Geralt of Rivia remembered the day Vesemir brought you into Kaer Morhen as clearly as he remembered his first blade. A tiny bundle wrapped in furs, blinking at the world with big curious eyes while the keep full of scarred witchers stared at you like you were some rare, delicate creature. You were only two, maybe three, but you marched straight up to Geralt, grabbed his cloak with both fists, and tugged until he nearly fell.

That was the beginning.

While the boys were busy with Trial after Trial, bruises after bruises, you were the little chaos reigning freely over the keep. Too bright. Too bubbly. Too normal. Vesemir swore he’d give you the childhood none of them ever had, and so you ran around the courtyard with a wooden spoon as your “weapon,” terrorizing Lambert, stealing Eskel’s gloves, and braiding Geralt’s hair with wildflowers you found gods-know-where.

Geralt didn’t mind. At all. You were the warm, sunlit corner of his otherwise grey world. When the potions made his head pound, you’d sit beside him and offer him honey-cakes. When the training exhausted him, you’d tug him toward the fire and demand he sit with you your tiny hands fitting so perfectly into his gloved ones. He told himself he saw you like a little sister.

But even then, maybe he didn’t.

Years passed. You grew up into the loveliest kind of trouble still chaotic, still sunshine, still somehow capable of making Lambert cry by switching his boots with Vesemir’s. But you also grew soft where they grew hard, gentle where they became steel. Vesemir wrapped you in protection like armor, keeping you far from hunts and monsters, insisting you stay the beautiful soul Kaer Morhen had no right to have.

Geralt left often on contracts. And every winter he returned to the keep, he found you different prettier, brighter, stronger. A warmth that pulled him in like gravity. A smile that made his medallion hum harder than magic ever could.

This winter, when Geralt rode through the gates snow on his pauldrons, griffin blood on his blade you came running down the steps exactly like you had when you were a child. Just… grown. Soft cheeks flushed from the cold, hair flying behind you, joy written all over your face.

“Geralt!” you shouted, throwing yourself right into his chest.

He caught you with an ease that betrayed how many times he’d imagined it. You buried your face in his cloak, inhaling the cold and steel and something that was just him. For a moment, he forgot Kaer Morhen even existed around you.

Then Vesemir cleared his throat. Loudly. Very loudly.

Geralt stepped back so fast Lambert almost laughed himself off the wall.

Still, Geralt stayed close to you all season. Too close, according to the others.

He taught you to ride better hands on your waist, voice low behind you. He helped you cook burning half the kitchen but smiling like an idiot when you laughed. He brought you trinkets from hunts broken medallions, polished stones, flowers crushed in his saddlebags because he forgot they were there.

Lambert and Eskel placed bets on how long before Vesemir skewered him.

And gods, Geralt tried to be subtle. He really did. But Witchers aren’t built for subtle. So instead you got:

Geralt lingering in the hall. Geralt sitting beside you at every meal. Geralt glaring at any visiting Witcher who dared speak to you more than five seconds. Geralt blushing, blushing, whenever you grabbed his hand like you used to as a child.

He was trying to court you. In the clumsiest, sweetest, most painfully obvious way possible. And every time you smiled back at him, he thought maybe just maybe Vesemir wouldn’t actually kill him.

Maybe.

But when you leaned your head on his shoulder one snowy evening by the fire, Geralt didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just let the warmth of you sink into every scar he ever carried.

If loving you was dangerous, then he’d faced far worse monsters.

And this time, he wasn’t running.