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“Ciri!” Geralt hisses but the girl is already hurrying off towards the tavern on the other side of the town’s open square. Dusk is setting in, the sun beginning to sink down over the horizon line and painting the surrounding town in a soft twilight. Long shadows from the two-story buildings darken the streets. Geralt sighs frustratedly as Ciri glances back at him before opening the tavern door and slipping inside.
With Nilfgaard still hunting the Lion Cub of Cintra, Geralt had done his best to limit their exposure to heavily populated areas. They were running low on supplies, so Geralt had begrudgingly agreed that stopping at the next town was the right move. Long enough to get a night’s rest, restock, and then head out in the morning. But Ciri had heard music—a lute, specifically—and smelled seasoned meat and was gone before Geralt could remind her that she really ought to stay close.
Geralt follows after her, flipping the hood of his cloak up. Geralt would do anything to keep Ciri safe, and Witchers are likely to attract unwanted attention.
He ducks through the tavern door just as a song ends. There’s a chorus of applause and cheers, and Geralt quickly scans the packed space for the familiar blue hood. He spots her quickly, slipping between patrons with practiced ease. Geralt huffs another frustrated breath. He is much larger than her, and he wouldn’t be able to weave through the crowd to grab her without attracting attention. And there were lots of people that could notice.
“Oi! Bard!” a patron—a young man with a mess of curly blond hair—calls from the bar. “Play that one ‘bout the White Wolf! Toss a Coin or whatever-the-hell it’s called.”
Instinctively, Geralt’s head swivels over to the patron. He freezes when he hears the response from around a hidden corner of the room.
“Call me Jaskier, good sir!”
Gods, he hasn’t heard that voice in almost a year. Geralt’s slow heartbeat stutters for a moment for reasons he decides not to linger on.
Geralt spies an empty booth in the corner of the tavern that maintains a reasonable vantage point. He sidles around towards it, slipping into the seat. His fingers twitch with the desire to leave. He stares at the back of Ciri’s head—Ciri, who had paused slightly when Jaskier responded but continued to move towards the sound of the music once the familiar song began—as if by simply staring her down, he can will her to come back to him so they can make their way out of town. Or at least out of this tavern.
Geralt hadn’t seen or heard from Jaskier since their parting on the mountain almost a year ago. He had meant to. He had. He’d intended to find the bard after a brief stop in Cintra to ensure to that his Child Surprise was safe. But then Nilfgaard attacked, and… well. Things became complicated. Other things took priority.
Geralt had hoped that the right words to apologize would come to him sometime on the way. They never had.
The tavern is too busy and Jaskier is tucked away around a corner, just barely out of sight. Geralt can’t see him, but he takes a certain comfort in that. Because if he can’t see Jaskier, then Jaskier can’t see him.
Maybe that makes him a coward. Geralt waves a barmaid over and orders a pint and some food for himself and Ciri, his gold gaze tracking her movement through the room as she drifts closer to the music.
“At the edge of the world, fight the mighty hoard, that bashes and breaks you and brings you the morn. He pressed every elf far back on the shelf, high up on the mountain from whence it came—” Jaskier’s fingers seem to slip from the lute for a fraction of a moment just as Geralt watches Ciri turn the corner.
“Fuck,” Geralt mutters under his breath.
The bard recovers easily enough, and Geralt wonders if he’d even have noticed the slip up in the first place if he hadn’t been listening so closely, or if he hadn’t been quite so familiar with the song. The whole tavern joins him in singing the refrain and Geralt ducks his head slightly. The last thing he wants is attention drawn to him.
The barmaid returns with his drink and two bowls of lamb stew. Geralt slides the coin over to her wordlessly, barely risking eye contact. She gives him a surprisingly kind smile, pocketing the payment and turning to the patron in the next booth over. The Witcher is grateful that she doesn’t do anything to draw attention to him. Geralt takes a long swallow of ale—finding it passable but forgettable—and stares at the tankard as the song approaches its end.
He can’t help but think that the song is lacking… something. Jaskier sings it well—brilliantly—as he always had, and the tavern brings a liveliness to it with their enthusiasm. But there’s an earnestness, perhaps, that seems to not be present in Jaskier’s voice like it once had been. It seems more… rote performance. Forced.
Perhaps he’s imagining it. Regardless, he can’t help the way the familiar voice tightens something in his chest. The Witcher’s lips press into a thin line, and he takes another long swallow of ale.
The song ends to raucous, drunken cheers. Through the commotion, Geralt thinks he can hear Jaskier saying something about being done for the night and thanking the crowd for the hospitality. Geralt keeps his eyes carefully trained on the corner that Ciri had disappeared around, hoping that the end of the performance would mean her quick return to his side. He didn’t like not being able to see her in such a crowded space. If the wrong person recognized her, all hell would break loose, and it would be harder for Geralt to get to her quickly.
A moment goes by, and then the familiar sight of the young princess reappears. Her eyes scan the room before settling on Geralt in the corner. He quirks an unimpressed eyebrow. Ciri rolls her eyes, but quickly weaves her way through the crowd towards him.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Geralt says gruffly as she slips into the booth across from him.
“I wanted to watch the performance,” she argues without much heat. “Especially since it’s Jaskier. Is that the same Jaskier as the one you’ve mentioned?”
Geralt thinks, briefly, about denying it. The Continent is vast; it’s entirely possible there is another bard named ‘Jaskier’, right? He could claim that he couldn’t be sure because he hadn’t seen the bard’s face. But he’d know that voice anywhere. Even after a year of separation.
“Hm,” Geralt decides.
His gaze flickers across the room and sees Jaskier making his way through the tavern, smiling and graciously thanking the compliments tossed his way but his brows are pinched slightly in concern. His gaze flickers over the room like he’s searching for something—or someone—when his bright blue eyes find Geralt’s gold ones. Jaskier freezes, but only for a second.
Then he’s heading for their table, Geralt realizes, and he quickly tears his gaze away. The Witcher opts to stare down into his half-full mug of ale instead.
He hears Jaskier release what sounds like a sigh of relief when he reaches the table. It makes Geralt look up. Jaskier’s bright blue eyes are a bit wide, but the smile he offers Geralt is tense and uncertain. He’s got the lute strapped around one shoulder, his hand on the neck of the instrument. Geralt can feel Ciri’s gaze flitting between himself and the bard.
Jaskier clears his throat. “I wanted to make sure she was safe,” he says eventually.
“Why?” Ciri’s soft voice breaks Jaskier’s gaze from Geralt’s. The bard’s smile softens a bit.
“Because you, princess,” Jaskier says in a whisper after a quick glance around, “are the subject of some buzz these days. In the very least, Nilfgaard seems interested in you.”
“You recognized me,” Ciri says, equally quietly but unable to mask the surprise in her voice. She scoots further into the booth in a clear invitation for Jaskier to sit down beside her. The bard’s eyebrows tilt up in surprise, but he hesitates for only a moment before sliding into the seat beside her.
“Only because I was acquainted with your family,” Jaskier replies, sensing the spark of fear that had ignited in Ciri. Geralt could smell the shift in her. How Jaskier had been able to sense it was beyond the Witcher, though the bard had always been better at reading emotions than Geralt had.
“That’s right,” Ciri replies. “You were there. When Geralt claimed the Law of Surprise.”
Geralt senses a shift in Jaskier then. The smile he offers Ciri reads to Geralt like a flimsy, half-hearted attempt to hide something. He smells the change too. Something turning slightly bitter in the bard’s normal scent of faint wildflowers and cedarwood.
Geralt frowns. He sees Jaskier glance at him quickly before turning his attention back to the young girl sitting beside him. “You’ve heard the story, I see.”
“Geralt told it to me.” Ciri has turned her attention back to the food set in front of her. “I asked him why we were linked by destiny, and he told me about the Law of Surprise. He said you were the reason he was there in the first place.” She takes a mouthful of stew.
Jaskier had always been a man that wore his heart on his sleeve. He spoke more in five minutes than Geralt tended to say in a week, or at least it felt that way. He’d never been one likely to hide his emotions. His bright blue eyes had his heart on display. He lived fleetingly. Dramatically. Unapologetically.
But there’s something guarded about those blue eyes now. It makes something uncomfortable settle in Geralt’s chest, even as he turns those eyes on the Witcher himself.
“I suppose that was my fault,” Jaskier says carefully. And the memory that Geralt had been trying very hard not to think of comes crashing back into him.
Why is it that whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days, it’s always you shoveling it?
There’s a quiet click as Ciri uses the spoon to scrape the bottom of the bowl for the last morsels of a hot meal. She pauses, glancing once again between Geralt and Jaskier. “Then I suppose I have you to thank.”
Jaskier blinks in surprise, looking back at the young girl beside him. “Thank?”
“If you hadn’t convinced Geralt to attend that banquet, he never would have been there to claim the Law of Surprise. And I probably would be dead by now.” She takes the final bite of stew and swallows it. “Finding Geralt was the first good thing to happen to me in… a long time. So any role you had in making that happen, I’m grateful for.”
“I, ah…” Jaskier, for once in his life, seems briefly at a loss for words. “You’re quite welcome.”
Ciri smiles. “Has he always been so serious all the time?”
“Ciri,” Geralt sighs.
Jaskier smiles then. A genuine, less-guarded one. “As long as I’ve known him, certainly. Does he hum a lot with you?”
“Yes,” Ciri replies with an amused glint her eyes. “I’m still figuring out when it means yes and when it means no.”
“It’s all in the timbre,” Jaskier replies, and Geralt stares at both of them. Have they forgotten he’s literally sitting on the other side of the table? “A higher or softer hum is usually a good thing. Though a higher timbre in Geralt’s voice is still quite low, so it takes some practice. If it’s short, low, gruff? Usually means no. Learned that the hard way. If it’s somewhere in-between, it usually means ‘you’re on thin fucking ice, Jaskier’.”
“Jaskier,” Geralt snaps as Ciri snorts.
Jaskier sucks in a breath through his teeth and leans in to Ciri conspiratorially. “And when he says your name like that, it usually means you’re in trouble.” Ciri laughs, and the bard’s bright blue eyes flicker over Geralt. The brief flash of mirth in them dulls slightly. Jaskier shrugs. “Then again, it has been quite a while since… we’ve traveled together. So perhaps my information is a bit out of date.”
Geralt averts his eyes to look down at the half-full tankard in his hands.
“How long did you two travel together before you parted ways?”
There’s a long beat of silence. Geralt can feel Jaskier’s gaze on him, like he’s waiting to see if Geralt will answer. He doesn’t. Jaskier sighs a little. “Off and on for around twenty-two years.”
“And then you just stopped?”
“Something like that.”
“Why?”
And that… well. That was certainly a loaded question. Geralt risks a glance up, but Jaskier isn’t looking at him anymore. He’s looking down at the glass of wine in his hand as if it might hold the answers to Ciri’s question. For a brief, odd moment, Geralt feels an odd sense of gratitude. Because it would be not only easy but justified for Jaskier to use that opening to tear into him for all the words he said on the mountain the last time they parted. But he doesn’t.
Jaskier, for once, is silent.
“Ciri,” Geralt says when he can sense the princess is about to press for an answer, “it’s getting late.”
“We should stay here for the night,” she replies firmly. “It’ll give Roach a chance to rest.”
The corner of Geralt’s mouth quirks slightly. “Fine,” he relents. Roach would be okay to keep moving, but the girl hadn’t had a night in a decent bed in weeks, and they could afford it. They could leave in the morning—staying too long in one place was too much of a risk—but they should be able to spare a night.
Ciri seems satisfied with that arrangement, and Jaskier slides out so that she can slip out of the booth. She pauses, glancing once again between them as Jaskier sits. “Goodnight, Jaskier. I… hope that whatever it is, you two are able to work it out.”
Jaskier turns a startled gaze onto the princess—Geralt throws her an exasperated look—but Ciri has already turned her back and is heading to the innkeeper to buy a room for herself and Geralt. Geralt watches the exchange closely, keeping particular attention for any sign of recognition from the part of the innkeeper. Nothing. The innkeeper pockets the coin Ciri offers him and hands her a key with a kind smile.
Ciri heads to the stairs, throwing a pointed look at Geralt over her shoulder. Talk to him! She mouths. And then she disappears up the stairs.
“She’s the spitting image of her mother,” Jaskier says, and his voice sounds oddly… tentative. Like he’s testing the waters before wading too deep.
If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.
“Hmm,” Geralt hums in agreement.
“She’s got a fire about her though,” Jaskier continues, his voice still oddly subdued. His eyes linger on the stairs that she’d disappeared off to. “That would be Calanthe’s influence, I can only assume.”
Geralt tilts his head slightly in agreement, lifting the tankard to take a long swallow of slightly warm ale. It doesn’t help as much as he’d been hoping it would to quell the nerves churning in his stomach. He didn’t know what to say to the bard across from him. How to explain that he’d meant to go find him not long after the mountain—find some way to apologize, to make amends for the ways he hurt the bard intentionally and viciously. But then he’d gone to Cintra, which fell to Nilfgaard, and fate had managed to lead him to his Child Surprise despite all his best attempts to avoid it.
Ciri had changed things for Geralt in ways he hadn’t been expecting. In ways he was grateful for. Ciri had thanked Jaskier for his role in setting things in motion, but Geralt can’t help but feel that he owes the bard a debt of gratitude himself. For many, many things.
It’s a swirl of emotions in his gut that Geralt doesn’t even know how to begin to sift through. He wants to try. Has to try. Jaskier deserved better than the words said on the mountain. But the words get lost somewhere on the way up his throat.
Geralt takes another drink instead.
Jaskier’s gaze falls back to his wine glass. “Right then,” he says. “I suppose you’ll be gone in the morning.” It’s not even a question. Jaskier is well-aware of the danger that they’re in. Even if Geralt wanted to, they cannot stay. “I’ll see you around, Geralt.”
His same parting words on the mountain echo back in the small space between them. The realization that Jaskier means to leave before Geralt has worked up the courage to apologize, to thank him, to say any of the wide number of things he wants to, needs to— it sends an unexpected jolt of panic through the Witcher.
“Jaskier.”
The bard is half-way to standing, but he freezes at his name.
Geralt sighs. “It’s… good to see you.” Geralt has to stop himself from cringing. It’s a lame start.
Even Jaskier releases a disbelieved huff. “Is it?” he asks flatly.
Fuck. “I didn’t mean what I said. On the mountain. I was…” Geralt trails off, suddenly unable to look Jaskier in the eyes. Stupid. Impulsive. Afraid.
So, so afraid.
“Sure.” The weight in the bard’s voice twists Geralt’s chest painfully. “But I did, Geralt. Mean what I said on the mountain.”
Geralt swallows. He doesn’t need to ask what Jaskier is referring to. I’m just trying to work out what pleases me.
“Did you work it out?” Geralt asks, letting his gaze flicker back up as he keeps his hands wrapped around the tankard in front of him like it can ground him. “What pleases you?”
For the first time tonight, Jaskier looks… tired. Weary. He gives Geralt a smile that is a distant, brittle echo of his usual bright grin. His faint scent of wildflowers takes on a barely-noticeable edge of acridity. He stares at Geralt for a long moment before he answers. “I thought I had.”
Geralt frowns. “What happened?”
Jaskier huffs a humorless breath and raises his wine glass to his lips. He pauses to answer before he takes a drink. “I gave him 22 years. And then he told me to get out of his life.”
Geralt tries not to wince. He feels faintly nauseous with guilt. “Forgive me,” he says thickly. “I was wrong, Jaskier.”
Jaskier’s brows rise in surprise. “The great Geralt of Rivia admitting he was wrong? Someone should write a song. Immortalize the moment.” There’s just the faintest hint of teasing, and the familiarity of it—so close, yet so far out of reach—makes Geralt ache.
The Witcher swallows. “More than admitting,” he says. “I do not, cannot, expect your forgiveness so easily, Jaskier. But I want to show you. With time. If you’ll… allow me the chance.”
Jaskier’s blue eyes fall from Geralt’s to the glass on the table in front of him. For a long moment, the bard is uncharacteristically quiet. The tavern continues to bustle with life—drinks slamming on tables, drunken laughter, patrons calling out to the bartenders—but it fades into a distant background. Geralt focuses instead on studying Jaskier’s face. On the curve of his jaw, the sweep of his dark hair that almost falls into his eyes, the thin circle of darker blue around the outside of the bard’s irises.
If this is the last time he sees Jaskier, he wants to remember as much as he can about him. It’s selfish of him. Geralt does it anyway.
“Okay.” Geralt blinks as Jaskier’s gaze flickers up. The bard seems to recognize the bewilderment and nods once. “Okay,” he repeats, more firmly this time.
Geralt swallows past the slight lump to his throat.
He sees the faintest twitch to the corner of the bard’s mouth. If Geralt wasn’t quite so entirely undeserving, he may have dared to call it fond. The Witcher takes a breath to say something—to thank him, maybe—but it doesn’t feel adequate. And Geralt is so tired of saying words that fell short. Of words that aren’t enough or are too much of the wrong thing.
Jaskier reaches across the table and places his hand on Geralt’s forearm. “We leave in the morning?”
Geralt’s breath catches in his throat. Because he asks the question with so much ease and casual intimacy. It makes the ache in the Witcher’s chest splinter and crack. It’s a simple question, but it’s a reminder of the depth of the man’s loyalty that is just as undeserved as the grace with which he asks it.
Geralt covers Jaskier’s hand on his arm. He pretends he doesn’t notice the tilt to the bard’s head at the gesture. Jaskier is either curious or confused. Geralt isn’t sure which. He feels the bard squeeze his arm a bit and Geralt clears his throat, pulling his hand away from Jaskier’s.
He nods once, still not trusting his voice. Still not sure he can find enough of the right words. But he meets Jaskier’s gaze and does his best to let his own be open. The bard, once upon a time, had been able to read all the things Geralt would never say. And from the faint smile that Jaskier returns the look with, he still could.
“See you in the morning, Geralt.” The words themselves weren’t so different from the last time they parted—see you around, Geralt—but Geralt drinks them in and lets it settle the storm churning in his chest for the moment. It feels like a promise. For both of them.
Geralt clears his throat. “Sleep well, Jaskier.”