Chapter Text
The roots are what get him, every time, as if the trees have minds of their own. Hell, maybe they do; they’ve been hunted by stranger things than living trees. As a child, he was convinced everything was alive, always watching him, having an agenda of its own, be it a chair, a squirrel, a malevolent crackling fireplace, or really anything at all. He was always blessed with an overactive imagination. Now he knows everything is watching, but it’s men, or cruel mages, or real monsters, not the make-believe shadows of a child’s nursery.
But today, it’s a gnarled hooked root trying to kill him. He goes down hard, pain exploding as his knee takes most of the hit, followed by the rest of his body. His hands find every sharp twig in the pile of leaves he sprawls face-first into.
“For fuck’s sake, Jaskier,” comes the disappointed sigh behind him. “You could look where you’re going.”
“I’m alright, thanks” he groans, taking a moment before attempting to clamber back to his feet.
He rolls over, getting a nice view of his witcher standing over him, his hand extended. Instead of taking that hand, Jaskier scoffs, reclines saucily, and attempts to look comfortable.
"I think I've fallen for you,” he teases, delighting in the frown that takes over the witcher’s entire face.
“Get up.”
“Fine,” Jaskier groans as he staggers to his feet, still ignoring Geralt’s offered hand. “Take all the fun out of everything.”
“We’re doing this for a reason, Jaskier. We aren’t here having fun,” Geralt growls, in the tone of a man who regards ‘fun’ as another way to get yourself killed.
“Not with that attitude we aren’t,” Jaskier brushes leaves and debris off his pants. “A mission can be fun.”
But the mission indeed isn’t fun, it’s silent the rest of the way to the next town. There’s tension, because there always is, with them. There are endless words multiplying in the space where Jaskier would like to put them, but he doesn’t. There isn’t enough time in the world to pick the right ones. He manages to avoid tripping and falling flat between his first tumble and the town, but his ankle smarts and a slight limp slows them down somewhat.
They arrive later than intended, the sun already dipping below the horizon. Just another thing for his companion to blame him for, he supposes. Still, the inn is a welcome sight, although a dangerous one. It’s too much exposure, but it’s an intentional danger. They want to be seen, they want a sighting of the witcher who never strays far from the violet-eyed woman and his golden-haired girl. They want to draw the hounds off the scent, if they can, or at least flesh them out so Geralt can stab them. But there are so many hounds, so many monsters who want the girl.
Jaskier earns them their room for the night, performing half-heartedly, but still to enough applause and flowing drinks to pay for their lodgings. They retire to the room long after nightfall, looking forward to a brief rest before setting out again at first light.
Igni.
Jaskier flinches at the eruption of fire, his eyes unfocusing as it dances in the fireplace. But Geralt is single-minded in his focus, checking the drop from the window in case they need to leave in a hurry, memorizing the number of paces from the bed to the door, the bed to the window, the door to the stairs.
He grunts approval, which means the bard will probably just sprain an ankle or complain loudly if he has to jump out of the window, but that Geralt feels satisfied with the strategic options of the room. With Jaskier wonders… with two sprained ankles, would Geralt either leave him there, or carry him like a potato sack? Neither option is great.
Jaskier and he will only travel together a little while longer, until the witcher doubles back to join Ciri and Yennefer. The bard is every bit as taken with Ciri as the witcher is, feeling the same strange obligation to seek her protection, though Ciri is also terrifying, and no child of his own. Still, he’d stay with them, if invited. Which he wasn’t, and didn’t expect to be.
After they part ways, Jaskier will continue by himself to revive the sandpiper’s operation, at least until Dijkstra catches up with him, while Geralt will rejoin his family. How long will the little family be on the run, he wonders. Who knows, but the bard won’t be there to write their songs until their stories are over, or his is, or until they randomly decide they need him with no consideration for the fact that he has his own life and important things to do, thank you very much.
He frowns. As they have many times, they’ll share the bed tonight. Or more likely, with years of distance between them now, Geralt will sulk on a bedroll on the floor while Jaskier snores a few feet away on the bed because he will make sure to get to the bed first.
“What’s this?” the witcher’s voice is gruff as always, breaking Jaskier out of his reverie.
He cherishes the familiar growl more than any chords, more than the babble of a brook, or Roach’s gentle nicker. It’s even sweeter than the soft chorus of drunken idiots arguing downstairs in the inn, fighting over which songs they liked best.
“What’s this?” Jaskier parrots, as he so often does.
It’s never to be cruel or mocking, just because he genuinely needs a moment to figure out what the hell someone has said, which in this case, needs some context.
The bard follows Geralt’s line of sight to the subtle gleam of a small dagger peeking out from inside his bag, where he’s carelessly dumped it on the floor. Geralt stoops, flipping open the bag. He grasps the dagger and lifts it into the light.
“Ah. That, my dear witcher,” Jaskier closes the distance between them, reaching to pluck the blade from the other man’s loose grasp. “Is- fuck!”
Grabbing a dagger from a witcher, even a friendly one, isn’t the best idea ever. Geralt tenses at the worst moment, the blade nipping at Jaskier’s outstretched fingers. Jaskier sucks at his injured digit, frowning at the slight taste of blood.
“Yes, it’s sharp,” Geralt rolls his eyes. “Why do you have sharp things?”
Is that a note of concern?
“I always have one,” Jaskier protests. “You never know when you’ll need to stab someone.”
“With a butter knife?” Geralt smirks, flipping it neatly to hold it out handle first. In his hand, it doesn’t look nearly as impressive as it feels when Jaskier holds it.
“It’s not- it’s better defense than a lute, anyways,” Jaskier snatches it, frowning.
In his hand, it evokes one image and one alone, that of a pretty hilt jutting out from a mage’s eye, its beauty offset by the scars on his cruel cheek.
“Hmm,” Geralt relents wordlessly, then starts kicking his boots off. “You need a new one.”
“What, a lute or butter knife?”
“Both.”
“Well, you can buy me both as an apology, as soon as you have any real coin to speak of,” Jaskier huffs.
There is no reply. He’ll die of old age if he waits for a proper apology, which he surely feels is owed, to some degree. His knees have never felt the same after sliding down a mountain in the snow, and his heart will never feel close to how it did before it shattered in his chest.
Jaskier sits on the bed, dagger beside him. He slides his own boots off, making a mental note to purchase or procure more practical boots as soon as possible. They’ve gotten slightly more sensible as the years pass, but his feet still ache, throbbing reminders that years have passed and every step hurts more than the one before it.
“You’ll need a proper weapon,” Geralt sighs. “If you do actually plan on fighting anyone.”
Geralt’s voice is rough, as always, with the sweet layer of tenderness that creeps in underneath the rasp, almost imperceptible.
The bard has tried many different ways to describe it, that voice, starting with rocks in a jar, which isn’t nearly as romantic as he wants it to sound. His latest attempt, something with honey poured over rough edges, doesn’t ring true, so he’s scratched it out in his songbook.
There are plenty of things he scratches out. Words with sibilance, with substance, tantalizing and seductive, words like devour, words like ruin, like take… please. Words like more.
He keeps his voice light, teasing, uninvolved.
“Alright, but nothing crude, like a broadsword, or some ugly club with spikes.”
“Of course not,” a smile is audible in Geralt’s voice. “Only pretty weapons for you, Jaskier.”
‘Only pretty weapons,’ is already trying to weave itself into a line in a song, his mind always filled with words like embers, burning, insistent, demanding his attention. His eyes wander to his bag, his book and quill inside.
Geralt’s never broken the trust that lies between them, a cold mountain and years of distance notwithstanding, he’s never opened his bard’s songbook. His white eyebrows would probably flap circles around his head if he did, and certain passages would elicit maybe even a guilty “hurmph”, as their reunion has sparked plenty of bittersweet words that Jaskier hasn’t bothered to scratch out.
Angry words, hurt words, these he wouldn’t mind the other man reading. But his hunger, the desperate gnawing desire that leaves him hollow… he’s not sure what he’d do if Geralt read that. Geralt knows, he has to know. He’s never hid himself from Geralt, but he’s also never put it into words for him. He’s made it seem like just part of Jaskier being Jaskier, nothing special, just part of the routine. He’s forced it to look easy when loving this idiot is anything but easy.
He slides his dagger into his boot, gives it a nice pat-pat, then flops back onto the bed.
He’s out before he has a chance to watch the witcher unfurl his length across the floor, not able to appreciate the rumbling breaths in his chest, something he enjoys quite a bit. He does, however, dream of the witcher’s voice.
He wakes before Geralt, which may be a first. He listens to him breathe, not opening his eyes, just listening to the steady pattern of the man’s breath. He hums, content, and tries not to think of what could have been. Without meaning to, he slides back into sleep, restless.
It burns, it all burns. The wildfire claims a heartbreaking victim, a young hare. It screams as it runs, fur and muscles ravaged by the fire that it can’t outpace, because the fire is part of it now. He looks down, the hare twitching at his feet.
The hare can speak, which is incredibly disconcerting. It looks at Jaskier with reddened and empty sockets, its eyes melted from its skull.
“Jaskier, wake up,” it says.
“Please be quiet, you horrible thing,” Jaskier begs. “Leave me alone."
“Get up. You’re dreaming.”
“Am not, and I’m not taking orders from a rabbit.”
“What about a wolf?” it leers, its skull cracking, new teeth emerging, as a wolf’s head slides out from the carcass of the hare.
“You're disgusting,” Jaskier informs the creature, calmly. “And I don’t like you at all. Go away.”
“Jaskier, wake up,” Geralt’s voice breaks the silence of the morning.
“Nuh-uh,” Jaskier takes a half-hearted swing at the other man, who leans back slightly, looking amused.
"Was that about me?"
“Waswhabowyou?” Jaskier yawns, blinking blearily up at him.
“That I’m disgusting?” Geralt actually looks somewhat wounded.
“Oh, I was talking to a rabbit.”
“Of course you were. Come on, get your boots on. I want to reach the falls tonight, then I’ll head back, if we’re not being followed.”
What a fine motivational speech. Come with me now, so I can leave you, again.
But he does follow, because he always will- he’ll steal the moments he can and write about the ones he was never able to steal.
There is again more silence than is typical between the two of them, something which seems to both comfort and disquiet Geralt in equal measure. As they hike, slowly gaining elevation through dappled woods, Geralt actually makes a few half-hearted attempts at conversation.
“I can ask Yennefer,” he suggests, like Jaskier somehow knows the missing context for the statement.
“For?”
“Maybe she can make a potion, or something,” Geralt shrugs.
“I ask again,” Jaskier sighs. “For?”
He struggles, as usual, to keep pace with the witcher. He misses Roach, misses any horse at all as he watches out for roots with minds of their own.
“Nightmares,” Geralt slows his stride momentarily to shoot a guarded look at the bard.
“Aren’t nightmares just part of being a witcher?” he asks, not unkindly. He knows something of the traumas left behind by the trials, the ever-present burden of being Other, of being feared but needed by others who don’t understand.
“Yes, but I wasn’t aware they were a normal part of being a bard,” Geralt says, pointedly.
Jaskier stops walking to stare at the man.
“And I didn’t know you could put that many words together in a row,” he deflects. “I thought it would cause internal bleeding, or something.”
Geralt sighs, continuing to walk ahead.
“Forget it.”
“Wait, were you trying to be nice?” Jaskier probes.
“No. Forget it,” Geralt frowns.
“Well, I think I have perfectly run-of-the-mill, ordinary bard-mares, thank you,” Jaskier blinks away images of the fire-ravaged rabbit. He shudders at the idea of accepting a strange potion from Yennefer.
“Alright.”
“Plenty of people have nightmares.”
“Fine.”
“My aunt used to have nightmares about soap; we always hated when she visited because she smelled so bad-”
“Jaskier."
“My sister had nightmares about bees.”
“And you have nightmares about rabbits,” Geralt sighs. “How’s your sister now?”
"Oh, she doesn’t have nightmares anymore,” Jaskier injects a lightness into his voice, but he sees Geralt wince.
None of them have nightmares anymore, Geralt. Why don’t we have a nice chat about that? And let’s chat about nightmares, burning flesh, about monsters coming home. Let’s talk about how much worse it hurts when you’re left to mourn alone.
He doesn’t say it. They’re quivering in his mouth, these words that feel solid on the tip of his tongue, words he wants to scream at the stoic frame in front of him. His family is lost. Berating Geralt for leaving won’t bring them back. Though Gods, it might feel good.
They walk in silence.