#because alfie adopts geralt too

[jaskier-cult]

what the fuck is wrong with you

Julian Alfred Pankratz, a small noble boy of Lettenhove, runs away from his lessons to play in the woods, because he would much rather prefer being bare-footed and climbing among the trees than being in some stuffy room learning about assholes who killed their people and then themselves. And, out in the woods, he finds an egg.

He gets excited because he learned about eggs before, and they always hatch into cute little birds. And this egg is really big, so that means this is going to be a really cute bird.

That was logical, right?

The bigger the egg, the cuter the bird?

What he doesn’t know is that it is a griffin egg – not just a griffin, but an arch-griffin egg – that was orphaned by a witcher who killed the griffin and cleared out the nest, but missed this egg, which had rolled away and stayed hidden.

Julian only sees one option, and it’s to carry the egg home so he can care for it and wait for the baby bird to hatch. Because what else would he do? 

<><><><>

He’s in his room when it hatches, and eww – the baby bird is covered in slime and mucus and whatever else had been packed inside the egg, and this is definitely not cute, what were his mentors talking about – but then the baby screeches and rolls around, blind and weak, and its behaviour is cute and Julian’s heart absolutely melts. 

The baby is promptly named Alfie, and Julian uses towels and cloth to clean off the baby, and he scrunches up his nose in confusion, because this is a really weird looking bird.

And ugly.

But ugly as in cute.

So, Julian shrugs and showers the baby in coos and praise and love. 

He hides it from his parents and house staff, keeping Alfie hidden under his bed whenever someone comes in his room. 

She’s so smart, too, as young as she is. She listens so well to Julian, like a trained hound, and she loves curling up with Julian at night at the foot of his bed. To make sure she doesn’t starve, he feeds Alfie leftover scraps from the kitchen, and finds that she really likes meats. Specifically raw meats. Which makes sense because she’s a bird, right? Birds are omnivores, right? 

It’s not until the next week that Julian learns about griffins when he hears servants in the manor talking about the contract the witcher took, and something clicks in his head, and he’s like, “oh, so that’s why it looked like a weird bird. Because it’s a weird bird monster.”

He brings the baby, who is growing really big, too big to fit under his bed now – which he now knows is a griffin – outside again and plays with it and gets so proud and excited when Alfie starts to flap her wings and glide, jumping from high places and chasing after Julian. Alfie is really affectionate and likes to nuzzle and press against Julian like a cat. She even responds to her name, the clever little thing, but only when Julian calls it. 

She also hunts down small rodents all on her own, and even though Julian thinks the raw meat and the blood is kind of disgusting, he still praises her for her hunting skills. 

And she loves praise, and she’ll preen and puff her chest out whenever Julian showers her with love.

Alfie becomes protective over her human, and anytime Julian wanders into the woods with someone else, he quickly has to steer the other person away, lest Alfie mistake them for a danger to her Julian. Years after finding her, Alfie even once mauled a man who tried to rape Julian in the woods, when he was only fourteen, and Julian had never loved Alfie so much before. Immediately after, Alfie sniffed and tried to lick the blood off Julian, making high pitched whining and keening noises, like an overgrown puppy, worried that Julian was hurt. Julian gave her so much praise and coos that day, and he even brought back the best cuts of his dinner for her to enjoy. 

Within a few months of bringing her outside to stay, the griffin grows to full size, and has the power and strength to kill ten men without blinking.  

She’s still cute when she rolls over for Julian to give her belly rubs.

<><><><> 

Imagine Geralt’s surprise and exasperation to learn that the hopeless, painfully vulnerable and naïve bard who followed him, has a massive arch-griffin as a pet.

Certainly not him, who is attacked promptly after punching said bard.

<><><><> 

“Wait!” Jaskier choked out, still out of breath from being sucker-punched. “Don’t hurt her! Please!”

Geralt ignored the bard, tucking and rolling to avoid a swipe of massive razor-sharp claws. He brings his sword up, but the griffin jumps back, cleverer than most of its kin, and hisses at him, strangely subdued for a normally aggressive monster. It was weird, the way it kept glancing around and back at the bard, like it didn’t want to fight and wanted to fly away. And Geralt usually would have let it go, if not for the fact that it was between him and the bard and posed a danger.

He signed Aard, and the griffin was pushed back, shrieking as it crashed painfully into a tree. 

Geralt brought his sword down to meet it, but then he was being body-checked by the bard, being thrown with unexpected strength. 

“What the fuck –” 

Then the bard stumbled and put his body in the way. “Stop!” 

��Get out of the way, bard,” the witcher growled. 

“No, you can punch me all you want, but I won’t let you hurt Alfie! She was only trying to protect me!” 

The witcher had to blink to ensure he wasn’t hallucinating. 

Then the bard spun around and was running over to the arch-griffin, absolutely and painfully no sense of self-preservation in sight. And then, he fucking cuddled up to the monster. 

“Oh, baby, are you okay?” He asked in a high-pitched, soft voice, as if talking to a kitten. 

That was definitely not a kitten. The furthest thing from it. 

Then the griffin moved, and Geralt was ready to watch the bard’s head be chomped off, when the griffin nuzzled into his chest in what could be called an affectionate manner. 

Geralt blinked. 

The griffin fucking what? 

<><><><> 

It was unsettling to travel with an arch-griffin. It was even more unsettling to see it act like a tame overgrown puppy to a painfully naïve bard, who showered it unconditionally with love, kisses, and praise, near constantly. Jaskier would stroke and pet the griffin whenever he liked, and would fucking climb on its back to ride, and the damned griffin let him.

“Oh, you’re so beautiful! You’re so cute, such a good girl!” Jaskier crooned. “Yes, you are! So majestic! Geralt, isn’t she the cutest thing you’ve ever seen!”

Geralt wouldn’t exactly call an arch-griffin cute.

<><><><> 

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Lambert said, two seconds into meeting the bard. 

The fucking arch-griffin chirped affectionately and nuzzled into the bard.