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Jaskier woke a bit before dawn, warm enough despite the chill of the air, and it took him only a moment to identify that he was so warm because Geralt was pressed close against his back. The Witcher was awake, propped on an elbow, looking over Jaskier’s shoulder.
Jaskier rolled a little onto his back to look at him. Twenty days on the road now, and they’d passed the crossroads where Jaskier should have turned aside for Oxenfurt. They had a reasonably-good traveling rhythm now, and they’d long ago given most of the blankets to Ciri so she could make a nest, and they’d have to rely on one another’s body heat to keep warm. She seemed to prefer that, though on the coldest nights, she still huddled close, and sometimes Geralt put her in the middle. They had only sprung for an inn on two occasions; Geralt had perhaps had too much human contact, Jaskier thought, and was convinced they were being hunted. It was fine, the weather was mostly dry enough that they slept all right, especially with three bodies’ heat.
Jaskier wasn’t sure what Ciri thought of the two of them, if she thought it was normal for them to be so chummy, especially after dark, but she was either oblivious or genteel and either way, he didn’t see the need to disturb it. By day and in the evenings she seemed happy enough, and he’d taught her the basics of chord and melodic structures, and Geralt had taught her various feats of balance, the preliminaries of fighting skills.
Jaskier really thought she should come to Oxenfurt and be educated there, but Geralt very obviously wanted to bring her to the Witcher keep in the mountains where he’d been trained. He was unwilling to say much, but it seemed despite his dark insinuations of pogroms and massacres, someone still lived there and it wasn’t just a ruin. But without more information, Jaskier wasn’t willing to commit to going there himself. And, if he didn’t turn up at Oxenfurt in time for the winter planning session, they’d give his lectures to Fortzberg, who was an insufferable idiot, and his lessons to Karila, who at least was nice but he really didn’t want that either because then he wouldn’t get his stipend, and he wasn’t sure he could live off royalties alone for the next year.
“Have you changed your mind on your destination?” Geralt murmured.
Jaskier sighed. “No,” he said, “but I can backtrack once I’ve seen you there safely.”
“Hm,” Geralt said, and put his nose in the crook of Jaskier’s neck. His nose was horribly cold and he was probably just warming it, but Jaskier couldn’t help but enjoy the attention. They hadn’t had much privacy, and he was possibly going to die of frustration, but it was obvious they weren’t going to get any more privacy on the road. If Jaskier wanted sex, he was going to have to go all the way to their destination, and he just wasn’t quite willing to do that.
Geralt was probably trying to lure him, but kept sabotaging himself by saying things like well, there’s not much there and I don’t think they’d be unkind to you but then Witchers are assholes and probably it would be fine and the like. No, Jaskier wasn’t going to go all the way into the mountains and follow the secret way in to this ruined and horrifying keep that was either empty or full of assholes.
Especially since he had to get on the road to Oxenfurt within a couple of days if he was going to make it there this season.
“We don’t need an escort,” Geralt said.
“I had to stab you,” Jaskier said. “You weren’t doing all that well on your own.”
“We’re within reach of help, up here,” Geralt said. “There aren’t many more towns along this route, so you wouldn’t be in reach of help. I don’t want you traveling alone in such a lonely place.”
He had a point. “I travel alone all the time,” Jaskier groused. “You just don’t see it because by necessity you aren’t there.”
“That’s true,” Geralt said, “but traveling alone through towns and settlements is one thing, alone on mountain roads is another.”
Jaskier sighed. “Kiss me,” he murmured.
Geralt obliged, which never got old. He was stubbly at the moment, but they both were, and it was a strange and fairly novel sensation. There was no sense intensifying anything; the sky was lightening and Ciri wasn’t a heavy sleeper in the mornings despite being a teenager. But it was pleasant to just share a moment. Geralt was still not very snuggly, prone to isolating himself, and frequently went monosyllabic for extended periods of the day-- Jaskier had made a game of it with Ciri, where they’d decide how many words Geralt probably had left in a day and would compete to get the most done while requiring the fewest words.
But sometimes, Geralt was sweet like this, and would reciprocate pleasure, and they could spend time together.
After a pleasant few moments, Geralt pulled away, and looked down into Jaskier’s face contemplatively.
“When will I see you again?” Jaskier asked. “If I get to Oxenfurt by the end of next week, I’ll stay there until the end of spring.”
Geralt pressed his lips together thoughtfully. “I’m not sure what we’ll find,” he said. “And I don’t know who’s hunting Ciri, if they’ll think to look for her there.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to put you and Ancient Secret Witcher Fortress In The Mountains together,” Jaskier said. “But that does sound like it won’t be soon.” He sighed. “Well, I probably won’t travel much next summer. I have a lot of work to do and I missed the winter session of teaching, so I’ll probably try to pick up some work in the fall and winter sessions next year.”
“I’ll look for you,” Geralt said. “Sometime.” He shook his head. “I just don’t know what will happen.”
“Well,” Jaskier said, “if all else fails, at least I know how to get where you’re going.” But that made him think, and he rolled over a little and retrieved his belt pouch. “I should give you back the map you drew, though. I don’t want it on me, someone might go through my papers. I have it memorized, I don’t need it.”
He pulled out the crumpled map, and sat up to look at it. Geralt sat up too, and put the blanket over Jaskier’s shoulders when he shivered, moving away to retrieve his own jacket. The map was sketched in rough but sure lines, and labeled in Geralt’s now-familiar, dear old spidery writing. Jaskier traced the letters with the instructions on finding the hidden entrance to Kaer Morhen.
Geralt took the piece of paper, and put it into his jacket pocket. “Should burn that,” he grunted.
“Probably,” Jaskier said. He sighed. “You can write to me, if you like. Care of Oxenfurt University.”
“Should I address it to Jaskier, or?” Geralt tilted his head a little.
Jaskier made a face. “Jaskier should do it,” he said, “but.”
“Are there stuffy old fuddy-duddies who won’t call you by your stage name?” Geralt asked, one corner of his mouth tilting up.
“How did you guess,” Jaskier said. “And if one of them’s overseeing the correspondence…”
“Pancratz it is,” Geralt said. Jaskier must have made a face, because Geralt leaned forward and kissed him gently beside the mouth, quick and gone before Jaskier could react.
“J. A., to be sure of it,” Jaskier said. “There are… numerous Pancratzes about.”
“Hm,” Geralt said, and Jaskier understood that to be him emphatically not asking.
“Alfred,” Jaskier said. “That’s what the A is for.”
“Hm,” Geralt said again, looking at him under lowered brows. I wasn’t asking, plain as day. Jaskier laughed.
“I know,” he said. I know you weren’t. “It used to be a secret, who I was really, but then I wanted to publish poetry, and it just didn’t. Stay a secret.” He shrugged. “I’m over it now, Geralt. I’m old, and one can’t hold a grudge about one’s childhood forever.”
“Yes one can,” Geralt said, weirdly emphatic.
“It’s not so hard to move on once they’re dead,” Jaskier said. “Once the games they were playing with you as a pawn are dissolved into gravedust, it’s possible to pick yourself up and salvage some things.” He grinned toothily. “My sister inherited while I was off pretending no one could guess who I was, and the ones who wanted it to be me have all moved on to other machinations, or died of old age. Or been murdered, probably, but as I wasn’t involved, I don’t care.”
“Is there a ballad?” Geralt asked, with another of his sardonic head-tilts.
“No,” Jaskier said, “but there is a fantastic collection of really terrible songs that were among some of my first compositions. My Father Is A Piece Of Shit was possibly the first one, but Fuck You, You Grasping Bitch, dedicated to my mother, is perhaps the pinnacle of the genre. Sometime if I’m drunk and feeling very, very poorly, I’ll treat you to a recitation.”
“Hm,” Geralt said, which was a pretty clear no, don’t do that. Jaskier laughed at him, letting the brittleness run out of him.
“Anyhow,” Jaskier said. “I doubt I could write to you, but you could write to me, if you wanted to let me know a place to find you.”
“I assume your mail would be read,” Geralt said. “If they’re really looking for me, surely.”
“I suppose,” Jaskier said. “But your handwriting is so terrible, Geralt.”
“It is,” Geralt said thoughtfully.
Ciri groaned suddenly, and rolled over. “You never let me sleep,” she said accusingly.
Geralt looked at the sky. “It’s winter and it’s almost dawn,” he said, “which means it’s like two hours until noon.”
“I had the most wretched sleep last night,” she said. “Whatever we ate gave me the worst pains in my stomach. I feel awful.”
“Hm,” Geralt said, and darted a sometimes you remember she’s a princess look at Jaskier, who raised his eyebrows in don’t I know about noble brats. Ciri dragged herself up out of her blanket nest and wandered off grumbling into the bushes to relieve herself.
“I didn’t get a stomachache,” Jaskier said. It was sometimes a problem for Geralt, who was capable of not only eating but easily digesting whole raw animals he killed with his hands and ate entire-- he’d caused a mild scene at innumerable dinners by eating bones not only from chicken or squab but from pork roasts or sheep shanks-- and thus sometimes didn’t actually know what was safe for humans to eat. Jaskier had actually had to explain to him that it wasn’t just that humans were squeamish, but that their teeth and digestive processes were poorly suited to entirely uncooked meat. Apparently, Witchers, or perhaps more accurately the horrifying potions they routinely consumed, were poisonous to the common intestinal parasites that humans tended to acquire from poor sanitation and undercooked food, so he didn’t know about them.
“Yet,” Geralt said darkly, glancing in the direction Ciri had gone and then looking away.
Ciri shrieked, and both men started up. “Wait, no, stay away,” she said, “don’t, I’m not--”
They both stopped, hovering uncertainly on the other side of the tree where she was still putting her clothing to rights, and in a moment she stumbled out, pale and horrified.
“I think I’m poisoned,” she said, “there’s-- I don’t-- I don’t know--” She held out one hand, and there was blood on it.
“That’s definitely blood,” Geralt said. “That’s your blood.”
“Fuck,” Jaskier said. He’d thought of this ages ago, and had been amused about it, and then hadn’t considered it since then. “You’re fine, Ciri.”
Both of them looked at him. “It’s all over the place,” Ciri said, pale and shaking. “There’s-- so much.”
Jaskier looked up at the heavens, and then looked over at Geralt. “Come on,” he said. “Come back to the campfire, sit down, we’re going to take a little rest this morning and do some laundry and talk about how human bodies work.”
“I’m bleeding to death,” Ciri said.
“This isn’t like how I die and get better,” Geralt said tightly.
Jaskier stared at him. “Geralt, you are one hundred and three years old, and you are telling me you don’t have the first clue of how human reproduction works?”
“Reproduction,” Ciri shrieked. “I’m not reproducing!”
“You’re not,” Jaskier said, reassuring her. “Come on. Come back here.”
He managed to get them back to the campfire, sat Ciri down in her bedroll, washed her hands and dried her off and then set about ransacking their combined baggage. “I can’t believe I’m the only one here who knows about this,” he said. “Fucking useless noblewomen and their useless sycophant retainers. Would you believe I had to do this for my own sister too?”
“Are you going to tell us what this is about?” Geralt asked, audibly irritated.
Jaskier came over with his armload of ransacked garments and sat down next to Ciri. “Well,” he said, “it doesn’t involve you, so you can stay out of it.”
Geralt growled at him, wordless and savage. Jaskier laughed, ignored him, and turned to Ciri, taking both of her hands in his.
“So, I guess I’m your mother now,” he said. “Listen, Ciri, I know it feels wretched and generally unpleasant right this moment, but really it is cause for celebration. What has happened is that you have been accepted into the miraculous sisterhood, of which I am by the way not a member, of women with functioning wombs.”
“What,” Geralt said.
“What,” Ciri said, somewhat higher in pitch.
“Doesn’t this sound familiar in some way?” Jaskier asked. “Surely someone among the women of your family spoke to you about this, if even only briefly, maybe with overly-flowery metaphors? Something about an aunt coming to visit, perhaps, some metaphor about monthly somethings?”
“No?” Ciri said. “What?”
Jaskier sighed, slowly in, held it, slowly out, and then said, “At some point, somewhere in your education, someone surely explained to you how humans make more humans.”
“They breed,” Ciri said. “Like any animal.”
“Right,” Jaskier said.
“It sounds gross,” she said.
“Well,” Jaskier said.
“I really don’t know where you’re going with this,” Geralt said, sounding increasingly angry.
“Fortunately for all of you,” Jaskier said, talking faster, because while he wasn’t afraid of Geralt he did understand that there was no point antagonizing a Witcher, especially one who was feeling protective of a youngling, “I have mastered all seven of the liberal arts, and that includes a basic grasp of the biological sciences. So I can explain to you that a fertile human female goes through a cycle lasting approximately a month, from the ages of about fourteen or sixteen, through the ages of about forty-five or fifty, approximately every month for that entire duration, during which her womb grows a thick lining of blood vessels, and then sheds that lining if she does not conceive a pregnancy. Unlike other mammals, whose cycles manifest themselves in appearance and behavior changes, the only sign readily apparent among human females is that for three to five days of each month they shed the womb’s lining, which they excrete as clots of blood from the womb’s lower opening. Sometimes this process is painful and involves muscle cramps, but for most women it is only a minor annoyance at worst. I am absolutely certain you have encountered this phenomenon at some point within your literal century of life, Geralt!”
Geralt had the decency to look abashed. “Oh,” he said. “Well. I mean. Yes. Women smell like blood sometimes but it was never my business to ask why.”
“Well,” Jaskier said brightly, “that’s why. Congratulations to you as well, your daughter is a woman now.”
“Why did no one tell me this?” Ciri demanded, sounding a bit panicky. “Why-- every month? For the rest of my life? It feels like I’m being stabbed with a rusty fork!”
“I’m told it gets better,” Jaskier said, softer and sympathetic, “although I’m also told that’s a pack of lies. I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t know. I’m truly, truly terribly sorry that there is no woman from your household left, to be the one to tell you this. To tell you what to do about it, and advise you on what she’s found to help.”
Ciri stared at him, and her great wide-set eyes filled with tears. He pulled her into an embrace and held her for a long moment. “It’s all right,” he said. “I can tell you what you need to know, and hazard a guess as to what to expect at least.”
She sobbed, and he stroked her hair where her cap had fallen off, and rocked her gently. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, thinking of her monstrous grandmother, who had never told her any of the things she needed to survive. She’d thought there would be more time, surely, because everyone thinks there will be more time. It brought tears to his eyes, too. How awful for this child, that she was having to find these things out on her own, from some strange old unrelated man. But that wasn’t really fair; he wasn’t really unrelated. Just unrelated by blood, which was possibly the least of the coincidental ties that bound people together.
Geralt was watching in real horror, grim and silent and wide-eyed. “I can’t believe that’s really how it works,” he said finally.
Ciri had mostly cried herself out, and Jaskier kissed the top of her head. “I’m sorry, my sweet, that’s really how it works. Now I’ve collected what I can of clean rags but I don’t know as much about this sort of thing, it takes firsthand experience and mine’s all secondhand. I do know you have to make sure they’re really clean before you use them, and when you dry them you need to hang them up, not lay them on a rock. You need the sunshine to bleach them well because otherwise you could get an infection. But you’re going to have to figure out the rest by trial and error, unless you can find a farmhouse along here with a kindly wife in it.”
“We’re past the last farmhouse,” Geralt said grimly.
“Well,” Jaskier said, “then we’ll just have to work out what to do on our own.” He looked at Geralt. “We’re going to need some laundry water, so I think your job is going to be to haul that. We’ve got some hot water in the kettle, so Ciri can clean up, and she’d best change clothes. I’ll have to see what I can do with these rags. And then a leisurely breakfast, and then we can see about travel in the afternoon. We might need to peruse your remedies for something to relieve muscle cramps, as well.”
A thought crossed Jaskier’s mind, then, as Geralt went to get the bucket. “Ciri,” he said, as she sat pulling herself together. “I assume they explained to you how humans… breed… in more detail than just the bare fact of it.”
She frowned at him. “Why?” she asked. “I imagine it’s the sort of thing that one can figure out in the moment if one is stupid enough to attempt it.”
He stared up at the heavens for a long moment. “Fuck,” he said. “No, Ciri. There’s a lot that goes into it. Doing it successfully is easy, but there are a lot of reasons you’d want to do it and not make a baby, which is not obvious, so now I have to explain that to you in a way that doesn’t make Geralt want to punch me.”
She looked shifty. “Explain it while he’s gone,” she said.
Jaskier shook his head. “He can hear us,” he said. “I am quite certain of it. If ever you’re not sure if Geralt can hear you, just assume that he can and proceed accordingly.”
“He can explain it, then,” she said.
Jaskier shook his head again. “He doesn’t know,” he said. “Because Witchers can’t make babies. He has no idea. He can do whatever he wants to whoever will let him and there’ll never be a child. You, however, do have to worry about it, and unscrupulous and careless people will try to tell you all kinds of superstitious nonsense about it.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you ever made a baby by accident?” Then her eyes widened. “Or on purpose?”
“No,” Jaskier said. “Because I knew how not to, because I was smart enough to ask prostitutes about it, because they’re really the ones who know.” He tilted his head a little. “Eeehh, well, they also know a bunch of nonsense, but generally they’ve got a clearer handle on it than anyone else.” Then he paused. “Er, you know what--”
“I know what prostitutes are,” Ciri said. “Ugh, I don’t want to think about this, Jaskier. I’m going to go change my clothes.”
“You can do it here,” Jaskier said, “I’ll turn my back,” and he got her set up with water to clean herself up, and turned his back, facing the direction Geralt had left in, trying to think of a way to explain the facts of life that would make them sound neither enticing nor horrifying.
As Geralt came back, holding both of the nice collapsible buckets from Jaskier’s travel gear-- he was going to have to leave those with them, wasn’t he, and he sighed inwardly but consoled himself that the spring session’s stipend would undo a lot of the damage of this lately profligate season-- he stood up, holding the blanket out with his outstretched arms behind him to give Ciri more cover. “She’s changing clothes,” he said.
“I’m aware,” Geralt said. “What sort of nonsense were you telling her?”
“All about whores and bastards,” Ciri said gleefully.
“I never said a word about bastards,” Jaskier said.
“That’s what accidental babies are called, though,” Ciri said.
“Only really if the father’s important enough that it matters who inherits from him,” Jaskier said. “Otherwise nobody bothers with that nonsense.”
“It’s not true that I don’t know how babies are made,” Geralt said uncomfortably.
“Mm, is that so?” Jaskier said. “How many normal adult women have you had normal adult relationships with anyway?”
Geralt glared at him, setting the buckets down. “I’m done, you can put the blanket down,” Ciri said.
“That’s not the point,” Geralt said.
“Well,” Jaskier said, “then you go ahead, explain it to Ciri so she’ll know what to avoid, and I’ll just sit and observe.”
“No,” Geralt sighed. “It’s better if you do. Just-- don’t give her scandalous ideas?”
“Are you lecturing me about my dissipated lifestyle?” Jaskier asked.
“No,” Geralt said.
Jaskier grinned at him. “I have to get you all annoyed with me so that you’ll miss me when I go,” he said.
Ciri looked up. “Are you really going?” she asked.
“I have to,” Jaskier said.
“No, come with us,” she said, starting to look distraught.
“We already talked about it,” Jaskier said. “I have to go. I’m just a bard, I can’t go to a secret Witcher fortress in the mountains. And I have other obligations I have to fulfill.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “But you’re my mother now,” she said, and laughed, and the tears spilled over at the same time. Jaskier made a pained noise and came over and took her into his arms again, and they sat like that for a while.
He cried too. Why not. He was a tired old man and had nothing to prove to anyone. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said thickly. “I have to go.” He wiped his face, and sat back a little, and wiped her face too. “But you listen to me, all right? If anything about this doesn’t work out, if you’re not happy, or you get tired of being alone in the mountains with a bunch of assholes, or if nobody understands you-- or even if you just want to see something else in the world-- you can write to me, Geralt knows how to reach me. If you come to Oxenfurt, I can make a space for you there, and you can--” He laughed suddenly. “You can pretend to be my bastard daughter, and I’ll get you an education there and you can learn all you ever wanted to learn about poetry or biology or astronomy or any of it.”
“What if I want to learn about poetry?” Geralt asked.
Jaskier looked over at him, looking for the familiar mocking head-tilt, the mock-innocent eyebrow raise, but it wasn’t there. Geralt just looked sad, tired, and wistful.
“You can come too,” he said. “Of course you can. Whenever you’re finished with Kaer Morhen. Especially if it turns out there’s nothing there for you, come right away.”
“What will you tell people I am?” Geralt asked, and now his mouth was curling up a little, more playful than mocking.
Jaskier pretended to consider it deeply. “I’ll tell everyone that I’ve discovered that Witchers are actually female,” he said, mock-earnestly, “and that you’re the mother of my bastard daughter, and it’s all a miracle heretofore unknown to science.”
That got them both to laugh, which was what he had wanted.
But the morning slipped away all too quickly, as they did their laundry and Jaskier did his best to explain things to Ciri and get her set up with a good supply of rags for the next few days. He managed not to scandalize Geralt too much with his explanation of human reproductive activities for fun and profit. (He didn’t put it that way, of course.)
When it came time to divide up their goods, Geralt tried to refuse all of Jaskier’s stuff, but that wouldn’t work. Of course Jaskier had to take his horse, because his leg was still stiff at times and hadn’t regained much of its strength. But Oxenfurt wasn’t far, and the route led through several cities. Kaer Morhen was remote and probably not well-supplied, and Geralt had to admit that he needed things, now that he had Ciri and couldn’t just hunt and eat whole raw animals, for example.
In the end, Jaskier’s horse was left quite lightly-laden indeed, and they took a sad, lingering leave of one another.
“I can’t promise I’ll write,” Geralt said. “We don’t… send messages out, very often.”
“And I can’t write to you at all,” Jaskier said, making sure he was looking at Ciri. He wanted her to be certain that if she never heard from him again, it wasn’t because he hadn’t wanted to.
So he made sure Ciri knew the way to Oxenfurt, so that if anything went wrong and she was separated from Geralt, she could go there. He pinned a small purse of coins inside the hem of her jacket, so she’d have them even if she was separated from their luggage. And he wrote her a letter of introduction to the dean of his school, which he put into one of the saddlebags, saying she was a close family friend and should be treated with all the respect one would extend to any Pancratz-- all but explicitly naming her his bastard. If she came and he wasn’t there, he explained, she could find accomodations with that letter, and surely they’d send word to him and he’d come back right away.
At the last, Geralt came and stood by his horse, as Jaskier was preparing to get up and ride away. He just stood there, not speaking, and Jaskier looked at him for a long moment.
“I’ll see you soon, one way or another,” Jaskier said. They’d never had big showy leavetakings, before. Usually Geralt just left. Well, except when Geralt blew up at him and was an ass. He supposed it was all different now.
“One way or another,” Geralt said. Jaskier considered it; he supposed they could clasp hands. But as he was raising his arm for that, Geralt took him by the shoulders, embraced him, and then kissed him soundly on the mouth.
Jaskier laughed and embraced him again, and Geralt squeezed his shoulder one last time, hard, before turning and walking away to where Ciri was waiting on Roach.
“One way or another,” Jaskier said quietly, and got up onto his horse. They rode in opposite directions, and the turn of the road hid them from one another within moments.