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Chapter Text

Jaskier spends three days picking his way down off the mountain before he finally makes it back to the town where Borch first approached them. 

He walks straight into a patrol of Nilfgaardians, on his way to the tavern. 

He makes it out intact, much to his surprise, but only because he’s a bard and they’re an army. He’s useful in keeping up the army’s morale. He spends a month with them, singing for hours upon hours every night while the soldiers jeer and cheer from one song to another, mocking him and demanding another after another. 

He spends his days walking alongside the caravan until his feet aches, a miserable parody of his adventures with Geralt. At night, he’s not allowed to sleep — curled up on the ground beside the wagons — until he’s sung for hours upon hours and his voice has gone hoarse. 

Then, because of course he can’t pass for a simple traveling bard, of course he can’t simply be the nightly entertainment — he’s recognized as the Witcher’s bard. 

More specifically, the one Witcher who actually gets involved in human matters: Geralt of Rivia, no matter that the man’s cast Jaskier aside like he’s worth no more than the bread people used to throw at him in taverns, like he’s a worse misfortune than men and women stoning Geralt for saving their lives, like Jaskier hasn’t spent the last twenty years sewing him back together after one fight or another. 

Like he’s worth less than a dandelion growing by the road to be trod over. 

Even if you pay it any mind, it is but a weed, to be cast aside once you’ve satisfied yourself looking at it. Plucked, then discarded. 

The soldiers clap him in irons; they take his lute and the few belongings he’d been allowed to keep, snatch his notebook and jeer at him for thinking he could escape their notice. 

His tale, more bitter than any of Geralt’s tonics, does little to convince the Nilfgaardians, though: they tie him and beat him, demanding to know where Geralt of Rivia is and what his plans are. 

Why is he so close to their army? Does he intend to interfere with them, with their army? 

They don’t believe him when Jaskier says there were dragons (not until the scouts return with confirmation, at least) and they don’t believe him when he says he has no knowledge of Geralt’s plans. 

They believe him even less when he says Geralt has declared him a blight, a tumor that brings nothing but misery and misfortune in his wake. 

He will come, they insist, for his bard. Geralt of Rivia is too noble to abandon his friend, nevermind Jaskier’s insistence that Geralt has never once admitted the fact, in over twenty years’ time. 

They stare at him, cold eyes boring into his skull, and smile coldly. No matter, they say. Even if they can’t break him, the mages will simply take what they want from his head. 

Their smiles are chilling when they declare that either way, they’ll have fun trying.

Jaskier pokes at the wound like a sore tooth, forcing himself to remember we aren’t friends, and what do you want, Bard? And if life could give me one blessing. 

He ruminates on Yennifer’s words, from one of their many fights — she’d told him, acid in her voice, that Geralt couldn’t even bring himself to claim Jaskier as a friend when he’d first met the woman, not even when Jaskier lay dying. 

At the time, Jaskier had laughed because Geralt didn’t even know how to ask for help with a wound when they’d been together for ten years, and asked if Geralt had ever even said the word ‘love’ in Yennefer’s presence. 

Now, he steeps his mind in the agony, in the betrayal that his own assumptions had ultimately led him to, because Geralt had never even claimed Jaskier as a friend, only as a misfortune. 

Why should he care for Jaskier’s fate, now that he’s finally rid himself of the bard with the irritating songs? 

Even if Geralt spoke in anger, even if he eventually decides he cares to hear the fate of Jaskier the Witcher’s Bard, it won’t be for years yet. 

Geralt has a short temper, but a long memory and a longer lifespan. 

He won’t notice that Jaskier is gone for half a decade or more, and no matter how long they traveled together, he never told Jaskier any of his plans. 

Jaskier brings all the bitterness, the years of devotion lost and the anger that he should be tossed aside after he’s done so much for Geralt, to the forefront of his mind. He pushes any thoughts of Geralt’s Child Surprise to the back of his mind with the family he hasn’t spoken to in years. He buries Geralt’s inability to say no to children beneath the question has my sister married? He hides any thoughts of Geralt’s tenderness, on the occasions Jaskier found himself injured or ill, beneath that long-ago pie with no filling. 

Jaskier buries any — all — fond memories beneath rage, behind bitterness, in the satisfaction that at least he’s his songs to show for all that time wasted with a man who cares so little. 

Jaskier buries any joy he might have once felt at the name Geralt of Rivia, and when they come to interrogate him, he talks. 

He tells them his stories, lets them hear the bitterness he feels that Geralt would abandon him so easily after decades of faithful companionship. 

He tells them how Geralt has always hated his music, even when it’s turned his reputation around and gets him paid in coin rather than stones and hard words; how Geralt doesn’t give a whit what happens to Jaskier; how the Witcher allows himself no attachments to anyone. 

He tells them of how he slept with a woman and then killed her the next day. 

He tells them of the years he’s spent at Geralt’s side, following on foot while Geralt rides his horse, never any clue what town they’ll be in the next week. 

He talks and talks and talks, and they don’t believe a word he says. 

Of course the Witcher would care. Why else would he allow Jaskier to follow him for so long? Surely he must know something.  

So the Nilfgaardians call their mages and have them ravage Jaskier’s mind, tearing into it piece by piece, day after day. 

They beat him, demanding answers he doesn’t have and information he’s never learned. 

They starve him, deprive him of water.

They chain him behind the wagons and force him to walk until his legs will carry him no longer, but it makes no difference: Jaskier has nothing left to say. 

Well. 

Nothing left to say. 

He sings, though. 

He sings, choking out the words to Toss a Coin and Her Sweet Kiss. He manages to sing The Fishmonger’s Daughter between gasping breaths and tears, and then he begins composing because of course he does. 

He’s a bard. 

That’s what he lives for, even as his body is broken and his mind shattered. 

He composes mournful ballads as he trudges through mud, things that make the heart ache with longing and loneliness, and finds himself beaten for it. He writes the war songs of the oppressed, the unbreakable spirits that march on even once they’ve been broken and gets his fingers broken in return. He sings an irreverent ditty mocking the Nilfgaardian king and goes three days without eating. 

They give up on getting any information out of him eventually, declaring him a lost cause in that regard, but they still have hope that he could be useful. Perhaps Geralt will come for him, can be lured into a trap or convinced to make a trade of some sort. 

They keep him alive. 

He laughs, as they stare coldly down at him, his voice high and broken, when they declare their intentions to wait for Geralt to attempt a rescue. 

There will be none, Jaskier knows. 

Geralt will be angry for months yet, maybe even years. He won’t even know Jaskier was ever in danger until it’s long gone. 

This is how he knows, as surely as the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, as confidently as he knows the notes to each of his songs, as deeply as he does that Princess Pavetta’s marriage was one of love and destiny, that Geralt will not come for him. 

He tells them so, his voice ringing out stronger than it has in months that while Geralt of Rivia might one day notice his absence, he won’t ever be fool enough to march into a Nilfgaardian camp for the bard he threw away.

He does not allow himself to doubt. 

He does not allow himself to hope. 

He only allows himself to remember long nights of revelry after another good hunt; the joy of a full tavern chorusing along to Toss a Coin; the taste of a fresh pie full of fruits bursting on his tongue; the feel of a soft bed of clovers on the side of a hill in late spring as sunshine seeps into his limbs.

They drag him along for weeks, for months, until he’s no longer certain how long they’ve had him but it’s been long enough for his fingers to heal and be rebroken twice and his ribs protrude so far they could be used as a musical instrument. 

Finally, the Nilfgaardians give in and accept that Geralt isn’t coming for his pet bard, that he truly doesn’t care what happens to Jaskier. 

Disgusted at the wasted time, the energy spent breaking Jaskier when they could have done better things with their time, the Nilfgaardians waste no more energy on him: they drag him to the side of the road one morning and put a sword through his gut, then leave him for the crows and the ghouls and whatever else cares to partake of a starved man’s corpse. 

As Jaskier lies there, bleeding in the dirt, he allows himself to smile with vindictive satisfaction. 

He doesn’t know where Geralt is. He doesn’t know his plans. 

He never has. 

But whatever the Nilfgaardians learnt from him, they didn’t learn of the grief Geralt felt for a princess he couldn’t save, so intense he attached her brooch to the hilt of his sword. They didn’t get a keep full of Witchers, wintering together every year for a century. They didn’t get a Child Surprise Geralt is too afraid to approach.

He hopes Geralt never learns what happened to him. 

He hopes Geralt doesn’t think it was his fault Jaskier was killed. 

He would rather Geralt think Jaskier is avoiding him for the rest of his life than that he ever learns how long he was kept alive in hopes that Geralt would come for him. 

Chapter Text

Witchers aren’t immortal. 

They are strong, yes, and injuries that would kill a human in moments take only a day to scar over and heal. With a vial of Swallow and one of Kiss, a Witcher can weather most injuries without trouble.

They aren’t immortal, though. 

If Geralt can’t reach his potions, or if they’re broken, he won’t be able to use them to heal himself. If he’s captured and beheaded, he will die. If he’s burned at the stake, he will die. If his heart is pierced, he will die. 

That doesn’t mean he expects it to happen any time soon, of course. 

He’s only a century old — young enough that he doesn’t have enough wounds coated in scar tissue to slow him down, but old enough to be experienced, to know which beasts will give him trouble and which ones he can take down easily. 

He’s got a long life ahead of him, one he doesn’t think of often because there’s no point in reminding himself that he’ll be fighting the same damn things for the next one, two, three hundred years or longer, depending how long it takes for something to finally kill him. 

The trouble, Geralt is finding, is that while he’s a hundred years old and has spent the majority of that time in isolation, he’s spent the last twenty of it with company. 

Not every moment of it, naturally — he and Jaskier have gone years at a time without crossing paths, and they pass most winters separately, in courts and Kaer Morhen respectively — but they have spent the last ten or fifteen years more or less constantly in each other’s company during the warm months. 

This is a problem because Geralt keeps expecting Jaskier to be there, even as he seethes his way down the mountain and meets with Mousesack, goes to Cintra to give in to Destiny and collect his Child Surprise. 

He keeps turning to snap irritably, or expecting Jaskier’s thoughtful what do you think of this, or how does that sound. 

It’s infuriating. 

Geralt doesn’t want Jaskier to be there, bringing down yet another misfortune upon his head, he doesn’t want Jaskier’s cheerful humming or his incessant questions. 

He focuses on the now, instead: now he’s meeting Mousesack, now he’s fighting, now he’s challenging Queen Calanthe, now he’s swearing to return if Ciri is put in danger. 

He’s so busy trying to keep Jaskier out of his damn head that he forgets not to stop moving until he’s gotten out, not to pause in the middle of the gates, and finds himself trapped like a foolish child walking the Path for the first time. 

Of course.  

Jaskier doesn’t even have to be with him to bring misfortune, pretty and poisonous as the flower he’s gotten his name from. 

Geralt spends weeks seething about it in his cell, in between meditating and exercising, pushing his body so he can still fight when he escapes. He spends months wishing curse upon curse on Jaskier, hoping the bard suffers the same misfortunes Geralt has and more, before he finally comes back to his senses, wrath fading into exhaustion as he realizes just how badly he’s fucked up. 

In twenty years of traveling — twenty years — he’s never managed to say something cruel enough to actually drive Jaskier from his side. He’s sent the bard into fits of pique; said something that made Jaskier sing nothing but Toss a Coin for weeks on end; even made him furious enough to compose three songs detailing how infuriating Geralt is. 

(The songs had, infuriatingly, gotten them rooms in inns for nearly the next month.)

This is the first time Jaskier has ever actually, truly, left him for saying something cruel. 

None of this is Jaskier’s fault. 

The djinn was as much his fault as it was Jaskier’s — he was the one searching for it from the start, the one who made both the wish that nearly killed Jaskier and the one that ultimately drove Yennefer away from him. 

Nor is Geralt’s Child Surprise Jaskier’s fault. Jaskier was hardly the one to claim Law of Surprise, after all. 

Geralt did all that himself. 

It isn’t even as though Geralt never suffered misfortune before Jaskier — the Blaviken shitstorm had been nearly ten years before he’d even met the bard.

Hell, Jaskier has done more good for Geralt than he has harm.

Geralt’s head thunks back against the stone wall of his cell.

He hasn’t been jeered out of a village in years, and while people still try to short him his pay, they eventually cough it up for the White Wolf. 

That alone, even without the times Jaskier has rubbed oil into his aching wounds or stitched together one gaping wound after another, is a gift Geralt can never repay. That Jaskier started because he wanted fame means nothing — Geralt isn’t foolish enough to think that had been Jaskier’s primary goal for more than a couple of years. 

The songs don’t just impact him, either. Each winter, Eskel and Lambert tell him how people approach them with jobs, now, instead of making them settle for half pay if any at all. They tell him how innkeepers sometimes give them fair prices for a room, how people don’t flee the tavern the moment they walk in. 

Jaskier has done nearly as much for Geralt’s family as he has for Geralt himself, and he’s gone and repaid the favor with the cruelest words he could think to say. 

If life could give me one blessing, Geralt thinks bitterly. What a joke. 

He’s the one who’s brought misfortune on himself, not Jaskier, and now he’s gone and driven away the best human he’s ever met. 

Jaskier is — what else is one to call the bard who’s single handedly changed the lore about Witchers from monsters to heroes and did it all while he sewed Geralt back together time and time again? 

This is a nightmare, a fucking mess, and it’s been Geralt shoveling the shit on every damn time. 

This time, he doesn’t have Jaskier there to help him out of it. 

Fuck. 

Geralt is going to have to apologize, isn’t he? 

Even if Jaskier decides he doesn’t care to accept it, he deserves at least that much courtesy. 

Twenty fucking years. 

It’s not as long for a Witcher as it is for a human, and it’s still been a long time for Geralt. 

Once he gets out of this cell, Geralt decides, he’ll make sure Cirilla is safe, and then he’ll find Jaskier and apologize. 

Geralt settles in to wait. 

-

When he finally gets out, all thoughts of finding Jaskier have already slipped from his mind: the Nilfgaardians are invading and he needs to find his Child Surprise before they do. 

It takes him a week, all told, before the Nilfgaardians are driven back — by Yennefer, he later learns — and he manages to track down Cirilla. 

She goes by Ciri, and she insists on learning everything he can teach her about fighting, and she tests his skin with her silver knife every time she sees him. 

He’s very proud. 

But there’s still danger — the Nilfgaardians might have lost one battle but they’ll be back, fanatics that they are — and he can’t just leave Ciri behind. He goes to Sodden, where he finds Yennefer weak from exertion but still full of fire and sharp words until the moment she lays eyes on Ciri. 

Then she’s all big eyes and soft words, gentle hands brushing the hair from Ciri’s face and holding the girl close to her as she weeps. 

Geralt needs to take them to Kaer Morhen, needs to get them safe, and Jaskier is going to be so furious that he didn’t get to come along with them but the mountain where they last saw each other is now deep in occupied territory. 

Geralt can’t risk Ciri.

The only consolation is that the mages agree to keep an ear out for any word of Jaskier the Bard, promising to lend aid if he is in trouble. 

He will be, Geralt is sure of it. Jaskier hasn’t managed to stay out of trouble a day in his life, gleefully waltzing into danger and off cliffs so long as he thinks there’ll be a song in it for him even though he doesn’t have a Witcher’s durability. 

Geralt keeps away from the main roads for safety, keeping Ciri at his side every moment, letting Yen go into town when they need supplies. 

None of them have any word about Jaskier. There are no new songs, of the White Wolf or otherwise.

Geralt ignores the urge to turn around, to find Jaskier. Jaskier is strong enough to keep up with a Witcher for twenty years; he can protect himself until Ciri is safe. 

The journey is long and hard, even once Yennefer has recovered enough of her strength to portal them most of the way to Kaer Morhen — it’s impossible to portal straight to the keep if you don’t already know where it is, and none of them are interested in portaling right off a cliff. 

The trail is dangerous even in fair weather before the storms come; much more so now that the first snows have already covered the ground in a blanket of white. 

They reach the keep, eventually. 

Geralt’s brothers ask why the hell he’s brought two humans and neither one the bard he’s spent twenty years of his life with. 

Geralt tells them to fuck off. 

Now that they’re here, though, Yennefer is able to portal herself and Geralt back to the south, to the mages, who have news about Jaskier. 

The mage who meets them hands Geralt a single sheet of paper with a Nilfgaardian stamp on it, and his stomach curdles before he even unfolds it. 

Nilfgaardians don’t take prisoners. 

He reads: 

The Witcher’s bard has been captured. Prisoner claims not to know the witcher’s location or plans, says they were on a dragon hunt.

Prisoner still claims ignorance. Says the witcher turned him away. Did not change story with encouragement. Tells stories of travels. Prisoner to be kept on half rations until he becomes cooperative. 

Prisoner still claiming he doesn’t know where the witcher is. Continues to tell stories. Spreading word that we have the bard. 

Prisoner claims the witcher won’t come for him. Mage will arrive tomorrow. 

Mage says prisoner has no useful information. Word still being spread that we have the bard. 

Witcher hasn’t come for the prisoner. Bard laughs, insists he won’t. 

Witcher still hasn’t come. Prisoner is no longer able to keep pace beside carts. 

Witcher still hasn’t come. Prisoner to be disposed of in one week’s time. 

Witcher did not come. Prisoner disposed of. 

Soldiers acquired a tavern today. Morale is high. 

Geralt stares blankly at the rest of the paper as it turns to talk of morale and supplies, of insignificant quarrels between soldiers and of the reprimands enacted. 

They didn’t even use another piece of paper.

He can’t — his mind is silent, empty. He can’t think. 

Jaskier had laughed at the idea that Geralt would come for him. 

He’d laughed. 

Yennefer, reading beside him, furrows her brows and purses her lips into a thin line even as the betrayal sears Geralt from the inside out: how could he have done this? Had he truly been so cruel, driven Jaskier to believe that Geralt wouldn’t spit on him if he were on fire?

“This doesn’t make sense,” Yennefer says, at last. 

“No,” Geralt says. “It does. I was… cruel to him. After you left.” 

“No,” Yennefer says, her eyes boring into Geralt, “This doesn’t make sense. Not even the mages were able to get anything useful out of him? Geralt, he traveled with you for twenty years.” 

Doesn’t she think he knows that? Knows that the most faithful friend he’s ever had would give up on him easily? 

She doesn’t need to rub it in. 

“Geralt.” 

He says nothing. 

“Geralt,” she snaps, “You’re a fucking idiot.” 

“Yeah. I did this to him.” The words are bitter in his mouth. They taste like ash. 

Yen rubs her forehead and sighs heavily. When she speaks again, she enunciates each word carefully and clearly, as though speaking to a dullard. 

“Geralt, they didn’t get anything useful from Jaskier. He knew you for twenty years, and yet he didn’t give them a single thing they could actually use.” 

The words sink in slowly, seeping into his chest and making it ache. “He didn’t give them anything.” 

“Not a damn word,” Yennefer says softly. 

Geralt closes his eyes and breathes through the agony washing over him like a waterfall. 

He doesn’t move for a long time. 

Chapter Text

Nilfgaard leaves bodies in its wake, strewn across the ground like broken stalks of corn after a storm. And, like broken stalks of corn after a storm, the bodies lie there and begin to decay, attracting hungry creatures to devour them. 

Crows are the most benign of the lot. 

More often, the crows know better than to eat from a killing field, though — crows are intelligent beasts and they know to avoid the monsters attracted by the unburied dead. 

Perhaps, Murumac thinks as his shovel bites into stony earth again, he should take a lesson from the crows and leave. 

But no, unburied souls find no rest, and his farm will be overrun by ghouls and angry spirits if they aren’t given their peace. If he isn’t the one to bury them, who will? 

There’s nobody else for miles around except Taldi and his boy, now that Nilfgaard has come through — Murumac is just too stubborn to leave the land his family’s lived on for the last hundred years, and Taldi feels the same. It’s been faithful to them, seen generations through the good and the bad, and he’ll not abandon it now, though he’s not too proud to send his wife and sons and their own little families to safety. 

Ordi is just too stubborn to leave his Pa.

But if he wants this land to have a hope of giving life to his own children, he’s got to take care of it the way it’s always done him.

His shovel bites into the dirt again, clumps of soil thumping down on the side of the hole he’s digging when he tosses it to one side, opposite the poor sod on the ground. 

Boy had a hard time of it, it seems — and a nasty ending, too. 

Not that most of the people the Nilfgaardians kill have better endings, but at least most of them aren’t starved near death and then sent off with a belly wound. Likelier than not, the man bled to death and felt every moment of it.

Murumac spits. 

Damned Nilfgaardians put him through enough; couldn’t they have even given him a clean death? But no, those bastards don’t know anything of small mercies.

The man’d had enough awareness to suffer, it seems — he’s curled onto his side like a child sleeping, though the comparison is marred by the darkness staining the ground. 

As Murumac watches, the man lets out a high, thin sound of pain.

Murumac’s eyebrows go up, up, up high on his forehead as he stares in shock. He gapes only a moment longer before his brows furrow tightly and his mouth purses in thought.

How in the hell can a man bleed that much and still live? 

Either the man on the ground is no man at all, or the gods themselves have decreed he lives. Whichever it is, Murumac could do worse things than earn the favor of something greater than himself by saving a life. 

If he’s wrong, and the man dies anyway, there are still worse things to do than give a bit of comfort to a dying soul. Mind made, he turns towards home. He’ll need to fetch the cart if the man’s to make it there alive. 

He’ll get Taldi to help him finish the graves later.

Getting the man home is only a little harder than it might have been. He doesn’t fight when Murumac hauls him up, only lets out a soul-rending sound of agony that cements the idea that he’s some fae creature, lost in the world of men. Why a fae would suffer more in this world than his own, Murumac can’t think.

“Don’t curse me for hurtin’ you, now,” Murumac grunts, “‘s just a bit ‘o necessary evil, if you’re wanting to live. Can’t be trying to clean you up until I’ve got you home, and I can’t do that without giving you a bit of pain here and there.” 

The stranger doesn’t answer, but that’s alright. Murumac’s grown used to the silence these last several weeks. 

It takes a fair bit to get the stranger home, and then inside to a bed so Murumac can get started cleaning him off and taking care of the stranger’s wounds. 

The water takes it’s time boiling, but that’s only to be expected. At least it gives him the time to fetch the herbs and salves he’ll need, as well as spare trousers for once he’s finished bandaging the stranger. 

He looks startlingly young, under the blood and grime and once you look past the hunger. It only adds to Murumac’s conviction that whatever it is lying in the bed, it’s not a man.

Once the water’s ready, Murumac takes his time to clean the wounds nice and carefully, stitching the big ones shut like’s done a thousand times when he needed to put bits of leather together for a waterskin or a bag or any of a dozen other things. 

He’s no healer, and he’s not got his wife’s skill with a needle and thread, but it’s a tolerable job in the end, and he’s lived long enough to know which herbs to pack into the wounds to keep them from festering and which salves to slather on top to start the healing.

Not that it might end up doing any good, though — the stranger’s face is thin with hunger and pale with blood loss, more of him covered in bandages than isn’t. 

His hands were particularly bad, and Murumac imagines he won’t be much pleased when he wakes to a farmer’s attempts to splint the things. 

Well, he’ll at least have his life and there’s no sense asking for milk from an apple tree.

“I’m only a farmer, you know,” Murumac grumbles as he considers what to do next. “Don’t suppose you’ll be needing me here for a bit, though, and there’s still enough light to finish the grave for the other bodies. Can’t all be lucky as you are, if luck this is.”

Mind made up, Murumac leaves a bowl of broth on the table by the bed and a bucket on the floor and steps out into the cold once more. 

Even if he’s saved a life today, there’ll be monsters soon if he doesn’t get the real dead folk buried.

It takes until the third morning before the stranger stirs, long enough that Murumac is wondering if the stranger prefer to be buried or burned or have some entirely different method of sending their spirits to the afterlife.

“Hngh,” the stranger says, then gasps in a ragged breath. 

“Huh,” Murumac says, “You woke up.” 

“Oh did I?” The stranger asks breathily, huffing a weak laugh. “Suppose death wouldn’t hurt quite this much though, would it?” 

“Likely not,” Murumac agrees. “Here — broth for you. You’ve not eaten in some time.” 

The man can’t hold the bowl on his own, not with his shattered hands, so Murumac helps him, holding it to the man’s lips and tilting until he can take small sips.

“Dunno what manner of fae you are, but it’d earn me ill luck to leave you to your death on my own land,” He explains. 

“Fae?” Murumac’s guest murmurs, a puzzled smile turning his lips up once he’s drunk his fill and allowed Murumac to set the bowl aside.

It doesn’t make him look any less otherworldly, eerie blue eyes peering out at him from dark shadows and the bones in his face sharp enough to cut a man. 

“What else could you be?” Murumac huffs, “To survive the wound in your belly without even a proper healer? Either you’re fae or you’re blessed by the gods and I’d rather not anger either if I can help it.” 

“Exceptionally lucky, perhaps?” The stranger says. His voice is raspy with disuse and whatever came before that.

“As you like,” Murumac demurs, unsure of the wisdom in arguing. If the creature insists he be called a man, then man he’ll call him. And it may yet be that he’s only blessed by the gods, though his voice leaves a chill that still lingers in Murumac’s bones three days later.

The stranger drinks a little more than half the bowl before he indicates he’s done, granting Murumac a wane smile. It melts into a grimace when Murumac helps him lay down, and doesn’t go away when Murumac says he needs to check the wound.

“That won’t be terribly pleasant, I think,” the stranger says, staring at his wrapped gut. 

“Nope.” 

“Ah, well. Best get it over with now.” 

Layers of bandages come away: white at first, then darkened with blood and pus once he reaches the inner layers. Then the wound itself, angry and inflamed but not yet reeking of the kind of infection that signifies a dead man walking. 

If Murumac hadn’t thought his guest a stranger before, he certainly would now. No man could lie with a belly wound in the mud for who knows how long and not develop an infection. 

Murumac doesn’t say anything about that, though: just goes about changing the dressing and smearing on more salve before he wraps the entire thing back up in fresh bandages. His hands are less swollen than they were earlier, at least, but aside from that they haven’t improved much.

“You’re very kind,” The stranger gasps when he’s finished. A polite beast, this one. 

“Of course,” Murumac says simply. He makes sure the stranger has a small cup of broth on the table beside him and enough blankets to keep him warm, then gathers the used bandages to wash. 

Other than that, there’s not much to do.

He’d gotten help from Taldi and his boy to dig the graves. The ground was hard enough and it’d been late enough in the day by the time he’d dealt with the stranger’s wounds that they’d had to cart the bodies to Murumac’s barn for a night, but they’d warded off any corpse eaters with salt and dried herbs. 

Nothing ate them, so it must have worked alright.

The horse is gone, helping get his family to safety, but he’s still got the donkey and chickens to check on. He’s a worn old thing, but does alright with helping Murumac to the village when he needs it. 

He gives the donkey a few pats on the head and a bit of feed to eat, then hauls a bucket of water up from the well before he goes inside.

His guest is sleeping, though he stirs briefly when Murumac enters and begins stomping the snow off his boots before he sets them by the fire with his cloak. 

Murumac blinks. 

The fire is still burning strong, even though he’s not been here to feed it all day. Surely his guest isn’t strong enough to have gotten out of bed already? The stranger only woke up this morning, and looks to be sleeping deeply enough that the fire should have at least begun to die down. Even if the stranger was strong enough to get up and put a log on the fire, how could he do it with his broken hands? 

He shivers.

It doesn’t make a difference though, and the fae are known for repaying their debts. This one, hopefully, will feel the same.

Murumac dumps the water into the pot to heat over the stove. Some of it will go to changing the stranger’s bandages; the rest, their dinner. 

He chops vegetables and meat while he waits, slicing several thick pieces of bread while he’s at it, and then fills a basin with the water he’ll need for the moment. He doesn’t put the vegetables in the pot just yet; if he needs more water for bandages it’ll be no good if it’s already in a stew.

Murumac pauses. 

Should he wake the stranger before he changes the bandages? 

The stranger might prefer to sleep. On the other hand, he might prefer not to be touched in his sleep. 

“‘Scuse me,” Murumac says after another minute’s debate — it’s likely best not to startle the stranger in his sleep, he thinks. “Come on then, time to change your bandages again.” 

The stranger wakes with a bit of sleepy mumbling, though it’s all polite enough. 

“Ah,” the stranger says, “Time to change my bandages again? Very well, then.” 

He doesn’t say anything else, only letting out grunts of pain when the bandages pull or when he needs to shift slightly to allow Murumac better access to some spot or another. When Murumac takes his hands to change those bandages too, the stranger’s expression tightens in grief. 

“I was a bard,” he confesses, “Until they took my lute and — well.” 

Murumac bites his tongue on I’m sorry, and instead says, “That must be terrible.” 

“It is.” 

The stranger says nothing else until his wounds have all been dealt with and Murumac is holding the bowl up for him to drink from: broth, again, and he’ll likely have nothing but for a few days. Murumac’s seen enough to know what happens to a body when it’s been starved for too long, and that large quantities of food do no good until farther along in the healing process.

“I’m called Jaskier,” the stranger says once they’ve both eaten, staring silently into the fireplace. 

“You may call me Cordac,” Murumac returns. It was his father’s name.

The stranger — Jaskier — smiles.

They exchange no more words that evening, partly because Jaskier drifts back into sleep almost immediately after he finishes his broth. He manages to finish the bowl this time, at least. 

They quickly fall into a routine: Murumac changes Jaskier’s dressings each morning and then does the washing. After that he’ll go out to take care of the animals, chop wood, and check the traps for any game. 

Jaskier spends his days in bed or by the fire, humming or singing with a distant look in his eyes. He laments, on occasion, his shattered hands. Still, Jaskier grows stronger quickly and it takes only a few days before he’s able to stomach vegetables and potatoes and a bit of meat when something’s in the trap. 

His belly wound heals, bit by bit, and by the time spring has finished arriving and the last of the snows have melted away, Jaskier is healed well enough to help Murumac with the chores, with finding food — Murumac isn’t quite sure whether he should be surprised or not that Jaskier is a surprisingly good forager, especially as he claims to have been a bard. 

Jaskier isn’t quite so good at hunting, though this is largely on account of the way his fingers shake more than a tree’s branches in a storm.

“To think I once had hands steady enough to embroider a shirt on horseback,” Jaskier huffs one day, setting aside a rabbit skin. 

“They’re healing,” Murumac says, “Your hands are already steadier than they were a week ago, and steadier still than they were a week before that.” 

“I suppose so.” 

A while after that, Jaskier takes to mending the clothes, the needle quivering between his fingers as he pricks himself again and again. When he tires of that, he chops vegetables as well as he can without losing a finger, or slowly stretches his fingers out and clenches them, again and again and again. 

He holds his hands out in front of him for hours at a time, keeping them as still as he can or moving his fingers in careful patterns, like playing a lute only he can see.

Murumac and Jaskier go out and plow the field, sow it with wheat and corn and potatoes and cabbages and other things, and Jaskier’s feet develop thick calluses from working without shoes. 

One day, Jaskier manages to balance a needle on one finger without it falling for a quarter of a minute.

Jaskier smiles widely. 

“You’ve been very generous to me,” Jaskier says the next day, “but the time has come for me to leave.” 

Murumac nods slowly. “You’re strong enough it won’t do you any harm to travel on your own?” 

Jaskier hums in agreement. 

“And what if you run into bandits, or more Nilfgaardians?” 

“Bandits won’t even think to rob me; I don’t even have any shoes. As for the Nilfgaardians… I suppose I’ll simply have to not run into them, now won’t I?” 

Well, if the man wants to be a fool and get himself killed, it’s his own choice. Murumac takes an old pack and fills it with food and a waterskin and makes sure there’s a spare shirt and a decent knife in it. He rolls a blanket and ties it to the bottom of the bag. 

Jaskier stares at it, eyes wide, when Murumac hands it over the next morning. 

“You — thank you. For everything.” 

Murumac blinks in surprise. He’s always heard it’s unspeakably rude to thank a fae, but… well. Perhaps Jaskier was telling the truth when he insisted he wasn’t one, after all. 

“You’re welcome,” he says. “Where will you go now?” 

Jaskier holds up his hands with a wry smile. “I think I’ll go to Oxenfurt. I’m a professor there, though I mostly only lecture in the winters. They’ll be glad to have me until I can play a lute again.” 

Neither of them says if.  

Jaskier thanks him again, and turns to walk away, humming as he goes.

Murumac stands there, watching him leave with a huff of laughter. How odd, that Jaskier may have been a man, all this time.

Chapter Text

“Easy, boy.” 

Eskel pats Scorpion’s neck when he snorts, made uneasy by the dark looks they get from the townspeople. It’s not as many as they used to get, mind, because somehow Geralt managed to befriend a bard. Not just any bard, either — one who single handedly changed the common view of witchers from being more like the monsters they hunt into a small group of heroes struggling to battle back the darkness in the world. 

He pushes through the market crowd regardless; he’s long since learnt to pay their ignorance and hatred no mind. 

There are more kind looks than there were twenty years ago too, even if he hasn’t heard a new song about witchers in over a year now — or rather, none that ring of truth and exaggeration rather than of made-up adventures. 

That still baffles Eskel — how did his sour-faced brother ever make such a loyal friend as Jaskier?

He met the bard more than a few times, when his Path crossed with Geralt’s by chance, or when he actively sought his brother’s company or aid, and Jaskier’s unceasing cheer has always struck him as a strange fit for Geralt. 

Jaskier always said Geralt is interesting, and saved his life, but that never explained why he stayed with Geralt when Eskel and Lambert have both made it clear that he’d be welcome with them, if he wished to change travel partners. 

“Rolls for a penny! Rolls for a penny!” A baker’s wife shouts hopefully at the crowds. Eskel exchanges a coin for one and continues on his way, still lost deep in his thoughts as he chews. The bread is just starting to grow stale in the late-afternoon air, though it’s still full of flavor.

Jaskier would have gotten just as many adventures and much less hostility, even if Eskel and Lambert aren’t as recognizable as the “White Wolf.” Well, from a distance at least. Eskel’s scar doesn’t make him anything like inconspicuous.

Eskel snickers at the memory of Geralt’s face the first winter he’d returned home to their teasing remarks about that epithet: longsuffering and irritated, and his voice as he growled, “If either of you start singing that fucking song…” 

They’d sung it almost continuously for weeks, just to harass him. 

The joy ebbs as he remembers this last winter, not a teasing smile to be found. Geralt had been in a worse temper than any of them have had to endure in decades, and there’s no denying it had something to do with Jaskier and the way Geralt had made his way into Kaer Morhen only days before the pass closed, towing behind him a child and a fucking sorceress but not a bard. 

Geralt’s temper had grown only blacker when he’d vanished for several days with the witch, returning to the keep for only hours before he’d run off to hunt and refused to return for two full weeks. 

Eskel pauses by different vendors’ stalls to purchase a sack of potatoes, a bundle of carrots, jerky for the road, oats and wheat and apples for Scorpion, oil to clean his sword and his leather — it’s best to stock up on necessities early, in case anyone takes offense at his presence here in Oxenfurt and feels the need to chase him out.

Neither Geralt nor the witch had actually admitted what they’d found, but stupid witchers don’t live long and Eskel has been alive for just shy of a century, starting when anti-witcher sentiments were highest.

Eskel doesn’t think Geralt would have reacted that way if Jaskier had refused to go to Kaer Morhen. 

Eskel can’t imagine Jaskier would have refused to go to Kaer Morhen. 

It’s a thought he had more than once over those months, in between uneasy glances exchanged with Lambert and Vessemir, as they all murmured their misgivings over tankards of ale around the fire in the small hours of night.

He hopes Geralt was just unable to find word of his friend, or that the two of them had a falling out and Geralt was only angry at his bard, or that he couldn’t keep Jaskier tucked away with the rest of his precious people. 

More likely, Jaskier is dead and Geralt got word of it when he ventured outside their walls. 

Even that is a near certainty, if Eskel is truly honest: the only new songs about witchers ring of falsehoods rather than of exaggeration, and there were rumors that the Nilfgaardians were searching for information on Geralt of Rivia a while back.

One last stop gains him several bone needles and thread to do his mending with, and a new pair of socks to replace the ones that are finally beginning to fall apart. The vendor doesn’t even charge him much more than they’re worth. 

“Don’t forget to stop by the inn three blocks over,” The woman says mildly when he thanks her, “Say hello to your friend. He’ll likely be there now — he spends most evenings there once he’s done lecturing for the day.” 

“My friend?” 

The stall keeper nods easily. “Yes. You’re a witcher, aren’t you?” 

Eskel blinks and nods. “I am.” 

“Well then, you might not be the one he sings about, but I can’t imagine you haven’t met the bard before. Give him a familiar face, won’t you? It’ll do him some good.” 

Eskel’s eyebrows shoot up — or rather, his left eyebrow shoots up and his right follows as best it can with his scar holding it in place. “Jaskier is here?” 

“That’s him. I haven’t figured out if he’s cursed or blessed just yet, but it’s one of the two for sure.” 

“He’s alive,” Eskel says frankly, “That’s better fortune than I’d thought he’d met with.” 

“And it was the gods that kept it so, judging by his tale,” The stall keeper agrees. “If you haven’t crossed paths with him recently, go listen to his tale. If you think it was something other than gods that kept him alive, you’re mad.” 

“I will. Thank you for telling me he’s here.” 

“You’re welcome. My sister runs the inn — pay me back by giving her another customer tonight.” 

He agrees and finally leaves the crowd behind as he makes his way to the inn down the road, stabling Scorpion before he enters the building to find that yes, Jaskier is here, and somewhat worse for wear. 

His clothes are just as well-tailored as ever, but he’s lost weight since Eskel saw him last — his face is thinner than it was the last time Eskel saw him, and new lines have appeared around his eyes and mouth, hinting at the ill fortune the vendor mentioned. He doesn’t notice Eskel at first, deep in conversation with several men over bowls of stew. 

His lute is nowhere to be seen.

“Jaskier,” Eskel says as he makes his way over, waving to the proprietress to draw her over. 

“Eskel!” Jaskier cries, a smile taking over his face. Several of the men Jaskier had been speaking with stand and leave the table, saying their farewells as they go. “It’s been a lifetime since I saw you last. How have you been?” 

“Well enough. There are still plenty of monsters to kill, at any rate, and I doubt they’ll be running low any time soon.” Eskel glances at Jaskier again, brows furrowing when he notes the way Jaskier holds his spoon awkwardly, like his fingers have forgotten quite how to hold it. “What happened to you, though?” 

Jaskier’s eyes go tight with unhappiness. “I had something of an unpleasant encounter with some rather trying men, a while back. They had absolutely no taste in music, and I came out somewhat poorly for it.”

The woman running the inn drops a tankard of ale in front of him and he nods his thanks. “A bowl of stew as well, if you would.” 

“Of course, sir,” She says, already bustling off again. 

Eskel returns his attention to Jaskier, eyebrows pulling down into as tight a furrow as they can manage. It’s undoubtedly a bit lopsided. “You’re alright though?” 

“As well as I can be,” Jaskier confirms with a small smile that doesn’t hide the sorrow in his eyes. It’s clear he doesn’t want to talk about it, and they haven’t met much more than a handful of times, so Eskel doesn’t press. 

He shakes his head and says, “Well I’m glad you made it out. Would you be willing to let me spend the night on your floor?”

“I’d be glad to. I’d offer you my guest bed if I had one, but alas, I’ve only the one room. You can also take my sofa if you’ll fit, but—” Jaskier gestures at Eskel’s broad shoulders and makes a doubtful noise. “It’s been far too long since I had the pleasure of your company — you can tell me all about the monsters you’ve seen in the last several years, and any embarrassing stories about Geralt that I haven’t yet heard.” 

“Are you going to be turning those embarrassing stories into songs?” Eskel asks, lips twitching. 

“What do you take me for?” Jaskier asks, putting a hand to his chest in mock offense. “How could you ever accuse me of such a thing? Me, the bard who’s spent his best years singing Geralt’s praises across the continent! Slander!” 

“Come on,” Eskel wheedles, “Just one?”

The innkeeper briefly attracts his attention with a bowl of stew and a thick hunk of bread, which he accepts gratefully.  

“I suppose I could compose something making fun of Geralt.” Jaskier’s eyes dance with mischief. “If you’ll guard me from his reaction when he finds out about it.” 

“Deal.” Fuck, Geralt probably won’t even be mad when he hears it, because it’ll come with the knowledge that Jaskier is alive and as well as he can be. Speaking of— “Have you seen Geralt recently?” 

Jaskier shakes his head, eyes darkening with concern and something else that Eskel can’t quite place. “Not in close to two years, now. We had… something of a falling out shortly before my —ah, altercation, and I haven’t been well enough to wander the countryside searching for the brute. Traveling will be rather difficult for some time yet, I think.”  

Jaskier gestures to the glossy wooden cane leaning against the table with a small grimace. Eskel can sympathize. While he might have wanted to settle in another life, he’s a witcher in this one, and a still witcher is a dead witcher. Sitting still isn’t something he’s ever been comfortable with.

At least he’s not as bad as Lambert and Geralt, though — both of them have to be sat on any time they’re injured badly enough to actually need any length of recovery time. Geralt especially tends to get himself sliced nearly in half and then immediately insist that he can simply walk it off.

“Ah. He spent a year in Cintra’s dungeons and escaped when it was sacked. Found his kid, then brought her to Kaer Morhen and spent a while looking for you, I think.” 

Surprise flickers across Jaskier’s face, widening his eyes as he blinks at Eskel. “Geralt was looking for me?” 

Eskel shrugs. “He never said, but who else would he have been looking for in the dead of winter, when Nilfgaard was busy running over the countryside?” 

Jaskier falls silent for a long moment, lost in his own thoughts until he pulls himself back to the tavern with a shake of his head. “I haven’t a clue, but Geralt and I have gone half a decade without speaking when we were on good terms, and as I said, we had something of a falling out. He won’t be seeking me out for several years at the least.” 

He says it like there’s not a doubt in his mind that Geralt wouldn’t worry about him, one of the few people he’s ever talked about in the long winters at Kaer Morhen and the only one who’s traveled at his side for decades. 

Like he — as has happened with so many others — has allowed himself to be pushed away by Geralt’s sharp tongue.

Eskel wonders just how cruel Geralt had been during their falling out.

He allows Jaskier to guide the conversation to other topics after that — it’s not his place to press for more information, not when it’s Jaskier and not Geralt, who he will be pressing for more information next time their Paths cross — and once they’ve finished eating, he allows Jaskier to lead the way to his apartment. 

“It’s not much, but it’s mine,” Jaskier says, limping through the streets on his cane. His hand shakes every time he puts pressure on it, but he hides his pain well. “I’ve been teaching here nearly every winter for years now, so the Dean was ecstatic with the opportunity to keep me a bit longer.”

He leads the way to his rooms, waving at several people as they pass, though he doesn’t actually stop to speak with them.

They’re small but clean, with bright splashes of color lighting up the rooms — the curtains are a cheerful yellow complemented by the pillows on the sofa; a vase of flowers sits on a small table; there is a tea set with intricate patterns painted on. There is a small kitchen area with a stove, oven, and a few cabinets for pots and pans and such, though the table is covered in parchment rather than anything that might be misconstrued as something meant for dining.

A covered harp sits in one corner. Two instrument cases, carefully latched, recline in a stand next to it. 

“It’s nicer than anything I’ve ever had,” Eskel tells him honestly. 

“Yes, well I suppose everything seems like a castle when you spend more days sleeping under the stars than not.” Jaskier gives him a knowing look. 

He’s not wrong. Eskel is used to living rough, staying in his room at Kaer Morhen — designed for functionality rather than beauty — or inns that provide little more than a bed when he isn’t camping. There’s no shame in it, it’s simply what he knows best. 

He concedes the point with a laugh and a nod, and sits in an armchair while Jaskier takes the sofa. The bard sits with a sigh, rubbing gingerly at his knee as he relaxes back into the cushions. 

“Alright there?” 

“Mm. As I said, I shan’t be doing much traveling in the near future, unless I resign myself to riding in a caravan — a thought I’ve never found terribly attractive, but I suspect I’ll give in to it eventually.” 

Eskel hums. “You could always get a horse, come along with one of us even if Geralt never pulls his head out of his ass long enough to apologize to you.”

“Thank you.” Jaskier blinks, clearly surprised at the offer, then his eyes soften and he smiles sadly. “But — well, I’d hate to be a burden. I think I’ll stay here and teach for a while longer.” 

Ah. That must be what Geralt had said to drive him away, Eskel realizes. “Well, it’s a standing offer if you ever decide to change your mind.” 

“I’ll let you know,” Jaskier laughs, “But for the moment, I believe you promised me some embarrassing stories about Geralt?” 

“I did. Have you ever heard about the time Lambert colored Geralt’s hair green?” 

Jaskier’s bright laugh fills the room. “I haven’t!”

“Well,” Eskel begins, “Geralt’s hair has no pigment of its own, so it takes color very well. I still don’t know where he got the dye unless he stole it from the weaver in town…” 

They talk long into the night, exchanging stories over glasses of mead until dawn is only a few hours away. 

“Don’t tell Geralt, will you?” Jaskier asks at some point, when they’ve both fallen silent. 

His words sit heavily in the air between them. 

“I mean,” Jaskier says, “If he asks after me, tell him I’m well and teaching here, but I wouldn’t want him to — to feel obligated, or some such nonsense. He has such a terrible habit of blaming himself for things that are out of his control.” 

“I’ll at least tell him I ran into you.” 

If Geralt is only being an ass, it will be a nudge he likely needs. If he thinks Jaskier is dead, as they all suspected until now, then it will give him the opening to ask questions.

“Very well, then,” Jaskier concedes, “but don’t tell him about the—” 

He waves at his legs. 

“I’ll tell him if he wants to know how you’re doing he can damn well ask you himself,” Eskel suggests, drawing a snort from Jaskier before they fall silent again, each lost in his own thoughts. 

They sit there for a while longer before Jaskier pushes himself carefully to his feet, vanishing for a minute and reappearing with several thick blankets in his hands. 

“I’m afraid I need to turn in now,” He confesses, “but we can talk more tomorrow once I’ve finished with my lectures for the day. You’ll let me know if there’s anything else I can get for you, of course. I refuse to be a poor host.” 

Eskel waves him off lazily. “This is plenty. Go on to bed, get your beauty rest so you can beat your knowledge into the kids in the morning.” 

“Excuse you,” Jaskier sniffs, “I don’t beat the knowledge into my students. That’s what assistants are for.”

He limps off into the bedroom, Eskel’s chuckles still echoing through the air. He lies down on the floor in front of the fireplace and doesn’t contemplate Jaskier’s broken fingers or his covered instruments or the limp that keeps him from traveling. Instead, he thinks of how he’s going to slap some sense into his brother and get the ass to apologize for once in his life. 

He falls asleep to thoughts of Geralt’s face when Eskel gives him the good punch he undoubtedly deserves.

Chapter Text

“—alive? Where is he?”

Geralt’s voice is low. Less because he’s trying to keep people from listening, she suspects, and more because he isn’t a loud sort of person. 

All the people in the main room don’t help; the sounds of their chatter and clanking dishes make it difficult to hear what’s going on inside the room.

Ciri leans in closer, pressing her ear against the wall to hear over the chatter filtering up from the main floor of the inn. She glances at the floor. She has to make sure her shadow isn’t falling across the doorway, or Geralt will certainly realize she’s listening in when he told her to go downstairs. 

“—ching at the academy there,” the other witcher, Eskel, says. He’d been waiting for them downstairs, sitting in the corner and sipping at a tankard of ale until he’d caught sight of Geralt and led them upstairs until both men had told her she wouldn’t be party to their conversation. 

Shows what they know, she thinks sourly. 

The value of knowledge is something she’s been familiar with since she was a child, for years before Cintra fell. Knowing what people are talking about has only become more important now that she’s on the run, and the witchers are fools if they think they’re protecting her by keeping her ignorant. 

“The report said he’d been killed. How the fuck would he be teaching?” Geralt demands gruffly. 

“Go ask him yourself, Geralt — and apologize for being an ass, while you’re at it. He spent twenty years following you around, you owe him at least that much.” There’s a moment of silence before Eskel continues, tone dark. “Don’t go if you’re only going to make it worse, though, Geralt. I might not know exactly what happened, but it wasn’t anything good.” 

Does Eskel honestly think that Nilfgaard would let someone go? 

Nilfgaard, whose soldiers slaughtered scores of refugees for no reason but that they could? Whose soldiers are so infamously cruel that every single person who could commit suicide did so rather than be left to their mercy? 

The screams of the dying echo in Ciri’s ears and she remembers hot blood splashing on her face as people fall around her— 

She shakes the memory away. Ciri has nightmares often enough without dwelling on those terrible nights before she’d found Geralt; she doesn’t need to invite more. Instead, she focuses on listening. 

“I’m not kidding, Geralt. Go. Talk to your bard, admit you’re a moron and you fucked up. If he followed you around for that long, he’ll at least hear you out.” 

Another moment of silence, then Geralt sighs in defeat. 

Eskel’s footsteps move closer to the door, and Ciri has to scramble away or risk getting caught. He must stop and say something else, though, because there’s no way she would have been able to avoid their notice otherwise. 

She’s just managed to get her breath back under control, sitting at a table where she can see the rest of the room, when Geralt and Eskel stride back into the main room. Everyone notices them in a way they didn’t notice her, shifting warily in their seats and sending the witchers looks that range between caution and hostility. 

It’s a mixed blessing, traveling with a witcher. 

On the one hand, Geralt’s presence is enough to deter a lot of the people who would ordinarily see her as a target. On the other, people don’t often like witchers very much. Geralt is threatened in more towns than he isn’t, and people typically assume she’s been kidnapped. Even with her hair, they can’t convince everyone he’s her father. 

Geralt and Eskel speak briefly with the proprietress before making their way over to her. 

“Have you eaten?” Geralt asks. 

Ciri shakes her head. “You have the money.” 

It has the advantage of being true, even if the innkeeper likely would have let her simply wait for Geralt to pay. She can’t tell if Geralt buys the excuse, but all he does is let out a low, rumbling hmm and wave a hand to let the innkeeper know to bring a third plate for her. 

She listens quietly to the chatter around her, trying to catch word of anything that could impact them — monsters, bandits, if there have been soldiers in the area, even just the weather. 

Ciri never had to pay attention to the weather before the Nilfgaardians took everything from her, because she could just go inside when it rained. 

Now, though, her options are shelter or risk contracting any number of illnesses. 

That’s another thing that makes traveling with a witcher complicated, for more reasons than that she’s a child and Geralt is a grown man. He might eat more than she does, but he can eat things that would make her vomit for days and the only time he has to worry is when snow coats the ground or there’s enough rain to wash away an entire village.

The innkeeper brings over plates of potatoes for all of them, filled with bits of beef and carrots and onion and a rich gravy — the sort of simple fare that Ciri has grown used to.

She digs in eagerly, keeping one ear on the chatter around her and the other on Geralt and Eskel’s conversation. 

They’re not talking about anything interesting anymore, just jobs in the area. 

“You’re going to Oxenfurt, of course,” Eskel says. 

“Hm.” 

Ciri rolls her eyes and stuffs another bit of potato in her mouth — of course Geralt wouldn’t bother with a real answer. It’s probably the most annoying thing about him. 

“Geralt.” 

“Fine.” 

On second thought, it’s definitely the most annoying thing about him.

Ciri swallows and looks up at them, intentionally drawing attention to herself for the first time tonight. “Why are we going to Oxenfurt?” 

“I have a — someone I know lives there.” 

“A friend, Geralt,” Eskel says, exasperated, “It’s okay to acknowledge that you like having him around.” 

Geralt grunts. “He’s annoying.” 

“Yes, and that’s what friends do. They annoy you and they let you annoy them back. And believe me Geralt, you annoy everyone.” 

Geralt gives Eskel one of his looks, the one that says ‘Why haven’t you stopped talking, yet?’

Geralt has a lot of looks he uses when he doesn’t want to bother speaking, which is pretty much always. Just about the only exception is when he’s teaching Ciri things she needs to know to survive: how to mend her clothes, sharpen a knife, set a trap, skin an animal, build a fire, or any one of a hundred other things. 

Then, Geralt speaks clearly, describing what to do and how to do it most efficiently, and then he demonstrates and makes her copy him. After, he’ll point out what Ciri did right, what she did wrong, and how she should have done it. If it’s something he can make her repeat immediately without wasting any of their valuable supplies, he does. 

He made her set up camp all on her own for a week straight, once, just wandered off in the woods to hunt when she tried to complain about it. The next week, he’d made her hunt. Or try, anyway. It hadn’t gone well. 

“Go see Jaskier. Apologize. Have him teach the kid to sing or something, I imagine he’ll enjoy that.” Eskel rises from his seat and says farewell, and then he’s gone. 

“Who’s Jaskier?” 

“A bard.” 

That’s… surprisingly helpful information, actually, especially since she’s just eavesdropped on their conversation and Geralt’s songs are more or less ubiquitous. 

See? Eavesdropping is a good idea. 

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want more information, though. She wants details, and she wants to know what Geralt will tell her, know where the lines are drawn and how honest he’s willing to be. Time to see how much he’ll let Ciri dig before he shuts her down. 

“Why haven't we seen him before now?” 

Geralt nearly always tells her things when she asks, he says it doesn’t do any good to keep her ignorant, but she doesn’t know how he’ll approach this and she doesn’t want him to know she was listening in. 

“Thought he was dead.” 

Huh. Well that’s… a lot more forthright than she was expecting. Ciri squints suspiciously at his stew — did someone poison him, or something? 

“Why?” 

A muscle in Geralt’s jaw twitches — she’s getting close to the end of his patience, then. “Nilfgaard isn’t known for keeping prisoners.” 

 No, they aren’t. Ciri goes quiet and still.

If Jaskier wasn’t mentioned specifically in a report, then Geralt shouldn’t have any reason to think the Nilfgaardians had had him in the first place, which means he was mentioned. Nilfgaard isn’t known for keeping prisoners, but they’re even less known for releasing them.

Ciri keeps her face placid as she bites into a carrot. The familiarity of the situation prickles in her gut. 

“And you think they just let him go?” 

“Dunno.” Geralt grunts. “That’s one of the things I plan to ask.” 

“What if it’s not him?” 

“It is,” Eskel says firmly, shaking his head. 

“But how do you know?” She pushes, “What if it’s someone else?” 

Eskel gives her a smile that he probably thinks is comforting but really just comes across as condescending. “I’m a witcher, Fiona. It’s him.” 

That’s what she’d said about Mousesack, once upon a time. She’d listened to Dara about as well as Geralt and Eskel are listening now. And they’re even less likely to take her warning seriously — like Eskel said, they’re witchers, used to dealing with monsters, and she’s a child who’s only been with Geralt for a couple of years. 

If she can’t convince Geralt before they get to Oxenfurt… she’ll have to just take care of it on her own.

She’ll try, of course, the same way Dara did with her, because that’s what you do when someone you care about is walking into a trap, but it’s more likely than not that nothing will come of her efforts. 

It’s best to plan for the worst.

O.o O.o O.o 

“Geralt?” 

“Jaskier’s” eyebrows — because Geralt wouldn’t bother going to see someone else first when they pushed so hard to get here in just a little over a week — are high up on his forehead, his eyes wide and lips parted in surprise. 

“Jaskier.” 

Please don’t have an entire conversation in nothing but single-word sentences and grunts, Ciri thinks sourly. She would go mad if she had to endure that, especially when she’s so on edge already. 

The last week has given her a new appreciation for Dara and how much he must have worried before she finally believed him about Mousesack — no matter how much she’s argued, Geralt hasn’t listened to a single word she’s said. Ciri is going to have to prove it on her own, somehow, without Geralt stopping her. 

“Well. What brings you here?” “Jaskier” regains his composure enough to give Geralt a small, stiff smile and manage real sentences, thank Melitele. He also gives Geralt a decidedly unimpressed look. “If you’re here to express how I’ve ruined your life again, it certainly wasn’t me. I haven’t done any shit-shoveling in months.” 

Oof.  

Geralt stands there like the awkward giant he is, that little muscle in his jaw twitching rapidly. 

“No.” He finally says. “I came to see you.” 

“Jaskier’s” eyebrows go up again; not quite as high this time, but he’s still clearly surprised. He leans against the doorway, crossing his arms nonchalantly. “Well, you’ve seen me now. Are you satisfied that whatever it is you’re annoyed about, it’s not my doing?” 

Geralt’s jaw twitches again. Jump. Jump. Jump. 

“I came to apologize.” 

“Jaskier’s” eyes bug out, widening to the size of dinner rolls for an instant before he manages to stop gaping. “Oh — well — come in, I suppose.” 

He steps back, pulling the door with him to allow Geralt and Ciri to enter. His eyes widen again, just slightly, when he sees her, but it’s gone again as quick as Geralt drawing his sword or a knife. 

Tension curls tightly in her gut.

“Princess.” “Jaskier” closes the door and bows deeply from the waist. “I’m glad to see you well. It made my heart ache to hear of Cintra’s fall, and I confess I’ve often wondered of your fate.”

He shouldn’t know who she is. Ciri’s been trained to remember faces, bards dress specifically to be memorable. If he’d traveled through Cintra, she would recognize him. 

Ciri gives him a shallow curtsey and a shallower smile. “Thank you. My grandmother told me to seek out Geralt before she passed; I’ve been with him ever since.” 

“You have my condolences for her loss,” “Jaskier” says with a sober nod. She doesn’t spit at him. 

Instead, Ciri gives him another thin smile but says nothing else. “Jaskier” takes the hint and turns to Geralt, whose expression didn’t flicker at all during their exchange. 

“So, you said something about an apology?” 

Geralt nods stiffly and then says more words than she’s ever heard him say outside of a lesson. 

“I’m sorry. I was hurt and angry and I lashed out at you because you were a convenient target. You didn’t deserve that, and I shouldn’t have accused you of the things I did. You are my friend, even if I’ve not always been one to you.”  

It’s the sort of speech that Ciri would be able to pick out as rehearsed even if she hadn’t grown up in Court, but no less sincere for it. In fact, as concise as Geralt usually is, the rehearsed nature of the speech makes it feel even more heartfelt.

“Jaskier’s” mouth drops open, face slack with shock as Geralt plows on.

“I’m sorry for the other things I said and did, for all the ways I was cruel to you, and while I don’t deserve your forgiveness I hope you’ll give it to me anyway. Even if you don’t, the Wolves of Kaer Morhen will always come to your aid should you need us.” 

There’s a moment of stunned silence, then: 

“How many times did you practice that, Geralt?” “Jaskier” asks.

“… I lost count,” Geralt grunts, his gaze breaking away from their staring contest. 

Ciri believes him. He wouldn’t let her hear him practicing, but she can easily imagine him going over it in the early hours of the morning, or when he checks the perimeter, or when he hunts alone. She isn’t entirely certain who helped him put it together, but there’s no way Geralt composed that on his own. 

Did Geralt ask some random innkeeper’s wife for help constructing it, or did he find time to beg Yennefer’s help? When would he have had the chance? 

“Well.” “Jaskier” takes a deep breath, his eyes shining brightly. “I can’t say I ever expected this, but I’m glad you’re here. I followed you half my life; of course I accept your apology, you stupid witcher.” 

Geralt smiles — a small, shy thing that Ciri’s only seen a few times in all the months she’s traveled with him. 

Clamping down on the sudden, unexpected wave of hate means Ciri misses whatever Geralt says, but — it’s Geralt. She can guess. 

The men hug, embracing tightly for a long moment before they pull away again, Geralt looking distinctly uncomfortable. 

“I’m glad you’re well,” Geralt says suddenly, like an afterthought. Or, more likely, something he’d thought was obvious and then realized people have to actually say out loud. 

“Jaskier” gives him a fond, exasperated look and laughs tiredly. “And I you, you great brute. Did you really come all this way just to see me?” 

“Yes.” 

Ciri rolls her eyes when Geralt leaves it at that. He’s back to monosyllables, apparently. “Jaskier” gives her a commiserating look and huffs a laugh that makes her skin crawl. 

She wants nothing to do with this imposter, and less to do with his futile attempts at bonding or whatever it is he’s after. 

“Then I suppose you did, didn’t you? Come over here and sit, we’ll have a glass of wine and you can tell me about your adventures since I saw you last. And don’t give me any of that, ‘and then I killed it’ nonsense, either. You’ve got to actually tell me the stories, Geralt.” 

“Jaskier” wags a scolding finger at his friend, his attempt at seriousness betrayed by the crinkles in the corners of his eyes and the smile playing at his lips. 

Geralt sighs heavily and looks up at the ceiling, clearly begging the gods for an intervention that doesn’t come. 

Without that, Geralt is left to follow “Jaskier” to sit down by the fireplace, where the two men fall into conversation. 

Well, it’s less falling into conversation and more “Jaskier” dragging Geralt grunting and hmm-ing into conversation. And it is a conversation, albeit one where Jaskier coaxes answers and details out of Geralt with specific questions and a great deal of patience. 

Ciri curls up on the couch and listens to them with one ear, wishing they could leave already. She doesn’t like it here, and she doesn’t trust the creature masquerading as Geralt’s friend. She wants it to be just her and Geralt again, traveling wherever the Path takes them. 

The adults talk for ages, until sunset is only an hour or so away and Geralt gets to his feet. 

“I’m going to check on Roach. You’ll be okay here?”  

Ciri’s eyes narrow on “Jaskier” for a moment before she meets Geralt’s gaze and nods once. Geralt is clearly convinced that this is his friend, and speaking up isn’t going to do anything more this time than it did the last dozen times. 

He glances between her and Jaskier. “Stay here. I’ll be back soon.” 

He leaves, the door clicking shut behind him. It feels like it should be a dull thump that resonates in her bones, but no — just a soft click when the latch fixes in place. 

She and “Jaskier” sit in uncomfortable silence, him eyeing her curiously while she watches back with a fair measure of suspicion. 

“So,” He says after a time, “How is it, living with Geralt?” 

“Don’t bother. I know what you are.” She doesn’t bother stopping her lips from curling back into a sneer, now that Geralt isn’t here to see. 

“A bard?” 

“No.” 

“Jaskier” blinks at her, tilting his head in confusion. “...a teacher? I’m not evil just for giving my students homework, you know. It helps them remember the things we’ve discussed in our lectures and then make it stick a bit better.” 

Ciri scowls fiercely. “Other than that.” 

“Ahhhh… a man?” 

“No.” 

His eyebrows shoot up, lips quivering in amusement. “Well I’m certainly not a woman.” 

Why is he playing this game? It’s not going to do him any good, and it’s only making her angrier. How dare this monster trick Geralt? How dare he try the same trick on her father of surprise that they’d done to her? Do they think she’s stupid? 

Ciri pushes forward on the couch, her hands dropping to the dagger at her side, though she doesn’t draw it yet. 

“I know what you are, you monster,” She spits, “Stop pretending to be Geralt’s friend, before I make you.” 

“Jaskier’s” brows furrow and he scowls.

Finally. 

Perhaps he’ll stop pretending and get on with it, now. She doesn’t have the patience for this, and she wants to finish before Geralt comes back and tries to stop her. He won’t understand that she has to, that “Jaskier” isn’t his friend and isn’t safe. 

“Now see here,” “Jaskier” says shortly, “I don’t know why you think I’m not Geralt’s friend, and of course I’ve bungled it up a few times, but I’ve certainly done my damndest to be good to him. Now, you can tell me what this is all about and we can talk about it like civilized people, or you can sit there and continue glaring at me.” 

Ciri steps closer, keeping her body still and relaxed the way Geralt taught her. “Jaskier” eyes her from his seat, unimpressed. 

Fine. It’s better if he underestimates her, anyway. 

When she’s close enough, just in range, she whips her dagger out and lunges as fast as she can, but it does her no good. 

“Jaskier’s” hand lashes out, shoving the dagger off course: instead of impaling him it only nicks him in the side and buries itself in the cushions. 

“What are you doing?” The monster squawks, twisting sideways in his seat as she tries to stab him again. 

“Killing you!” She yells back, lunging again. “You’re not his friend, and I’m going to prove it!” 

“What did I do to deserve that?!”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know!”

“I don’t!” “Jaskier” grapples with her, catching her wrists in his hands and twisting her around so she can’t move. The dagger clatters to the floor, narrowly missing their feet until “Jaskier” kicks it aside. 

She struggles furiously, heels smashing back against his shins as hard as she can and slamming her body against his chest, but the creature’s grip is as strong as Geralt’s ever was and she can’t break free. 

“Let — me — go!” She shrieks, slamming her head back into Jaskier’s chest. 

“Not until you stop trying to stab me!” He counters, like he doesn’t deserve to die. She writhes even harder against his grip. “Geralt! Geralt, come get your demon-child!”

“Stop it! Just die already!” 

“Absolutely not!” 

Geralt crashes through the door then, sword drawn and raised for a fight, freezing when he takes them in: Ciri thrashing in Jaskier’s lap, dagger discarded on the floor. His eyes narrow, flickering between the two of them as he processes the scene before him. 

“Geralt!” “Jaskier” gasps before he can ask what happened, “Thank Melitele you’re here, get your child to stop trying to stab me!” 

Geralt looks between them, frowning. “What happened?” 

“This is why I’m not a parent, Geralt, they’re demons in miniature!” 

Geralt presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, sighing in exasperation. He sheathes his sword and stalks forward, yanking Ciri away from “Jaskier” and planting himself firmly between them. “Explain.” 

“He’s not your friend!” She yells, angry tears pricking in her eyes. “Why won’t you listen to me?” 

Geralt stares hard at her before finally, finally he actually seems to listen. “Okay. What’s your reasoning?”  

“Nilfgaard doesn’t let people go, Geralt! They killed Jaskier and replaced him with that!” 

Geralt pauses and “Jaskier’s” eyebrows go up — the two men make eye contact, something passing between them without being said. 

“Ciri. My medallion is made of silver.” He pauses long enough to get her attention before continuing. “Mimics can’t hold silver without losing hold of a body they’ve duplicated.” 

Ciri’s memories flash back to when Mousesack — or the mimic that had taken his place — had touched her dagger and started screaming and turned into the hideous gray monster that had tried to eat her and Dara. “And?” 

“If Jaskier holds my medallion and doesn’t turn into one, then it means he’s Jaskier.” 

She eyes “Jaskier” mistrustfully. “He could be something else.” 

“No. Physical contact would have disrupted a glamour. Besides, he smells right and it’s his heartbeat. Neither glamours nor mimics are that thorough.” 

“Fine.” Ciri subsides at last, letting Geralt tug out his medallion from under his shirt and toss it to “Jaskier.” 

The bard fails to catch the pendant itself, but the chain snags on his fingers and dangles there, swinging wildly until it loses its momentum. He twists it up to grasp the medallion in his palm, letting it sit there. His skin doesn’t start bubbling or shifting, and he doesn’t turn into anything else, either. He just waits for her to decide. 

“Have I passed your test, then?” Jaskier asks when it becomes clear he isn’t going to start melting.

Ciri lets another couple of seconds pass in silence before she nods grudgingly. “How’d you escape, then? Geralt said there was a report you’d been killed.” 

Jaskier’s eyes turn dark for a moment, but he hides it away quickly. That’s something else she’s gotten used to, that dark look in people’s eyes. “I didn’t. As it turns out, Geralt has a point when he says to make sure your enemies are dead, though — a farmer found me and nursed me back to health after they put a sword through my belly.”

He hesitates briefly, but tugs his shirt up to display an ugly scar on his abdomen, thick and ugly and red. 

Oh. 

Guilt makes her belly churn and Ciri looks away, uncomfortable. She’s really messed up, hasn’t she?

“Thank you for trying to protect Geralt.” 

What? She looks up, eyes wide, to see Jaskier smiling gently. 

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to gut me next time, but I do appreciate your intentions. Just make sure your target is guilty next time, won’t you?” 

“Okay.” She nods slightly, earning herself another small smile. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s — well, it’s not quite alright, but it’s close enough. You made a mistake, and as long as you’ve learned from it I’ll let it pass this time.” 

She nods again. “Next time I’ll make sure you’re really an enemy before I stab you.” 

“Or, you could not stab me at all?” 

Ciri tilts her head at him. “No,” she decides.

Jaskier sighs in exasperation. 

“Why does this nonsense happen to me, an innocent bard only doing my best to share my music with the world?” Jaskier looks pointedly at Geralt. “I blame you.” 

Geralt just shrugs. “That’s probably fair.” 

Hmm, Ciri thinks, Perhaps Jaskier isn’t so bad, after all.  

(She’s definitely going to stab him at some point, though.)