Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Geralt can win this fight, he knows. He’s outnumbered, of course, but he’s won against worse odds than this…but things are different this time.

He’s felled several of his assailants already, cuts down another with a blow that almost rends the man in half, and turns snarling to face the remaining attackers.

Over the sound of his own enraged breathing, he hears a gasp from the branches of the tree where Ciri’s hiding.

Now he has something worth fighting for.

The men quail in the face of his fury, backing away and grouping together as if for safety. It won’t work; he’ll kill every one of them for daring to come after Ciri. He remembers the terror on her face when he told her that a group of people was tracking them, when he instructed her to hide.

They used to call him Butcher. Maybe it’s time for him to live up to that name. He raises his sword and gets ready to charge.

It would have worked, he reflected later, if the extra man with the blunt instrument hadn’t managed to sneak behind him in all of the confusion.

It’s then that the blackjack comes down with an inordinate amount of force on the back of his head. I’m sorry, is all he has time to think as he falls, consciousness and his sword slipping from his fingers as he goes.

Jaskier finishes buttoning his doublet and surveys himself critically in the mirror. He tweaks his collar into a slightly more fetching position and, satisfied at last with his wardrobe, begins arranging his hair.

The mirror is possibly the perk he’s most grateful for in this, though it’s hard to narrow it down to a favourite. After several winters travelling between towns and busking for basically no money, having to scavenge in the woods for anything edible and drinking melted snow to survive, a change is very welcome. Through a chance meeting at a tavern Jaskier had managed to secure a whole four months at the estate of a very handsome and, more importantly, a very rich young Earl who had an equally young and handsome new wife. The Earl had just come into his estate and he and his new bride were keen to show their riches and hospitality, holding banquets and parties almost every night. Parties needed guests, and guests needed to be entertained… which is where Jaskier comes in.

Jaskier has been at the Hall for just over a week, and has already made in tips almost as much as he’d earned over the whole summer.

The fire – a fire, in his room! He basks in its warmth as the wind howls outside his window – has burned low. Jaskier throws on another log from the pile, kept stacked high by a friendly young manservant, and stirs the flames with the poker to coax it back to life. The orange glow is reflected by his new lute which he has placed gently on a stand in the corner. He’d been given it by the Earl on his arrival as they made their greetings…

Jaskier had been kneeling on the thick crimson rug in the Earl’s study, head bowed. He might possibly have been laying it on a bit thick, but this job was the best he’d ever had and he wasn’t going to risk being turfed out on his ear after all.

“Thank you for employing me, my Lord. I hope I will be able to entertain you and your guests through the long winter.”

The Earl moved around his desk that was larger than most peoples’ beds and hauled Jaskier to his feet.

“Nonsense, Jaskier! I asked you here as a friend! You saved me that night we met. If you hadn’t picked me up from that piss-stained alley floor and let me sleep in your room, I don’t know what would have become of me!”

Jaskier had smiled and looked down modestly. Of course, as a Viscount himself, Jaskier is an expert at spotting a nobleman who’s decided to slum it for a night. He’d have helped the prone man in the alley anyway, of course, but it hadn’t hurt his decision at the time to know that there was likely to be some substantial recompense for his good deed.

“We’re having a banquet tonight, hosting the in-laws. Fran has been badgering me to have her family over as a thank-you for our wedding feast, so the whole clan is descending tonight. You’ll be the main entertainment, of course.”

“Thank you, my Lord. I’ll endeavour to prove my worth to you,” Jaskier bowed deeply. Again, possibly it’s a bit much but no one has ever accused him of being understated and he’s not about to start now.

“Yes, I know you will. Listen, Fran’s lot are a bit up themselves if I’m honest, so I’ve got you something.”

The Earl reached behind his desk and handed Jaskier a lute. Immediately, from its weight and feel Jaskier knew that it was an exceptional instrument. Fine carvings of scenes from great poems and songs, some of which he had written himself, were carved into its curved base. The fret board was inlaid with mother-of-pearl that glowed opalescent under his fingers.

“Thank you, my Lord.”

Jaskier picks it up again, cradling it in the crook of his arm as his other hand plucks at the strings, fine-tuning them to sing as sweetly as possible to tonight’s audience. The carvings shift and move in the firelight, mother-of-pearl turning red-orange with its reflection. Its sound is no match for Filavandrel’s lute, of course, but the elven instrument is understated. This lute is opulence itself, luxury carved into solid music. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

An indignant yellow-gold gaze flashes in his mind’s eye for a moment.

Well… the second most beautiful thing.

Jaskier pushes the thought away, concentrates instead on the strings under his fingers as he tunes. Finally satisfied, he slings the lute over his shoulder by its strap and heads downstairs and through the kitchen, swiping a chicken leg on his way. Dodging the chef’s half-hearted swipe with a laugh and a wink, he enters the hall through the servant’s door and settles himself in his corner.

The tables are arranged in a horseshoe facing the top table where the Earl and his bride, Fran, will be seated. The plan, as it has been for the last few weeks, is for Jaskier to play lyricless melodies as dancers, acrobats and other performers entertain the guests while they eat. Once the last mouthful is swallowed, Jaskier will take centre stage and lead the assembly in song, the audience being deep enough in their cups by then to bellow along with him, butchering his tunes. Jaskier can put up with this for the money he’s earning, plus the sneaked looks and winks from both the Earl and Fran. Then, as he has most nights since coming here, he’ll probably receive an invitation to a private audience with the Fran and the Earl themselves, in their chamber.

Gods, but it’s been a good winter so far. If he’s lucky, maybe this arrangement could stretch beyond the winter into Spring as well. It’s not like he has anywhere to be, and the couple hosting him really are extremely accommodating.

The guests begin to filter in, their chatter filling the room as his music winds through and around their words. The feast-goers’ shoes crush the perfumed rushes beneath their feet, freeing their flowery scent to mix with the deliciously meaty smells emanating from the kitchen.

Eventually, the guests are seated and expectant. At some unseen signal, servants pour into the room, filling cups (not forgetting Jaskier’s) and placing platters of food in front of the guests. The Earl stands and makes a speech thanking them all for coming and inviting them to eat as much as is humanly possible without bursting. This speech somehow manages to take the best part of twenty minutes, but that’s the Earl of Lidaris for you. Why use ten words to say something when a hundred would do, after all? Jaskier very carefully does not roll his eyes.

Finally, the Earl tires himself out and the feast begins, the hall filling with the sound of cutlery against plates and polite dinner conversation. Jaskier is the first to admit that he’s never had the most robust attention span, and so lets his mind wander, fingers picking out familiar tunes on the strings as the diners tuck in.

Jaskier sees the fire eater and acrobats perform through half-closed eyes, dozing in the heat of the room. The plates of the diners empty and fill more times than he can be bothered to count, and while he does not partake of every course, he’s certainly eaten his fill. More importantly, his wine glass is never allowed to become empty, always being refilled by a passing servant. This, he thinks muzzily, may be what true contentment felt like.

He is roused from his semi-conscious state by the conversation of the two burly men sat just in front of him, who presumably haven’t seen him in his shadowy musician’s nook.

“I hear they’ve got a bard for later,” one of them says between courses. The chatter is loud enough that he has to shout, making it easy for Jaskier to overhear.

“He likes showing off, this Earl, doesn’t he? Not that I’m complaining. This is the best venison I’ve had.”

“Yup. You reckon this Bard knows that one… how does it go? Oh Valley of Plenty?”

Jaskier smiles to himself in the shadows.

“Of course he does! What bard doesn’t? But they probably won’t be singing that one much longer. Or maybe they will, but as a eulogy.”

“Eh?” his partner askes, swigging ale from a tankard.

“Well, it’s about Geralt of Rivia isn’t it?”

Jaskier is suddenly sat at attention. He catches himself leaning forward, the better to hear what this random man is saying, and curses himself internally. He’d been doing so well, hadn’t thought about Geralt in minutes. And yet, as soon as the White Wolf is mentioned, he’s hooked right back in…

Words echo in his head: If life could grant me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands!

He pushes the memory away. He should stop listening. Geralt doesn’t want him, certainly doesn’t need him. He has a good life here right now. He’ll ignore whatever it is they’re saying, concentrate on the set he’s playing later…

Jaskier stops breathing in order to hear the conversation better.

“So?”

“He’s not been seen for months, didn’t you hear? He was in Redania after some werewolf or something, and never came back. Word is he got captured, no one knows by what…”

Jaskier feels his throat constrict, even though there’s no way a djinn could be here.

“Still, what’s one Witcher less? They’re creepy, self-satisfied bastards. Hopefully they’ll all get taken and leave the rest of us alone…”

The conversation is cut off as the Earl stood and called for silence.

“Thank you all for joining us tonight! We’ve had a fantastic time and I hope you have too! So, before our final course, I’ve prepared a special entertainment for you all… Jaskier the Bard! Jaskier? …Jaskier?”

The audience follows Fran’s gaze to Jaskier’s nook, the two thick-set men having to twist in their seats to look. The musicians’ alcove is empty except for a stool and a lyre with intricate carvings and mother-of-pearl inlays on the fretboard propped against the wall.

Jaskier has to fight the urge to spur his horse into a canter. The forest floor is thick with roots and climbing plants just waiting to snare a hoof and send them sprawling. Besides, the poor thing is tired. Since Jaskier had… uh… liberated the beast, it’s been carrying him for every moment there was even a hint of light in the winter sky.

Jaskier is exhausted too, he knows. The weariness is somehow detached, kept at bay by adrenalin and worry over Geralt, which Jaskier knows is ridiculous in itself. The last time he saw Geralt, the Witcher had been very clear about what he wanted from Jaskier, namely for him to go far away and stay there. He is also well aware of exactly how much use he is in dangerous situations, thanks to Geralt’s kind tendency to inform him that it’s none whatsoever. And yet, on hearing the slightest rumour that Geralt might be in trouble, Jaskier is unable to keep himself away.

Gods, but he’s weak.

As he travels to Redania, Jaskier manages to scrounge up a few more snippets of information about Geralt. It feels odd to be asking after him, after almost a year of actively avoiding hearing about the White Wolf, but he chooses not to examine how easily he falls back into old habits, instead concentrating on what he finds out: Geralt had been travelling fast, as if worried about pursuit. He also, unusually, hadn’t been alone; he was journeying with a child of about ten years old. Jaskier swallowed hard. Evidently the Child Surprise had caught up with Geralt at last.

And now she was alone, and it’s his fault. If he hadn’t wheedled and cajoled Geralt into attending that stupid Engagement Banquet, the poor thing wouldn’t have been bound to Geralt only to be left defenceless when something took the Witcher away…

Jaskier loses the battle with himself and digs his heels into the horse’s flanks, leaning forward in the saddle in impatience as Pegasus breaks into a reluctant canter.

After only a few moments, Jaskier feels the horse’s step falter. He sways as Pegasus staggers sideways, unable to catch his balance. He leans forwards and strokes the gelding’s neck, mumbling soothing words to calm him as he dances back and fore nervously. He glances around, grudgingly admitting to himself that twilight has progressed to dusk. He should stop. You can’t help Geralt if you’ve broken your neck going arse over tit when your horse falls in the forest, he tells himself severely.

Jaskier dismounts and ties the horse to a tree, hooking Pegasus’s nosebag in place and whispering an apology in his ear. He sets up camp in movements that have become practiced over the days – days? Weeks? He doesn’t know except that it has been too long – since he’d set out from his cushy job at the Earl of Lidaris’s hall.

Jaskier had thought that he knew how to set up camp before he met Geralt, but had soon realised that he was wrong. While he had been content to find a spot in the undergrowth that was hidden from the road and put down his bedroll, Geralt stalked around checking for any places where an enemy could conceal themselves. He set up trip wires attached to old metal pots with holes in that would clank a warning if anyone triggered the line while approaching the camp. He set up traps usually used by poachers, ensuring that anyone who missed the trip lines would end up hanging upside down by one leg from a tree and facing a Witcher who was not at all inclined to cut them down again. He would also use some of his Witcher magic to set protective spells around the camp and especially around the area where Roach was sleeping for the night.

Jaskier can’t recreate the magic, of course, but he diligently recreated all of Geralt’s other traps and tricks, ignoring the lump in his throat that pressed on his windpipe every time he thought of his Witcher.

Finally satisfied, he rubs down Pegasus, reflecting that a childhood spent in a house with stables had come in useful. Then he lay down, estimating that he had about six hours before the grey light of a winter morning would be bright enough to navigate the woods by. His eyes are burning with exhaustion, and they burn more when he finally allows them to close. Sleep claims him before they are fully shut.

He wakes what feels like moments later, on his feet before he fully registers why. Then he hears it again: the clanking of the pots attached to his tripwire. Someone tried to approach his camp and got stuck in one of the traps.

Jaskier pulls the dagger from his belt and cautiously moves towards the source of the noise, praying that the cacophony doesn’t summon anything else that might be roaming the forest at night. He and Geralt had been attacked by a group of Bruxae in the forest, once, and one of them nearly had her teeth in his throat before Geralt…

He stamps on that thought. Whatever it is, he’ll have to deal with it himself this time.

Jaskier moves through the trees until he finds the tripwire in question. He’s moved silently as he knows how, which isn’t all that quietly in all honesty, but the person tangled in the wire has been struggling so loudly that they must have masked any noise he made. He squints in the dark but he can’t make them out except for they have very light hair. His heart leaps into his throat for a moment as his traitor brain hopes for a brief, flaring instant that it’s Geralt who has stumbled upon his camp. It’s ridiculous, of course; for one thing, Geralt would never trigger a trip wire. Also, the person there is much too small to be the White Wolf.

A cloud rolls away from the moon, illuminating the scene in silver light. Jaskier manages to make out that the form tangled in his tripwire is a girl of about eleven or so, with ash-grey hair and green eyes. Jaskier sheaths his dagger.

“Fuck.”

Chapter Text

“Fuck.”

The girl’s head snaps up at the sound of his voice. She bares her teeth and scuttles backwards on her hands and feet like a crab as far as the tripwire binding her will allow, which isn’t very far.

Something moves in the undergrowth a few metres away, startled by their voices. Both Jaskier and the girl jump at the noise, already tense from their standoff. The woods are silent around them except for a breeze meandering through the winter-bare branches of the trees, the boughs darker scribbles against the black night sky.

“Get away from me!” The girl orders.

Jaskier raises an eyebrow. “Me get away? You’re the one who was creeping up on my camp,” he points out gently.

“It’s not your camp!” She spits. “It’s Geralt’s! Where is he? What have you done with him?”

Jaskier blinks. “What?”

“It’s Geralt’s camp! He’s the only one who makes the border defences like this. Where is he?”

She brandishes something at Jaskier. He can’t see what it is until the light of the moon glints on the edge of sharpened metal, and then he realises: she’s holding a dagger.

Jaskier raises his hands in what he hopes is a conciliatory way and not a way that suggests that he’s oh, say, ready to use deadly force if necessary. He considers throwing his own dagger away to reassure her, but thinks better of it; things in the forest are not always as they seem. There are plenty of monsters that could seem like a little girl if they wanted, and besides – even a child could kill.

“It’s my camp, kid. But how do you know Geralt of Rivia?”

She twists in her bindings – the wire has wrapped itself around her calf. She can’t untie it one-handed, but she won’t let go of her dagger. She growls, then looks up at him through her hair.
“Your clothes are two seasons out of fashion and you stole Geralt’s camp and you’re going to tell me where he is right. Now.”

“Two seasons out of…!? First of all…!” Jaskier splutters, arms flailing as he physically recoils from the insult. Then he steps forwards, finger raised and ready to wag in admonishment, about to let loose with some choice words about this creature’s own appearance.

He sees her wince as he approaches. The righteous indignation drains from him in an instant.

This close, he can finally see her properly. Her face is a mask of desperate bravado that’s slipped, revealing the fear beneath. She’s terrified.

Jaskier sits on the mess of leaf mulch and thorns that passes for a floor in this cursed forest, heedless of the mess it’ll make of his one-season-out-of-date-at-most trousers. He forces himself to adopt his performance demeanour; posturing, amusing, very much non-threatening. He smiles at her, willing his anger and fear to disperse. “What’s your name, little fashionista?”

It hasn’t worked; she’s trembling. Amusingly, that just seems to make her more angry.

“Fiona,” she tells him, her tone managing to make a pleasant name sound like she’s telling him to go and fuck himself.

“Okay, ‘Fiona’,” Jaskier replies. You can’t embellish the truth as much as Jaskier does and not spot the lies that other people try to sell you. He’s been lying longer; he’s better at it. But Jaskier understands the wish, the need to be someone else sometimes. Let her be Fiona.

“My apologies,” Jaskier bows but keeps his eyes on the girl. He tugs his doublet straighter as he sits back up – shit. She’s got in his head.

He studies her, noticing how her hair shines even under the dirt coating it and how she sits with her back ramrod-straight even while ensnared in a trap.

“I don’t know where Geralt is, I’m very sorry to say. But I’m going to find out as soon as possible. Your turn: how do you know Geralt of Rivia, big fashionista?”

Fiona only stares at him like he’s a drowner that’s climbed up her privy, clutching her dagger and eyeing him like she’s choosing where to stab him first. He bites back his frustration – anyone else trussed up like this would understand that answering him is their best bet, but here she is planning the best way to relieve him of life and limb.

Jaskier takes a deep breath. Her accent is Cintran, he realises belatedly. She must have been through hell during the Massacre, he can’t blame her for being cautious. There’s something else about her too, something that tugs at his memory, a thought that dances out of view every time he tries to pin it down.

It’ll come to him.

His gaze is drawn inexorably towards the knife she’s clutching like it’s her anchor in the world. Its blade is still glinting in the moonlight, but another reflection at the base of the hilt seizes his attention. He gasps.

“Fiona. Geralt gave you that knife, didn’t he?” He knows he’s right. “Steel blade for your usual horrors, a silver charm on the hilt for anything else. It’s true, isn’t it?”

Her eyes narrow. “How…?”

“How do I know?” Jaskier chuckles, then gestures to her dagger’s twin where it sleeps in its sheath on his belt. “I know because he gave me one, too.”

For a moment, it seems like Fiona might believe him. Hope passes over her face like a shadow before the mask returns. “You stole that. You kidnapped him, and you stole it!”

Jaskier laughs at this, proper belly laughs that rumble from deep in his abdomen. He can’t help it; the idea of him being able to kidnap Geralt, to force Geralt to do anything he didn’t already want to do, is just too funny.

Fiona bridles at his laughter. It’s a haughty gesture, it reminds Jaskier of…

Of course!

The Cintran accent. The ash-grey hair. A ten-year-old travelling with Geralt. The way she holds herself, proud as the late Lioness of Cintra herself.

Jaskier’s mind, slow and clumsy, finally forces its way through the fog of exhaustion and unearths the memory of that night: Princess Pavetta and Duny, the man who was her Destiny, suspended in a tornado. Ciri is her mother’s image in miniature. Jaskier could kick himself for being so slow.

He needs to reassure her. “Listen, Fiona. Would that I were strong enough to kidnap Geralt, but alas I am not. I know that I may seem strong and intimidating, but appearances can be deceiving.”

She doesn’t trust him, he can tell. He sighs.

“You don’t trust me. That’s good, Geralt would be proud. But I’m a friend. Look, I’ll prove it. You can touch the silver to my skin yourself.”

Jaskier undoes the belt with his dagger on and tosses it away from him. Slowly and deliberately, he rolls up the now-ragged silk of his sleeve to expose his forearm. He approaches Ciri, kneeling just outside her reach, and smiles.

“I’ve known Geralt for years. I’m Jaskier.”

Then he offers his exposed skin to the scared girl with the sharp knife.

Ciri stares at him for a long moment, then lunges forwards and presses the base of her dagger’s hilt into the soft flesh of his forearm with enough force to bruise. He forces himself not to wince.

When he doesn’t collapse screaming and smoking in agony, Ciri withdraws. She stares at him with something like recognition, and hope flares in Jaskier’s chest.

“Jaskier… the bard? You’re the one my grandmother hates. Hated,” she corrects herself, eyes shining in the gloaming. “Prove it. Perform something.”

The hope dies. Not because of the news that Calanthe hated him – after all, there’s no helping some people and she hadn’t been shy about letting her opinion be known in front of him, so why should she hold back in his absence? – but because Geralt hasn’t spoken of him to her. But then, why would he?

If life could grant me one blessing…

He blinks to clear the image of Geralt standing on a mountainside from his mind’s eye.

“Perform something?” He asks with a forced smile. “But of course! I’m always happy to bless a keen audience with my exceptional talents. What would you like to hear? I’m at your disposal.”

She frowns. “If…”

“If?” he prompts. Honestly, performing something might be good. Singing settles his nerves, it’s soothing. He’s glad she suggested it.

“If you’re Geralt’s friend, why didn’t he ever tell me about you?”

She’s just as sharp as Calanthe, he’ll give her that.

Her words are a blow to the stomach, punching out his core and leaving a void that he’ll disappear into if he’s not careful. They were travelling, they must have heard Jaskier’s songs on the road, but not once did Geralt think to mention that he knew their composer, to insult the rhyme scheme or imagery or anything else. Geralt doesn’t even care enough about him to tear him to pieces behind his back.

Jaskier’s expression doesn’t falter, he knows. He blesses all his years of performing in taverns for giving him a Gwent-face for the ages. You need one if you’re going to keep playing for a horde of burly drunkards who’ve decided that the best way to get rid of their empty cup is by hurling it at the bard’s head.

“Can you keep a secret, Fiona?” He asks conspiratorially, looking around the forest as though checking for eavesdroppers. He leans in towards her and whispers “It’s because I intimidate him. I beat him at arm wrestling once, you see, and he’s never lived it down.” He winks at her.

Her face closes down again instantly. Okay, wrong play. Humour’s clearly not the way to go. He’ll have to try something else.

“I shouldn’t let you hog that tripwire all night – some other forest dweller might decide to approach my camp and I’ll need it then. Shall I untie you? You can keep hold of your knife. I’ll play you a song then, if you like. Or, if you’d rather leave after you’re untied, I won’t stop you. But I hope you’ll stay for some food first, at least. Is that alright?”

She lets him untie her, flinching at his touch and scrambling away as soon as she’s free to put as much space between herself and him as possible. She does stay though, eating some of his rations after carefully watching to make sure he’s eaten some of everything first as if worried he’ll try and poison her.

She keeps her dagger in her hand and her mouth glued shut, but that’s okay. Jaskier is used to sharing camp with a silent companion, knows how to fill the silence with comforting nonsense.

She’s wrapped up in her cloak and his blanket on his bedroll by the fire when she finally speaks again.

“You lied about Geralt. I’m not stupid. Why should I trust you if you lie about him?”

Jaskier’s head had been drooping as he sat against a tree with his lute in his lap. For a moment he considers feigning sleep to avoid answering the question, but thinks better of it. He strums through a chord progression to give his nervous fingers something to do while he considers his options.

Geralt won’t want to see him, he knows. But he’ll want Ciri. He needs Ciri, just as she needs him. He has to convince her to stay with him rather than wander the forest, has to keep her safe. Besides, a shameful voice whispers in the back of his mind, Geralt and the Lion Cub of Cintra are bound by Destiny. You’re more likely to find Geralt with her than without her.

How much will be enough to convince her to stay? How much would be too much?

She’s so quiet. A silent companion in the dark, the campfire burning low and dawn not far away. It’s like talking to Geralt. That thought shouldn’t be as soothing as it is.

“I met Geralt when I was, oh, seventeen or so? I was singing shite songs in a shitty tavern for two coppers a night and whatever rotten food I couldn’t dodge. Geralt started pointing out all the inaccuracies in my songs, so I invited myself along on a contract of his to fight a Devil. It turned out to be a Sylvan and two elves, all of them almost dead on their feet. Geralt could have killed them, but he didn’t. He gave them all his coin, some dubious advice, and told them he was ready to die but that they should let me go.

“You’ve heard people call him the White Wolf? I came up with that name. Before that, people used to call him… something else. But he saved me. So I decided that people should know him as a hero, not a villain. Just out of the goodness of my own heart, you understand… that, and the opportunity to tag along on more adventures. They make for great ballads, you know, Geralt’s contracts. Lots of monsters and blood and brooding. It made him famous. He never thanked me, of course. He did teach me how to set up proper defences around a camp, though, as you saw earlier.

“Anyway, then we went on a dragon hunt. Yennefer was there, you can ask her the next time you see her. You know what she’ll do to me if I’m lying. Or if I’m not lying, one never quite knows with her… but anyway, the quest. It didn’t quite go as planned. Geralt and I ended up having words. It was my fault.” Jaskier has to fight to keep the tremor out of his voice. His fingers are suddenly uncooperative; the lute falls silent. “I’ve not seen him since. I was working for the Earl of Lidaris when I heard Geralt had gone missing, that he’d been captured. I set off that night. If he needs help, I want to help him.”

Ciri snuggles further down under her blankets and is quiet for a long time, long enough that Jaskier begins to hope that she’s fallen asleep. Just as he’s considering if it’s safe to close his eyes himself, she speaks again.

“You had words? He was angry with you?”

What is it with this kid that she’s always able to home in on exactly which question Jaskier doesn’t want to be asked? Maybe she learned from Geralt. He was always the sword that cut through other peoples’ intentions.

“No, Fiona. It’s not that he was angry with me. He is angry with me.” He’s talking so quietly that it’s more like his mouth is forming words around an exhale than true speech. “He… Geralt wanted someone to have a good opinion of him. But, because of something I did, that person stopped trusting him. Geralt let me know that he didn’t appreciate it.”

Jaskier glances at the sky, then puts his lute gently back in its case. He straps it shut gently, then slings it across his shoulders, and forces a smile at Ciri. “It’s basically light now. I’m going to get on, I need to find Geralt. If you have more questions I’ll answer them on the move, if you’ll come with me. What do you say?”

She’s still holding her knife, unsheathed and close. She glares at him for a long time, mistrust warring with curiosity on her face. Curiosity wins. She stands.

“I have more questions. I’ll come.”

Chapter Text

They start moving in the direction Ciri had just come from, Jaskier reasoning that the easiest place to track Geralt from is the one he was last seen in.

He tries gently probing Ciri for information about Geralt’s kidnapping, but she’s reluctant to speak of the details. It’s yet another way in which she reminds him of Geralt in a way that makes his heart ache.

“We were walking to Midcopse. Geralt had just killed a cockatrice. They took him before we could bring its head back to town. He told me to find his brothers if anything happened, Coen or Lambert or Eskel. That’s what I was doing when you found me.”

“His brothers? Not Yennefer?” Jaskier wonders aloud. It makes sense, he supposes – any of Geralt’s brothers would be more than a match for most people who would come after Ciri. But the Geralt Jaskier knows would always instinctively think of Yennefer if something precious needed protecting. It’s another reminder that he doesn’t know Geralt like he thought he did.

“He didn’t know where she is, or if she’s alive. We heard that fourteen mages died at the Battle of Sodden Hill, and Yennefer was there…” She tells him this, then closes her mouth and sets her jaw in a way that tells Jaskier she won’t be sharing anything further. After over a decade travelling with Geralt, Jaskier knows better than to pry.

Jaskier thinks of Yennefer, tries to imagine her dead but fails. She’s too full of raw power, even someone like him without a magical bone in his body could sense it. She’s also too full of rage to die. She’d stay alive out of spite, he’s sure.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” he tells Ciri in what he hopes is a comforting voice.

The point of her accompanying him was ostensibly for her to ask questions, but she doesn’t do much of that either. Perhaps she doesn’t trust him to tell her the truth.

He ponders Ciri while they travel. They got off on the wrong foot, and he’s keen to make amends. To do that, he needs to know who she is.

Old enough to be angry at being patronised. Young enough to think that being comforted is only for children. Proud enough to demand respect while tangled helpless on the floor as an armed man stood over her. Insecure enough to worry, almost constantly, whether she’s doing the right thing.

The Right Thing. Jaskier remembers thinking about that, too, when he was younger. But he has long since reconciled to himself to the fact that there is no Right Thing to do, just as there is no Wrong Thing. There is just what happens, and how you react to it. Sometimes your choices are so limited that there is not even a “best” of the bad lot to choose from. You choose, as best you can, and then you move on. You have to.

Ciri is scared, too. And, more than anything, she seems… sad. Her sadness sings louder than he can, it pours off her like smoke. She tries to hide it, but one doesn’t travel with Geralt the Taciturn without picking up a talent for hearing the things that people do not tell you.

He wants, more than anything, to ease that sadness. Jaskier knows too well what it’s like to be joined, wherever you go, by the dark place in your own mind. It cannot be chased away, but it can be eased. The question is how.

He is too agitated about Geralt’s predicament to be silent, so whatever the method it will have to include talking. He wonders for a moment if he should sing the legends of Cintra to her, using her accent as an excuse, to soothe her with the sounds of her childhood. He decides against it; reminding her of what she’s lost would be too cruel.

So maybe he should try to remind her what she has. Jaskier clears his throat, wets his lips with a nervous tongue, and starts talking about Geralt.

He tells her nothing personal, of course – it’s a complement to Geralt’s swordsmanship when Jaskier says that he is almost as good at fighting as he is at guarding his privacy. Anything that Geralt wants Ciri to know, he will tell her himself. It is not Jaskier’s place, would not be fair of him, to fill Ciri’s head with Jaskier’s own ideas of her protector. Ciri will have to understand. After all, she has become Fiona. Shouldn’t Geralt also be allowed to choose the face he presents to the world?

Instead, he tells her the things he knows Geralt believes to be so trifling as to not be worth noting. Things that are everything to Jaskier. He will speak the truth of Geralt’s actions with impartiality and let Ciri draw her own conclusions.

He tells her how Geralt halted a lucrative hunt, costing himself much coin, to help an old woman find her frying pan. He recalls the time Geralt came across a boy of only fifteen who had just inherited a farm from his parents who had died suddenly, and how the Witcher had cleared the farm of an infestation of Graviers for the child and then left without the payment that he knew the young farmer could not afford.

He gives examples of how Geralt will humiliate himself in order to let someone else save face – as long as the someone else deserves it. He remembers how he will risk his life rather than kill anything, man or beast, that does not deserve it.

Eventually, his voice starts to break. Jaskier has enough material to last for hours; sometimes he feels like his mind is a vault, a vast library full of Geralt’s mannerisms and his words and deeds and looks and idiosyncrasies. But, for now, he lapses into what he knows the White Wolf would call blessed silence.

Ciri says nothing as he speaks, and remains silent for a long time when he’s finished talking. She keeps her eyes directed at her feet, watching her boots as they carry her through the forest.

Jaskier is halfway through mentally composing a jig when Ciri clears her throat.

“Thank you.” He almost doesn’t hear her over the wind and the soft rustle of their footsteps, but it’s there.

“You’re welcome.” He replies. “Now, how about a tune as we travel?”

She doesn’t seem thrilled, but she nods. He gives her a grin. “Sing along if you know this one. The fairer sex they often call it/but her love’s as unfair as a crook…”

It takes them a day and a half to reach the clearing where Geralt and Ciri had been attacked. It’s a smart spot, he has to admit. If he had to plan an ambush, he’d choose something similar. There are plenty of trees to hide behind on its borders, thick enough to hide an army. A guerrilla unit could easily disappear without a trace. The clearing is wide enough to offer very little cover for someone caught in the middle of it, and the centre of it dips like a bowl so that anyone trying to fight their way out would have to do so uphill. Jaskier is reluctantly impressed by the kidnappers.

“Geralt heart bandits. I climbed a tree to hide, and he waited for them. There, against that stump.” She points.

“Hmm.”

Jaskier will cheerfully put his hand up and admit to being useless in battle. But Geralt’s spartan approach to providing details of his contracts has meant that Jaskier has been forced by necessity to become good at reading a fight’s aftermath. Luckily, a frost descended the night after the fight and has mostly held steady since, literally freezing the mud of the clearing in place where it was immediately after the brawl, churned up and streaked with blood.

Besides, he has the feeling that Ciri has decided to test him. He’s not surprised; he knows that he’s not what most people would think of if they had to imagine a friend of Geralt’s. Well… if they had to imagine someone who had thought they were a friend of Geralt’s, until very clearly informed otherwise. He supposes it’s fair enough if she doesn’t trust him yet.

He squints at the battle site once more. Yes, she’s testing him. Well, that’s fine. Jaskier is good at tests, especially ones he hasn’t studied for. Flying by the seat of his pants is his specialty.

“He waited by the stump, did he? That’s funny, because I rather think he was over here…” Jaskier strides over to an old oak, gnarled and ancient and wide enough to hide Roach behind it lengthways. There is a pair of distinctive and achingly familiar footprints at its base. Standing where Geralt stood, he pauses.

“This spot would give better cover. How many of them were there? Nine? No… eleven. And they completely failed to come at him in the time-honoured one-at-a-time method, how rude. No sense of the dramatic. No, they swarmed him. He cut down six of them… gods, this would make a good song… excuse me, chum,” he addresses this last to a decomposing attempted kidnapper Geralt managed to kill as he steps over the man’s prone form. “He was fighting his way through the rest of them… he’d have made it, too, if it wasn’t for this one who snuck up behind him… and sent him sprawling. Knock to the head?”

Ciri stares at him, mouth agape. She snaps it closed, nods tersely in confirmation.

Jaskier follows the groove Geralt’s body made as he was felled. He’s still alive, he reassures himself. He has to be.

“They had a hard time dragging him – poor fellas, I know how that is. Geralt weighs an absolute ton – to where they left their horses. And… aha!” There’s something caught, dark and frayed and snagged on a twig…

Jaskier rushes back, almost snatching Ciri up into a hug before he remembers that she hates to be touched. He settles for singing.

“Fiona, you beauty!” He brandishes the black metal like a trophy, unable to keep from dancing a little jig. “Geralt’s alive, and he’s leaving us a breadcrumb trail! This is from his undershirt, isn’t it? he’s showing us the way to find him!”

Hope wars with doubt on Ciri’s face. “It’s just a piece of shirt. It probably got caught by accident.” But as if she can’t help herself, she retraces Jaskier’s steps to the place where the mud has been disturbed by the hoofprints of the kidnappers’ horses. She darts back to Jaskier a moment later, waving another piece of material over her head. “Jaskier! There’s another one! Is it the same?”

Jaskier is beside her in a moment, studying the cloth in her hands. He’s thankful that, for once, she hasn’t asked the question he doesn’t want to answer: how do you know Geralt’s underwear so well that you can recognise a scrap of it at ten paces? That’d be an awkward conversation to have with anyone’s adopted daughter…

“It’s the same,” he tells her. “It’s the same! We have a trail! Let’s go!”

Two nights of travelling later, they’ve lost the trail. It’s dark, and wet, and windy, and Jaskier thinks longingly of the Earl’s hall and the plush apartment he’d left without a second glance as the cold penetrates to the bone and keeps going. He’d have given up if he were alone, huddled at the base of some tree and covered himself with leaves and a bedroll and waited out the night. But he’s worried about Ciri, terrified that she won’t last to morning if they don’t find shelter. He can see her shaking in the gloaming, even though he’s insisted on draping his cloak around her shoulders over her own.

Finally, through the trees and sheets of torrential rain, he sees a glimmer of light in the distance.

“Look, Fiona!” Jaskier shouts through chattering teeth, pointing at the distant flicker. “There! It must be a cottage or hut or something. We’ll stay there tonight!”

Geralt swears at the blood in his hair, drags his fingers through it to get the worst of the entrails out. The bodies of the men who’d kidnapped him lie around him, reduced to loose limbs and viscera.

Geralt searches their pockets and, inside the gambeson of one, finds a wanted poster with a sketch that’s a fairly decent likeness of himself. He grunts in amusement when he sees the award that’s offered for him, a truly exorbitant amount. His smile dies on his lips when he sees where the gang would have had to deliver him to get the money: Nilfgaard.

Geralt curses. His life has become much too complicated.

He cleans his steel sword and sheaths it, drawing his silver sword instead. He grabs a torch from the wall and looks around for an exit. The price on his head can wait. He needs to find Ciri. He’s not overly worried; she’s sharp and stubborn and Geralt knows better than to underestimate her. But the winter is only getting worse, and she has no way of getting to Kaer Morhen by herself.

He takes the first door out of the chamber he’d been locked in. His captors had been stupid, choosing Elder ruins for their hideout. The stone walls are damp and dark and slimy green in patches. His medallion hums against his chest, resonating with the neglected magic that’s trapped within the foundations. His kidnappers were lucky to have met a swift end by Witcher steel – the lesser vampires that lurk in Elven ruins would not have killed them quickly.

Geralt flares his nostrils, follows the smell of rain through the labyrinth, mistrustful of the silence. He dilates his pupils as wide as they can go without Cat, sweeping the ceiling and walls with his gaze for anything that might attack.

His caution is for nothing – no monster accosts him as he navigates the corridors. He can taste the cool night air, feels a few drops of rain on his face and knows he’s made it out.

A voice he knows rings out through the dark.

“There! It must be a cottage or hut or something. We’ll stay there tonight!”

It’s Jaskier, loud in the pre-dawn. Geralt’s gut hollows as he freezes, cowardly. It’s been a year. They’ve spent longer apart, of course, but never after cutting the cords that tied them so thoroughly. Jaskier had been long gone when he’d reached the base of the mountain. He’d hesitated there, staring at the footprints that the bard had left. Jaskier treads more heavily on his left heel than his right, his tracks are distinctive. Geralt could have tracked him easily, almost had. But then…

He’d used up all his strikes with Yenn. He always did, eventually. People would put up with him for a while, if he was lucky, but eventually he did one too many shitty things and they abandoned him. He could never guess exactly when he’d hit the limit, but it always came eventually, and he would be left alone again.

Jaskier had been different. Again and again, Geralt had spoken too harshly, refused gentle affection, been bull-headed and critical, struggled to navigate kindness he’d not been raised to expect. If Jaskier had reached his limit on the mountain, if he were to slough Geralt off… Yenn had cracked his weary heart. Jaskier’s rejection would smash it completely.

So he’d gone South instead, to where a Witcher’s coin was made easier due to an overabundance of monsters, to where life’s blessing was granted.

But then he’d found Ciri, or rather she had found him, and that had been that.

But now Jaskier is outside these ruins, a hundred metres away at most by the sounds of it. He should call out, tell the bard where he is. But the same fear that choked him at the base of the mountain is coiling around his neck again, smothering the words before they can be spoken.

He’s still standing there uselessly, deliberating, when the ancient floorboards beneath him let out a too-late warning creak and give way beneath his weight. The hand holding his sword shoots out and he manages to grab he edge of the floorboards as they fly past his face. He doesn’t know how far the drop would be, but from the clammy feel of the air around him and the echo as the floorboards fall away beneath him, it’s a long way down.

He curses, realising his decision has been made for him by fucking Destiny again. He has no choice but to shout.

“Jaskier! Over here!” He throws the torch as high as he can, to act as a flare to guide the bard to him. “Here!”

He feels his grip start to slip on the swollen wood of the floorboards and prays to the gods he doesn’t believe in that Jaskier reaches him before his grip slips completely.

Geralt hears Ciri’s voice carry to him through the night air, and seriously considers that he’s hallucinating after all. What are the chances that she and Jaskier would both be here, now? It must be his over-tired brain trying to comfort him before he dies. It’s just a shame he couldn’t conjure up Yenn, too.

Another finger slips from the wood above him as his feet swing above the void.

It doesn’t know how long it’s been travelling, having no concept of duration, but it seems like aeons. It’s been alone again, untethered, since its last shelter left it defenceless and adrift. Thoughts cannot form without a brain, therefore all it knows is the wanting that agonises it every second, driving it on. It must find shelter. It must become real again…

A gale had blown it, tumbling in the eddies of the wind, into and area with nowhere to take sanctuary. It’s vaguely aware of things around it as it wanders, tall things made of something scratchy and brown with green shapes that rustle above it. They are useless, cannot protect it or give it what it needs. It ignores them and glides on.

Then, it senses something. Somewhere close, there’s a flare. If it had been a wolf, its head would have snapped up and sniffed the air. It sets off in that direction, spreading over the ground like a mist and crawling its way to the possibilities…

The journey is for nothing. There are three potential shelters, but none of them are any good. Two are cold, weak, too exhausted to be of any benefit. It can’t use them, and they wouldn’t last it long in any case. They are moving toward a third, but this one too is useless. It’s closed, mutated, measured and methodical. There’s no way in. It will have to keep going.

The three potential sanctuaries converge and suddenly there’s a match flare in the pitch; the automaton-like one is no longer closed, but open. On the breeze, the creature can scent its elation mixed with pride and fear. A way in.

The creature pauses, coils… strikes.

“Geralt!” Ciri calls again. Her face appears over the ledge to look down at him and it’s brighter than the fucking sun, blowing the inadequacy from him and leaving stubbornness in its place. He swings his other hand up to the ledge, manages to pull himself up and his heart swells as Ciri’s small hands and Jaskier’s strong musicians’ fingers grasp his forearms. For a moment, he’s held. He’s safe.

Something brushes against his ankle, and the last thing Geralt remembers is shivering before his body slackens and he’s falling into the dark.

Chapter Text

“Geralt!” Jaskier sobs, leaning around Ciri to haul with all his might to pull Geralt further from the gaping hole that’s still waiting to swallow him a mere few inches away. He makes no discernible progress, but that doesn’t matter. What’s matters is that Geralt’s here, alive, and the world can go on turning.

Jaskier can just make out Geralt’s eyes, topaz and searching Ciri’s face… then Geralt shudders under Jaskier’s grip and sinks to the floor with a grunt.

“Geralt!?” Jaskier and Ciri chorus. Jaskier cushions the Witcher’s head as he falls, feeling Ciri shake him, trying to coax Geralt back to wakefulness. Jaskier scrambles for the torch that’s almost sputtered out on the wet ground, holds it up so he can examine the White Wolf.

“Fiona… Fiona, stop!” Jaskier has extensive practical knowledge of cleaning, stitching and binding wounds that he learned by necessity on the Path, but has no medical knowledge beyond that. He doesn’t need any to know from a glance that Geralt’s not in any normal sleep. His breath, usually so even and measured, is shallow and quick. Under closed lids, his eyes are moving fast, as if trying to follow the flight of many birds at once. Thought the night is freezing, sweat is beading on his forehead and upper lip.

“He’s ill,” Jaskier says slowly, reeling inwardly. It’s too cruel of Destiny to let him find his Witcher, only to snatch him away immediately. Jaskier’s mind chases itself in circles, thoughts incoherent. I wish Shani were here, he thinks pointlessly. Why are the best medical minds always in Oxenfurt when you need them? . Stop, he scolds himself. Think.

“Fiona. We have to carry him between us, get him to the horse. There was a Wise Woman in the last town back, I heard someone say so in the market. We have to get Geralt to her so she can heal him, alright?” Of course she’ll be able to heal him , he tells himself. Of course .

Moving an unconscious Witcher turns out to be almost impossible. They end up having to roll him onto Jaskier’s blanket and dragging him along on that, as they quickly discover that lifting him is not an option. Finally, after what seems like hours, and with Jaskier dredging up knowledge of levers and pullies that he didn’t know he’d retained from his academy days, they get Geralt onto the horse.

Poor Pegasus shouldn’t have to carry the three of them, but there’s no time to be kind. Jaskier urges him as close to a gallop as the gelding can manage and aims Pegasus’s nose at the town, blinking as the rain stings his skin and eyes as it hammers down. He winces as the wind flays his skin from his flesh, crouching low to Pegasus’s neck and muttering all the while to Geralt that he’d better not dare fucking die.

The Wise Woman is waiting for them at her doorway when they arrive. She glares at them all in turn, snorts as if thoroughly unimpressed with what she sees.

“You’ll be the death of that horse, riding him like that,” is all she says by way of greeting. She turns on her heel and walks into the house without a backward glance.

Jaskier lets Ciri jump down from Pegasus first, then slips off and controls the floppy Witcher’s fall from the horse’s back, throwing one of Geralt’s arms over his shoulders and his arm around the Witcher’s waist, gritting his teeth against the complaints of his muscles as they bear the Wolf’s weight.

He feels no pain while dragging Geralt into the Wise Woman’s cottage. He feels nothing, in fact, except the iron-clad knowledge that he has to accomplish this task. Geralt must be brought from the horse to the door, or he’ll die. Geralt must be brought over the threshold and onto the beaten earth floor of the cottage, or he will die. Geralt must be laid on the scrubbed wooden kitchen table, or he will die. And so Jaskier does it, because there is no possible way he won’t.

Finally Geralt lies on the table, sweating and jerking and still breathing, thank the gods.

It’s then that the pain hits him. Jaskier grunts quietly as it strikes, wondering if it’s possible that he’s dislocated both shoulders and a knee over the course of a few hours. He’s willing to put his coin on the answer being yes.

It doesn’t matter, though. All that matters is Geralt. Geralt and…

Jaskier turns, searching. “Fiona?”

Ciri’s standing in the doorway, her eyes fixed on Geralt. She’s tensed as if unsure whether to run away or rush to where Geralt lies on the Wise Woman’s kitchen table. Her green eyes find Jaskier’s, and harden. She nods, and steps into the cottage.

The Wise Woman gives her an approving nod, then turns to Jaskier with her hand held out palm up. “Witchers are difficult. I’ll take double my usual payment.”

Jaskier pulls his coin purse from his belt, everything he earned in his few weeks with the Earl, and all he’d saved over the summer too. He presses it into her hand and closes her fingers over it.

“That’s triple. Do whatever you have to, dear lady. Just make sure he lives. Please.”

Her mouth turns down at the “dear lady”, and Jaskier gets the impression that only the satisfying weight of the purse in her hands stops her from turfing them straight back out into the storm again. He doesn’t care, just flits back to the table to fret over the prone Witcher that lies on it. He reaches out a shaking hand to brush some white strands of hair out of Geralt’s face, willing the White Wolf to grab his wrist and force his arm away. Come on, Geralt , Jaskier pleads internally. Tell me to fuck off and stop fussing. Tell me to go and die. Tell me anything .

The Wise Woman tucks the purse away into the dark recesses of her clothes and turns to the patient, elbowing Jaskier out of the way to allow herself better access. She lifts an eyelid, lets go a sound of discontent at the sight of Geralt’s pupil, blown and fixed. She listens a moment at his chest and grunts again. She holds a finger under the Witcher’s nose, feeling the quick weak flow of air in and out, tastes the staleness that’s coming from his lungs. Geralt’s still sweating, though he’s clammy to the touch.

Jaskier can feel the pulse in Geralt’s hand as he holds his sword-callused hand. The beat would be a little on the slow side for a human, which means that for a Witcher it’s pumping fit to burst.

Jaskier is at her side again, a fly that won’t be swatted. “Please, mistress, I beg you not to spare my feelings. Tell me the truth. What’s wrong with him?”

Jaskier watches impatiently as she blatantly looks him up and down only to find him wanting. He bites his tongue through the time it takes, knows what the outcome will be; not once has he been measured and found sufficient. This is both known and unimportant. How is Geralt ?

The Wise Woman finally folds her arms and speaks.

“He’s gone.”

“Gone!? I’m sorry, do my eyes deceive me or is he right there on your kitchen table ?!”

“That’s where his body is, yes. It’s his mind that’s gone wandering. You must have come across a Bwgan.”

“A what?” Jaskier is at his wits’ end, temper fraying like the hem of his doublet. Some part of his brain flicks a card from the deck of his memory from way back in his first year at Oxenfurt: Bwgan, pronounced boo-gan, is elder for scare or spirit .

“That’s what we call it. You might have a different name for the creature. It doesn’t call itself anything.”

“I’m sorry but could you perhaps start making sense?” Jaskier pinches the bridge of his nose, too frightened to watch his tongue.

She smirks at him. “A Bwgan is a soul that’s lost. It can’t remember who or what it was, but it knows that it’s not what it used to be. Not whole . And it wants to be whole again, oh yes.” She begins gathering herbs, pausing to spit in the cauldron before continuing. “They wander mostly, looking for someone to shelter inside of. It makes them feel safe, see? Taking over someone makes them feel like they are someone themselves. They stay in your head, happy as anything, living vicariously through your memories. Which means it’s not letting you be in the here and now. You sleep, while the Bwgan lives your past like a story, until you die of thirst, hunger or starvation.”

“How did it get in? How do we get it out ?”

The Wise Woman sighs. “They use a strong emotion, any strong emotion, as a gateway in, pounce while you’re distracted. You can’t get it out.”

Strong emotion? Jaskier’s eyes stray to Ciri, listening intently and worrying the hem of her cloak with her fingers. Of course, Geralt had just been reunited with his Destiny, that’s bound to inspire some strong emotions…

…Hang on.

“What do you mean, can’t get it out ?”

“Just what I say. It’s not flesh, there’s no substance to it. You may as well try and grab the smoke in his lungs and pull that out.”

Jaskier shakes his head, takes a few compulsive steps. “No. No, that can’t be right. There has to be something .”

“No,” the Wise Woman says too quickly.

Jaskier grabs her forearm. She looks pointedly at his fingers, then stares coldly at his face. But Jaskier has been glared at by both the Butcher of Blaviken and Yennefer of Vengerberg at their most fearsome and does not even flinch. He stares back. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She breaks his hold, goes back to crushing seed pods beneath the flat of her knife. She speaks to the growing mash of plant matter beneath her blade rather than to Jaskier.

“Someone could go in after him. Try to draw him out, try to tell him what’s happening so he can fight the Bwgan.”

“Will it work?” He demands.

She looks at him then. “Not once so far.”

Jaskier knows she’s telling the truth. Like the master bard he is, he doesn’t skip a beat. “I’ll do it.”

Ten minutes later, Jaskier is laid on the floor of the cottage in a circle of what he really hopes is the blood of an animal, as opposed to the blood of anything – or any one – else.

The Wise Woman daubs Jaskier in a pungent paste, making symbols on his skin with the brown-green gritty substance. Jaskier had recognised sage and mugwort, barrenwort and valerian from his observations of Geralt’s own potion making. The Wise Woman had added other, strange herbs that he doesn’t recognise that hung in dry bundles from the ceiling of her cottage, along with several slimy-looking things from the jars on the shelves over her workbench. Jaskier had decided not to enquire as to these ingredients.

She steps back and looks over him, huffs as if to say well it’s not what I’d hoped for but it’ll have to do . Jaskier is used to that look, too.

She turns to Ciri. “Pluck me a hair from the Witcher’s head. The longest one you can.”

Ciri hesitates. Geralt has been stripped and painted just like Jaskier, the Wise Woman’s runes criss-crossing the scars on Geralt’s skin as they snarl over his muscles.

“Come on, be brave. We haven’t got long.”

Ciri glares at her. “I’m not scared,” she lies. She darts forwards, pulls a few hairs from Geralt’s head, and retreats to hand them over to the Wise Woman, who sifts through them to find the longest one. With her other hand, she picks up a lit candle.

“I’ll bring the flame to the hair and let it burn. As long as the hair lasts, you’ll be safe in there. Once the hair is burned away, I’ll pull you out and it’s over for the Witcher. Do you understand?”

Jaskier nods.

“Fine.” She moves to bring the flame into contact with the bottom of the silver-white hair held between her index finger and thumb.

“Wait!” Jaskier calls. From where he lies on the floor he can just see Geralt’s form, pale and tortured and alone on the table. “Fiona. Sit with him? Hold his hand?”

Ciri’s eyes widen as she realises what he’s asking. Jaskier is sorry to put her in this position, but how can he not?

Jaskier never saw Geralt as the hulking mass of muscle and killer instinct that most people seem to see when they look at the Witcher. He doesn’t think that Ciri sees that either, but she hasn’t known Geralt long. Most people are taught to fear Witchers from birth, and Jaskier is sure that after Pavetta’s wedding feast Calanthe can’t have had anything good to say about Geralt’s kind. Of course she’s nervous.

Jaskier looks at Geralt again, tries to see him as Ciri must. All he sees is his friend. A friend who’s never bothered to look after himself the way he should, a friend who’s saved Jaskier’s life more times than either of them could count. And now his friend is so vulnerable, suffering in an unknown person’s house with strange sounds and smells all around him.

Jaskier knows about Geralt’s heightened senses, oh doesn’t he just. Geralt has more than once pulled him down from the stage and out of the tavern just before a brawl started because he could smell the change in the air that meant that someone had looked at someone else in the wrong way and now a fight was coming. He had heard Jaskier coming up on the road behind him from half a mile away, and ridden Roach just a little quicker to make it harder for Jaskier to catch up – but never so fast that Jaskier couldn’t catch up.

If Geralt’s going to come back, he needs something to come back to . Jaskier can’t leave his – urgh – circle of blood. Ciri’s familiar scent, the sound of her heart beating, the feel of her hand in his… it’ll help. Jaskier is sure of it.

“Please?” He asks softly.

Ciri fists her hands for a moment and nods once. She crosses the room to Geralt, careful not to look at him too much, and places her hands over one of his.

“Thank you,” Jaskier tells her, putting all his emotions into the words as he’s been trained to. Then he lies back. “I’m ready.”

“You’ll latch on to a memory of his. I don’t know what you’ll find, but be ready. Understand?”

“Yes.”

Her face inscrutable, the Wise Woman lowers the hair to the candle flame. Jaskier just sees the tip start to curl and fizzle. Then his eyes close, and the world jerks beneath him.

“Halt! Who goes there?” A voice shouts.

Jaskier opens his eyes.

Chapter Text

Jaskier doesn’t know what he’d been expecting, but this is not it. He pats himself down hastily and is relieved to find that he’s clothed in his usual travelling gear; unlaced doublet, boots, trousers, lute over his shoulder and dagger concealed on his belt. This is… good. Familiar. Soothing. Certainly better than turning up mostly naked and smeared with unguents, as he knows his real body is back in the cottage. But where is Geralt?

“Back, you beast! I’ll kill you and take your treasure!” A high-pitched voice cries.

Jaskier looks to his left and right, taking in the ramshackle barn he’s apparently landed in, but completely fails to spot the speaker. He lets his eyes drop downwards, and gasps.

Oh gods, his heart. Geralt is less than half the size he’d expected, the hair and eye colour all wrong, a deep luxurious brown rather than silver-white and yellow respectively. The expression Geralt is wearing is one Jaskier’s never seen before – it’s open, the chubby-cheeked face trusting even as he plays the valiant guard. Nevertheless, Jaskier would recognise his Witcher anywhere.

Geralt stares at Jaskier with uncertainty that he tries (unsuccessfully) to hide.

“Friend or foe?” The tiny Geralt demands.

Melitele have mercy, what a loaded question, Jaskier thinks to himself. He can’t help but laugh. The adorable baby-Geralt looks furious at the sound, which only makes Jaskier laugh more.

“I’m sorry, young sir! I’m just passing through, looking for a friend. But I seem to have come at, hah, the wrong time…”

“Geralt!” A voice calls from outside the barn.

Geralt spins around to face the door, Jaskier’s presence apparently forgotten. “Coming, Ma!”

Jaskier is about to call out to Geralt – after all, he’s here to speak to him, to rescue him – when the barn dissolves around him, splintered wooden stalls and straw dispersing into motes that dance through the air for a moment before coming together again to form a snow-covered courtyard.

Oh…kay . Jaskier forces himself to breathe. What the fuck is going on?

Jaskier looks up to see that he’s now standing in the shadow of a massive keep. The grey stone of the walls stretches up towards a sky of almost the same colour, high enough that Jaskier has to crane his head back to see where they end. The walls are covered in carvings of fish and other sea creatures, many of them too weather-worn to be identified. The courtyard is full of deafening activity, at least forty young lads sparring with each other while an older man with yellow eyes looks on.

Jaskier steps instinctively behind an outbuilding before anyone can spot him. He’s never been to Kaer Morhen, but if he’s in Geralt’s past then that’s what this place must be.

The uncomfortable scene transitions must be the Bwgan summoning different memories of Geralt’s to live through, Jaskier decides. He’s pleased that a small mystery has been solved. Now all that remains is: how the fuck does he get to Geralt and help him stop the Bwgan before his time limit runs out?

“Have you got any ideas?” He asks a training dummy that’s been stored in his hiding place between the shack and the wall of the courtyard. The mannequin makes no reply. “Yeah, thought not.”

Jaskier peeks his head around the corner of his hiding place and manages to find Geralt amongst the press of boys. His hair and eyes are still brown, highlighting a face that’s still almost unbearably cute and painfully innocent. Jaskier remembers with a sinking feeling that they won’t stay that way for long.

Geralt is losing, and badly, to a taller boy who’s raining down relentless blows with his training sword. As Jaskier watches, Geralt is forced to his knees and his wooden sword knocked from his hand. He raises his arms to protect his face, cowering on the floor.

Jaskier realises he’s never seen Geralt lose a fight before. He longs to step out from his hiding place and sweep the boy off the ground and into his arms, to protect him, and feels disgustingly impotent when he reminds himself that he can’t. He doesn’t know what would come from interfering with Geralt’s memories, but he knows it wouldn’t be anything good. Besides, Geralt has already made it very clear what he thinks of Jaskier’s previous attempts to meddle.

The boy fighting Geralt raises his sword over his head in both hands, ready to bring it down with all his strength on Geralt’s cowering form. Jaskier forgets about his resolution not to interfere, is about to jump from his secluded corner and throw himself between the lads when…

The blow is stopped by another boy’s sword. The lad, ginger and stocky, blocked the sword with a snake-fast move, protecting Geralt from the blow.

“STOP!” the old Witcher calls out. He strides across the courtyard to Geralt and his opponent, clapping Geralt’s sparring partner on the shoulder with one hand and pulling Geralt to his feet by the scruff of his neck with the other.

“Good job, Eskel,” He tells the boy who had been about to brain a defenceless Geralt in cold blood.

“Thanks, Master Vesemir,” Eskel grins.

Vesemir rounds on Geralt and the ginger boy who saved him. “Geralt. You gave up too easily. There’s lots of things that’ll want you dead, lad. You have to want to live more than they want to kill you, and make them know it. Understand?”

Geralt eyes the ground. “Yes, Master Vesemir.”

“And you,” Vesemir turns to Geralt’s saviour. “What the fuck do you think you were doing, Jedrik?”

“Helping Geralt, Master Vesemir. If we find a fellow Witcher in trouble out on the Path, shouldn’t we help them?” Jedrik stares up at Vesemir, defiant.

“You’ll never make it to the Path acting like that, boy,” Vesemir growls. “You left yourself wide open to attack when you performed your little rescue attempt. Eskel would have killed you both, rather than just Geralt, had this been real. Make sure you’re safe yourself, first, before saving anyone else. Go again!”

The last was spoken to the whole group. The other boys, who had been frozen and staring open-mouthed as Jedrik and Geralt received their reprimands, square up again and fill the courtyard once again with the clattering of sword-on-shield.

Eskel falls into a battle stance, crouching with sword raised. “Ready to go again?”

Jedrik picks up Geralt’s dropped sword and presses it to his hand. “He’s ready, teacher’s pet,” he spits at Eskel before turning back to Geralt. “I’ve got your back, Geralt.”

Geralt grins at him. “Thanks, Jedrik. I’ve got yours.”

The scene dissolves again. Jaskier has to stand up quickly as the wall he was leaning against rudely dematerialises, leaving him to support his own weight.

New scenery forms around him. He finds himself in a hall with straw-filled sacking tacked to the walls to form a rudimentary padding. Jaskier sees why when a boy that’s just become corporeal in front of his very eyes throw another lad ten feet with a well-aimed blast of Aard. Jaskier steps smartly behind an open chest that holds a ridiculous number of weapons, crouching so that its lid can obscure him from view.

“Good, Eskel!” The master calls from across the room.

The lad who was thrown gets up, standing as if trying to hide the fact that his shoulder is clearly in agonising pain. It must work, because the master seems not to notice. “Again!”

The boy with the injured shoulder turns, and Jaskier has to bite his lip to keep silent. It’s Geralt, still with his brown curly hair, but his eyes have changed from deep brown to a startling yellow. One of the twenty boys with now-matching eyes steps up beside him.

“Let’s switch partners. I’ll go with Eskel, and you can go with Telek.”

Eskel sighs exaggeratedly in the background, folding his arms and tapping his foot against the flagstones as if bored. Jaskier feels his eyes narrow.

Geralt shakes his head. “I’m fine, Jedrik.”

“Is that so?” Jedrik pokes Geralt’s shoulder, and is rewarded by a hiss as pain paints a picture across Geralt’s features. “Doesn’t seem like it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Geralt says through gritted teeth.

“Come on, Ger. Telek hasn’t been able to make a light breeze, let alone a full blast of Aard. Pair up with him, you need a break. I’ll go with Eskel for a bit.”

Geralt lets his shoulders drop, and gives Jedrik a cautious smile. “Thanks, Jed.”

Jedrik grins back. “No problem.”

The scene disperses again. Jaskier curses, looking around for cover. He finds it behind a tapestry that appears on the wall that wasn’t beside him a moment ago, but is now. He squeezes himself behind the brightly-coloured scene just as ten young wolves appear behind desks crowded with potion making kit, each with a cauldron set up in front of them. Geralt and his classmates are taller than last time, but they don’t have the usual gangliness that comes with a growth spurt. They are all thick with muscle, giving off an aura of barely-controlled power. Jaskier can make out a few scars already caressing their way over the young Geralt’s skin.

“I’m never going to get this,” Jedrik groans. Beside him, Geralt smiles.

“You made it perfectly last week. Just do what you did last time.”

“I was copying you last time,” Jedrik whines and rests his head on Geralt’s shoulders. Geralt slouches slightly to make himself more accessible as a pillow.

“Master Vesemir says we shouldn’t rely on others,” Geralt says without conviction.

“I know. Master Vesemir can drink a pint of Aracha venom.”

Geralt gasps, laughs. It’s not the suppressed huff that Jaskier’s used to, but a proper belly laugh. The Potion Master’s head snaps up, and Geralt hastily pretends to be busy chopping some root as Jedrik scoots away from where he’d been resting against Geralt.

Geralt scrapes his chopping into the cauldron, and grins as the mixture turns golden. He looks around surreptitiously, then ladles half of his potion into Jedrik’s cauldron.

“Thanks, Geralt,” Jedrik whispers.

“Always,” Geralt replies.

A hand shoots up at the back of the class. “Sir! Geralt and Jedrik are cheating!” Eskel says gleefully.

The potions laboratory disappears. Jaskier doesn’t have time to hide before the scene resolves itself, but he doesn’t need to. He’s surrounded by trees, a rocky outcrop before him that overlooks Kaer Morhen below.

A boy sits on the outcrop with his back to Jaskier. He is facing away, but he has silver-white hair that’s grown down to his collar. Jaskier’s whole body aches when he thinks of what Geralt must have gone through to cause the change in hair colour.

Jaskier hesitates. Would now be a good time to talk to Geralt? This is the first time Jaskier’s seen him alone. Maybe he can convince Geralt of the truth? Time must be running out, surely it’d be best to speak to Geralt immediately.

But the young Geralt in the barn, the one still living in blissful ignorance with his Ma, hadn’t recognised the bard that had spent the last fifteen years travelling with the Witcher. Does that mean that Geralt won’t recognise Jaskier until they reach the memories where they have already met? Jaskier isn’t convinced that the Geralt who’s known him for fifteen years would believe him. A Geralt that doesn’t know him from a bar of soap would be even less likely to put his faith in a bard in a brightly-coloured doublet.

Jaskier curses. Who knew that going on a rescue mission into the memories of your ex-very best friend in the whole wide world would be so bloody hard?

There’s movement behind him. Just in time, Jaskier throws himself behind a tree and out of sight.

Eskel emerges from the forest. He approaches Geralt carefully, as if he’s making his way towards a jittery animal. Geralt only continues to stare down at Kaer Morhen, not acknowledging the other Wolf even when he sits right beside him.

“Geralt…” Eskel begins.

“What do you want, Eskel?” Geralt interrupts. He picks up a stone from the ground beside him, palms it while staring at it consideringly for a moment. Then he twists his hand so that it falls over the cliff and watches it as it bounces down the sheer cliff face towards the Keep.

The question seems to throw Eskel, who looks down at his hands. His fingers twitch and almost form the sign for Axii, before falling limp again.

Geralt grunts. “I’d have knocked you out before you finished anyway.”

Eskel nods. “I know. The extra mutations. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Geralt says nothing.

“I’m sorry about Jed…”

“Don’t say it,” Geralt orders. Jaskier hears the threat of tears in Geralt’s voice.

He thinks of the change in Geralt’s physical appearance. He considers the steadily reducing numbers of trainee Witchers in each of Geralt’s memories, and the fact that this is the first time he’s seen Geralt without Jedrik since Geralt has been at the Keep. Cold rage fills him from boot to fingertip, and only iron-clad willpower stops Jaskier from marching down to Kaer Morhen and murdering each and every one of the Witchers and Mages who have done this to the little boy who was playing at being a knight in his mother’s stable.

Eskel’s mouth closes with a click, before opening again hesitantly.

“We’ll be heading out on the Path soon. I just wanted to say, if you ever need anything and I’m around. You could send word. We made it this far and didn’t die. I should probably try and make sure you don’t croak before your first winter out there.”

Geralt just fiddles with a leaf, staring down at his feet as they dangle over the thousand-foot drop to the Keep. Eventually, Eskel sighs and starts to leave.

“You can call me too. If you need to.” Geralt says just as Eskel reaches the treeline. Eskel leans against a tree for a moment, takes a deep breath.

“Thanks, Geralt.”

“Hmm.”

The scene changes again, throwing Jaskier off balance.

Jaskier’s not sure, but he thinks a lot of time must have passed. Geralt now looks pretty much as Jaskier knows him in the present – the future? The present? The semantics can be worked out later – minus a few scars.

It’s a grey day, with the kind of rain that seems to hang suspended in the air soaking you more thoroughly than any downpour ever could. They are standing in what appears to be a marketplace, but all the stalls are overturned and the wares smashed and trodden into the dirt. Worse than the smashed merchandise are the multiple bodies, spilling blood and viscera over the cobblestones. Jaskier loses himself in the gathering crowd.

Geralt stands in the centre of the carnage – Jaskier would have expected no less, after all. He’s without his armour, only in trousers and a shirt. He’s also holding his sword to the neck of an old man, which is… less expected.

“What, are you trying to get yourself killed by fighting without your sodding armour and then threatening a mage?” Jaskier asks him under his breath, shifting from foot to foot. He’s on edge; bards learn to read a crowd early in their career, and he doesn’t like what his senses are telling him about this one. It’s something about the way the villagers are holding perfectly everyday things like scythes and pitchforks as if they no longer consider them as useful farming tools, but weapons. This crowd is on the cusp of becoming an angry mob, and they have Geralt surrounded.

“Fuck,” Jaskier says to no one in particular.

“You’re a beast!” One prospective mob member cries.

“You endangered the girl!” Another shouts.

“Shit. Not good, very not good. Geralt…” Jaskier mutters. He looks around, for something that could help, before remembering that this is a memory and there’s nothing he can do. “Fuck.”

Jaskier doesn’t see who throws the first rock, but he sees it hit Geralt’s thigh. A rain of stones follows, and Jaskier loses his resolve.

“No! Fuck, stop! There’s been a mistake!” Jaskier begins elbowing his way through the crowd, trying to get to Geralt where he stands in a shrinking circle in the centre of the forest. It won’t be long before the mob members feel emboldened enough to do more than throw rocks, and Jaskier is not about to watch his friend suffer death by mob. “If you’d just listen to me, I’m sure I can explain! This is all just a misunderstanding…”

Geralt’s eyes look up just as Jaskier reaches the edge of the circle, and Jaskier could swear that the golden eyes meet his. Then there’s a sickening impact to the back of his head and a thunk that reverberates through his skull. Jaskier’s vision darkens as he feels himself sink to the wet ground. The last thing he sees before the unconsciousness closes over him is Geralt walking away from him and Blaviken market, never to return.

Chapter Text

Someone’s groaning. Jaskier wishes they would stop; his head hurts too much to suffer any noise.

It’s only when he swallows, and the sound stops, that he realises the noise was coming from him.

“Bollocks.”

He sits up, breathing through the nausea that the movement causes. When he feels like he can let go of the ground without falling off the world, he reaches up and tentatively feels the back of his head. There’s a lump there the size of half an egg, and his fingers come away tacky with blood. Fortunately, there’s no straw-coloured fluid that Shani once helpfully informed him is the fluid that your brain and spinal cord float in within your skull. That’s good, at least.

Except that he is apparently vulnerable to hurt within Geralt’s memories.

“Less good,” he announces to no one. If he can be hurt, then potentially he can also die here. He doesn’t know what Geralt would say about Jaskier dying inside his head, but he doesn’t want to find out. He’ll just have to be careful not to die. He’s managed it so far. How hard can it be to keep up a thirty-two year streak, after all?

Jaskier takes stock of the rest of himself. There are several cuts and scrapes on his arms and legs, but nothing serious. The memory of Blaviken must have dissolved around him before much more damage could be done, thank the gods…

Memory. Shit. Wherever he is, Geralt can’t be far away… what if he doesn’t know Jaskier yet? Or worse, mistakes him for a threat and attacks? Jaskier has to hide.

For the first time, Jaskier takes stock of his surroundings. He’s on a dirt road that he vaguely recognises, surrounded by grass that’s grown to waist height. He scrambles to his feet, disappearing into the foliage just before Geralt comes into view around the corner, riding Roach and accompanied by a familiar figure in a blue doublet and matching trousers, an elven lute slung over his shoulders.

Jaskier has a moment of pity for this young man, taller than he expects, with fewer wrinkles and darker hair. Poor sod doesn’t know what he’s in for, Jaskier reflects.

Gods, was I ever this young? Jaskier wonders. The child-Jaskier is following Geralt and chattering. Child-Jaskier… Jaskier can’t keep thinking of his past self like this, he realises, and so internally nicknames him CJ. CJ seems unbothered by Geralt’s lack of conversation and basic manners, talking away as they meander along the road at a frustratingly slow pace.

Come on lads, get a move on will you? Jaskier pleads internally. He’s having to crouch in the long grass to hide from the memory-versions of Geralt and CJ, who he now realises are leaving the Valley of Flowers, newly-freed by Filavandrel. Jaskier’s knees are not what they used to be and are making their complaints known as he squats in the undergrowth.

“That’s not how it happened,” says Geralt, Geralt reining Roach to a halt. “Where’s your newfound respect?”

“Respect doesn’t make history.” CJ replies with a smile before turning and continuing to wander down the road.

From his hiding place in the grass, Jaskier has to admit that CJ has a point. You could respect someone without liking them. Respect without love could too easily turn into fear and resentment. And so it would have been with the people of Posada, he knew. They would have respected Geralt for freeing them from the devil who was stealing their grain, of course… but even at this point in time, CJ is too well-acquainted with human nature to believe that they would stop there. After the respect would come the creeping resentment that Geralt, a hated Witcher, was able to do what they could not… the irony being, of course, that any of them could have gone to Dol Blathanna and spoken to the Sylvan and the elves. But they didn’t. Geralt did. The truth wouldn’t work.

With the benefit of hindsight, Jaskier knows that CJ’s hunch about what would work is right. Respect doesn’t make history… but a good song can. A song can slip into the memory banks, uninvited but at the party regardless and raiding the open bar. A song can take root in a mind before a kid is old enough to understand the words, becoming so integral to their childhood that its truth is never in doubt. It can sneak up on an old man, humming it while he repairs his broken shoes at the winter fireside and making him question, without even realising, the truth of what he thought he knew.

And what everyone knew is that Witchers are inhuman monsters with no emotions or morals. Or rather, that’s what they thought they knew. Jaskier watches CJ progress along the same train of thought that he remembers so well: now I know better than what “everyone knows”. And it’s always nice to share. Especially knowledge, one of the few things you can share without your stock of it depleting.

CJ gives his new lute, Filavandrel’s gift, an experimental strum. No need to tune; it’s perfect.
No, respect doesn’t make history. Songs make history. Songs of love, especially. By the time CJ is done composing, everyone from Nilfgaard to Poviss will have new truths, new history about Geralt of Rivia. It will be dropped neatly into their consciousness on the back of a tune so catchy that they won’t be able to resist it, this love of the Witcher. Jaskier has a moment of pride in his younger self.

Jaskier is pulled from his thoughts by the sounds of Geralt and Roach beginning to follow CJ along the path.

The realisation of what he’s seeing hits him like a Slyvan-projected iron ball: Geralt followed me . All these years, Jaskier had thought of himself as following Geralt. But here’s the proof from Geralt’s own memory: he could have ridden away from young Jaskier, left him alone on the road. But instead… he had followed.

Jaskier swallowed hard and kept his eyes on Geralt’s form as it followed CJ while the memory fades.

Jaskier blinks, and the world around him has changed once more. He curses under his breath, steadying himself as he acclimatises to his new surroundings. He really fucking hates the disconcerting way that reality is shifting, though of course this is not reality. Well, it is, in a way, he supposes. It’s the reality inside Geralt’s head.

The only time Jaskier has experienced something similar was in his first year at Oxenfurt university, when one of his fellow students had smuggled a small bag of mushrooms into their lodgings under his shirt and passed them around, giggling. Jaskier had enjoyed watching the colours and shapes in the air for a while before things had suddenly taken a turn for the worse. Horrors that only he could see began crawling through the walls and up through the floor, screeching and groaning. He’d had to lie on his bed with his eyes closed, gripping the sheets white-knuckled until the sensations died away.

That solution is unlikely to work this time.

He inhales once, twice, regulating his breathing as he learned to do in that first year of schooling. No Bard could afford to tail off, red-faced and breathless halfway through the second verse, after all.

Once he feels more sure of himself, he risks a look around. Another anonymous stretch of road hemmed in with greenery on either side. He knows that Geralt would know at a glance exactly where he was, reading the foliage and birdsong of this particular region like a signpost. To Jaskier, they are just so many leaves and twittering things. He sighs, shifts the comforting weight of his lute on his shoulder slightly, and listens. Geralt and Jaskier’s past self cannot be far away.

On cue, he hears a voice singing. It takes a beat for Jaskier to realise that the crooning he can hear is coming from his past self. He stands frozen for a moment, aghast. His voice sounds more high-pitched from the outside, his Redanian accent stronger. Like ordering a pie and finding it has no filling…

Jaskier stamps on that thought with a speed and accuracy that he has built up over the years. Not today, Satan. Or, Sylvan, as the case may be. He sets off in the direction of the sound.

Past Jaskier is singing as he packs up his rucksack for the road, repeating a phrase with slightly different wording until it pleases him before pausing in his work to scrawl down the lyric in his notebook, and then turning back to his bag and starting on the next line of song.

Geralt has already finished packing his bags and is strapping them to Roach’s saddle, his back to CJ. Geralt tenses suddenly, bringing his sword hissing from its sheath in a moment.

“Quiet, Bard,” he orders, scanning the treeline.

“Oh, stop your grousing, I’m nearly finished…” CJ sings. Jaskier, from his hidden place in the trees, feels his stomach drop to his boots. He remembers this morning now.

“Jaski…” Geralt is cut off before he can finish, a dart with colourful fletching seeming to bloom from his neck. He just has time to reach up and pull it out before collapsing to the floor.

CJ hasn’t noticed, the fool. Jaskier could literally kick himself.

“Geralt, have you seen my… Geralt?” CJ turns, looking for Geralt six feet higher than where he currently lies prone, conscious but paralysed.

“Oh, very mature, hiding from me now are we? Just because you didn’t get your way? That’s doesn’t really match your hulking, stoic aesthetic now does it? Geralt?”

Finally, CJ sees the Witcher in the grass. He staggers back as if the shock is a physical blow, arms wheeling, before rushing to Geralt’s side.

The countryside around Jaskier blurs, pitches and sways beneath him. He stumbles, grabbing the ancient elm tree next to him for support. What the… an earthquake isn’t one of the things Jaskier remembers from this morning!

Then he realises: this is how Geralt experienced it, the poison from the dart corrupting his senses and making him dizzy. Because Geralt’s world was spinning at the time, this is how he experiences the memory. Jaskier sits against the broad tree trunk, grabbing it behind him with both hands and idly wondering if an astrally-projected body can vomit. He hopes not; Geralt will not be impressed if Jaskier throws up inside his head. Luckily, CJ is unaffected.

Jaskier watches CJ as he kneels by Geralt, babbling and panicked. Idiot, Jaskier wants to shout, wondering how he was ever this stupid. Don’t worry about the Witcher, worry about what floored him…

It’s then that the woods erupt. Three men, bandanas tied around the bottom halves of their faces to hide their identities, sprint from the treeline towards CJ. Jaskier, despite knowing how this encounter ends, feels a cold sweat bead on his skin.

He watches CJ, who is frozen for a long beat. Then the young man reaches out and takes the sword from where it fell from Geralt’s grip, and stands.

CJ’s unfolding from kneeling to standing seems to take an age. Kneeling, he is a flustered bard, flapping and too panicked to do anything remotely useful. As he rises, Jaskier sees his younger self metamorphosise. The posturing, clownish persona that always settles on him around Geralt evaporates. The sword, which seems comically large in CJ’s hands, settles into his grip as he takes a wide-legged battle stance. CJ’s free hand slips behind him and unsheaths his own dagger, the one Jaskier can even now feel digging into him as it presses against the tree, from behind his back. With steel in both hands, CJ stills.

CJ exhales once, and the bandits are on him. Jaskier sees the first one go down after CJ delivers a snake-like strike to the chest, an arc of crimson blood only just beating the robber to the ground. The second one is more prepared, clashing blades with CJ twice before they are caught together, swords interlocked as they glare at each other over the steel… but this one hasn’t reckoned with the dagger in CJ’s other hand. CJ brings it up gracefully, slipping it between the highwayman’s ribs and in, piercing the heart. The man is dead before he hits the floor.

The third assailant is almost at Geralt. Jaskier’s heart is beating almost out of his chest as he sees the brigand raise his sword above the Witcher… but this man has just caught CJ’s eye. The young bard lets out a scream of rage and launches himself at the villain, who goes down headless.

Jaskier can finally breathe. The world is slowing in its lurching, gradually coming back into sharper focus. May the gods bless the Witcher’s healing capabilities; he’s already working the paralysing agent out of his system.

CJ leans down and tweaks a miraculously clean handkerchief out of the pockets of one of the assailants. “Excuse me, would you mind awfully if I borrowed this? Thank you,” he croons before wiping off his blades.

Geralt grunts and raises his head slightly. “Jaskier.”

CJ jumps. Immediately, the rigid poise and efficient movements are gone, replaced by exaggerated gestures and foppery.

“Oh, uh, Geralt… um… sorry.” CJ finishes cleaning the sword and steps swiftly over to Geralt, surrendering it to its owner. Geralt lifts a hand that only wavers slightly, and manages to grip the hilt on his second attempt.

“Jaskier.”

“Yes, Geralt?”

“Jaskier, what the fuck?”

“Ah, well… Geralt, I’m sorry. I should have been quiet when you said. I won’t do it again. Sorry.”

Geralt, leaning on his sword, has dragged himself into a sitting position.

“No, Jaskier. I mean how did you just do that?”

CJ blinks.

“How did I just clean the blood off your sword?”

Geralt grunts in annoyance. The poison is still affecting him, he’s struggling not to slur his words. “How did you just… kill those men?”

CJ laughs. “Well, I can look after myself you know. How do you think I survived before I met you, or cope when you’ve ridden off to Kaer Morhen for the winter?”

“But… how? You’re just a bard!”

CJ scoffs, hurt. “Just a bard? Excuse me, just a bard? I happen to be the bard that’s changing your whole reputation, slowly but surely. We can go for weeks now without someone calling you the bloody Butcher of Blaviken, have you noticed? But do I get any thanks? Oh no, no no no, of course not. Instead it’s” CJ’s voice drops several octaves in a raspy impression of Geralt’s voice, “just a bard.”

Geralt growls a warning. CJ sighs.

“Alright. I am a Viscount, you know. Or at least, I was raised as one. Which means I got the Noble upbringing, the whole works, whether I wanted to or not. That included daily sword training.” CJ shivers theatrically. “I can still hear my tutor screaming at me in my nightmares.”

Geralt is looking at CJ and very carefully showing no emotion at all. Jaskier, from the trees, can tell that it’s the no-facial-expression that Geralt uses when he’s trying to hide his surprise.

“If you can fight,” Geralt’s voice is menacingly low, “then why do you always just stand around when you’re in trouble and make me come to your rescue?”

CJ smiles then. “Well, Geralt… I know you like to feel useful. And besides, these hands are for art, they aren’t weapons. Do you know what fighting does to my lute capabilities? I won’t be able to play for hours.”

Geralt grunts again, annoyance turning his mouth down at the corner. He is still, however, unable to move. Jaskier knows this to be the case, as otherwise CJ would be nursing a newly-punched arm by now.

CJ turns, surveying what’s left of the attempted robbers. “I reckon if we bring this lot to the next town, we’ll probably get a reward. Judging by the size of their coin purses, we aren’t the only ones these gentlemen have decided to visit. Just when I was starting to feel special, turns out we’re not unique in the slightest. Oh well…”

“Jaskier. Answer the question. Why don’t you fight?” Geralt is up on one knee now, testing his strength to see if he can stand.

CJ sighs. Jaskier does too, in sympathy. For all that he uses words like they cost money, Geralt can be like a dog with a bone when he wants to know something.

“I hate it, Geralt. No offence, I know it’s your bread and butter, but I hate it. You were taught to fight to protect people. I was taught to fight to keep me and my family on the top of the pile by making sure everyone else stayed below us, neck-deep in shit so that we didn’t have to get our shoes dirty.” CJ looks down at his worn boots, filthy from the road. “I’d rather reason with people, talk them around, than use force.”

There’s a moment of quiet, then CJ looks back up at Geralt, bright once more.

“Still, sometimes there’s nothing for it. Faint heart never won fair maiden! Or fair… Witcher. Anyway. Can you walk?”

“I’m fine,” Geralt says, though from the way the ground is still making lazy circles Jaskier would have to disagree. Geralt manages to mount Roach on the first attempt, however. Jaskier sees Geralt’s face as he looks at CJ, who has his back turned. Could Jaskier be mistaken or was that… a smile? Could Geralt have looked impressed just now?

CJ breaks the spell by speaking. “Well then. Onwards!”

They set off, dragging three bodies and purses behind them to deliver to the next town’s magistrate. Geralt smiles at CJ’s back, and the look is almost… fond?

Jaskier doesn’t have the strength to stand up from where he sits against the tree.

“What the fuck just happened?”

Chapter Text

The creature snarls. It has a mouth snarl with, now, and the relief is almost enough to wash away the annoyance of the complication that’s arisen.

Almost.

It hadn’t been worried when the bard had somehow appeared in the memories. What could Jaskier do, anyway? Nothing. The creature could feel its hold on the new vessel growing stronger with each moment. It had done a cursory sweep of the shelter’s memories of the bard, and found nothing to concern itself with. Jaskier is a fop, his decision to enter the memories just another in a long line of decisions apparently stemming from a complete lack of self-preservation instinct. The creature had been confident that Jaskier wouldn’t pose any threat.

But then in the course of its bacchanal, the gorging on memories that it was allowing itself, it had come across the memory of Jaskier killing the bandits in the woods. The vessel had experienced a warm swelling in its abdomen as it regarded Jaskier, pleasant surprise mixed with shame for underestimating the bard. The creature had savoured it like all the other emotions, basking as the sensations somehow became both a filling to soothe the howling void within itself, and a casing to keep it from dispersing into nothingness.

Below the glorious sensations, though, was unease. The bard may be more of an issue than it had originally thought…

It shakes its head, partly to dispel the worry and partly because it can, now that it has a head. The bard won’t be an issue. From what the creature has seen, even if Jaskier can wield a blade, he’s still flighty and inconsistent. He’ll soon get bored and leave, and then the creature can continue its feast, remain safe and sheltered within the Witcher with so many delicious memories.

This time, Jaskier knows when they are before the memory is done manifesting. He’s been half-expecting this one.

Geralt is just finishing removing the head of a Vypper, still knee-deep in the swamp. Jaskier moves swiftly downwind and hides behind a tree, trying to quiet his breathing. Jaskier can tell from the eerie way Geralt’s skin seems to glow purest white and how his eyes are coal, a nightmare parody of a child’s snowman, that the Witcher has taken potions to help with this kill. That must be the reason why Jaskier can see so well; he’s seeing the memory as Geralt saw it. The woods are as easy to see in as if this was happening in the early dawn light and not the darkest part of the night.

The Vypper’s head finally parts company with its body with a squelching noise that sets Jaskier’s teeth on edge. Geralt wipes down his sword, picks up the head and wades through the turgid waters to step onto the only marginally more solid land.

Jaskier follows Geralt the short distance to the camp. The Witcher quickly puts the head into a burlap sack, taking a long band of leather and wrapping it around the bag’s neck several times to seal off the Vypper.

CJ is snuggled down in his bedroll beside the fire. As Jaskier watches, CJ snuffles in his sleep and turns over, mumbling something sleep-incomprehensible. Geralt, as usual, is moving silently around the camp so there seems to be little chance of him waking…

Roach, startled by something in the forest, whinnies loudly. Geralt crosses the camp to her more quickly than any human would be able to, stroking her neck and soothing. But it’s too late; CJ is stirring. Geralt’s shoulders tighten, then drop in resignation.

Jaskier sees the scruffy form of CJ sit up in the camp. He looks around, grabs a log and throws it onto the fire that had burned down, prodding it with a stick to tease the flames back to life. Jaskier throws up a hand to protect his eyes from the flare, hears the slightly-stronger-than-normal exhale from Geralt, sees him close his eyes against the mild light. It’s too bright for eyes made painfully sensitive by Cat.

“Geralt?” CJ calls. Geralt tenses again as Jaskier is forced to cover his own ears against the noise. Of course, a normally spoken word is too loud for a Witcher who has taken his enhancing potions. CJ is practically bellowing in his ear. But then, he doesn’t know not to. Jaskier stifles a groan at the booming in his head.

“Geralt?!” CJ calls again, human eyes unable to pick out Geralt’s form outside the firelight.

“Hmm,” Geralt answers. Roach is settled now, but he isn’t approaching the fire to dry off and warm up, preferring to keep his back to the warmth… and CJ.

“Geralt, have you gone somewh… hey! What’s in that sack? Have you gone and killed the monster already?”

“Hmm.”

CJ splutters. “Geralt!? What did you do that for?! Why didn’t you wake me? What’s the point in me travelling with you if you don’t let me see the monsters you kill? How am I supposed to make you coin and reputation without material for my songs?”

The words are hitting Geralt’s poor ears like hammers on a gong. Jaskier knows because they are doing the same to him, narrowing his world to the pain in his eardrums. But the White Wolf says nothing. Instead, the Witcher starts to methodically remove his armour.

CJ is growing enraged. He wriggles free of his blankets and stalks around the fire towards Geralt.

“You won’t even look at me? At least tell me about the fight, give me something to work with here Geralt…”

CJ’s hand reaches towards the burlap sack, but is forced to stop short when Geralt’s fingers close around his wrist.

“Oh, what, I can’t even see the beast once it’s dead?” CJ demands bitterly. He uses his other hand to try and prise Geralt’s fingers off and, though Geralt could keep his hold if he wanted, the White Wolf lets go.

“No. There might still be some venom in the head. You’ll die if you come into contact with it.”

“Oh.” CJ pauses, stymied. But not for long. “I would have been plenty far away from the venom watching from the treeline somewhere as you killed this thing, you wouldn’t have even noticed me. I’d have been like a leaf on a branch, or a particularly handsome tree trunk…”

Geralt has managed to keep his head turned away from CJ while removing his armour and cleaning away the swamp filth. Now he sets it by the fire to dry and stands, facing the flames and away from CJ though the light must be both blinding and agonising.

Jaskier, from the edge of the camp, feels his heart clench in sympathy. Stupid fucking Witcher.

“Geralt, I’m serious. If you don’t tell me when you’re doing things like this, how am I supposed to help?”

Geralt snorts. “How can you help me, bard?” He spits the final word like an insult.

CJ’s eyebrows shoot up, fists planting themselves on his hips. “Oh, I’m no help at all then am I? Haven’t you noticed that since I’ve been travelling with you, we haven’t once been chased out of a town immediately after the contract? That the number of stonings you get to experience has drastically reduced? What’s wrong, are you missing the feeling of solid rock against your equally hard skull? If you don’t want me here, Geralt, then that’s fine. I’ll go.”

Geralt finally turns to CJ, whirling around as if he can barely contain the rage coiled in his muscles.

“Then go!” The Witcher roars. His eyes, black and large from Cat, reflect CJ’s face back at himself. His skin, papery and pale even in the warm light of the fire, seems to exude a chill. He looms over CJ, the image of what everyone thinks Witchers are: monstrous. Terrifying.

But Jaskier knows that stance. Geralt’s not angry; he’s afraid.

CJ takes in Geralt’s appearance, from his air of an unsprung trap to his potion-altered face. The young bard’s brow creases as if he’s trying to solve a faintly difficult equation in his head. Then he raises his hand to gesture at Geralt’s face.

“Geralt… is this why you wouldn’t look at me? Is this why you didn’t want me to see the fight tonight?” CJ’s voice is soft now.

Geralt is taken aback for a moment, but rallies.

“What? I… no. Just fuck off, bard. You said you were leaving, so leave.”

“Mmmm, nope. Don’t think I will.” He steps forward and reaches out, removing a strand of some unnameable substance from Geralt’s hair. “I’ve heard things about Witcher potions. They help you fight, but they take a toll. Is that right?”

Geralt says nothing, staring at CJ with more mistrust than hostility, more fear than mistrust.

“I’ll take that as a yes, Geralt. Listen, you… sit down, for a minute, okay? I’ll go and get some water from the stream we passed. You can wash what appears to be most of the Vypper’s insides off yourself and I’ll brew some tea. It might soothe away some of the potion’s after effects, you never know.”

Geralt lets himself be guided to a seat by the gentle pressure of CJ’s hand on his shoulder, far enough away from the light to be comfortable to his over-sensitive eyes. CJ grabs the leather cauldron from his pack and heads away from the circle of firelight to fill it, but pauses just as he reaches the limit of the firelight.

“None of us like all the faces we’re made to present to the world, Geralt. But the people who try, the people who matter… they won’t be fooled by the mask. They’ll know who’s beneath it, and that it’s who’s beneath it that counts.” He starts walking again.

As CJ disappears into the trees, Jaskier watches Geralt follow the young bard’s progress away into the woods. It’s been a year since Jaskier was with Geralt, his powers of reading the Witcher’s lack of facial expression may be rusty but he thinks that Geralt seems… glad?

Jaskier doesn’t have time to muse on Geralt’s expression any further before the scene disperses again.

Between memories, the creature pauses. The last memory, while a delightful feast of fear and guilt and doubt and relief, has done nothing to improve the creature’s worry. Maybe Jaskier won’t leave on his own after all. Maybe he will need… persuasion.

Well. That’s fine.

Jaskier blinks and stares around. To his relief, he spots Geralt – and alone. He doesn’t know how much of the hair is left unburned, how much time he has left, but it can’t be much. He has no time to waste.

“Geralt! Thank the Gods!” Jaskier hurries to the Witcher, holding the strap of his lute taut to stop the instrument banging against his back with each step. This is the first time Jaskier has seen him alone post-Posada, the first time Geralt will know who Jaskier is but without CJ in the way. Jaskier had almost begun to have sympathy with all the times the Wolf had complained at not being able to shake the bard off.

Geralt turns, narrows his eyes.

“Jaskier. What are you doing? You don’t belong here.”

“Look, I know what you’re going to stay, but… come back! We don’t have time to fuck around!”

“You should not be here. This is not correct.”

Jaskier snorts. “You can say that again. Listen, Geralt…”

“Go away, Jaskier.” Geralt’s tone is emotionless. He turns back to Roach.

“Fine, I will, but only once you’ve heard…”

“If you won’t leave by choice, you’ll be made to leave.”

“Geralt Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde, will you just listen…”

“No!” Geralt turns and flings out an arm, as if to cast Aard. Jaskier swears, ducks. But instead of the expected rush of displaced air and blue light, it’s something dark and woven that wooshes over Jaskier’s head. Too late, Jaskier notices the tell-tale mist that means they are shifting to a new memory.

Before he has time to react, Jaskier hears the now-familiar tones of CJ singing at the top of his voice. From the volume, he is within a few tens of feet.

“’Cos everyone knows that this bard
Loves ladies from Nilfgaard…”

“Shit!” Jaskier hisses. Still bent double, he hustles himself behind a tree and out of sight of CJ, recently rejected by the Countess de Stael and coming up on them fast.

“‘Cos Nilfgaard can kiss my… Geralt!”

Jaskier knows when they are now, oh doesn’t he just. He doesn’t need to look around to see the brown surface of the lake that conceals an Amphora with a seal decorated with a broken cross and a nine-pointed star. If there were a sign post that read “Welcome to Rinde”, it would be completely superfluous. Jaskier knows as soon as he hears the song. The song that he hasn’t sung since this day.

Panic rises up inside Jaskier and drowns out the conversation between CJ and Geralt, who is calmly throwing the fishing net that almost ended up in Jaskier’s face into the lake, over and over. Jaskier’s hands fly defensively to his throat, though he knows they would do no good. He can’t relive this moment, he can’t…

“…unless somebody fancies sharing a fish with an old friend?” CJ hints.

Past Geralt gathers his fishing net and moves away. Jaskier edges around the trunk of the tree to keep out of sight. He is fighting for breath, difficult when he has to remain silent. Logically he knows that he can breathe, of course he can breathe. But terror seems to have grasped his lungs, simultaneously crushing them and pulling them asunder.

“Oh, are we not using ‘friend’? Yeah, sure, let’s just give it another decade!” CJ calls after Geralt as the Witcher walks away, not quite hiding the venom in his voice.

Jaskier loses track of the conversation again, but intentionally this time. He starts singing the words to Her Sweet Kiss in his head to distract himself, the familiar tempo and rhyme scheme calming him slightly. When he runs out of verses, he makes up some more. They aren’t very good, but under these circumstances he’s just pleased that he was able to think of any words at all. The forest around him darkens and Jaskier wonders if he’s about to faint, only to realise that the darkness is not brought on by his agitated state, but the Djinn. It’s loose.

“I just want some fucking peace!” Geralt’s rough voice breaks through Jaskier’s mental armour.

Fuck fuck fuck… CJ exhales with a force that sounds like it was punched out of him. Jaskier hears the chokes and gasps that are coming from his own throat not ten feet away. Jaskier’s heart is beating so hard that it rocks his torso slightly. The beat is disconcertingly fast and irregular. His breath still won’t come.

“Geralt!” CJ croaks.

Jaskier closes his eyes, but he can’t shut out the sounds any longer. All he can hear is CJ’s frantic failed attempts to inhale, his coughs as blood flows from his mouth.

It will be okay, Jaskier reassures himself. Geralt will banish the Djinn, he’ll use Aard and then they’ll make it to Rinde and to Yennefer and then it’ll be okay…

But nothing happens. CJ’s choking goes on and on, and Geralt hasn’t used the Sign. The moment stretches into an aeon, an eternity. Jaskier will be caught here, with the agonising tendrils of the Djinn’s magic invading and infecting his throat forever and it won’t end even if he dies…

Jaskier forces his eyes open, and sees Geralt stood in front of him, staring at him intently.

“Geralt…” Jaskier pleads.

“You were told that you don’t belong here.”

Jaskier can only wheeze.

“He belongs here,” Geralt gestures to CJ, collapsed at the base of a tree and clawing at a throat that won’t let enough air into his lungs. “That’s the familiar Jaskier. Pathetic, weak, needing to be rescued. A burden. He’s correct. He can stay. You’re not. You must go!”

The shock coupled with the overwhelming panic causes Jaskier to bend double then sink to the floor. He and CJ are now a duet of tortured breath.

From the forest floor, Jaskier looks up at Geralt who gazes back dispassionately. The edges of Jaskier’s vision start to cloud in a dense brown fog that creeps in to the centre of his vision. He’s going to pass out.

No.

Jaskier can see Roach in the distance. He concentrates on her front left hoof. She lifts it, takes a step forward in search of some tasty leaf or tuft of grass. She is not frozen in place, she is not acting strange. She is Roach, as she has always been. It’s comforting. Jaskier concentrates and, with all the willpower built over more than a decade of professional troubadour life, he opens his throat and breathes.

His vision clears after a few breaths. After a few more, he can sit up. With each moment, his body tells him that he cannot breathe. With each moment, he overrules himself. There is not much that Jaskier has control over, but he does have control over his breathing and his voice, godsdamnit. No Djinn or Bwgan is going to take that from him.

Jaskier reaches out a shaky hand and steadies himself. He stands.

Geralt is frowning at him. As Jaskier stares at him, something clicks into place. The suspicion that had been lurking in the back of his mind finally solidifies into certainty.

“You’re not Geralt.”

Geralt’s eyebrows raise.

“What?”

“You’re not. You’re not Geralt.”

The Witcher snorts. “Don’t be an idiot”

“No, you’re not. I know Geralt. You brought us here, but I know that he wouldn’t come to this memory if he had any choice; the man’s not one for reminiscing at the best of times, let alone this moment. And if I was choking, if anyone keeled over, Geralt wouldn’t just stand there. He’d help them. He can’t help himself, he wouldn’t be able to ignore it.”

Geralt looks almost disconcerted. He takes a threatening step forward, but Jaskier has never been frightened of Geralt and he’s not about to start now.

“You aren’t Geralt. You’re just living through his memories. I know what you are. And that must be hard for you to hear, because. Because you don’t know what you are yourself. Which is why you’ve taken refuge in my Witcher. You’re living through his memories, but you aren’t a good enough Wolf to fool me.”

The not-Geralt sneers. “You think so? You were fooled up to now.”

A blade of guilt twists in Jaskier’s gut. “That’s true. But I’m not fooled any more. So, get out. Go and lose yourself in the abyss. You can’t have this head.”

Not-Geralt huffs a laugh. “You’ll be the one to leave. You almost left just now, all it took was a peek…” the Bwgan points to CJ, still choking at the foot of a tree. “Go before you see something worse. Go, before the delay you're causing means that this laughable specimen expires on the floor. He won’t be missed.”

The sight of CJ on the floor, of himself drowning in blood and suffocating on his own swollen larynx, almost sends Jaskier spiralling again. He concentrates on his breath for a moment, blessing his old Oxenfurt tutors who had insisted on drilling his class in breathing until they were dizzy. The pause gives him time to think.

“I don’t think…”

Not-Geralt snorts again. “Obviously.”

Jaskier shoots him a look of pure venom. “I said, I don’t think you can.”

“What?”

“I don’t think you can let him expire. You can’t… you can’t imagine. You can’t think. You can’t change things, change the memory. This is Geralt’s past, and you’re living through it like a tick riding on a sheep. You can’t steer; you, my disgusting arachnoid friend, have to go where the sheep wills.”

Not-Geralt looks discomfited for the first time.

Jaskier grins. “I’m right, aren’t I? While you’re in Geralt, you are Geralt, to an extent. So you will save that man over there, because you have no choice. You can’t fight that.”

Not-Geralt is fuming. Jaskier hasn’t often seen the look he’s getting directed at himself, except in certain near-death moments which may or may not have been caused by Jaskier ignoring the Witcher’s direct instructions. But Jaskier refuses to blanch, will not back away.

“I’m right. Off you go. Save him.”

Not-Geralt looms over the bard. The Djinn-caused darkness of the forest seems to grow noticeably more dim around the not-Geralt where he hovers imposingly above Jaskier’s defenceless form.

“You’re right. Maybe what’s done can’t be changed. But maybe it doesn’t have to. There are plenty of times here that you can be shown which prove how much you don’t belong. Will you sit through them, O Bard, O Useless One? You'll see who gets tired and leaves first.”

Jaskier raises his chin and smiles slightly, giving the appearance of unconcerned bravado. In truth, his bowels have turned to water at the words, spoken with such derision. He only hopes that the not-Geralt hasn’t absorbed the Witcher’s knowledge enough to be able to read the fear beneath the mask.

The Bwgan snarls and turns on his heels. He casts Aard at the Djinn, sending it away across the lake’s surface like a black gauze scarf caught in a gale. It hauls up the flailing CJ by his collar and forces him none too gently onto Roach. They set off for Rinde as fast as Roach can gallop, with CJ barely able to hold on to the saddle and prevent himself from falling.

The forest begins to melt away. Jaskier braces himself as best he can for what might come next. Whatever it is, he’ll cope.

Chapter Text

The Bwgan stretches its arms appreciatively. Strength hums through them like a chord resonating through the still air of a temple. After so long being as insubstantial as mist, power was a welcome change. To have shape; to have a body as protective armour, a shield between itself and the cold hard universe… the Bwgan accessed a word from the mind that was providing it shelter: safety.

Unfortunately, the word came with an association; the bard. Its two syllables were drenched in unmistakable Jaskier-ness, smelling of lute strings and silk.

The bard is still stumbling around the memoryscape. The creature senses him as he blunders about, a toothache that worries at its core.

Time to get rid of him once and for all. And a juicy memory as a treat for itself, to boot.

The Bwgan summons the next remembrance. Its eager anticipation caused the scene to waver slightly; for a moment the creature is Child-Geralt again, on the eve of Belleteyn and almost frantic with excitement. Visenna has made Chrusciki and allows her son to take one, still hot from the fire, and munch on it as powdered sugar makes his face and hands sticky. It is joy, and trust, and the creature feels his mouth stretch wide as the creature grins up at Visenna with its stolen mouth.

But the creature has already sampled this memory, tasted its delights. In time it may circle back around to savour the notes it had missed at first experience, but now it is time for something new…

The scene flickers again, solidifies. The Bwgan is naked in the house of the Mayor of Rinde, heat from the steaming bath seeping into its muscles and convincing them to relax. Yennefer rises from where she has been lounging like a cat in the sun and undoes her robe.

From the corner of its eye, the Bwgan sees a panicked bard look furtively around and finally step behind the only convenient thing with which he can conceal himself: a full-length mirror.

“Turn around.” Yenn orders.

The Bwgan turns, eyeing the mirror that Jaskier is hiding behind. Is the bard planning to leap out, to attack? Or will he just watch, like he has previously?

The creature shifts its focus to look at Yenn’s reflection in the mirror, rather than the mirror itself, just in time to see her gesture. The mirror moves so that she is no longer visible in its glass. There’s a muffled curse from the concealed Jaskier, and a flash of green silk as he shifts to travel with the mirror and remain concealed.

The creature feels the corners of its mouth tug upwards, and a feeling it has to search its shield’s mind for: fondness. Just as swiftly, practiced habit forces its mouth back to a flat line.

“That’s cheating,” the creature's mouth says on cue.

“Nobody smart plays fair.” Yenn counters before slipping into the bath behind the Bwgan.

Jaskier clutches his lute to his chest behind the mirror, breathing only shallowly in an attempt to make less noise. The Bwgan must know that he’s here, though Yenn doesn’t seem to. If it were the real Yennefer, of course, she’d have picked up on him instantly in some magical way or other and Jaskier would be hanging from the ceiling by his toes by now. This is Geralt’s first memory of Yenn, though, so he probably didn’t know enough about her by this point to be able to predict what she’d do at the appearance of an uninvited bard in her bathroom.

Jaskier feels guilty for eavesdropping on such a private moment, but he can’t leave without drawing attention to himself. So he waits. Geralt and Yenn are talking, sparring, about scars and childhood and Geralt’s poor conversational ability. Jaskier has always liked Yennefer, in a terrified sort of way, and finds himself warming to her all the more during this conversation. Anyone who can see through Geralt and hold him to account the way she does is okay in Jaskier’s books.

After a while, Geralt asks what Yennefer’s fee for healing CJ’s Djinn-induced injury will cost him. Yenn half smiles, answering Geralt over her shoulder.

“Fortunately for you, I’ve determined your company and conversation payment enough.” She says.

The Wolf turns to stare at her, incredulous, before launching himself from the bath as if scalded.

Jaskier watches Geralt storm from the room, trying to read the Witcher as his muscled bulk flashes past. Geralt is normally extremely reluctant to leave a good bath, especially when the warm water is paired with good company. Why did Geralt practically sprint away?

Oh.

This thing, this phantom… it’s not Geralt, Jaskier knows. He has seen the proof with his own eyes. But Jaskier cannot stop his heart going out to Geralt, attempting to tug the rest of Jaskier along as it does so. But then, who could refuse their heart to someone who ran away from such a bargain because they were convinced that their company and conversation were worthless?

The Bwgan scoops up the clothing that Yenn had provided, allowing its dextrous fingers to dress him in quick, agile movements that could almost be called hasty. The speed is caused by a worry so strong that it makes the Bwgan’s borrowed fingers tingle as it relishes the feeling. Geralt had been rushing to get to the bard. Yennefer follows at a more leisurely pace, having first dried and donned her robe again.

The creature is aware of Jaskier, sneaking up behind Yenn, loitering close enough to hear. Let him.

“I said some things to him,” the Bwgan’s mouth says. “He’s a…”

“A friend?” Yenn supplies.

The Bwgan turns. “I’d like it not to be the last thing he remembers.”

The creature means to pause the memory here, have Yenn halt in place so it can talk to Jaskier and then pick up where it left off after dealing with the bard. But the memory-Yenn refuses to freeze. Instead, she snorts lightly and stalks away. The Bwgan rides the swell of admiration that rises in its chest, savouring it for several long moments. It’s wonderful; this vessel feels so much and so deeply, and all the Bwgan has to do is let it. The emotions that the sorceress evokes are as uncontrollable as she is herself.

“Bard,” it calls, when it’s done appreciating the sentiments.

Jaskier edges into sight carefully after Yennefer is gone. His eyes flicker between the prone figure on the bed and the Bwgan standing over it.

“Oh, will you look at that? I’m lying there at death’s door and they couldn’t even change me out of the blood-soaked shirt. And I’m lying down in my silk breeches! They’ll be wrinkled beyond hope, you know,” Jaskier walks over to himself and tousles his younger self’s hair, combs through it with his fingers until it falls in a more attractive way. “There. Much better. If I’m going to lie there fighting against going to that good night, at least I can look good doing it…”

The Bwgan registers mild exasperation, dwarfed by that irrepressible sense of fondness. It leans into the sensation, drinking it. Oh, it’s perfect. And the bard wants to take this away from it, to thrust the Bwgan back out into the featureless grey howling void. No.

“Did you hear? He refused to admit he’s your friend. Because he’s not.”

“Hmm? Oh, yes. Well, he always says that. Can’t take him anywhere.”

The creature steps forward so it is next to the bard, looking down on the memory-Jaskier. The Jaskier that is vertical moves automatically as if to lean his head on the Bwgan’s shoulder, only to jerk himself away at the last moment as if catching himself from falling off a precipice.

“Do you know what the Witcher’s feelings during this memory are, bard?”

Jaskier turns to look at the Bwgan warily.

“No. As you can see, I was asleep at the time. I’m not generally able to read a room while actually unconscious. I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

A snort looses itself from the Bwgan’s nose.

“I’ll tell you.” It looks down at the supine form on the bed. “The Witcher, standing here looking down at you after almost killing you… he felt frustration. And anger. And hatred.”

The creature is able to raid Geralt’s knowledge at will, and so has a large bank of information about the Bard’s moods and how to read them. But even without that knowledge, it would have easily registered the pain in Jaskier’s eyes, the involuntary step back and the quiet, hurt noise that tore from his throat.

Regret roils in the shelter’s stomach and the creature breathes into it, encourages it like someone feeding twigs to a reluctant campfire, coaxing it to a strong blaze. And it is strong, this sensation. The Bwgan exists. There is nothing sweeter.

Of course, frustration, anger and hatred… these are not static emotions. They require action, a direction. Something to be frustrated by, be angry at, some thing to hate. The creature doesn’t say that what is frustrating, angering and hated by Geralt is Geralt himself, for putting Jaskier in danger. The Bard does not need to know.

Jaskier also doesn’t need to know that when the Wolf had cried “I just want some peace!”, the bard’s silence was not what Geralt had in mind. Jaskier did not know how right he had been when he had suggested that the Child Surprise could be the cause of the Witcher’s sleeplessness. And when Geralt had shouted for peace, what he had meant was respite from the constant guilt that gnawed at him, tortured him for thoughtlessly and callously binding an innocent child to the likes of him.

The wish had been granted, and Geralt had no one to blame but himself. After all, every Witcher knew that Djinns always give you what you ask for, but never what you want.

Geralt had been bereft, guilt-stricken almost to the point of paralysis in that dungeon when he had realised how his wish had been interpreted. Oh, it had been delectable, the Bwgan had feasted on the ferocity of the feeling that was almost strong enough to crush the creature even as it nourished it.

The Bwgan turns its gaze back to Jaskier, waiting for him to finally see, to understand that he should go. He should leave, and then the Bwgan can rest. Can have sanctuary. It’s too cruel that the bard wants to push it out to the swirling nothing where it cannot even scream, cannot even die. It can’t; it won’t. It will just have to make sure that it forces Jaskier to go.

Jaskier looks at his Witcher’s face, the face he wants to reach out and soothe the lines from even after what he just heard.

And it must be the truth. Jaskier knows it must. He’s said it himself: the Bwgan has no imagination, cannot think for itself. It can only mimic and repeat. If it says that frustration, anger and hatred are what Geralt felt when he looked down at CJ as he lay in a healing sleep, then those things are what the White Wolf felt.

It should not have been a surprise. It wasn’t a surprise. But it was painful. It was splinter, lodged so long in the flesh that it lay dormant and forgotten, suddenly jostled and pushing deeper. Jaskier gasped, rubbed the back of his left hand with his right as if rubbing away a sting.

The not-Geralt was watching him eagerly. It had listed the Witcher’s emotions like a pompous boor at a party, sipping his wine and listing its notes and overtones and waxing lyrical about the bouquet. Maybe it’s feeding off me too, Jaskier thought distractedly. “I’m getting a strong taste of pathetic, complemented by the rich fullness of humiliation…”

Jaskier shook himself. Come the fuck on, bard. You’ve never bothered to care what anyone thought about you before. Why should you start now, just because it wears the face of your best friend like an overcoat?

“I’m not surprised he was annoyed. I did smash a rather nice amphora that he’d spent all morning fishing for, as I’m sure you remember. That’s enough to put anyone out of sorts. It made for a nice grand gesture, though.”

The not-Geralt’s eyebrows meet in a look of confusion that is so Geralt that Jaskier wants to cry. Fortunately – or unfortunately, as the case may be – the look is replaced just as quickly by the much more unfamiliar visage of malice.

“Fine,” it snarled.

The bedroom with its four-poster bed, flickering candles and CJ melt away as the Bwgan shifts them again to another time. Jaskier has no time to brace himself before the next scene crashes over him.

***

The smell of lilac and gooseberries, Yenn’s scent, registers first. The memory seems to coalesce around the fragrance, becoming solid in an instant.

Jaskier blinks, rubs his eyes. The room that has taken form around him is dark. He can hear something, though. The sound of… breathing? As Jaskier listens, he realises it’s the sound of two sets of breath rather than one. His eyes adapt to the darkness tortuously slowly, and he can finally make out that he’s in a nondescript tavern room. On the bed is Geralt, his hair a light point in the gloaming. He is curled in on himself on his side. Yennefer is wrapped around him, the big spoon. Her hand strokes through Geralt’s hair, letting it spill through her fingers like molten silver. Geralt’s face, Jaskier can just make out, is wearing an expression the bard has never seen before. It looks like… contentment?

The Witcher seems to be asleep, but Jaskier supposes he must be pretending if this is Geralt’s memory. Yenn sits up, slips on her dress. Jaskier draws back into his shadowy corner, praying she won’t notice him.

She moves across the room silent as intention, putting on pieces of discarded clothing as she goes. For a moment, Jaskier holds his breath – he could swear that the memory-Yenn had looked right at him. Then she steps through the door, and a faint whoosh and answering hum from Geralt’s medallion as it reacts to magic tell Jaskier that she’s portalled away.

Geralt’s eyes snap open immediately. On the bed by himself, he looks almost… small. Vulnerable. He turns and seizes the pillow Yenn had been sleeping on, presses it to his face and inhales deeply.

Jaskier averts his eyes. He feels a twinge of guilt, as if he is spying on a private moment. It’s not his fault, of course – the Bwgan brought him here, it wasn’t Jaskier’s choice – but he is very sure that Geralt would not want him to see this.

“Lilac and gooseberries,” comes a muffled voice from the bed.

Jaskier’s gaze snaps back to the Witcher. He hasn’t removed the pillow from his face, as if reluctant to lose contact with Yennefer’s already fading scent.

Jaskier steps forward and sits on the chair by the small table of the room. The remains of a supper are still spread across it, Yennefer and Geralt seeming to have become distracted while only halfway through eating. Looking at the food, Jaskier is almost tempted. It seems a long time since he ate anything. He picks up an apple, has it halfway to his lips when a sense of alarm stops him short.

Fool, an internal voice that sounds a lot like his Folklore lecturer at Oxenfurt. Are you a bard or aren’t you? You specialise in poetry, songs… and stories. And what is the one thing you must never do in some enchanted faerieland?

The tales rush to the front of Jaskier’s mind. When dealing with faeries and hidden folk, never strike a bargain. Keep iron on you at all times. And… and…

Jaskier puts down the apple carefully.

And never eat the food.

The Bwgan grunts and dislodges the pillow.

“It’s dawn, bard. The Witcher met the Sorceress last night. They ate together, slept together. The Wolf spent all night in her arms. Do you know why? Because he wanted to. Has he ever done that with you?”

“No,” Jaskier answers.

“No. And he has no intention of doing it with you, either. He has Yennefer. Their fates are bound by Djinn magic that no mage can break. He loves her. The Wolf has Ciri, his Destiny. He has Yennefer, his Fate. What does he have in you? An annoyance, this noise he cannot shake.”

The Bwgan feels the burn of loss, the sense of being bereft, that was Geralt’s when he woke to see that Yenn had left him again. It’s the feeling that the Wolf gets when he knows that, once again, he’s not enough for anyone to want to stay with. It is an ache, a vacuum in the Witcher’s chest. The Bwgan revels in the sensation.

The vacuum is joined by a shrivelled feeling in the Wolf’s stomach as he aims and looses words at Jaskier. Guilt, remorse and regret combine in a heady mix that almost make the Bwgan’s mouth gasp.

Of course, it’s all true. Geralt truly has no intention of letting Jaskier hold him all night – but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to. And Geralt has told himself and others that the bard is an annoyance, a frustration that he can’t get rid of just as a rock cannot rid itself of a limpet. That’s what Geralt says. But the Bwgan knows what Geralt thinks, though it will not be telling Jaskier.

The Bwgan watches the bard carefully, eager to see the words hit home.

“The Witcher loves Yennefer. He wants her. Why try and force your way into his heart when she’s already there?”

Jaskier doesn’t react how the Bwgan had expected, from Geralt’s memories of him. It had anticipated wide eyes and mouth open in hurt, flailing arms, indignant spluttering. Instead, it gets a huffed laugh.

You think I’ll be upset about Geralt having lovers? Why would I be? Yenn’s amazing, she’s been good for Geralt. I’m not sure he’s been so healthy for her, though. Wishing someone bound to you, that’s really not alright…” the bard’s brow creases momentarily, then smooths. “Then again, she had really pissed off that Djinn by the time Geralt made the wish. It would probably have killed her if our stupid Wolf hadn’t protected her by binding her fate to that of the Djinn’s master.

“You make no sense, bard.” The Bwgan interrupts.

Jaskier laughs. “Yeah, that’s much better. A much more convincing Geralt. You’re improving, well done. You still won’t win, though. Especially not if this is your tactic. What makes you think that someone can only have one love? Not that I’m holding out hope about Geralt, of course; I’m not that stupid. But someone can love more than one person without their heart being diminished. Love is not a finite resource. You should know that, because Yenn taught it to Geralt.”

A recollection flares for a moment: Aedd Gynvael, a shithole of a town. Two… two birds? And two identical notes from Yenn explaining that she couldn’t and wouldn’t choose between Istredd, her oldest friend who called her Yenna and whom she called Val, and Geralt. Delicious. The Bwgan makes a note to visit it soon. Then its eyes narrow.

“So the Witcher can love more than one person. And yet he still does not love you."

The bard’s mouth presses into a line so thin as to not be there, but his resolve does not seem to waver.

“Enough of this. Time for another memory.” The Bwgan declares.

Jaskier does pale at that.

***

The surroundings lightened as the walls seemed to glow. Jaskier squinted, and realised that this was because the walls were now those of a tent with sunlight filtering through the canvas. Several joints of meat materalised in the air around Jaskier and the air smelled of cool pig flesh. The sounds of bustle and trade filtered in from outside. He’s in a cold store tent at a market, then.

Jaskier turns to see the not-Geralt moving through the tent in the half-crouch that he used when he was hunting something. His leather jacket is torn under one arm.

Novigrad, the time with Dudu and Dainty.

Jaskier peered around half a hanging pig and saw the Witcher’s prey: Dudu the Doppler, currently in the form of Dainty Biberveldt the halfling merchant, backed against the material of the tent. Dudu’s eyes are darting around the enclosure, as if looking for an escape, but Geralt had him cut off.

As Geralt advanced, he spoke. He told Dudu to leave the city, that if the changeling didn’t leave by choice then the Witcher would make him leave by force. Jaskier’s mouth turned down sharply – these words, this argument, was the same promise that the Bwgan had made him at the shore of the memory of the Djinn’s lake. Jaskier had assumed that the Bwgan had been the author of that particular speech, but it seems that this too had been lifted from Geralt.

The Doppler grew, took on Geralt’s form. Jaskier bit back a groan, dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. First the Bwgan, and now Dudu had become another not-Geralt… Fantastic, that's just perfect, Jaskier thinks bitterly. Now there’s an ersatz copy of an eldritch copy of Geralt, but there's still no fucking sign of the real Witcher... The situation was getting worse, not better, and Jaskier had no idea how much time he had left before the hair would burn to nothing in the Wise Woman’s hand.

Geralt launches into a speech that was, even for him, peak Geralt. It was all about how Dudu couldn’t possibly understand the darkness that lived inside the Butcher of Blaviken, and would therefore not be able to defeat the true Witcher in which that darkness harboured.

Despite himself, Jaskier snorted.

“Oh yes, so dark. Definitely not a noble and selfless idiot with two swords and a horse you treat better than yourself. And you never get involved either, I’m sure…” Jaskier muttered.

He was abruptly silenced when the Doppler-Witcher sheathed his sword and morphed again, shrinking by an inch or two as his hair shortened and darkened and the sword on his back dulled from shiny steel to the varnished wood of a lute. Dudu had become CJ.

Jaskier’s eyes snap to Geralt – or rather, to the not-Geralt – just in time to see the Witcher reach back and sheath his sword as his face twitched from determination to disgust.

Jaskier blinked, looked again. He was not mistaken. The White Wolf’s face showed nothing but disgust.

Was this how Geralt always felt on seeing Jaskier? It had appeared as quickly as the form of CJ itself, so it seemed reflexive. Geralt must have masked his feelings on seeing the real Jaskier, but wasn’t going to bother when it was a Doppler taking the form of the person he so despised. Jaskier had no idea that Geralt was that good an actor. The Witcher, it turned out, was still full of surprises. The not-Geralt turned to look at Jaskier where he hid behind his half-pig, and the disgust intensified, as if looking at the real bard was much worse than a copy.

***

The tent disappears, and now they are outside. Jaskier steps smartly behind a conveniently large bush out of what is fast becoming reflex. He peers around the leaves and sees that they are on the outskirts of a town. Geralt is riding away from the village towards a man who is waiting just beyond Jaskier’s hiding place, stroking his mare’s neck.

“You took your time,” is the man’s only greeting.

“Lambert,” Geralt replies.

“Ready for the ride to Kaer Morhen?” Lambert asks, rubbing his hands together. “Melitele have mercy but it’s cold. It’s a good I didn’t let you piss about here any longer or we might not have made it there before the snows close the pass.”

Geralt opens his mouth to reply but is interrupted by a call that Jaskier can just make out on the wind, which of course means the two Witchers can hear it clear as day.

“BYE, GERALT!” A figure on the edge of the town calls. He’s wearing a silver doublet and matching britches covered in gold detailing, and waving enthusiastically. It’s CJ. “SEE YOU IN THE SPRING!”

Lambert, baffled, stares at the bard. “Who the fuck is that? A friend of yours?”

“No.” Geralt urges Roach on without looking back. “It’s no one.”

***

The world shifts. Jaskier staggers as if from a blow, leans against the tree that has just taken shape in front of him, surprise making him halt. He can hear one of his own songs being sung, but it’s not the voice of CJ or even another bard. The voice singing is Geralt’s.

The song is Jaskier’s, a duet that he and Essi Daven had composed together during a long winter evening in the Oxenfurt faculty lodgings. The song described a maiden in a bar one night as she first meets, then confronts, then befriends her inner demons.

Jaskier peeks around the tree. Geralt has started making camp, but has only got as far as lighting the fire. His saddlebags lie on the ground, still packed. The Wolf is brushing Roach where she stands beside a river bank. The water is rushing fast, white and deadly a few feet from her hooves as she stamps at the ground. Geralt’s singing softly to himself as he works. The wind is restless in the trees, shaking their branches as if to wake them and setting their leaves grumbling.

Geralt's absorption in his task, and the fact that CJ is approaching from downwind are the only reasons that CJ has been able to arrive undetected.

Geralt is singing Essi’s half of the song, the part of maiden. He’s dropped it by two octaves, but it’s recognisable.

CJ steps up to the bounds of the camp, eyes Geralt who still has his back to him, and grins. Geralt, oblivious, continues singing.

“Instead,
What is left
But this old satin dress
And the mess
That you left
When you told me that I wasn’t right in the head…”

CJ slips his voice in to the space in the ballad that was always meant for him, the part of the demon.

“Are you alright?
Ask the boys from beyond
You gave us such a fright…”

He gets no further. Geralt whirls around, pulling his sword from Roach’s saddlebags as he turns.

CJ holds up his hands in surrender. “Geralt, it’s me!” The young bard grins. “And there I was thinking you didn’t like my music.”

Geralt grunts furiously, but lowers his sword so he’s no longer poised to attack. He turns back to Roach, sheathing his steel.

“I can’t get it out of my head.”

CJ drops his hands, still grinning. “Because it’s a good song.” He’s right, too. Essi’s got a better way with words than he does, he’ll admit, but his grasp of music is superior. Their talents together, well. There’s a reason the song’s so famous.

Geralt kicks dirt over the fire, extinguishing it. He lifts the saddlebags with a swipe of his hand.

“A tapeworm is hard to get out of your system, too. But not because it’s good.”

CJ splutters. “A tapeworm!? Come on, Geralt, that’s hardly a fair comparison…”

Geralt has secured Roach’s saddlebags to her, ignoring her offended whinny. He takes her reins from the branch he’d thrown them over, and swings up in the saddle.

“Hey, wait, Geralt, hang on! Haven’t you just stopped for the night? Where are you going? At least have a chat with me before you go, it’s been months!”

“And it’ll be a few more before I have the time to spare for a bard who can’t keep himself out of trouble. I have contracts to find. Goodbye, Jaskier.”

Geralt rode off into the darkening forest, leaving CJ gaping in his wake.

***
The memories start coming faster, flickering one after the other faster than Jaskier can blink.

Geralt emerging from the wilderness, grumpy and exhausted from killing a basilisk that took far too long to die.

“Ger…Geralt! We, the… this woman just killed a man with her bare hands for trying to steal your horse!” CJ, apparently not desensitised to violence after all these years, pointing at Téa who’d put an end to the town butcher who had tried to steal Roach without spilling a drop of blood.

Sardonically: “Maybe she’ll make a better travel companion then.”

But Geralt was joking. Right? He was joking.

Wasn’t he?

***

Geralt, face bloody as he stares up at the people Jaskier assumes had kidnapped him.

“Maybe we’ll hand you over to the person who employed us, Butcher… or maybe we’ll put the word out and see if anyone’s willing to pay more. You’ve probably got some enemies with a score to settle. Or hey, maybe you’re lucky and one of your friends will fork out to rescue you.” The kidnapper laughs.

Geralt spits blood. “I have no friends.”

This causes even more hilarity amongst the bounty hunters, one of whom pauses in his chuckling to kick Geralt hard in the ribs. Jaskier, from his vantage point in the shadows, flinches more than the Witcher does.

“What, no one to come for you at all?”

“When you’re a Witcher, you get the knack of knowing no one will ever come back for you.” Geralt says with absolutely no intonation at all.

The memory is already changing as Jaskier bursts out “Oh, you can fuck off if no one will come back for you!”

Seriously, does Geralt have no opinion of Jaskier at all? Does he really think Jaskier would just leave him to his fate?

Apparently.

***

The memories start coming faster still, relentless as the blows Geralt rains down on the monsters he kills for coin. Jaskier seems to usually appear behind or next to something he can use to hide himself, and wonders vaguely if this is coincidence or if the Bwgan is doing it to make sure Jaskier can have the most devastating vantage point for the memories.

***

Casually, not even looking up from the coin that Jaskier had had to coax the villagers into handing over: “Fuck off, Bard.”

***

Geralt riding away on Roach in the pre-dawn while Jaskier still slept by the remnants of their campfire, leaving no trace the Witcher had been there except for the trampled grass where Roach had been tied the night before. He should have left earlier; he wasn’t far enough away that his Witcher hearing couldn’t pick up CJ’s disappointed sigh when he realised he had woken up abandoned.

***

In a Cintran bath, looking CJ straight in the eye: “I want no one,” CJ’s downturned mouth catching on the subtext of “Including you, Jaskier.”

***

Geralt returning to a village after fulfilling a contract, bone-weary and with a fractured wrist, to hear Jaskier’s distinctive voice belting its way through his greatest hits in the Harvest festival that has sprung up since Geralt left the town at dawn.

Geralt snatching his coin, swinging up on Roach with a grimace and leaving immediately rather than stay and inevitably run into the bard in this one-horse town…

***

The Mayor’s house in Rinde, Djinn-caused gales tearing the room apart. Yenn is on the floor, half-dead from her attempts to overpower the furious genie.

“I don’t need your help. You’re free, no longer under my spell.” The effort of speaking clearly pains her as she tries to dismiss the Witcher.

“And yet, here I am.” Geralt answers.

Jaskier feels that hit home from where he’s hiding behind the door. It’s what he had said to Geralt as the Witcher bathed and insisted he needed no one and wanted no one to need him. CJ had responded: and yet… here we are.

Geralt had known Yenn all of ten hours, and here he was spouting words to her that Jaskier had spent ten years working up the courage to say, only to have Geralt ignore them. Jaskier blinked, and tears that he hadn’t noticed were welling up spilled down his face.

***

CJ’s eyes, two wild and panicked points of light in the dark forest.

“Geralt, what’s going on!? Talk to me!”

Geralt, bloodied and hurt but able to talk, just grimacing.

“For Melitele’s sake, just say something!”

Geralt turning his face to the dark trees rather than look at his very best friend in the whole wide world.

***

CJ pleading “Geralt, don’t leave me,” as the Witcher stalks away without a backward glance.

***

CJ running from the house in Rinde, blood still on his face from the Djinn’s best attempt to murder him.

“Jaskier. You’re okay.” Geralt saying as he falls into step with the bard.

“Well I’m glad to hear that you give a monkey’s about it.” CJ says hopefully, if distractedly. Well, he was almost castrated by a sorceress a few moments ago, and that tends to split a man’s attention.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions.” The Witcher who had almost killed him replied, unrepentant.

***

Casually, over his shoulder as Geralt soaks in the bath Jaskier paid for to wash off the Selkiemore guts: “I’m not your friend.”

***

Jaskier can’t catch his breath. He stops even trying to hide during the memories, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference. He feels like he’s had another blow to the head, disorientated and displaced and wrong.

If he could just have two damn minutes, he’d be fine. Two damned minutes in which to calm himself, to grasp all this fucking despair and shove it past that door in his mind and lock it firmly away so that he can function, so he can think. But the creature doesn’t let up, and the memories don’t stop, and the two minutes aren’t forthcoming and Jaskier is not fine.

Chapter Text

Another memory flares up, one that Jaskier recognises it easily. It’s the camp on the first night of the dragon hunt, Sir Eyck triumphantly roasting his murdered Hirikka over the fire as if it was something to be proud of.

Jaskier actually has quite good memories of this evening. He always liked to verbally spar with Yennefer, to keep his courtly banter in top condition. Just before this excursion, he’d come across Essi in a village knees-up and lost woefully to her in their traditional spite-off. There was no shame in losing to Poppet, of course – Jaskier had first met her as a fifteen-year-old at Oxenfurt and she’d been a fearful adversary even then. But months on the road with no one to talk to but a monosyllabic Witcher had left his skills blunted. Yennefer was the perfect antidote; they were flints, chipping against each other to make their edges sharper than any steel could be.

Unfortunately, tonight Yenn had been playing the part of the Dutiful Mage to Eyck of Denesle and had therefore not able to respond to his taunts since the crow’s feet barb at the mountain’s foot. Still, it was the last night which Jaskier had spent in Geralt’s company and, no matter how hard he had tried to exorcise it, it had remained a warm remembrance.

Jaskier noticed that, while CJ had folded a blanket underneath him to cushion his backside from the rock that was acting as his seat, Geralt was sitting on bare stone. Jaskier desperately wanted in equal measure to provide the damn Wolf with a pillow, and to punch him in the face. Stupid fucking Witcher.

“If you’ll excuse me, I must get my beauty sleep,” Yennefer rose from her place by the fire and moved away, coming right at Jaskier where he was half-crouching in the bushes.

Jaskier didn’t know why the Bwgan had brought him to this campfire, but he had no desire to find out. Instead, he found himself moving to intercept Yennefer once she was far away enough from the group to not be overheard.

“Yenn,” he called softly as he stepped onto the path in front of her.

Confusion bloomed on her face as she took in his clothes, completely different to those CJ was currently wearing at the campfire.

“Jaskier. When did you…” she looks at him closer and narrows her eyes. “The crow’s feet are… more. Why is there an older version of a useless bard here?”

Gods, but it was good to speak to someone who knew who he was, treated him normally, and didn’t waste time with questions like “How is this possible?”. Bonus points that she wasn’t, as far as he could tell, an empty husk of a being intent on stealing his Wolf’s memories one by one until he expired on a Wise Woman’s kitchen table.

“It’s so good to see you Yennefer.”

Yennefer’s eyebrows shoot up. Before he can react she’s raised a hand and sketched a complex symbol in the air that causes fire sprung up from her palm and makes to throw it at him.

“The real Jaskier wouldn’t say that. What are you?”

Jaskier raises his hands in surrender. “No no no no no, I’m the real Jaskier. I swear. It’s just been… I’ve had a fucking awful time of it, Yennefer. So a familiar face is good, even if it’s the face of someone who wanted to kill me over whether or not I’d make a wish. And because, believe it or not... where I come from, we're friends.”

Yennefer scoffs, fireball still aloft and threatening. "We're what?"

"No, really. A few months from now, I'll be kidnapped and tortured by an extremely unpleasant mage called Rience. And you'll save me. And then, afterwards, you'll tell me that you like me." He can't resist a cheeky grin, real warmth in his chest shining through as he looks at her. "I like you too, Yennefer. You learn to put up with me eventually. We're friends."

Yenn considers him for a moment before closing her fingers and squeezing out the fire within them.

“So you're from the future? I'm still waiting for an explanation. Don't try my patience, friend ”

Jaskier feels his mouth work silently for a moment. How long does he have? How long would the Bwgan keep them here? He has no way of knowing. Best to keep it concise.

Not his forte, admittedly, but he’ll have to give it a go.

“Geralt’s been taken over by a Bwgan. This is his memory. A Wise Woman sent me in to find him, to help him fight it. I’m not having much luck. Or any luck.”

Yenn hisses a curse between her teeth. It must have been magical, because Jaskier feels the power charge in the air that makes his hair stand on end for a moment, like the instant before lightning strikes. She seizes his arm and marches him to her tent, flinging him inside and following immediately.

“A Bwgan? You’re sure?”

Jaskier laughs bitterly. “Yes, quite sure by now, thank you.”

“Fuck,” Yenn curses mundanely this time. Jaskier completely agrees, but really does not have time for this.

“Yennefer. I need to help Geralt, but so far all I’ve been doing is having rings run around me by this… creature, whatever it is. You’re the smartest person I know. What do I do?”

Yenn reaches up to touch the diamond-studded obsidian star that hangs around her neck. Jaskier has never seen her without it. He has to squash the idiotic and probably suicidal impulse to reach out and stroke the velvet of the ribbon that holds it snug around her neck.

“If the Bwgan’s been torturing you – oh, shut up, any fool could see how shaken you are right now – then Geralt can’t be actively fighting it. But he can’t be completely overpowered, either, or the creature would probably have forced you out or killed you by now.”

“Right, comforting, thanks…” Jaskier isn’t sure he’s pleased with how nonchalant Yenn is when speaking of his death.

“Shut up and listen. I said that Geralt’s not dead, that’s good. But he’s also not fighting. That means he’s gone to ground. But the Bwgan will keep forcing its way through his mind until it’s taken all of it. He’s going to have to have the battle eventually.”

“Right…” Jaskier nods, trying to look like he understands more than he does.

“You need to find him and convince him to fight.”

“Finding him is what I’ve been trying to do, Yennefer. What, do you think I’ve been having the Bwgan Horror Tour for my godsdamned health?” Jaskier tried and failed to keep the frustration out of his voice.

Yennefer just glares at him, unimpressed. “I don’t know, have you? Have you just been going blindly where the Bwgan has led, or have you tried to force your way to Geralt?”

“Uh… I’ve never been able to force Geralt to do anything in my life. How am I going to break my way into his inner memory sanctum or wherever he’s hidden himself?”

“Don’t be an idiot. You’ve forced Geralt to do plenty.”

Jaskier laughs, an ugly thing that feels like will crack his face.

“What have I forced him to do, exactly?” Jaskier is rubbing his thumb over the calluses on his fingertips, a habit of his that comes out when he’s upset. Yennefer glares at the nervous movement, and he stops.

“Come on, Jaskier. For all you act it, I know you’re not actually stupid. And you know I say what I mean. Think about it.”

Jaskier’s brow creased. He tried to think like the most powerful mage on the continent, to anticipate where she's going with this.

“I… forced him to put up with me, my songs, my singing. I forced him to let me look after him, to start looking after himself. I forced him to stop dwelling on Blaviken during every waking moment. I forced him to have a friend. Or, I thought I did.”

Yennefer nods, allowing him the tiniest hint of a smile.

“You forced him to be happy, at least fleetingly.”

Jaskier could only gape. Yennefer took a step towards him, and Jaskier did not flinch when she raised a hand to his shoulder.

“If anyone can find him, Jaskier, it’s you. Well, or me, but if you’re the one here in Geralt’s memories I assume it’s because the me out there in the real world is either indisposed or disinclined to help. No, don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear about the future; it won’t do any good. But you’re the one who’s here, and you’re not the worst person for the job.”

“Yennefer, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yes, well, don’t let it go to your head.”

Yennefer’s tent started to dematerialise around them. The pressure of her hand became a ghostly impression, then faded altogether.

***

Jaskier is getting the hang of this travelling-by-memory business. He barely stumbles as the ground underneath him changes, looking around to get his bearings and finding he knows exactly where he is. He’s back at the lake in Rinde, behind the same tree he’d leaned against when his anxiety overcame him the last time the Bwgan had brought them here. Jaskier listens to himself for a moment, and is pleased to find he feels in no danger of giving a repeat performance. As usual, listening to Yenn was an excellent idea.

a few metres away, CJ stands above the not-Geralt, who’s still fishing.

“We are so having this conversation. Come on, Geralt. Tell me. Be honest. How’s. My. Singing?”

Yennefer’s words still echo in Jaskier's head, through his body. Replenishing the strength he thought had been sapped for good.

“It’s like ordering a pie and finding it has no filling.”

Something snaps inside Jaskier, very quietly but very definitely. He has had enough.

Jaskier always forgets that he and the Witcher are almost the same height, and so he is able to stride up to the not-Geralt and go nose-to-nose with the creature with no difficulty.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Jaskier snarls, “to scare me away.”

The creature growls and disappears. The memory-scape around Jaskier changes so fast this time that he is hurled to the floor, wheezing and coughing as the wind is knocked out of him. He scrambles to his feet quickly, taking in the view of the mountains, the scrubby foliage, the scent of ash on the wind. He feels the way the volcanic dust is blown into his eyes in a steady stream by the breeze, making them blink and water.

Finally.

Jaskier spreads his arms wide, turning slowly as if to take in the view – or present an easy target for a predator. He feels truly feral, ready to bite and claw, and it is a power.

He shouts. “Well, we got here at last! Took you long enough!”

As he finishes his turn, the creature materialises in front of him. The stolen yellow of Geralt’s irises has all but devoured the pupils, leaving nothing but pinpricks for him to see through.

“Have you forgotten,” the impostor asks, “that you can be hurt here?”

The scenery warps and flickers for a moment, and now they are on a different mountain. It’s the one above Posada, looking down on the pub where Geralt and Jaskier first met. The creature swings its fist, wearing Geralt’s silver-studded gloves, and delivers a devastating gut punch. Jaskier takes the blow and staggers to keep his feet, only to fall when the ground stutters below him and becomes once again the Mountains of King Niedamir.

Jaskier exhales, breathes, stands with a groan. He laughs.

“Do you think that I’d travel with Geralt if I couldn’t stand pain? The man is allergic to creature comforts, won’t accept them unless they’re all but forced on him and even then he’ll just complain. Do you know the number of times I’ve slept on pine cones and thorns just to save myself having to listen to him whine about the cost of a room?”

The creature’s lip curls in anger. Jaskier squares his shoulders and sticks out his chin. The Bwgan, Jaskier remembers the Wise Woman saying, has no mind of its own – which is why it has to steal someone else’s. That means that whatever faculties it’s using to think with, it’s stolen them from Geralt. Well, that’s just fine.

If asked, Jaskier knows that Geralt would claim that he has a stronger will than Jaskier. And what’s more, he’d believe it. Jaskier also knows this to be wrong. If Geralt’s will was stronger, after all, he’d have succeeded in driving Jaskier away long before that morning on the mountain. And even on the mountain it didn’t stick or Jaskier would not be here right now. Jaskier knows this, but Geralt doesn’t… and therefore, neither does the Bwgan.

Jaskier takes a step towards the not-Geralt, feeling the aura of barely-contained violence that’s flowing before him. He beats a fist to his chest. “C’mon. You can do better than that. What the fuck are you waiting for? Hit me with it. I’m ready.”

The yellow eyes narrow and a malevolent smile twitches onto the Witcher’s face. The not-Geralt disappears and is replaced by the form of Yennefer, glowing with rage and undischarged magic as she all but runs away from the Witcher and the realisation of what he had done to her with his wish. She is marching away from the cliff edge, followed closely by Borch. They pass CJ higher up the path, but Jaskier is shielded from their view by a boulder.

CJ, the poor fool, tries to console his Witcher.

Jaskier doesn’t need to be close enough to CJ and Geralt to know what’s being said, but he is anyway.

“Damn it, Jaskier! Why is it that whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days it’s you shovelling it?!”

“That’s not fair.”

“The Child Surprise! The Djinn! All of it! If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you..." Geralt stabs at CJ with his finger, as if he'd rather be using a blade. "...off my hands.”

“Right. Uh… right then. I’ll… I’ll go and get the rest of the story from the others. See you around, Geralt.”

CJ walks away. Geralt does not turn to see him leave.

As soon as CJ is gone, Jaskier springs from behind his rock.

“And finally we come to the meat of it! But I really don’t think you’re doing Geralt justice. Maybe he’s remembering it wrong, but that face you’re pulling is only about a six on the ‘Suffering In Silence Means I’m Doing It Right’ scale. On this day, Geralt was at a nine and a half, minimum.”

The creature shifts its weight as it stares at Jaskier, brow creasing in confusion at Jaskier’s reaction. It must decide to try a different technique, because its expression morphs into something ingratiating.

“Your memories are easy to read, bard. They’re right there on the surface, it’s not difficult. You were safe, and warm, and would have been for the whole of the winter. If you go back to this Earl’s house now, maybe he will take you back in and you can spend the time from now until Spring getting fat and rich. And why not? It would be so easy.

“Why instead do you struggle so hard to save this one, this Geralt? He does not want you, this has been proved to you. He isn’t your friend, he says so himself. So go, back to your own body and your own life. Leave him. If he lives, he will not want you. Even if you save him, you gain nothing.”

Jaskier knows that these words are arrows, but his skin is steel and they bounce off him harmlessly.

“Listen: once I’m done saving his life – and I will save his life, I want there to be no doubt about that – Geralt and I will very probably never see each other again. So I won’t let you turn our last night into this. As you say, he’s made it very clear that he doesn’t want to continue seeing me. But it was not all bad.

“I’m not making any excuses for what he just said to that poor child that I used to be, because there is no excuse. He was hurting because the woman he loves left him, quite rightly by the way. Using magic to bind someone to you is not the best way to court a lady’s favour. But he was hurting, and he thought that he could take it out on me because, fool that I was, I was an easy target and I loved him. And he thought that by venting his frustration at me, he’d feel better. But all that happened was that he hurt us both and I don’t think that either of us will ever fully forgive him.

“But… these memories you’ve been centring on, they aren’t a fair representation. Geralt is these things you’ve shown me, it’s true. But he is more.

“He is the man who told the Elven King to spare my life even as sharp steel warmed itself against the skin of his own neck. He is the man who gave that same Elven King all the coin he had. Geralt is the Witcher who didn’t teach two upstart Lords a well-needed lesson about manticores at a Cintran wedding feast because he’d promised me that he wouldn’t make trouble. He is the person who didn’t claim his child of surprise because he didn’t want to subject her to his life of violence, even though the guilt of not protecting her ate him alive every day. He is the man who saved my life more times than I can count.”

Jaskier closes the distance between himself and the creature, gripping the back of Geralt’s neck and bringing it down so that the Witcher’s forehead is in contact with his own. He summons up the memories of all the good times that he can, remembers them with all the force that he can muster, fashions them into a battering ram to smash into the not-Geralt’s defences. The creature whimpers, trying to back away but unable to break through Jaskier’s iron grip.

“See? I can call up memories too, you bastard. Now let. Me. See. My. Friend.” Jaskier hisses through his teeth.

Like blowing out a candle, the light is gone. So is the creature, and without the neck to cling onto Jaskier’s hand is falling through the air and to his side as he overbalances and rights himself.

Willing his eyes to adapt to the darkness, Jaskier looks around. In his peripheral vision he can just make out trees, he thinks. In front of him, the embers of a fire almost completely burnt out puts out the faintest of glows.

“Jaskier?” asks a familiar voice.

Chapter Text

Jaskier wheels around to face the voice. The not-Geralt is sat on the other side of the fire, perched on a log and staring up at Jaskier through the flames. The Witcher’s topaz irises are almost incandescent in the firelight, and Jaskier has always loved looking at them. He tears his eyes away from them, unwilling to let another memory become tainted by the Bwgan.

He looks around the camp in an attempt to guess when they are, but has no luck. Roach is standing grazing at the edge of camp, her tack hung up beside her. Geralt’s bedroll is spread on the ground beside him. There’s another bedroll that Jaskier recognises as his own, with his rucksack and travelling notebook laid out next to the roll, as if he’s been composing. His lute lying in its open case as if just put down. CJ must have just stepped away to hunt down some herbs to season their dinner. They could be anywhen.

Jaskier sighs and flings himself down on the thin padding of his bedroll, taking his place on the opposite side of the fire to Geralt as he’s done thousands of times before. “Bollocks. I really thought that would work. Why have you brought me here, then? What horror do you have to show me this time?”

Geralt startles, then looks confused. “What?”

Jaskier waves his hand expansively, trying to encompass the concept of this memory hellscape in a gesture. “You know. You’ve been torturing me with these memories to try and get me to leave. You really do make a good Geralt, too thick-skulled to realise that you can’t get rid of me that easily. Best I just let you wear yourself out. So, what’s the next one? May as well get this over with.”

The not-Geralt stands and circles the fire more quickly than any human could, making no sound as he crosses the forest floor. He’s crouching beside Jaskier before the bard has time to react, staring intently at Jaskier’s face. Jaskier stares right back.

The not-Geralt reaches out and pinches the back of Jaskier’s upper arm, hard.

“Ow!”

Jaskier tries to bat the not-Geralt’s hand away, but it grasps him gently, thumb smoothing over the area that had just been pinched to soothe away the sting.

“…Jaskier? Is that you? The real you, not some memory?”

“Geralt?!”

Jaskier doesn’t wait for a response. He launches himself at the Witcher, his Witcher, wrapping his arms around Geralt’s neck and pressing his face against the white hair that’s fallen loose from its tie. “Fuck, Geralt, thank the gods!”

For a moment, he is held, Geralt’s arms coming up to wrap around him and press him to the warm leather armour that covers the Witcher’s chest.

The next moment, Geralt is gone. Jaskier flails as he almost overbalances, catching himself on the dirt with both hands. He looks up to see Geralt striding away and shaking his head, hands twitching towards the hilt of his sword though he doesn’t draw it.

“Geralt, what the fuck?”

“You’re not real. This isn’t real. You’re another trick, another… go away. Leave me alone.”

Jaskier stands, strides up to Geralt and into his space. “How can I be a memory? We’ve never had this conversation before, have we? So the Bwgan couldn’t construct it, ergo I can’t be one of its traps.”

Geralt’s face twists like he’s tasted something bitter. “Jaskier doesn’t know what a Bwgan is. You can’t be him. I knew it.” He moves further away, as if trying to put the campfire between them again.

Jaskier splutters. “I can know what a Bwgan is, Geralt! In fact, I think I know quite a lot about them after traipsing around your sodding memory maze for the last however long trying to save you from one. You’re welcome, by the way.”

Geralt takes a few steps back from him, shaking his head again as if he doesn’t dare believe what he’s hearing. “Jaskier wouldn’t come. Not after the mountain.” He declares. Somewhere in the dark woods, an owl hoots.

Jaskier swallows down the pain of that statement. Sometimes it would be nice not to be constantly underestimated by your very best friend in the whole wide world. But there’s no time for hurt feelings. Not right now.

“Okay, fine, you don’t believe me. What do I need to do to convince you? Something I’ve never done before, that can’t be in your memory?”

Geralt hesitates. Nods.

“Fine,” Jaskier says.

He grabs Geralt by the back of the neck and tugs him down, claiming the Witcher’s lips with his. It’s not until they are several seconds into the kiss that Jaskier’s brain catches up with his actions, and by then it’s too late.

Maybe I should have hit him instead of kissing him, Jaskier considers with what little is left of his coherent thoughts. I’ve never struck him either. But Jaskier has always been more of a lover than a fighter. To his surprise, Geralt, after a moment of stunned stillness, begins to kiss him back, growling into the kiss and fisting one hand in the front of Jaskier’s doublet, wrapping the other around his back as if determined to stop the bard from going anywhere else. Fuck, I should have done this fifteen years ago, Jaskier thinks.

It’s at that moment that Geralt does something downright unfair with his tongue, and Jaskier forgets to think about anything at all.

Once again, the moment is broken when Geralt wrenches his way free and backs away, panting. The cold night air suddenly feels much colder against Jaskier’s skin.

“Well? Does that prove it?” Jaskier asks, trying not to look too disappointed that the most phenomenal kiss of his life has come to an end.

Geralt refuses to meet his eye. “No. It’s not… that’s not a memory, but you could have stolen it from somewhere else. My imagination.”

“Your imagi… Geralt. Have you… you’ve thought about doing that before?”

Jaskier thinks for a moment that the Bwgan must have initiated another memory change, the world going hazy and insubstantial around him. But he blinks and he’s still here, in this camp, with Geralt who still won’t look at him.

Geralt, who has thought about kissing him.

“I… look, we don’t have time, but we are so coming back to this conversation. All I’ll say is, you should know that kiss was real because it was probably much better than anything you could have imagined. You were kissing the most famously wonderful lover on the Continent, after all. Hell, it was better than anything I could have imagined, and I’m a poet. But what you’re telling me is, I have to do something that you’ve never either witnessed me do, or imagined me doing? And that’ll make you believe me?”

Geralt is still looking at Roach rather than Jaskier, but he nods.

“Fine,” Jaskier says, and shuts his mouth. The fire crackles and Roach churns the earth with one of her hooves, but the night is otherwise silent.

Geralt’s eyes snap back to him.

“What are you doing?”

Jaskier says nothing. Just folds his arms and stares right back at Geralt.

“This… whatever you’re doing, it won’t work.”

Jaskier shrugs.

Geralt’s voice turns sly. “Jaskier. Play me a song?”

Jaskier silently flicks Geralt the Vs.

Geralt steps up to Jaskier, looming over him in the dark.

“Stop this. Or else. I mean it.” Geralt warns, as if he thinks Jaskier could ever be scared of him.

Jaskier just rolls his eyes, and continues to stare at Geralt. His eyes are starting to sting, but he doesn’t blink.

Geralt grabs his shoulder, gaze softening slightly.

“…Jaskier?”

Jaskier sighs, hopefully loud enough to portray his sentiments of of course, you idiot and nods. Geralt’s hand moves from his shoulder to cup his cheek, and Jaskier lets himself nuzzle into it while keeping his lips pressed together. Geralt’s eyes flutter closed, a whine escaping his lips.

“Fuck, Jaskier. It’s you.”

Jaskier is pulled into a third embrace, and this time it lasts. He closes his eyes and breathes in the scent of leather and sword oil and musk that is Geralt, feeling his eyes prick as tears well up in them. Geralt’s shoulders shake beneath his hands and Jaskier feels a damp patch spreading on his shoulder, and realises Geralt is crying too.

Eventually, and very reluctantly, Jaskier draws back. He reaches out and wipes away a stray tear from Geralt’s cheek with his thumb. Geralt’s face turns into his hand as he does, as if chasing the contact.

“Jaskier.”

Jaskier nods.

Geralt huffs. “I believe you. Say something.”

“What? I thought you’d be enjoying the blessed silence .” Jaskier smiles to take the sting out of the words, and he’s more pleased than he should be when Geralt’s mouth twitches like it does when he’s trying not to smile. He shoves Jaskier slightly in retribution, only to draw him back immediately.

“Jaskier.”

“Yes, yes, it’s me. But nice as this cwts session is, Geralt, we’re going to have to get a move on.” He taps Geralt’s head gently. “You’ve got a Bwgan infestation.”

“I know,” Geralt rumbles.

Jaskier feels his mouth drop open. “I’m sorry? You know !?”

“I’ve heard of them. Never dealt with one before. I tried to fight it, at the start. Couldn’t. Came here to recuperate. I needed somewhere safe.”

Jaskier looks around the camp, littered with Geralt’s potions and his notebook and Geralt’s swords and his bag and Geralt’s horse and his lute and all the detritus of their entangled lives as it always was when they had been travelling for a while. Their camp.

“Camping with me is where you feel safe?” He asks, feeling perilously close to tears again.

Geralt’s steady gaze meets his. “Yes.”

Geralt catches him when he throws himself at the Witcher again, not even flinching at the momentum.

“You’re fucking impossible, you know that? Completely ridiculous. Unbearable, really. I don’t know why I put up with you.” Jaskier says with his lips against the shell of Geralt’s ear. “We’ll beat it. I swear.”

“You won’t,” a voice from the treeline says.

Geralt drops Jaskier, his silver blade materialising in his hand from somewhere. Jaskier is scarcely any slower to get his dagger in his hand, scanning the treeline and swearing when he can’t make out the figure that spoke.

The not-Geralt steps into the firelight, casting a long flickering shadow onto the treeline behind it.

“Very sweet. But you won’t win.”

“Fuck you. We will.” Jaskier responds, his hand tightening on the handle of his dagger.

The not-Geralt regards Jaskier for a moment, before turning its attention to Geralt.

“You were supposed to think he was a trick. To kill him.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” His voice is thick with sarcasm as Geralt raises his sword more threateningly.

The Bwgan snorts. “You can’t win this fight.”

“Watch him,” Jaskier says at the exact same time as Geralt says “You’re right.”

“Let him go,” Geralt continues. “Let him go, and you can do what you want with me.”

“Oh, like hell!” Jaskier bursts out. “If you want to kill Geralt, you’ll have to kill me first, and that is a fucking promise.”

“Challenge accepted,” the Bwgan tells him. Then its yellow eyes swivel to meet their twins in Geralt’s face. “You’ve seen how your memories can be accessed. Did you also know they can be cut off from you, too? It’s easy, like squeezing a throat and cutting off the air supply. Easier.

“You’ve thought of it, haven’t you? How easy it would be to grip the throat of this bard, to squeeze the life out of him?”

“What? Geralt…” Jaskier begins. Geralt doesn’t move, just glares at the Bwgan with true hatred.

“Your memories no longer belong to you, Geralt of Rivia. They can be taken away. They will be taken away. Let’s see what happens to your bard when he doesn’t have your shared history to protect him.”

The Bwgan makes a gesture, as if sweeping away a troublesome insect. Geralt tenses, then drops to the floor.

“Geralt!” Jaskier runs to the Witcher, falling to his knees on the ground beside him and stroking his hair out of his face. “Fuck, no. No no no no no no no no no.”

After a long moment, Geralt stirs. His eyes open and focus on Jaskier’s face.

There’s a blankness in his eyes that Jaskier hasn’t seen since the Posadan pub fifteen years ago. Geralt swats Jaskier’s hand away, moving away from Jaskier with a look of extreme distrust.

“Who are you?” Geralt asks.

Chapter Text

This cannot be happening. Jaskier absolutely and categorically refuses to believe that this is happening.

“Geralt… Geralt, it’s me. It’s Jaskier.”

No recognition sparks in Geralt’s face. His questing hand finds the hilt of his silver sword amongst the fallen leaves and muck of the forest floor and closes around it. He jumps and is suddenly on his feet above Jaskier, the tip of the sword resting in the dip at the base of Jaskier’s throat. Jaskier’s not a monster, but he’s sure the silver sword will work on him just fine.

Jaskier knows just how sharp Geralt’s blades are from many hours of observing fights against every variety of monster known to man, mage and Witcher. Now it seems that he’s about to get unenviable first-hand knowledge. He gulps, and feels that small movement against the blade cause a tiny break in his skin, the warmth of his blood eerie against his throat, making him shiver. The wind has stopped blowing through the trees; Roach is perfectly still. There is no sound other than Jaskier’s breath, the pounding of his heart in his ears.

Jaskier raises both hands slowly in surrender. “Geralt. I know you don’t remember this, but you’re in danger. I’m here to help you. I’m a friend.”

“I’m not your friend,” Geralt replies without hesitation.

Jaskier curses himself. Obviously telling Geralt of Rivia that he’s a friend is the opposite of how to get the Witcher to trust him. He should know that by now.

“Okay, right, yes, fine,” Jaskier replies. “We’re not friends. But I am trying to help. You’re trapped in your own mind, your memories, right now, by a Bwgan. It’s sealed you off from your memories somehow, but you do know me. You’ve known me for fifteen years. You have to fight the creature so we can get out.” And maybe you’ll remember me then, Jaskier doesn’t add.

If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands…

Jaskier’s not sure, for a moment, if he wants to be remembered.

He dismisses the idea. No time for that right now. He hopes the thought didn’t show on his face.

Geralt’s eyes narrow. “You expect me to believe that? Bwgans are rare, it’s unlikely I’d come across one. Even if I did, how could it attack? Witchers are taught to control our emotions, and they need a strong emotion to get in. So a Witcher would give it a hard time. Why wouldn’t it go for easier prey?”

Jaskier rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, the emotionless Witcher, of course. As long as you’re playing the old favourites, how about the one that goes ‘I Don’t Get Involved?’ That’s my favourite.”

Geralt growls, and presses the sword a breath harder against Jaskier’s skin. Jaskier feels the beads of blood start to drip more quickly from the cut on his neck and onto his under shirt, making the material stick to his chest unpleasantly.

What happens if he dies in the memories? Will he wake up in his body on the floor of the Wise Woman’s house, and have to watch as Geralt weakens and dies? Or will he die himself, only to be followed by the Witcher to the afterlife shortly after? Something tells him that this is the more likely scenario. He almost smiles at how angry Geralt would be that he couldn’t escape Jaskier even in death.

As he hesitates, the tip of Geralt’s sword makes an even more intimate acquaintance with his neck.

“Fuck, alright, fine. Apparently you lost your sense of humour along with your memories of me. You’d been attacked, but you managed to break free, and then you saw…” me? “Ciri. Your Child Surprise. That was probably enough of an experience to get a strong emotion going, wouldn’t you say Geralt?”

Geralt’s face is inscrutable as he glares at Jaskier, processing his words. A leaf detaches from a branch above him and spirals slowly to the ground.

“And who are you to me, exactly?” He asks finally.

“Well, I’m… I’m your barker. Spreading the tales of Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf.”

“You’re a barker?” Geralt’s voice is sour with distaste.

“A bard. I write songs about your adventures, use them to turn the tide of public opinion. I’m the reason that nine in ten villages don’t refuse to pay you and chase you outside the town walls before sundown. You’ve not had a stoning in years. My songs, they… it smooths the Path a bit. Lambert, Eskel and Coën all say so.” But you’ve never said it, are the words Jaskier bites back. There’ll be space for snarkiness later, he reassures himself. As long as he’s not been skewered by a silver sword, that is.

“You’re telling me a bard has followed me around for fifteen years?” Geralt asks dubiously.

“No. Well, I followed you initially. Then you followed me. Then we just sort of… followed each other.” Jaskier maintains eye contact, willing Geralt to believe him. There’s normally an element of performance to Jaskier, any person caught in conversation with him becoming an audience member as well as part of a dialogue. He’s very rarely been able to drop the elaborate stage persona he projects as a protective façade. But occasionally, sitting by the fire in a campsite like this with Geralt, he’s felt like he could.

He drops all of the act now, kneeling on the ground at Geralt’s feet and feeling somehow more naked than he’s been since he was a child, even though he’s fully clothed.

Geralt regards him for the space of another heartbeat, then makes to lower his sword.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s lying.”

Geralt turns to confront the newcomer to the conversation. He keeps his blade steady at Jaskier’s throat, but raises his other hand in the sign of Aard, ready to blast the newcomer into the trees if necessary. He hesitates when he sees the form of the person approaching; Jaskier doesn’t dare turn to look directly at the form approaching them, but he can just make out the outline of the Bwgan in Geralt’s form in his peripheral vision.

“I’m not!” Jaskier is indignant, but can’t make his usual sounds and gestures of outrage for fear of moving the wrong way and opening his own throat on the blade held steady before him.

“What the…” Geralt says above him.

“Well, he’s not lying completely. You are under attack by a Bwgan, Geralt. But he…” the not-Geralt gestures at Jaskier where he kneels on the floor “is the one you need to kill to free yourself.”

“Bollocks,” Jaskier whispers before he can stop himself, because apparently Geralt’s own self turning up and announcing the need to murder him in cold blood wasn’t damning enough. He looks back up at the real Geralt, pleading. “I know this probably won’t work, but I have to try: that’s the Bwgan. It’s taken your form. You have to fight it. Kill it.”

The Bwgan laughs using Geralt’s stolen mouth. “Really? You think that’ll work?” It spits before turning to Geralt. “You know he’s lying.”

Geralt says nothing. His eyes flicker between the Bwgan and Jaskier as if trying to read the truth on their faces. Jaskier can almost see the cogs whirring in his brain as the White Wolf tries to make sense of the situation.

His thoughts are interrupted by the Bwgan.

“Really? You’re considering believing this bard? Would you really let some entertainer who doesn’t know when to shut up shadow you over the whole of the Continent? Of course not. Why would you?”

“I’ve always wondered that myself, actually,” Jaskier knows he’s proving the Bwgan’s point with regards to not knowing when to shut up, but he’s nervous. His mouth runs on even more than normal when he’s nervous; he can’t help it. “Why you didn’t just spur Roach into a canter or Axii me away when we met in Posada. It would have been easy for you to do that. Easier than putting up for me, that’s for sure. But you didn’t. It had me puzzled for ages.”

“And did you work out why?” Geralt asks him, face expressionless.

Jaskier risks bringing his hand to Geralt’s wrist, gripping it gently and stroking a soothing circle with his thumb. It’s a useless gesture from a protective point of view; Jaskier’s fingers are strong from years of lute-playing, but even with the full strength of both his hands he couldn’t stop one of Geralt’s if Geralt had decided to stab him. But it’s not meant protectively; it’s to soothe, though Jaskier couldn’t say if he was reassuring himself or the Witcher. Geralt tenses, but doesn’t run him through, which is something.

“I came to the conclusion that you didn’t want to, Geralt. That you were lonely, and a good man. So you let some snot-nosed piss-poor Bard fresh and clueless from Oxenfurt follow you around, and saved his life more times than I can count.”

The Bwgan snorts again. “See? Why would you do that? You’re the Butcher of Blaviken,” Jaskier feels Geralt’s arm tense under his fingers at that name, as if just hearing the name spoken makes him want to stab someone. And here Jaskier is, conveniently at the end of Geralt’s sword. But still, the White Wolf does not strike. “Who would be friends with a Witcher, let alone the monster who slayed eight people in the middle of Blaviken Town Square? No one in your right mind would be friends with that.”

Geralt’s shoulders tense, his face closing down in the way it does whenever he’s thinking of anything particularly horrific. The way it does when he’s thinking of himself as a monster. The Bwgan’s winning, Jaskier realises in horror.

Jaskier brushes the skin on the back of Geralt’s hand, feels the tiny hairs stand up under his fingers. “I would.”

The Bwgan snarls. “The Butcher doesn’t have friends, especially not friends like this.”

“Friends like this?” Geralt asks, not quite managing to shake off the melancholy mindset that’s always hovering over him, waiting to descend.

“Yes. ‘Friends’ who do nothing but make your life harder. Who require protection from spurned lovers and angry spouses after he goes fishing for trout in unfamiliar ponds. Who refuse to stay out of danger and cost you much-needed concentration on a hunt when you have to save their useless skin. Who land you in a pile of shit and just keep on shovelling.”

Jaskier can’t refute any of the Bwgan’s claims, and what is worse is that he knows Geralt can read that in his eyes. The Bwgan is halfway to convincing Geralt to slit Jaskier’s throat, and there’s nothing Jaskier can say that will stop him.

“Even if you were his friend, the best thing you could do is finish him off and save yourself the hassle in the long run. Remember what Vesemir always says: ‘Make sure you’re safe yourself, first, before saving anyone else.’ So just kill him and you’ll be on your way.”

Geralt shifts his position slightly. Jaskier recognises the change in stance; it’s the different between Geralt when he’s on his guard and Geralt when he’s about to attack.

“Look, Geralt,” he blurts out before the Witcher can commit the deed, still meeting Geralt’s intense gaze with his own. “Just… just promise me, Geralt. When you kill me, and that doesn’t work. Kill that thing that looks like you next. It’s the Bwgan, and killing it will set you free. You don’t believe me now, but maybe you will when I’m dead and that doesn’t release you. Just… I’m sorry, okay? And tell Ciri I’m sorry too. Hell, tell Yennefer as well. But don’t blame yourself, Geralt. It’s not your fault.”

Geralt raises his sword, the better to strike. When the blade is at the top of its arc ready to swing down, he hesitates.

There are worst last sights than the face of your very best friend in the whole wide world, Jaskier reflects as he looks up. He manages to smile reassuringly at the White Wolf.

“If you must kill me, I am ready. See you around, Geralt.”

Geralt stares at him another moment, then nods. The sword flashes starlight as the Witcher brings the blade down, too fast for the eye to follow. It meets its target with a wet thump, followed by the sound of a body hitting the forest floor.

Chapter Text

Geralt delivers two strikes to the chest. They’re not clean, but they are spectacular. Blood fountains from the wounds and splatters onto the leaves on the forest floor, speckling the ground with gore.

Geralt strikes at the torso first, Jaskier knows, because it’s wide and easy to hit. You disable them first, then when they’re on the ground, you finish them off the Witcher had told him one long summer afternoon when he had been feeling particularly talkative. Easier than going for the throat or some other kill shot when your opponent’s still a moving target. More room for error.

Jaskier watches as Geralt circles, then comes to a halt above the Bwgan where it fell.

Jaskier puts his hands to the ground and pushes himself to his feet, ignoring the way his legs shake beneath him like they can’t hold his weight, and comes to stand beside Geralt, both of them looking down at the creature that’s spitting blood from stolen lips.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says it like he’s just trekked miles through knee-deep snow and found a warm fireside. Like he can barely speak for relief.

“Does this mean you’ve got your memories back?” Jaskier asks warily, fingers playing nervously with the edge of his sleeve. He’s reluctant to get his hopes up for nothing, won’t believe it until he knows it’s true

“Hm.” Geralt nods. "It lost its hold on them when I stabbed it. They're back." Jaskier can breathe again. Mostly. It’ll be easier once the Bwgan is gone…

Geralt raises his sword to finish the job, but the creature jerks away before he can.

“Not so fast,” it hisses, a horrible grin twisting Geralt’s features into something malign and alien and showing off the blood on its teeth. “Didn’t think it’d be that easy did you, Witcher? Nothing in your life is that easy.”

Nothing should be able to move with a gash that big across its chest and a sizeable chunk of its abdomen missing, but the Bwgan manages to rise and put a bit of distance between itself and Geralt and Jaskier. It puts a hand to the wound at its chest, cursing when its palm comes away red.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Jaskier announces to the world in general.

The Bwgan ignores him and fixes Geralt with a glare. “Why are you fighting this? What’s the point? No one needs you. No one wants you. Ciri would be better off without you. Yenn will annihilate you, wipe you from the face of the Continent if she sees you again. You’ve only ever been a disappointment to Vesemir and the others. Even the bard is better off without you.”

The embers that are what’s left of the fire snap and crackle, sending a shower of sparks up into the air. Geralt’s shoulders are tensed and hunching, he’s curling in on himself more and more with each word the Bwgan speaks. Jaskier groans; he recognises the early stages of a self-hate spiral when he sees one. He steps forward and swings around to face the opposite direction, putting himself with his back to the Bwgan and eye-to-eye with Geralt.

“You’re not actually listening to it, are you?” He demands. “Geralt. Even if what it’s saying is true, you should still fight. Your life is worthwhile, you are worthwhile, even if no one needs you. Even if you’re on your own. But that’s a moot point because you’re not on your own! Ciri loves you. She’s been frantic since you were taken from her. She needs you. Your brothers and Vesemir need you too. And I came all this fucking way to save you, so you cannot give up now. I forbid it.”

Geralt quirks an eyebrow, a smile threatening to tug at the corners of his mouth at the idea Jaskier could prevent him from doing anything. “You forbid it?”

“He was doing better before he came back to you,” the Bwgan cuts in before Jaskier can answer. “He spent the last several weeks at an Earl’s court, playing to adoring audiences and making coin so fast he couldn’t spend it all if he tried. Now where is he? Penniless, bleeding and concussed, lying ensorcelled on some dirt floor trying to save you.”

Jaskier has his hands in front of him, his back obscuring them from the creature. He slips his hand into his sleeve, praying the motion goes unnoticed by the Bwgan.

“But he doesn’t have to be. You can give up, and he can wake up and go back to his Earl, no harm done. He’d be better off without you, like they all would. You know it’s true. And wouldn’t it be easier? To stop fighting. Put down your sword and stop having to scratch and claw for every moment? Doesn’t that sound nice? You could do it. Just let go.”

“Geralt,” Jaskier says conversationally, making sure the Witcher’s eyes snap away from the Bwgan and to him. Geralt’s eyes flicker down to Jaskier’s hand, widen incrementally in understanding, and then fix on Jaskier’s face. “If you listen to what that thing is saying, I’ll bloody well kill you myself.”

Geralt’s mouth threatens to smile again.

“He doesn’t need you,” the creature all but whines.

“I don’t need him,” Jaskier addresses the Bwgan with his eyes still fixed on Geralt’s face. “But I still want him.”

Jaskier spins and throws the stone he’d grabbed hold of when he was kneeling on the ground, flinging it in the direction of the creature. He’s not expecting it to hit its mark, just to distract the Bwgan long enough to give Geralt an opening. To Jaskier’s delight, though, it hits the creature where its chest is slashed open and it reels backwards, hissing in pain and rage.

Geralt is moving before the stone has left Jaskier’s grip. He’s crossed the clearing before the Bwgan has a chance to recover, bringing his sword around and homing in for the kill.

The creature sees him coming, takes a few steps backwards for all the good that will do. Its eyes focus on Jaskier, holding his gaze. The eyes smile.

The Bwgan shrinks slightly, the yellow of its irises giving way to green and then blue while its hair darkens. Jaskier realises he’s watching something impersonating Geralt shift to an impersonation of himself for the second time in recent events, and likes it even less than he did the first time.

“Oh, shit. First Dudu and now you… doesn’t anyone understand that an impersonation is never going to be as good as the real thing?!” He demands.

The Bwgan, having fully taken on Jaskier’s form, is wearing a red leather doublet and matching trousers. It’s the outfit he wore on the dragon hunt, Jaskier realises with a shudder.

Geralt has slowed his approach from a run to a predatory stalk, circling the creature and looking for an opening. As his trajectory brings him around to face Jaskier, the look on Geralt’s face makes Jaskier’s stomach clench; it’s the same mask of disgust he wore when faced with Dudu’s Jaskier impression.

The Bwgan smiles, raises its hands in a placatory gesture. “Geralt. You wouldn’t hurt a bard…”

“Wrong,” the Witcher growls.

Jaskier doesn’t see the sword move. One moment it’s in Geralt’s hand, its bloodied tip tracing a moulinet in the air; the next it has been pushed through the not-Jaskier’s throat, silencing its pleas.

The Bwgan scrabbles at the blade in its neck, but the only thing that accomplishes is to give itself deep cuts on its fingers. It sinks to its knees, choking on metal and blood, and then slumps to the side. It makes one last failed attempt to draw breath before resignation softens the blue of its eyes. In its last instant, it smiles as if peaceful.

Then it dies.

Geralt pulls his sword from the neck of the prone figure. The squelch-crunch sound that the blade makes against his – against the Bwgan’s – throat as it comes free echoes through Jaskier’s limbs, making his gorge rise. As he watches, the Bwgan’s form – his form – evaporates into mist that dissipates to nothing within seconds.

“Good riddance,” Geralt mutters.

“It’s gone?” Jaskier asks, somehow making his mouth work though it feels like his tongue is numb. His whole body is numb.

“It’s gone,” Geralt confirms.

Jaskier’s thoughts are scattered. They have somehow vanquished the Bwgan, a task that was meant to be impossible. Well, Jaskier tends to witness at least one impossible thing per week when he’s travelling with Geralt, so that is nothing new. But saving Geralt has been Jaskier’s main driving force for days, weeks, and now Geralt is saved. Suddenly, Jaskier has no idea what to do next.

All he knows is he feels an all-body ache, like he has been hollowed out. As though the inside of his skin has been scraped agonisingly raw by a razor shell. Tears well up unbidden in his eyes, roll down his cheeks in a way that suggests that they do not intend to stop for some time.

“Jaskier?” Geralt takes a step towards him. Jaskier holds out a hand to keep Geralt at a distance.

“Geralt… I’m going to need a moment, alright? Well done on the…monster… killing, as always. But… before I found you, it showed me some things. Things I didn’t necessarily want to see or hear, and then I literally just watched you stab my doppelganger to death, so I’m going to need a moment. Okay?”

Geralt shifts, uncomfortable. From the way his jaw is clenching, Jaskier knows that the White Wolf has an inkling of what sights the Bwgan treated Jaskier to.

“I don’t know how much longer we’ll have to wait here but I don’t think it’ll be long. The Wise Woman that Ciri and I brought you to said she’d give me as long as it took for a hair to burn in a candleflame and then she’d pull me out.” Jaskier eyes the Witcher’s hair. “I know your hair is long but it’s not that long. We won’t have too much of a wait.”

Jaskier looks at Geralt. He is still only half-lit by the fire, the other side of his face lost to the indigo shadows of the nighttime forest. For once, Jaskier has no idea what to say.

“Hmm,” Geralt intones. “How about we go somewhere less gloomy?”

“As in… to another memory? I don’t know, Geralt. I’ve had enough reminiscing tonight to last me a lifetime as long as an elf’s…”

“Do you trust me, Jaskier?” Geralt asks.

Jaskier stares at the half of the Witcher he can see, and curses internally. After what he’s seen tonight, he should answer with an emphatic no.

“Yes.”

The corners of Geralt’s mouth twitch up slightly. The memory changes softly this time, like a fog lifting and leaving a clear landscape behind it. Despite this, Jaskier stumbles slightly before his arm is caught in a firm grasp. The bard allows himself to be steadied, then gently extricates himself.

Jaskier looks around. He can taste sea salt on his lips, and has a moment of concern at what the moist air will do to the lute strapped to his back before he remembers that it’s not real. He takes in the crashing grey waves, the cliffs towering above him, the sand and pebbles crunching under his boots.

“Where are we?” he asks.

“Bremervoord,” Geralt replies. “The time we came across the sea-dwelling nation and they attacked us.” With that, their past selves appear at the edge of the water. They watch their younger forms scrambling over rocks and away from the incoming tide that’s chasing them towards the cliffs, and the fish-folk that they’d accidentally disturbed.

“Run, Jaskier!” The past Geralt orders as he takes a wide-legged stance to face off with their pursuers. CJ does, reluctantly, and manages to scramble atop a large rock formation, out of reach of the sea and the well-armed humanoids that are still giving chase.

As he watches, the churning tide and fish folk catch up with Geralt’s former self. Jaskier sees past-Geralt clash with them, grappling with them briefly before getting pulled under the swirling water by his opponent for a worryingly long time. After the space of far too many heartbeats, Jaskier sees Geralt’s younger self erupt from the surface of the ocean, flailing with an arm that has blood gushing from a wound that stretches from left wrist to elbow. He gasps and splutters, coughing up what must be at least one lung’s worth of sea water.

“Um, Geralt,” Jaskier mutters, “I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish but this memory is not exactly making me feel calmer…”

“Wait…” Geralt suggests.

Past-Geralt manages to stagger a few steps, though he’s in danger of being grabbed and dragged under again by the aquatic people who are lurking in the water that now reaches his chest, keen to get revenge on the land-dweller who had dared trespass on their territory.

Just when all looks hopeless, CJ’s head and shoulders appear over the side of the ledge he’s perched on. His purple clothes look almost black thanks to the sea water that has drenched them, and he’s leaning with his arm stretched towards Geralt over the edge of the rocks he scrambled onto.

“Take my hand!” CJ orders. Past-Geralt, with difficulty, reaches up and is hauled gracelessly atop the rocks.

Geralt, the true Geralt, the now Geralt, turns to Jaskier. “That was the first time you saved my life. If you hadn’t been there, completely ignoring me when I told you to run, I’d have been crab food.”

The figures of their past selves have gone, but the surf still booms a short distance away. Jaskier has always loved the sounds of the coast, ever since he was a boy. He finds them soul-soothing.

“Well, if I’d let you become crab food then I’d have been robbing you of the last fifteen years of hearing my music, and for free too. No one else has had such a privilege, you can be sure.” Jaskier says this in an attempt to return to their pre-mountain banter, to tempt some normality into this most extraordinary of situations. He’s expecting Geralt’s usual snort and derisive comment, but none is forthcoming. Jaskier’s stomach sinks, his shoulders sagging involuntarily. It seems there’s no coming down from the mountain after all. Geralt doesn’t care enough to insult him.

“Jaskier,” Geralt reaches out as if to touch Jaskier’s face, but holds back. “What’s wrong?”

Jaskier gapes. It’s not a good look on him, he knows, but he can’t help it.

“You really have to ask? Geralt, I just watched you stab me to death. Or something that looked very like me. Do you know what you looked like when it put on my face like some cheap carnival mask? You… you were pure hatred. You loathed me.

“It was the same when I saw your memory of Dudu shifting into my shape in Novigrad. As soon as you saw my form, you were disgusted. I don’t know why you’ve pretended not to horrified by the very idea of me whenever you’ve been around for the last decade and a half, but you don’t have to pretend any more. The cat’s out of the bag.”

“Jaskier. That’s not… ah, fuck.”

“Not what, Geralt?” Jaskier demands. “I know you you don’t like to use your words. And that’s fine, normally. I love a good game of ‘Interpret The Witcher Grunt’ as much as the next person. But you’re going to have to talk to me now.” Jaskier softens his voice as much as he can, hating himself just a little for not being able to stand his ground. “Just… try. Try? Please try for me.”

Geralt sighs. Looks at the horizon where it draws a line between the sky and sea. Looks back.

“I’m not disgusted by you. It disgusts me when… when a creature takes your shape. They… hm. You. You’re special to me. When a creature impersonates you, it’s like… they’re using you to get to me. Sullying what we have. I don’t like that.

“You’re one of the few good things on this Continent, Jaskier. I don’t want anything contaminating you like that.”

“Oh.” Jaskier breathes. “Geralt…”

Geralt takes a tentative step towards Jaskier, slow enough that he could avoid the Witcher’s arms if he wanted to. He does not want to. Geralt folds him in his arms, firm but not insistent. It’s Jaskier who changes it from a hug to an embrace, tangling his fingers into Geralt’s hair where the salt spray is already making it curl and frizz and claiming the Witcher’s lips with his.

After a few moments a thought strikes him and he has to pull away, hiding his face in the crook of Geralt’s neck and giggling helplessly.

“What?” Geralt rumbles into his ear, but Jaskier can feel the word too with his chest pressed up against the Wolf’s, the bass reverberating in both of them and oh. Oh, that’s nice. “What’s so funny?”

“I told you we should come to the coast,” Jaskier tells him.

“Hm.” Geralt smiles back with his eyes before pulling Jaskier close once more.

Chapter Text

They walk the Bremervoord coastline for a while, not holding hands but close enough that their shoulders and arms brush together frequently, sending little pulses of electricity through Jaskier’s limbs every time they do.

Jaskier insists they take off their boots and paddle into the sea, trousers rolled up to their knees. They’re not in the freezing water long before he can’t resist splashing Geralt just to see the look of amused annoyance on his Witcher’s face. The huff of laughter that Geralt can’t quite hide makes Jaskier bold, gives him the mischief he needs to wait until Geralt’s back is turned and then jump on him in an attempt to dunk the Witcher under the water, a course of action that ends with Jaskier being unceremoniously dumped beneath the waves by a laughing Wolf.

Jaskier surfaces spluttering and mock-indignant, swatting at Geralt as hard as he can while almost collapsing with laughter. Geralt looks at him with those yellow eyes, smiling as he pushes sopping-wet white hair from his face and staring at Jaskier like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

The softness Jaskier feels as that image brands itself on his memory is beyond anything his frail human body should be able to contain. He grabs the back of Geralt’s neck, kisses him in an attempt to share this feeling, this happiness, because it’s beyond anything he could carry by himself. It demands to be a joint experience.

They stagger back to the shore, Geralt helping Jaskier fight against the strong pull of the current that seems to try and keep them in the waves. If Jaskier pretends to struggle more than strictly necessary, then Geralt doesn’t need to know. Besides, the Wolf seems happy to keep his arm snaked around Jaskier’s waist even when they are safely back on solid ground.

“Urgh. I’m soaked,” Jaskier complains. He grasps the front of his undershirt between thumb and index finger, pulling it away from his chest where the seawater has stuck it and turned it basically transparent. The rest of his clothes are no better, the damp plastering the material to his limbs with unpleasant clinginess and gritty with salt and sand.

“Hm,” Geralt responds, eyeing Jaskier’s chest through the shirt that’s doing nothing to preserve the bard’s modesty.

Jaskier laughs. “Hey, Witcher. My eyes are up here, you know.”

Geralt smirks without raising his gaze from where it’s burning a trail down Jaskier’s stomach towards his belt. “I know.” He reaches out and takes hold of Jaskier’s hips, pulling him forward until they’re flush against each other. Geralt’s nose finds the join where Jaskier’s neck meets his shoulder and Geralt inhales as if trying to catch Jaskier’s scent.

Jaskier can’t help but melt into it for a moment, before wrenching himself back to wag his finger at Geralt.

“No, Geralt, we can’t. Not when we could be pulled out of here any moment and into a Wise Woman’s cottage. Being caught in flagrante delicto is not how our first time is going to go.”

“The chance of getting caught doesn’t normally stop you,” Geralt points out as his mouth ghosts along Jaskier’s jawline, turning Jaskier’s insides to jelly and causing his dick to twitch in a very unsubtle way.

“Yes, uh, good point… ah, fuck, Geralt… compelling, really, well argued and thought out with an excellent delivery. But Ciri’s in the cottage, and I draw the line at being caught by your ten-year-old daughter. I imagine you do too?”

Geralt pulls back, staring at Jaskier with pupils blown wide. They shrink as Jaskier watches, a look of concentration passing over the Witcher’s face. Jaskier realises he’s seeing Geralt regain control over himself with willpower alone, and fuck if that isn’t one of the sexiest things he’s ever seen.

That’s not helpful. Think of something helpful…

“I’m cold, Geralt,” he gasps. “Take me somewhen warm.”

“Hm.”

The sea gradually disappears, melting into a hot summer day. Jaskier can still hear running water and turns to find a stream, the cool rush of the brook stopping the heat from being oppressive. Trees provide dappled shade around the clearing, the sunlight filtering green through the leaves and illuminating the yellow wildflowers that are dotted through the grass. Jaskier looks more closely at the petals: buttercups.

“Oh, Geralt,” he spins around to face the Witcher. “Perfect!”

“Hm.” Geralt sits down with his back against a tree trunk, legs stretched out in front of him. He’s in just his shirt and trousers, no armour, though his sword is on the floor close to his hand. “We’re just outside Beauclair.”

“Oh yes! The time when we were behind schedule but you still let us stop for the afternoon because it was too sweltering for me to keep walking. I remember.” Jaskier lies down on the ground, cushioned by the springy Toussaint grass, and puts his head in Geralt’s lap, flinging an arm dramatically over his eyes to shield them from the bright sun. “Thank you.”

After a pause, Jaskier feels Geralt’s fingers begin to brush through his hair, over and over. He hums contentedly. He could doze, he thinks.

Don’t fall asleep in fairyland, his bardic knowledge of stories tells him. No telling when you’ll wake up if you do. Or if you’ll wake up at all...

Jaskier’s eyes snap open. “Talk to me, Geralt, or I’ll fall asleep.”

“Hm.” Geralt’s fingers comb through his hair once more as the Witcher thinks. “What memories did the Bwgan show you?”

Well… mission accomplished, he supposes. He’s wide awake now. Ice slides down his oesophagus, constricting his soul and urging him to run. He pushes the feeling down.

“Erm. Dudu turning into me. Lambert asking you who I was when I waved you off one winter, and you telling him I was no one…”

“Hm. I couldn’t be bothered with having him taking the piss out of me all the way to Kaer Morhen.”

“…you refusing to talk to me when you’re injured, or coming across me and riding away rather than let me help you.”

“I don’t want you to have to deal with… that sort of thing. If you don’t have to.”

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response. I’ll always help you, Geralt. I want to. As long as you want me to. Um, what else…? Me catching you singing and you scarpering immediately.”

Geralt covers his eyes with one hand. “I was embarrassed.”

“You shouldn’t be. I rather think you suited the part of the maiden in that duet… ow.” Jaskier rubs the spot on his arm where Geralt had swatted at him in retribution, then continues. “You talking to your kidnappers and telling them you didn’t think anyone would come for you.”

Geralt’s voice is small. “I didn’t think anyone would. Besides, I didn’t need them to. They were only men, and they’re dead now.”

“It’s not about what you need, Geralt. You’re important to people, of course we’ll come for you. Then there was you telling me to fuck off. You telling me that you want no one, that you don’t give a monkey’s if I’m okay, that you’re not my friend. You riding away without me without even saying goodbye.”

“Shit. Jaskier, I’m…”

“The Djinn.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jaskier reaches up to smooth his thumb over the two lines of worry that have appeared between the Witcher’s eyebrows, to cup Geralt’s cheek in his palm. Geralt closes his eyes, turns his face into Jaskier’s hand so his lips touch the skin in a not-quite-kiss.

“I know,” Jaskier says. “But thank you for saying it.”

Silence fills the clearing for a while, broken only by birdsong and Roach’s snuffling. After a long while, Jaskier sits up. Geralt’s hands tighten on him fractionally, as if to stop him from moving away, but they immediately relent, giving Jaskier his freedom.

“Well, I think I’m dry now!” He says in his best bright voice. “Can’t be long before the Wise Woman pulls us out.”

Geralt regards him with his head slightly tilted, considering. “We’d better make the most of our time here, then,” he says. He stands and reaches out a hand to Jaskier to help him up. “Let’s go.”

The peaceful clearing disappears, replaced by a village square. Jaskier looks around and spots CJ as the young bard weaves his way through the townspeople gathered in groups, celebrating the death of whatever monster had been plaguing their hamlet, and approaches the younger version of Geralt who’s sequestered himself a shadowy corner.

“Don’t fancy joining the festivities?” CJ asks when he’s come to a stop leaning against the wall beside the Witcher.

Geralt shakes his head. The noise of the crowd must be too overwhelming.

“That’s fine,” CJ replies, producing a bag of pastries and a skein of wine from behind his back. “The party can come to you!”

***

A chance meeting on the road.

“Geralt! Geralt, help! Don’t leave me!” Jaskier shouts from where he’s lost in a flood of refugees, waving his arms above his head to get the Witcher’s attention. In the distance, Nilfgaardian troops can be heard shouting as they advance, murdering and pillaging as they come.

Past-Geralt’s face lighting up despite the circumstances. He reaches down a hand and pulls Jaskier onto Roach, spurring her away from the danger. “You must be insane,” he tells the bard. “You must be insane with fear if you think I could leave you.”

***

In a tavern, CJ is on the slightly raised floor in one corner that acts as a stage, singing his heart out as though he’s performing for royalty rather than the few afternoon patrons that a sub-par establishment can rustle up on a weekday afternoon.

A drunken lout stumbles up to Geralt and starts slurring abuse into his face as the Witcher leans back to avoid the stale smell of the man’s breath. It catches CJ’s eye, and a malign light shines in them for a moment. His hands don’t still on the lutestrings, however, and his voice never falters.

The lyrics to The Fishmonger’s Daughter change from the usual words, morph into verses that warn of the dangers of angering a bard. The song promises that anyone who dares to insult the friend of a troubadour will soon find several songs dedicated to themselves and their staggering stupidity, and they will be vilified and laughed at up and down the Continent.

The patrons all catch on long before past-Geralt’s aggressor does, nudging each other and laughing. CJ hops down from his makeshift stage and strolls towards the Witcher, still playing and singing.

Eventually the drunkard notices how quiet the pub has become around him, pauses in his tirade to look around and finds himself nose-to-nose with CJ.

“Anyone who insults Geralt of Rivia can bet,
That their words are something they’ll live to regret.”

CJ sings the last words with a cheerful smile and a look of steel. The gathered villagers are all clapping along and laughing. The man takes one look around the pub, then pales as his eyes meet CJ’s once more. He all but runs for the exit, weaving with the after-effects of his overindulgence as he does so.

“No one insults my Witcher but me,” CJ says to himself, but Geralt’s enhanced hearing picks it up. It was the first time an encounter like this has ended bloodlessly, the present-Geralt whispers in Jaskier’s ear as CJ strikes up another ballad.

***

CJ having to climb out of a window again to escape an angry spouse. Past-Geralt is already there to catch him before he hits the ground.

***

Past-Geralt being resigned to stringy game and stale biscuits again for his post-hunt meal, only to return to camp and find that CJ has rustled up an excellent fish stew that fills his body and mind with warmth.

***

CJ getting captured by bandits on the road, and barely having time to feel afraid before Past-Geralt happens upon the camp and tears the bandit stronghold apart to free his bard.

***

“Ooh! You’re Jaskier’s Witcher!” a Marquis announces when he meets Geralt at a banquet.

“Hm.” Geralt pretends to be annoyed, but can’t hide a small smile.

***

An alderman refusing to pay Geralt the sum they had agreed on because a hunt had taken longer than expected. Past-Geralt, exhausted and covered in entrails, ready to give in and take the reduced coin.

CJ plants both of his palms on the table, leaning over the alderman. “Your village makes most of its money on trade, doesn’t it? It’d be a shame if word got around that you’re a bunch of swindlers. The Viscount de Lettenhove is well known to me, and he has a habit of making inconveniences like this rather public. I’d hate for you to end up out of pocket in the long run just because you wanted to keep back a few measly crowns now…”

Past-Geralt leaves a few minutes later, with twice the amount of coin he’d been expecting and an apology. But CJ’s smug look is what he’d been happiest about, Geralt assures him.

***

Past-Geralt telling his brothers about Jaskier one winter at Kaer Morhen, and getting ripped to shreds over his partiality for some bard. Past-Geralt just smiling into his ale as they do, knowing it’s worth it.

***

"You can kill me, just let Jaskier go," Past-Geralt tells the band of brigands that had captured them. "He won't tell anyone about your hiding place, or your crimes.

"The hell I won't!" CJ shouts, writhing and struggling against his bonds. "If you kill the Witcher you'd better kill me to, or I'll travel the Continent singing songs of your cowardice and evil until I've raised an army against you to get my revenge! Do you hear me? You will not hurt him!"

***

Geralt picked this memory to visit, Jaskier couldn’t help but smugly remind himself as he leaned against the wall of the butcher’s shop.

The Witcher had brought them to a music festival in a tiny town that Jaskier couldn’t even remember the name of. The name, of course, didn’t really matter – this was just a hamlet in Cidaris, a convenient place for travellers to stop and rest their horses while travelling between bigger, more important places.

But this village is hugely important for one reason: it hosted the fair where Jaskier had beaten Valdo Marx for the first time in open competition.

Jaskier is lurking in the shadows as CJ works the stage, winking and smiling and twinkling at the crowd. CJ doesn’t know that the White Wolf was in the audience, Jaskier hadn’t known until this moment, because past-Geralt had muttered something scathing about having better things to do than waste time at a pointless festival. But the WItcher had come and watched, hiding in the crowd more successfully than a six-foot-tall, white-haired Witcher should be able to.

Current Geralt – his Geralt, Jaskier couldn’t help but think of him – is also here, of course. He’d drifted a little way away from Jaskier to examine a trinket on a stall, confident in his ability to avoid his past self and CJ’s eyes. Jaskier had tried to keep track of his Wolf as he’d moved through the crowds, but had lost him within seconds.

Jaskier turns his face instead to the furious profile of Valdo, who’s seething next to the ramshackle bar that’s been set up in the open air. Marx is staring at CJ and trying to affect an expression of unconcerned contempt and amusement, and failing. Jaskier is well aware that CJ’s performance is less than perfect, but it’s streets ahead of Valdo’s earlier attempt, and Valdo clearly knows it.

As Jaskier chuckles to himself, trying to memorise Marx’s face to return to later, he spots his Geralt in the crowd. The Wolf passes Valdo on the bard’s right hand side and, as he does so, taps Valdo’s left shoulder as if to get his attention. It’s the age-old trick of making someone turn in the opposite direction from you, so that they’re met with thin air instead of a someone greeting them. It’s a childish prank, but Marx falls for it, turning angrily the other way an instant later to see who fooled him, but by then Geralt’s already melted back into the crowd.

Jaskier guffaws. It’s petty, he knows, but he loves it.

Loves Geralt.

Jaskier is suddenly hit by the feeling that his bones are being dragged backwards and away, leaving the rest of him to either follow or die.

Fuck. Not yet. Not yet!

An image flashes in his mind, a white hair hovering above a flame. The Wise Woman’s words come back to him: As long as the hair lasts, you’ll be safe in there. Once the hair is burned away, I’ll pull you out and it’s over for the Witcher. Do you understand?

Shit. Time’s up.

“Geralt!” he shouts. The dragging sensation is building, but he can’t leave yet. Not without his Witcher. The villagers continue milling around, enjoying the fete and paying no attention to the bard struggling in the shade.

“Geralt!” Jaskier screams. Fighting the pull is impossible, but he does it. He feels like he’s being rent in half, but refuses to go. The colours and sounds of the fair are suddenly too loud, disorientating him and grating on his consciousness, but Jaskier plants his feet and summons all his stubbornness and stays.

What will happen if Jaskier is pulled out, but Geralt remains here, in his memories? Will he make it out himself? Or will he be trapped?

Out you come and it’s over for the Witcher.

But surely Geralt could find his way out of his own remembrances? Of course he can. Of course…

Jaskier’s mind unintentionally flits across the last fifteen years, and Geralt’s impressive ability to not know how to deal with anything that doesn’t involve stabbing something.

Shit… Jaskier definitely can’t leave him here.

“GERALT!” The roar bursts from his throat loud enough to scrape Jaskier’s precious vocal cords raw, and he doesn’t care.

Geralt hears him over the party din by some miracle and appears at the edge of the crowd with a look of concern. Too far away.

“Jaskier?” Geralt’s brow is wrinkled, mouth turned down. He’s alarmed. “Jaskier, what’s wrong?”

Jaskier forces his gritted teeth open. “Love, run!” Is all he manages to get out before the incessant wrenching steals his breath.

It was the wrong thing to say, he realises with despair. He had meant to say run to me, so that Jaskier could grab the Wolf and haul him out too. But the words did not make it out and he cannot form more.

Jaskier stares at Geralt despondently even as he keeps fighting. He knows the Witcher will assume there is some danger, and move away to plan his retaliation in safety before coming to rescue Jaskier. No sense in running into danger too and getting them both incapacitated; better if Geralt retreats to where it’s safe until he’s sure. It’s the sensible thing to do. It’s what Geralt always does.

Jaskier has an absurd urge to laugh; he knows from experience that when Geralt runs, he runs away.

But if he runs away, he won’t make it to Jaskier in time to be pulled safely from the labyrinth of his memories. Jaskier feels his grip on this place slipping as the Wise Woman’s magic prises the fingers of his willpower from the ledge of the memory, one at a time. He’ll last a handful of seconds more at most. Grief envelops him and tears blur the edges of his vision.

Jaskier knows that if he leaves now, he’ll never see his White Wolf again. He also knows that he cannot stay an instant longer.

His eyes are locked on Geralt, so close and yet too far away. He should have known that he wouldn’t be enough to save the White Wolf, should never have fooled himself that he’d win…

“Geralt…” He croaks once more as the edge of the market begins to fade and he feels the Wise Woman’s magic overwhelm him.

Chapter Text

The tears in Jaskier’s eyes make the world swim before him, emphasising the mistlike effect that shows the memory is dissolving around him.

This visual disturbance must be why Geralt seems to be getting bigger. Jaskier blinks, looks again, and realises he was wrong – Geralt is getting bigger. He’s growing in Jaskier’s view as he barrels towards the bard, shouldering people out of the way without slowing his charge.

Jaskier opens his arms and waits a few unending moments, unable to move further. Geralt reaches him, wraps his arms around his waist and cleaves to him. Jaskier winds his limbs around the Witcher, fingers tangling in his clothes and hair as he finally lets go with a cry of relief, finally allowing himself to be dragged away by the Wise Woman’s magic, yanking Geralt behind him the whole time.

Jaskier’s eyes snap open. He stares for a moment at the low ceiling that’s hung with dried herbs and… other things he tries not to recognise. He feels, for a moment, oddly bereft. He’s been living in Geralt’s pleasant memories, and being torn from them feels like being ripped from a warm bath and plunged into a snow bank. The real world is harsh around him, oppressive and jarring. He shakes his head to clear it.

He takes stock as his thoughts slowly return to him. He is cold. He is uncomfortable. Scratch that: he is very, very uncomfortable. His shoulders ache like the godsdamned devil, his mouth is parched and cotton-y, he can feel his eyelids scratch over his eyes every time he blinks. It couldn’t have even taken three seconds for the hair to burn down, why does he feel like he’s been lying on a hard floor for days…

The hair. Geralt.

Jaskier sits up sharply, stifling a groan as the movement does very bad things to his body. He turns to look at Geralt where he’s been lying on the table, but sees that the Witcher is already up. He and Ciri are wrapped in a tight embrace, Geralt’s large hand stroking her hair as if trying to soothe but not sure he’s doing it right.

Jaskier forces himself to stand. He realises he’s still only in his smallclothes, grabs his trousers and undershirt from their messy pile on the floor and dresses hastily. The Wise Woman spares him an amused look before looking back at Geralt and Ciri.

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier hears Geralt murmur.

The bard’s stomach plummets as suspicion seizes him by the gut and spreads through the entirety of him in less time than it takes to blink. Geralt doesn’t do apologies, as a rule, and Jaskier is in no mood to take chances. If the Bwgan has managed to trick him, to somehow take over Geralt and gain control of the Witcher’s conscious body…

He takes several steps forward as Geralt and Ciri separate, and doesn’t stop until Ciri is half-concealed behind his own form.

Jaskier glares at the Witcher, taking in everything from the set of his brow to way his feet distribute his weight on the ground, scouring the Wolf’s appearance in search of anything that might suggest that this was not truly the Geralt, his Witcher. That it was another Bwgan trick.

“Jaskier…” Geralt’s voice is even more hoarse than usual. There’s a hope in there that is almost unbearable to hear.

Jaskier’s eyes return to the gold ones opposite him. It is, unmistakably, the real Geralt. The Witcher holds the bard’s gaze, and for once Jaskier refused to break it and look away, no longer caring what the White Wolf might read on his face.

“Jaskier,” Geralt’s voice is taut with emotion.

“We need to talk,” Jaskier says softly. “You… you stay with Ciri, make sure she knows you’re safe. I’ll wait outside. Come and speak with me when you’re ready.”

Jaskier doesn’t wait to hear Geralt’s reply. He grabs his doublet and a blanket from where he dropped them in his haste when he entered the cottage, and steps outside into the dawn.

The new light falling on the world is soothing. He inhales all the damp smells of the forest, wood and rot and leaves and new life hibernating under the soil. He’s not usually one for nature, generally preferring to view it through the window of a well-furnished room, but he cannot deny that it’s beautiful.

He walks a short distance, enough to lose sight of the cottage in the trees. It doesn’t matter; Geralt would be able to track him even if he went to the edge of the forest. Or the edge of the world.

Jaskier finds a fallen tree to sit on, wraps himself in the blanket and settles down to watch the wood morph into its daytime self. The nocturnal animals have hunkered down and the birds and daytime creatures are waking up. A hare runs past so close that it almost scampers over Jaskier’s outstretched legs.

Jaskier feels strangely calm for someone who has just spent weeks tracking someone who used to be their friend, and then passed what seemed like several days in that estranged friend’s memories and the friend became… a lover? It is especially odd when those several days apparently took place in the time it took one hair to shrivel into acrid smoke above a flame. But he is too weighed down with calm to worry about this unusual tranquillity, and besides – he is exhausted.

Jaskier is brought back from what feels like an almost meditative state when he hears someone approaching from behind. Geralt can move through a wood soundlessly, so he must be intentionally making noise so as to not surprise Jaskier. This revelation aches in Jaskier’s chest.

“Jaskier.” It’s not a question, or the start of a statement. It’s a statement in itself, a full sentence.

Jaskier scoots over to make room for Geralt on the log. The trunk shifts slightly beneath him as the Witcher settles his weight on it, close enough that Jaskier can feel the Geralt’s heat next to him even through the blanket.

“Is Ciri alright?” Jaskier asks.

Geralt huffs affectionately. “She’s asleep. The Wise Woman is watching over her for now. Jaskier, I…”

“Geralt,” Jaskier interrupts. “I’m glad that you’re safe, and I’m going to go now. I know that you don’t want me in your life, complicating things. It was different in your memories, but that’s okay. I understand. You were grateful and relieved, you wanted to pay me back. But we’re outside, in the real world again now. I won’t make you give your shit-shovelling speech again. I’ll go.”

Jaskier stands and stretches, careful not to let the blanket fall. “Goodbye, Geralt.”

Thanks to last night’s adventures the remembrance of the last time he said this, the first time he’d seen the effects that the potions worked on Geralt’s face, is fresh in his mind. The image of Geralt whirling around to him, shouting “then go!” is vivid. He is prepared to for it, ready to hear it again. So it shocks him when Geralt says: “Don’t.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Don’t go, Jaskier. Please.”

Jaskier stares for a moment. He realises his mouth is open. He closes it.

Jaskier had prepared for this morning in his mind; in all the long hours riding to find Geralt, in the time he had spent in Geralt’s remembrances. He had known that this parting of ways was coming, and planned what he would say and how it would be said. He had known how it would go. It’s really very inconsiderate of Geralt to go off script like this.

Jaskier doesn’t sit back down, but he doesn’t walk away either. He looks down at Geralt, sat glowing in the dawn light with his hands resting lightly on his knees. He’s put his trousers and shirt back on, but left his armour and swords in the cottage.

Jaskier, for the first time since coming out into the dawn forest, feels a sense of uneasiness trying to creep in. But he likes the clarity he has felt this morning, and denies the nervousness any soil in which to grow. He breathes in the morning air and lets the anxiety sputter out.

Geralt seems to be searching for words. After a long pause, he finds one.

“Stay.”

Jaskier takes a deep breath. Dropping the mantle of the performer is no easier than it was last time, when Jaskier was trying to stop Geralt from murdering him outright. That seems unfair, somehow. Nevertheless, he refuses to don the stage persona that usually protects him. Geralt deserves that, at least. Hells, Jaskier deserves it too.

“Geralt. I don’t think I can. No, actually, that’s not right. I don’t think I should.”

Geralt, unsurprisingly, says nothing. He stares at Jaskier. Two creases appearing between the Witcher’s eyebrows and a slight flaring of his nostrils betray that he’s trying to get a grasp on the situation.

It’s too late to go back now. Jaskier and plunges on.

“I don’t think I should stay. I spent the last year getting over you, getting over us – whatever we are. And, by the gods, it was hard. I confessed to you, do you know? Probably not, no. Perhaps I should have made it more clear. It wasn’t my best work, I admit. I’ve made much more poetic declarations to the Countess de Stael, among others, of course. But then others don’t… affect me the way you do.

“On the mountain, after Borch and Téa and Véa let go of the chain and fell. I asked you to come to the coast with me, I said that we should do what pleases us while we can. You accused me of composing my next song. And I said, no. I was just trying to work out what pleased me. I meant you, Geralt. Being with you is what pleases me.

“It was a declaration, Geralt. I should have made it more obvious, I admit that. But it had been fifteen years, and I thought I’d just seen three people fall to their deaths. I wanted to tell you how I felt, but I was too cowardly to do it without leaving myself a little wriggle room, a bit of plausible deniability. But I tried to make you hear me, all the same. I know you think that I find words easy, but that one minute of conversation took most of what I had in me.

“And then, the next morning… well. I know that you remember what happened.

“So I went back to my life, and getting over us is one of the hardest things I ever had to do. But I managed it, Geralt. I surprised myself, and I didn’t want to, but I managed. And as well as managing, I gained some clarity too.

“And yet here we are. And this time you’re asking me to stay. And I want to Geralt, Melitele have mercy on me I really want to. But I won’t. Not if it means going back to exactly how things were before.

“I will not go back to being treated as if I’m a nuisance that you’re barely tolerating. I will not be your figurative and literal punching bag when you’re having emotions and you don’t know what to do with them. By all means, come to me with your feelings and I’ll help you muddle through them. But you can’t take them out on me. I’m not seventeen any more. I don’t bounce like I used to.

“So, thank you for the offer. But unless something changes – and I’m not trying to pressure you here. You’ve got Ciri, and she’s your priority and rightly so. You can’t be worrying about pleasantries to a bard when you have to protect your child of surprise – but unless something changes, I won’t be joining you.

“Thank you for the good times, though, Geralt. Sincerely. I loved you then, and I love you still. But I think this is goodbye.”

Jaskier exhales a controlled breath. The words hurt to say, but it feels good to have said them.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says. His fingers dig into his thighs where they rest. “I…”

“You?”

The Witcher sighs. “I… I didn’t know why you travelled with me. I thought it was just for stories, for song material. Why else would you put up with me, with the things the Path puts you through, if it wasn’t for your career? For coin?”

Jaskier forces his lips to remain closed, holds his breath in case he breaks the moment by inhaling.

“I… on the mountain, when you came to talk to me after we argued, I thought you were trying to use what happened between me and Yenn for a song. That you were mining for more material, that you didn’t care about what had happened or how Yennefer or I felt about it. Normally I don’t care if all you want out of me is a story, but not… not about that. The idea that you were going to pretend to comfort me just so you could make a song about it, to let everyone know what I’d done to Yennefer and how much I’d hurt her… I just. I didn’t know how to make you stop.”

“Well you worked something out,” Jaskier says faintly.

A grimace twists Geralt’s features. “I know. The wrong thing. I didn’t realise… I didn’t think you’d actually care. Forgive me, Jaskier.”

Jaskier shakes his head, a few compulsive movements. Geralt makes a wounded sound.

“Oh no… not that, Geralt! You’re forgiven. Of course you’re forgiven. You’re my very best friend in the whole wide world. I’m just… I’m sorry too. I’m sorry that I made you feel like that, that that’s how I made you feel for the last… fifteen years?”

Geralt hesitates, then nods.

“Oh, gods, Geralt. I’m so sorry. I know I joke about it, taking ten percent of your coin and telling you that you’re welcome every time anyone mentions the songs and how famous they’ve made you. But I didn’t once think you believed I meant it! It’s just… it’s what we do, isn’t it? I prattle nonsense and spout exposition and you hit me and tell me to shut up and occasionally spear me with acerbic wit. I never thought… gods, I’m an idiot.” He drops his head into his hands.

“You’re not an idiot,” Geralt says. Jaskier can hear the edge of a smile in his voice. “You’re a master of the seven liberal arts. Your brain is of the highest quality, you’ve said so yourself.”

“Yes, and I’ve never used it, which is why it’s still in mint condition.” Jaskier looks up. “Well fuck. Yennefer was right, wasn’t she? We really are a pair of idiots.”

“Hm,” Geralt nods, his eyes crinkling at the edges in what passes for him as mirth.

“For the record,” Jaskier says, “I’m friends with you because you’re my favourite person on the Continent. You’re my friend first, always my friend first. The songs are a distant second. Say the word and I’ll never write one about you again, but I’ll keep travelling with you to the edge of the world and back.”

Geralt stands, steps forward so they’re almost chest-to-chest. “For the record, I am your friend. And you don’t land me in piles of shit. Every good thing in my life: Yennefer, my child surprise. It’s because of you. Thank you, Jaskier. I can’t think of a better travel companion.”

Jaskier drops his blanket and jumps. Geralt catches him and holds him up, Jaskier’s arms around his neck and the bard’s legs around his waist. Jaskier kisses him long and demanding, and Geralt rumbles happily into the kiss.

After a long moment, he pulls back, smiling at Jaskier’s whine at the distance.

“I’m taking Ciri to Kaer Morhen,” he tells Jaskier. “Come with us.”

“Just try and stop me,” Jaskier replies. Geralt is still laughing when Jaskier reclaims his lips.