Chapter Text
Something pulls him to Posada.
Jaskier isn't entirely sure why, in all honesty. He’s been roaming the Continent for most of the past few centuries, aimless, simply going wherever his heart takes him, following the whispers of wind rustling tree branches, the twinkle of stars in the night sky. It’s the first time in—well, in a long time, suffice it to say—that he’s felt something like this. Like an itch under his skin urging him in a new direction. It has been eons since Destiny last revealed herself to Jaskier, but he is quite familiar with her gentle yet insistent touch, so he goes willingly.
He doesn’t take the scenic route—he’s all the way in Cidaris, for fuck’s sake, it’ll take him a month and a half to get to Dol Blathanna on horseback. Instead, he closes his eyes and wills himself to be elsewhere; reopens them to find himself in the midst of a small, crowded marketplace in Upper Posada, surrounded by passersby who instinctively step out of the way when he appears, guided by gentle hands they cannot perceive.
He still has a day or two until whatever he’s been guided here for is supposed to happen; he can feel it like a countdown, an hourglass upturned in the center of his chest. He decides to stay in an inn that night, though he spends most of the evening wandering the hamlet, simply moving in accordance with the strange thrumming in his veins. He strums on his lute as he meanders. Nobody in Posada seems to be close to their time on this particular night, but he can feel others vying for his attention, fearful and hopeful prayers alike uttered in the dead of night. He heeds their calls, and he sings, a clarion call in the dark, a beacon for the many shadows searching for light.
The next day, he decides to try out some new material in a tavern he stumbles across—it’s a quaint little venue, the wooden floors uneven and sticky from a few too many pints of watered-down ale being spilled on the ground and never cleaned up. The bartender just rolls his eyes when Jaskier saunters up and asks if a bit of entertainment would be welcomed, and while it’s not the most warm reception he’s ever faced, he shrugs it off and gets set up with his lute.
He’s been trying his hand at writing original tunes again lately, as he’d taken a break after an unfortunate incident a year prior involving some unimpressed audience members, rotten fruit, and a very expensive doublet he’d gotten tailored in Temeria. In their defense, the ditty he’d been playing wasn’t exactly his best work; most of his songs have felt a tad uninspired these past few years, so he has been wandering and roving in the hopes that he’ll stumble into something—into someone—worthy of poetry. Alas, he sets up in the tavern, quickly finding out that writing without a muse is, in fact, incredibly difficult. He ends up ad-libbing a song. It is decidedly not his best work, but he doesn’t think that it’s that bad; it’s a conglomeration of rumors and tales he had heard while roaming town, set to a jaunty, whimsical tune.
His audience seems to dislike the song. Vehemently hate it, in fact.
He is very quickly met with jeers and boos from the crowd, and someone throws a dinner roll at him—much better than the Rotting Fruit Incident, mind you, and he’s only mildly ashamed when he decides to pocket some of it for later. He scolds the audience for their atrocious behaviour (throwing bread, really, he thought people would’ve become more civilized than this by now, it’s unbelievable the kind of behaviour he sees nowadays—) and is about to give up and leave when—
In the corner. White hair, swords, deep-set scowl. A wolf witcher medallion gleaming silver atop his black armor. The strange itch under his skin fades in an instant.
This man—this witcher—is the one Destiny wanted him to find.
He freezes where he stands, eyebrows furrowing as he takes stock of the witcher’s appearance again. There’s something familiar about him, and it takes him a second to realize why.
Jaskier is nothing if not a collector and purveyor of stories. Has been since the dawn of time. He learned to speak the tongues of men through mimicking the play-songs of children and nighttime murmurings of bedtime stories overheard through cracked-open windows. And staring at the witcher, he’s reminded of a time, about a decade prior, when he had been called to the small coastal town of Blaviken. He had woken up that morning with the feeling, deep in his bones, that he should travel to the sea, so he had simply willed himself there. He thinks Blaviken would have been lovely, if a bit dirty, if his memory of it weren’t so tainted. He still remembers the carnage: bodies littering the streets, blood spattered on windows and doors, the eye-watering sting of iron on the air. Something was off about the departed, too; Jaskier had never come across souls so reluctant to leave. Normally, his job was to guide those who were lost. Help them find their way. In Blaviken, something was holding them back. It felt more like he was coercing them; telling them that whatever was holding them back was not worth it. That moving on would bring them peace. He slunk through the alleyways, humming quietly and strumming his instrument. (He’d played a miniature harp back then, before he decided it was a bit too passé and switched to the lute.) While he traversed the city, he heard the hissed and hushed whispers on near-silent streets. They’d called him—the man responsible for the slaughter—the butcher. The freak. The white-haired witcher. Geralt of Rivia.
Jaskier freezes as the pieces click together in his head, anticipation and nervousness bubbling in his chest in a way that has become deeply foreign to him. He slowly steps up to the table and does his best to play coy, barely holding back a toothed grin. “I love the way you just... sit in the corner and brood,” he says, leaning up against a rickety, cracked wooden pillar near Geralt’s table. He’s met with a truly withering glare as Geralt nurses his ale; he seems to be trying to pretend Jaskier doesn’t exist. Unfortunately for him, Jaskier is impervious to being ignored.
He swings his leg over the other bench at Geralt’s table and seats himself, leaning forward with a raise of his eyebrow. He tries to hide the eagerness in his eyes, but he can still feel it clawing up his throat like a hungry, desperate thing. “No one else hesitated to comment on the quality of my performance, except... for you. Come on,” he goads, fingers digging into the marred wooden tabletop hard enough to leave indents. He imagines he must look a little funny, wearing a foppish blue doublet (he’s playing the part of a bard, okay, the loud clothing works) with somewhat stale bread rolls bulging in his pockets and a feral curiosity simmering in his gut. He tries to breathe through it, schools his facial expression into something a little more tame—less predatory, more jovial, perhaps. He tries for a grin. “You must have some review for me. Three words or less.”
(He’s never quite been so desperate for someone’s opinion before. He almost feels like he’s going to be sick, the feeling simmering in his throat and clawing toward his abdomen is so overwhelming.)
The witcher pauses, deepens his scowl, stares past Jaskier as though he isn’t there. He’s growing annoyed. Good.
After a few more seconds of Jaskier’s hungered, hopeful gaze, the witcher grits his teeth and huffs out a short breath. “They don't exist,” he says, and his voice is low and rough and makes something twist violently in Jaskier’s gut. He nearly forgets to respond, he’s so distracted.
“What don't exist?” Jaskier breathes. He has no idea what Geralt could be talking about. He’s already lost the thread of the conversation, if he’s being quite honest. It feels as though every ounce of his energy is trained on decoding the minuscule shifts on Geralt’s face—imperceptible to the average eye, but to Jaskier, it’s more entertaining than any performance he’s ever seen. Hints of frustration and annoyance break through his nearly-stoic face. The witcher doesn’t like him. He’ll fix that sooner or later. Or, really, maybe he won’t. In either case, he’s going to be hard-pressed to get rid of Jaskier now; after all, Destiny clearly has intentions for the pair of them. Jaskier intends to see this through.
Annoyance flashes on Geralt’s face again. “The creatures in your song. They don’t exist.”
And what a lovely opportunity this is. Jaskier raises an eyebrow and tries to force back the smirk threatening to slip onto his face. “And how would you know?” he says, a goading lilt to his voice and a challenge in his eyes. He waits a moment, curious, hoping that Geralt rises to the bait, but is entirely unsurprised when the witcher averts his eyes and swiftly collects his belongings, then stands up and starts striding towards the door.
Jaskier scrambles after him, grinning widely. He jumps up from the table and follows Geralt to the exit. “Oh, fun. Let me guess,” he teases, reveling at the imperceptible shift of Geralt’s shoulders, the tension in his gait as he navigates between tables. He’s practically singing as he continues: “White hair… big old loner… two very, very scary-looking swords. I know who you are.”
He can feel the other patrons’ eyes following him as he saunters after Geralt. Conversations start to die down—Geralt’s hasty exit and Jaskier’s self-congratulatory crooning draw more attention with every step, every word.
“You’re the witcher,” Jaskier accuses, and the last of the chatter goes silent. “You’re Geralt of Rivia.”
For a moment, the tavern is still; nobody dares even breathe, a couple dozen errant eyes fixed on Geralt’s rigid form and Jaskier’s half-smirk. Geralt’s shoulders tense up even further amidst the silence, and he glances back at Jaskier over his shoulder before setting his jaw and taking his final steps toward the door.
Much to Jaskier’s unfettered glee, a somewhat unwashed man stands up and reaches out to Geralt, stopping him in his tracks. A devil, he says, is stealing the town’s grain, and he’ll pay Geralt to dispose of it. Jaskier sees Geralt steal the briefest of glances back at him out of the corner of his eye, and he waits with bated breath as Geralt haggles for a moment—negotiates himself an extra fifty ducats up-front—then is tossed a bag of coin. He stalks out of the building, and Jaskier is right on his heels, the tavern bursting back into life as they make their exit.
He follows Geralt outside and across a rickety wooden footbridge, where Geralt collects a well-groomed chestnut horse, saddled and bridled and tied to a short tree. It snorts in greeting as Geralt approaches and unties the horse’s lead and tacks his bags to the saddle, and Jaskier can practically see the annoyance radiating off of Geralt as he climbs onto the horse’s back and they begin to move out of the boundaries of Posada, into the grasses and flowers that surround the town. Jaskier manages to stay quiet for several minutes, which may as well be a personal record for him, honestly, but he’s so absorbed in watching that it doesn't even occur to him to speak; his eyes trace the tension in Geralt's shoulders, the firm grip he holds on the horse’s lead, the heavy set of his eyebrow as he stares directly ahead. But then, the witcher makes the mistake of pausing for a second to to survey the area around them, and Jaskier is all of a sudden bursting with the need to talk at the poor man.
“Need a hand? I’ve got two,” Jaskier says, grin threatening to slip onto his face. “One for each of the, uh, devil s horns,” and he does his best to not let his deep amusement filter into the words he speaks.
Geralt’s gaze is still fixed forward, though his exasperation begins to crack through the surface of an otherwise stoic expression—a slight downward quirk at the corner of his lip and a narrowing of the eyes. “Bard, go away.”
Jaskier waves his hand dismissively and maintains his position by the horse’s side as they move down the dirt path. “Oh, but I won’t be but silent back-up.”
Geralt seems to decide to take the strategy of pretending that Jaskier is not there once again. Jaskier plans on training him out of that pesky habit eventually.
Alas, they push forward.
Of course, Jaskier breaks his promise of silence almost immediately. He can’t really help it, given that he has never been much of one for luxuriating in long, quiet stretches, and he does not intend on starting now, especially when his current company is so fascinating . He starts up again, this time about how Geralt really is in desperate need of a new title—the whole butcher thing is rather unfortunate and has been following him around for nearly a decade now, and who better to relieve him of that pesky moniker than Jaskier? Sure, Jaskier’s earlier musical improvisation in the tavern wasn’t the best, but Geralt is sure to prove himself as a lovely muse, what with all the witcher-ing he’s bound to get up to. He’s got the look of a hero, too, with the muscles and the rather intimidating swords and the really very nice white hair—and, “hey, Geralt, that could be your new title, y’know, the white wolf or something.”
“I do not need a title,” Geralt says, voice terse. “Do not give me a title. I do not want one, nor do I want a barker, or a bard.”
Jaskier rolls his eyes.
He opens his mouth to reply, but Geralt seems to hear something moving in the grasses; he snaps his head in another direction, then grits his teeth and dismounts, his feet gently meeting the ground.
He follows Geralt as he stalks into the grasses, practically on his heels.
“What are we looking for, exactly?” he asks, cocking his head to the side.
Geralt doesn’t miss a beat. “Blessed silence.”
Well. Rude.
Jaskier rolls his eyes again. “Yes, well, I don’t really go in for that.” He pauses to look over Geralt’s shoulders. Sees nothing but the faint rustle of grasses and grains in the wind. “But really, Geralt, what do you think we’re really looking for?”
“What, you don’t buy that it’s a devil?” Geralt asks dryly. “Drakes and potion-brewing hags are perfectly fine, but devils are impossible?”
Jaskier resists the urge to kick him. Are all witchers so sarcastic? “Pish posh, Geralt, of course I know there’s no such thing as devils and flying hags.”
Geralt directs a scathing look at Jaskier over his shoulder, lips downturned into a disdainful scowl. “Could’ve fooled me,” he says, then turns around and continues to tiptoe forward. Jaskier, not one to be deterred, is right on Geralt’s heels, but he bumps into Geralt’s back as the witcher freezes.
“Geralt, what the—“ he starts, but the witcher interrupts him by turning back to face him, pressing his finger to his lips in a shushing gesture. Jaskier raises an eyebrow, but stops to listen, and he can hear some far-off rustling in the grasses. He takes the hint and shuts up, tiptoeing a few feet to the side and hiding behind a boulder emerging from the ground. Geralt nods and begins to inch away, leaving Jaskier and the horse alone in the grasses.
Jaskier watches with his eyebrow still raised, eyes following Geralt as he pushes forwards into the grasses, ever at attention as he scans the horizon for any incoming threats.
Then, out of nowhere, the rustling noises return as a creature emerges from the grasses; it’s short, coming up to Geralt’s midsection, and has brown skin and a spattering of fur covering its body, including its goatlike legs, its hooves clomping against the ground. And no wonder the villagers had called it a devil—it has a pair of horns emerging from its head. A sylvan. It's been decades since he last saw one—maybe since the Great Cleansing. He grips the edge of the rock with tense fingers and watches with bated breath as the sylvan starts to run for Geralt.
“Leave me be!” the sylvan screeches, voice piercing Jaskier’s ears as he charges directly for Geralt and rams his horned head into Geralt’s gut. Geralt flies backward and slams into a nearby rock formation hard enough that a thudding noise resounds in the air. Jaskier winces, but he watches as Geralt groans and rolls over onto his side, and his heart skips a beat.
And the next few minutes are a bit of a blur, really. Faster than Jaskier can blink, Geralt is back up on his feet again, charging back at the sylvan and throwing him into the dirt, pinning him down with his left arm. Jaskier has never really cared for violence much himself, so he crouches a bit lower in the grasses and watches on in bemusement and mild concern, though he is silently cheering Geralt on. More than anything else, he is curious to see how this all turns out. He thinks this whole situation really can’t get any sillier, and then the pair of them start speaking.
“You talk,” Geralt grunts out, the sylvan pinned under him. Jaskier rolls his eyes—he’s a sylvan, Geralt, of course he can fucking talk—
The sylvan shares his sense of outrage, screaming back, “Of course I talk!”
Geralt spits back at him, “What happened with you? Your mother fuck a goat?” because of course, naturally he would insinuate that the sylvan’s mother had inappropriate relations with a goat. This does nothing but make the sylvan quite mad, and he rips out some of Geralt’s hair in response.
The sylvan introduces himself (if you can call it an introduction and not a scream of indignation) as Torque and calls himself a “rare and intelligent creature,” which—well, sure, sylvans are quite rare nowadays, but Jaskier thinks intelligent seems a bit presumptuous, doesn’t it?
As the two of them engage in a spirited verbal sparring match, Jaskier watches on with a singular raised eyebrow as a pair of elves emerges from the tall grasses, hunched down and slowly, silently tiptoeing closer to Geralt and the sylvan. Jaskier ducks a little bit lower and takes in the pair’s appearance; one is a woman with long, dirtied red hair, and the other is a rather mousy brunet. He observes with vague interest as they slowly but silently tiptoe forward. Soon enough, they’re just a couple feet from Geralt, and Jaskier watches with bated breath as the redhead rears a foot up and—it connects with Geralt’s head with a harsh, sharp noise, and, well, would you look at that, Geralt’s already gone and gotten himself knocked out. Idiot. Jaskier winces and accidentally lets out an audible hiss, and both of the elves whip around and see him crouched to the ground, half-hidden behind a rock formation. He internally resigns himself to the indignity he’s about to endure, and bodily throws himself to the ground, dirt getting all over his nice, tailored doublet. It’s going to take forever to launder it properly.
“Please, please, please, I’ll come willingly, just please don’t hurt me,” he cries, hands clasped in a begging gesture. He continues on for a bit, cowering and sobbing and pretending he’s very, very terrified and will go with them willingly, if only to hide the fact that he can’t actually be rendered unconscious very easily and his clothes are already dirtied, but he doesn’t want to have to deal with laundering them with the blood stains that would result from any serious attempts at doing actually knocking him out. The elves do not seem amused, but Jaskier has spent a good deal of time perfecting his sad, pitiful bard act, and the woman rolls her eyes. She marches up and unsheathes a very, very pointy dagger from a holster. She yanks Jaskier to his feet and, holding the dagger to the small of his back, hisses at him—“Hand over the fucking lute, human.”
Jaskier very narrowly resists the urge to roll his eyes.
He tugs the lute over his head and blindly hands it to her over his shoulder. Seemingly satisfied, she urges him forward, forcing him to follow as the brunet elf drags a very unconscious Geralt up a small mountain. After a bit of marching (and Jaskier resisting the urge to complain about his poor, aching feet), they come to a stone entrance seemingly dug into the mountainside.
They enter into a damp, gross cave; the floor is covered in silt and sand, and the walls are a haphazard mix of natural rock and cobblestone. There seems to be another room beyond this main chamber, but Jaskier can’t quite crane his head enough to peer through the doorway.
The woman shoves Jaskier forward and barks at him to sit down, pointing at a spot further toward the back of the room, and he really would rather not because these trousers were very expensive, but he would also rather not get headbutted or kicked like Geralt, so he sits without making too much of a fuss about it; he doesn’t even grumble to himself about it, so he thinks he deserves some sort of award. The elven man arranges Geralt so that his back is pressed to Jaskier’s, and then he ties the two of them together like that with a piece of rope he fetches from the stone windowsill. It’s quite an unfortunate situation to have found himself in (and all before noon, at that!), and he sure would like to leave—could, really, and rather easily at that—but he’s morbidly curious by nature and wants to see how the whole thing plays out.
The trio leaves the room, heading further into the ruins, and Jaskier can hear faint chatter echoing in the neighbouring chamber. He sighs and wiggles a bit against the ropes. They’re bound quite tightly, and he’s really considering just leaving entirely when, a minute or so later, he feels Geralt begin to stir, then jerk awake.
“It’s about time,” Jaskier hisses, wiggling a bit harder. Damn bindings. “We’re a bit tied up here, and it would be very nice if you could do your witchering and get us free before they come back.”
“Shut up, bard,” Geralt growls, jabbing his elbow back and hitting Jaskier right in the kidney, which—ouch, mostly.
Jaskier winces and hisses through his teeth. “You’ve been awake for all of ten seconds and that’s your first priority, battering a bard? You really need to work on that attitude of yours. Now, will you please get us out of here? “
As they’re arguing, Jaskier is still wriggling against their bindings with all of the urgency and attitude of someone mildly bored and slightly inconvenienced, as has become second nature to him as of late. He’s about to open his mouth to call Geralt a foul name when his ears perk up at the sound of approaching footsteps, and the pair of elves stalk back into the room. The redhead marches up to Geralt and, without prompting or warning, rears her foot up and kicks Geralt in the face with the heel of her foot, a sharp crack resonating in the stone chamber.
“Both of you, shut up, ” she hisses in Elder.
Jaskier rolls his eyes and can’t quite hold back the bitter words that slip past his lips. “I’ve seen enough people beaten in to silence, elf,” he says, his Elder Speech fluent and rolling off his tongue like something comfortable and familiar. “It won’t work on me.”
He feels Geralt still behind him, but doesn’t have much time to ponder why; he’s too busy focusing on the elf and the flickering look on her face. She freezes for half a beat, as if deciding whether she heard defiance or mockery. Then she makes her choice—she stalks around to where Jaskier sits, a scowl of pure malice lacing her features. “Oh yeah?” she says, then straights up and the heel of her road-worn boot slams into his ribs, driving the air from his lungs and sending a sharp wave of pain through his abdomen. He grits his teeth and swallows through the pain, and he’s got half a mind to say something when, out of the corner of his eye, he spots the other elf picking up his lute from where it sits in the corner of the room.
That fucker had better not.
He roughly drags his fingers across the strings, and Jaskier makes an undignified squeak noise as the elf holds the neck of the lute almost like a bat and rears up.
“No, nonononono, anything but the lute—"
He winces as a sharp, splintering noise resounds through the air, the wood of his lute fracturing as it makes contact with the brunet’s knee. Jaskier makes a wounded noise, the sound worse than the pain still radiating in his stomach.
“We’ll see how long you can keep that attitude up, human,” the redhead hisses, sweeping back toward the doorway with the brunet in tow, the sharp shards of wood littering the ground.
Just as soon as they’re out of earshot, Jaskier feels Geralt craning his head to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of Jaskier’s face. “What the fuck was that?”
Jaskier leans his head to the side just enough to catch Geralt’s eye. His grin is too bright, too quick, as he tosses some of his hair out of his eyes. “Worry not, witcher dearest,” he croons in his usual lilting tone. “I've got it all under control.”
“Do not call me that,” Geralt snaps, shooting Jaskier a filthy glare from over his shoulder. “And what the fuck do you think you're playing at, bard? You're going to get us fucking killed.”
Jaskier rolls his eyes. “Oh, calm down, Geralt,” he says in a whisper. “You can’t expect to solve every problem with your big scary swords. You ought to give pleasant conversation a try sometime.”
“Pleasant?” Geralt growls, and Jaskier is certain that the witcher has plenty more choice words for him, but several sets of footsteps are approaching, and Geralt grunts discontentedly and fixes his eyes on the doorway.
The pair of elves and the sylvan return, but they are joined by an elf with a prominent brow and dirtied, flaxen hair. His clothing, likely once ornate and intricately woven, is naught more than dirtied rags, but he carries himself with a regal, stern posture.
“Filavandrel aén Fidháil,” Jaskier breathes; his thoughts begin to get away from him, long-forgotten memories unspooling before his eyes. “King of the Elves.”
“Not a king,” Filavandrel speaks, voice tired. “Not by choice.”
Geralt interrupts, regarding the sylvan with an inscrutable look upon his face. “The missing grain. You were stealing for them.” His voice is calm, lacking an accusatory tint, and Jaskier resists the urge to raise an eyebrow at the almost sympathetic exchange.
“I felt for them. They were forced out of Dol Blathanna,” Torque says, standing just to the side of Filavandrel and wringing his hands.
“He was trying to help,” Filavandrel sighs before turning to look at the redheaded elf, rubbing a tired hand over his face. “Toruviel, nobody was supposed to get hurt,” he says, gesturing at Jaskier and Geralt, still tied up on the ground.
“What's two humans in the ground when countless elves have died?” the elf, Toruviel, spits. She shoots Jaskier and Geralt a dirty look, sneering at them over her nose.
“One human,” Geralt corrects, turning to look at the elf.
No humans, really, Jaskier adds on unhelpfully in his head.
“And you can let him go,” Geralt says, jerking his head back toward Jaskier, the crowns of their heads bumping together gently. “He hasn’t done anything.”
“Then Posada will learn that we've been stealing,” Toruviel hisses, her posture tense as she glares at the pair. “The humans will attack.”
Jaskier very narrowly resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I would have nothing to gain by spreading such a rumor,” he says primly, still speaking Elder. “I am not what you think me to be.”
And—yes, in part, he is referring to the odd notion that he is just another loudmouthed bard. Jaskier only shows his cards when it is beneficial to him, and in this instance, that is not the case. And if he is hinting at their other claim, one of him being some ragamuffin run-of-the-mill human being, then that is a point of clarification made for himself and him alone.
A twisted look edges its way onto Filavandrel’s face, a hint of pain and re-remembering something thorned and buried deep. “And what, are we supposed to just trust you?” he asks, sounding somewhere between resigned and incensed; a tired man who no longer wishes to fight, but must. “Trust the words coming out of the mouths of humans? The same humankind that pushed us from viable soil, who killed our elders and our young, who grow grain in dirt fertilized by the blood of our babies?” His voice breaks as he continues. “I do not wish to bury anyone else, witcher. I was once Filavandrel of the Silver Towers. I am now Filavandrel of the Edge of the World. Pray tell, what would you do in these times? Bow to human sovereignty? They would make slaves of us all.”
Silence hangs in the air for a moment, before Geralt sighs. “Go somewhere else,” he says, voice gentler than Jaskier has heard it all day. “Rebuild.”
Something pangs in Jaskier’s chest; he knows a look, haunted and heavy like Filavandrel’s, has clouded his eyes. “Show the humans that you are more than what they fear you to be,” he says resolutely. “Show them who you truly are.”
Filavandrel scoffs. “Like your witcher?”
“I am not his witcher,” Geralt sighs, and Jaskier can practically feel the way his eyebrow twitches. “But he speaks truth. I have learned how to live with the humans, so that I may live.”
Toruviel steps forward, her earlier determined, ferocious expression having returned to her. “Please, my King,” she says, “there are others. A new generation of Evellien who wish to fight! Let us take back what’s ours. Starting now.”
Filavandrel’s eyebrows furrow, corner of his lip downturning. He opens his mouth to speak, but Torque inches forward and interrupts before words can leave Filavandrel.
“The witcher could have killed me.” His speech is nervous, voice wavering, and he still wrings his hands together. “But he didn’t. He’s different, like us.”
“If you must kill me, I am ready,” Geralt says, and the words make Jaskier furrow his eyebrows. “But the Sylvan is right. Don’t call me human.”
Much to Jaskier’s surprise (really, he had resigned himself, figuring Geralt was going to die of an unfortunate stab wound and then Jaskier would have to hightail it out of there, then shepherd the witcher’s very irate ghost into the great beyond), his and Geralt’s impassioned campaign works. Filavandrel, after some contemplating, orders for the pair to be let go on the promise that they will not reveal their location to the humans of Posada as they gather their things and begin the journey out of Dol Blathanna. And, much to Jaskier’s glee, Filavandrel gifts him with his lute to replace the one that the brown-haired elf had destroyed; it’s a beautiful thing, dark lacquered wood with gold filigree decorating the top in intricate patterns.
Jaskier strums on it aimlessly as they walk out of the maze of tunnels and rock-walled rooms the elves had taken up residence in, the light of the late morning sun greeting them with open arms. Jaskier smiles up at the sky, and is about to turn and wax poetic about the beautiful weather to Geralt when a large, calloused hand grabs him by the collar and pushes him bodily into the cliff face they are walking past, his lute slipping from his hands with the sudden movement and clanging uselessly to the ground. A jagged edge of rock digs unpleasantly into the small of his back as he gasps, squirming as Geralt holds him in place.
“What the fuck are you playing at, Geralt?” he groans, trying to move away from the sharp rock pushing into his skin.
“Where the hell did you learn how to speak Elder like that?” Geralt growls, almost accusatory, and leans closer. His eyes, golden and piercing, scan over Jaskier’s face from a measly couple of inches away, and Jaskier can feel every puff of breath against his mouth. Something in his gut spikes violently, but he tamps the feeling down and feigns a bored look. “I have met many bards in my day, and they possess an academic knowledge at best. You speak it near fluently.”
The corners of his lips drops. He knows he shouldn’t let his pride get the better of him, but—“Near fluently? Near fluently?”
The witcher raises an eyebrow.
Jaskier does not balk. “I have traveled to many places in my time, witcher, and have learned many skills along the way,” he sniffs. “Now, will you please let me go?” And, well, it’s not as though he’s lying, is it?
Geralt’s fingers tighten momentarily, then he releases Jaskier, slowly stepping back and giving him the room to dust off his doublet and bend down to pick up his lute.
The rest of their walk together is tense, and Jaskier plucks a somber tune on his lute, resisting the urge to scold Geralt for his atrocious behaviour. They trudge through the grasses in near-silence, only the low notes of the lute and the rustling of tall weeds accompanying them, until they reach where Geralt had left his horse, who whinnies when the pair approaches, nudging gently at Geralt’s chin when he comes within range. He scratches her behind her ear, then steps back to eye Jaskier.
“This is where we part ways, bard,” Geralt says, face nearly impassive, save for the slight, almost imperceptible downturn of the corner of his mouth and the hint of exasperation in his eyes. “For good.”
And. Well. Jaskier could listen to him; could veer left where Geralt steers right. Could march on to Cidaris or Kaedwen or Redania or Nilfgaard, could file this journey away as another small, lovely memory amongst his tapestry of many millennia of adventures and misadventures. He could.
He’s never been one to back down from a challenge, though.
There’s a feral edge to his smile when he steps forward and threads his fingers into Geralt’s lovely but blood-bespattered hair, then pulls him into a bruising, hungry kiss, all gnashing teeth and tongues. Geralt responds immediately and beautifully—he drops Roach’s lead as he heaves a rough groan into Jaskier’s mouth and his fingers dig into Jaskier’s waist just a bit too hard. Something hot and possessive coils up in Jaskier’s abdomen, makes him feel a bit lightheaded. He laughs deliriously into Geralt’s mouth, a lilting giggle both frenzied and unrestrained, and loops an arm around Geralt’s neck. Geralt tugs the first few buttons of his doublet open, and then his fingers start at Jaskier’s laces.
A man after his own heart, truly.
It’s a few minutes later that the realization hits him. It’s after they’ve shoved just enough of their clothing out of the way, after they’ve dug out the oil from Jaskier’s bag and Geralt has quickly but rather skillfully opened Jaskier up on three of his fingers. Geralt is buried inside him, powerful hips fucking him into the bed of tall grasses and wildflowers that he lays on. He feels rather small, caged in by Geralt’s arms, and he gasps brokenly at a particularly violent thrust that rattles his teeth, his heels digging into the small of Geralt’s back. He pants and bites angry red marks into the side of Geralt’s neck, punched-out sounds being fucked out of him with every relentless snap of his hips.
It’s amidst all of this, as Geralt growls into his neck, digs his teeth into the strained muscle there, and clutches bruisingly at his hip, that Jaskier realizes he has never felt quite so alive.
It’s a massacre.
Jaskier isn’t much of one for politics, in all honesty, but this latest news is widespread enough that there are whispers of it in the taverns and inns that he frequents. The elves, everyone is saying, have presented the humans with a treaty to formalize their borders, to establish Dol Blathanna as a kingdom of elves and establish a human territory just south of its borders.
The humans do not respond as the elves had hoped.
There are farming villages scattered a few miles out from the Silver Towers, hubs of agriculture that produce much of the livestock and fresh produce consumed in the region. Jaskier doesn’t tend to spend as much time in the outskirts of the city, but occasionally a farmer will succumb to illness (or, more rarely, to old age), and he will dance through farmland, singing and strumming his lyre, aiding them on their journey.
Tonight, he sings and wanders those same farmlands, but his tune is far more somber, and he walks rather than dances. The air is heavy with the sharp, acrid sting of blood and viscera, and Jaskier can feel them all grabbing at him, faint impressions of hands both large and small grappling at his clothing, digging their fingers into his skin. His voice is wavering as it cuts through the thick silence hanging in the air. Bodies—elves and livestock one and the same—litter the grasses.
The sight sickens him. Yet, there is no rest for the wicked, and he has a job to do here. He steels his stomach and pushes his voice harder, sings louder, and strums the lyre with a renewed resolve. The pressure of the hands digging into his ankles lessens with each note, but hours later, when he has finished walking the village, has stepped away from the blood and carnage to return to the city and wash the stench of the day off of him, he does not find that breathing becomes any easier.