the hands of the boy who first taught her the shortcuts and alleyways of the town, in the hands of the girl who once sat and watched her sharpen her knives in the square.
“You’re a beast,” they shout, the way they’ve always done. “Nothing but a feral bitch.”
Her stomach turns. She can barely move.
No, she wants to say, but her own thoughts are interrupted as the first round of stones fly. They mostly miss, the people too afraid to step closer. But one hits her in the shoulder. One hits her in the knee.
“She’s a curse, a bad sign!”
“Get out of here and don’t come back!”
“Fucking die, Butcherbird.”
She’d made a choice. She wouldn’t take it back, but—
“Die, bitch! You murderer!”
The jeers become one as she forces her way through the crowd, biting her tongue at how they draw away.
Still, they yell. Still, they toss stones and call her names. Freak, bitch, monster, beast, curse, murderer—
Butcherbird
The forest opens before her but she still feels their stones, their words. The trees welcome her but her body still aches with the fact that, once again, she’s alone.
A voice like music and wind fills her head, clawing its way up to shrieks and screams as she runs. Further and further into the woods, into the darkness, into the world.
Into a life stained by the blood now stuck to her hands; into a life weighed down by the medallion she’d taken, a snarling wolf hanging from her neck.
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The woman with the knife in her back had clung to Renfri as she’d died. At the moment before the sorcerers were upon them, she spoke words Renfri had never understood.
“The girl in the woods will be with you always,” she’d gasped. “She is your destiny.”
The words sailed like silver into Renfri’s mind, circling and stuck.
The girl in the woods. Always.
Destiny.
A promise of something more than this solitude that chokes her awake with each rising of the sun.
But Renfri— the princess born under a prophecy, cursed and mutated and fated to kill— has never put much faith in destiny anyway.
So, she runs-- and she runs alone.