Chapter Text
1247, somewhere in Aedirn
The last time Geralt had been to this city, some twenty years before, there had been an extremely good herbalist with a shop on the high street. It was part of the reason he chose this city to come into and get a room at an inn, to rest for a couple of days after a number of contracts but also in the hopes of unloading some of the large collection of salable components he was lugging around in his saddlebags after a very busy season.
He was delighted to find that not only the shop but the herbalist herself was still there, elderly but spry, and he quite happily unloaded a great deal of his collection for quite a good price; she was very discerning, and she remembered him from the last time.
It was nice, for once, to talk to someone who wasn’t hostile or suspicious. It had been a good successful season, in that he’d had a good run of lucrative contracts that he’d actually gotten paid for, but he’d also had to deal with a variety of very unpleasant people and sticky situations, and he had some new scars, he’d had to regrow half his teeth [see endnote], and he badly, badly needed a respite. Having an old woman speak kindly to him wasn’t something he’d have considered a luxury until this moment, when it felt so extravagantly wonderful, like a special present from the universe.
She also gave him directions to a stall in the market where he could get a good price for some of the other spell components in his bag, the monster parts and mutagens and other components no herbalist would use. Geralt traded back some of his newly-gotten coin for a few imported herbs she carried that he wasn’t likely to be able to collect on his own, because she was, after all, very discerning and if he was going to buy something, it ought to be from her.
He left highly satisfied; he’d be able to spend tonight doing some quite advanced potion-crafting, and would wind up with some excellent additions to his personal arsenal as well as likely being able to sell some of his extra works either to the herbalist again or possibly to the market stall she’d recommended, if they turned out to be worthy of the recommendation.
The scents of the market were largely pleasant, and he first followed his nose to a vendor selling pastries. He rarely indulged in such fripperies, but the scent was so alluring that he let himself buy a treat. For some reason it made him think of his little bard friend, Jaskier, who surely would have insisted on him having one. See, he thought, I do treat myself nicely sometimes, but it made him unaccountably melancholy for some reason, and he wrapped the rest of the sweet flaky pastry in a napkin and stowed it in the side pocket of his satchel, appetite gone.
It was fine, he’d eat the rest later. He should focus now.
The market stall he was looking for was down a side street, a little out of the main press of the market, behind a stall for a pawnbroker. He could smell the sharp unsettling tang of alchemical processes from down the block, and as he approached, a young man was sitting on a stool under the edge of the awning, smoking a pipe and perusing a printed broadside.
The young man glanced up as he approached, giving him a casual once-over and then suddenly freezing as he saw the medallion, his affectedly-disinterested expression arrested into stillness. His eyes traveled slowly up to Geralt’s face, and fixed themselves there, wide and dark and shocked.
“I have alchemical components to sell,” Geralt said, and held up a wyvern claw, which was the easiest thing to hand in his satchel. “Katrina the herbalist recommended your stall, I believe.”
“Ah,” the young man said, overcoming his paralysis, “yes, I’ll get the old man.” He left his broadsheet but took his pipe, and vanished into the back of the stall, and through a door in the wall behind. Geralt didn’t actually like that; people didn’t always go to get who they said they were going to get, and occasionally came back with a mob. But Katrina had recommended this place.
Geralt occupied himself perusing the merchandise on offer. Some of it was quite obviously superstitious nothing, talismans and wards against the evil eye and whatnot. But some of it was actually powerful. He held the back of his hand out toward one of the more outlandish-looking talismans, frowning at it. He couldn’t actually tell if it was active, which probably meant it wasn’t.
Geralt didn’t mind a little white lie here and there, and if someone came to him with superstitious fear that couldn’t be allayed genuinely, he wouldn’t himself be above perhaps giving them something harmless but scary-looking to ward it off. But this sort of thing could have real consequences, if someone took it too seriously and thought it would make them immune to very real dangers.
He’d have to ask the seller about it. He frowned, looking away, and his eye lit on the broadsheet the young man had left on the stool.
It was the usual sort of penny sheet one found around and about in larger cities like this where the notice-board couldn’t really scale up-- just a single sheet, printed both sides with salacious regional gossip, advertisements, the latest ballad lyrics, and occasional engravings. You never saw them in the countryside, but people could read, here.
This one had, he noted absently, a Wife Wanted ad like Jaskier had so ridiculously pretended to compose for him. This one was looking for someone “sturdy and willing” to be a third wife to a widower. Good luck with that one, Geralt thought, but, points for honesty.
There was a snippet of a ballad that he could immediately identify as not Jaskier’s work but heavily derivative, about a knight-errant fighting a dragon, which was ridiculous. It had a specific line about the dragon’s forked tail, as well, and Geralt caught himself actually shaking his head.
But a bit farther down there was another ad, for a missing child-- no, not a child. He frowned as he read it. MISSING-- a nobleman’s son-- twenty-five years, near six feet tall, slender, dark hair, blue eyes, of a fast tongue and dissipated temperament, substantial reward offered for his return. Plays the lute and dresses notably as a fop, preferring bright colors. Reward only for information or safe return, send word via the Redanian embassy.
Geralt frowned, tapping his finger thoughtfully on the paper. That sounded… awfully familiar. He folded up the broadside and tucked it into the interior pocket of his coat.
Someone was coming, and he returned to his contemplation of the talismans. This one was real, he could feel-- a ward against the evil eye, it looked like, but on examination, he’d wager that the resonance he felt from it was really indicating that it had a strong repellent property against vampires, which was never a bad idea. There was silver thread in it, and he could recognize a lot of components with vitriolic properties. It wouldn’t stop a higher vampire, but it might deter some of the lower ones. Better than a bulb of garlic, anyway.
The young man came out, and stood to one side as an older woman followed him through the door and came out into the stall. “A Witcher indeed,” she said.
“Katrina the herbalist told me you might have an interest in some of the things I’ve collected at my work,” Geralt said.
The woman came closer, seemingly unafraid, and looked up at him. “You’re not the Witcher I’ve met before,” she said.
“No,” Geralt said, “I haven’t been this way some twenty years.”
She peered at his medallion. “His amulet was different, too,” she said.
“Then he was of a different school than I,” Geralt said. “I probably don’t know him.” That likely wasn’t true. There weren’t that many Witchers left.
“Aiden, his name was,” she said.
“I don’t know him,” Geralt said. He’d heard the name. Cat school, he thought. It didn’t matter.
“He was a thoroughly decent fellow,” she went on. “I’d heard all sorts of terrible things about Witchers, but he was fair and quite good.”
“That is well to hear,” Geralt said politely. “Well, I have an assortment of items that are surplus to my own alchemical needs, which I would be willing to sell to you if your price is good. And there might be a thing or two in your collection I’d like to acquire, in return. If you’re willing to deal with me, I’d like to see about that.”
She was, and so she brought him into the back of the stall and had him lay out his goods on a table. He unwrapped them carefully, and explained any relevant details, and she asked knowledgeable questions.
Her offering prices were on the low side of fair, and he managed to argue her up to reasonability-- after all, his ingredients were not only absolutely fresh but also knowledgeably harvested, neither of which the average person gleaning from dead monsters was going to bring, and she eventually admitted that. In return she offered to sell him several things that were utter chicanery, but Geralt picked the one actually-useful thing out of the lot and she sold it to him for too cheap.
For once, he’d accept a mistake in his favor, though he’d have conscientiously corrected her if she’d offered him a better price on his ingredients. In the end, the deal came out fairer than many, and he took his money and the single thing in her shop he had actually wanted with reasonable satisfaction, bundling it all into his satchel and leaving behind a great deal of clutter he now no longer had to carry.
He bade her farewell, and she hesitated. “What was your name?” she asked.
“Geralt,” he said, “of Rivia.” He tapped his medallion. “Wolf school.”
“Oh,” the young man said. He’d watched the whole deal silently from his stool, his pipe gone out. “The White Wolf. From the ballad!”
“Yes,” Geralt said resignedly. “No, it didn’t happen like in the song, but yes, it happened, and yes, the bard really was there and really did get beat up, though they didn’t really kick in his teeth. He’s still got them, last I checked.” Humans couldn’t regrow teeth, he knew that one.
“It’s such a good song,” the young man said.
“It’s really not,” Geralt said. He personally found it trite and didn’t like the musical structure of it. He was no critic, but he had certainly heard it enough times to form a judgement. Jaskier was capable of much better work; that one was just designed to be catchy above all, and it succeeded.
“Don’t you like being a hero of song?” the young man asked. “Like in the,” and he looked around for his broadsheet. “Oh, hm.”
Geralt did not enlighten him. “Not particularly,” he said. “We don’t do this job for the fame, you know.”
“What do you do it for?” the young man asked.
“Money,” Geralt said.
“Is there that much money in it?”
“No,” Geralt said, and took his leave as graciously as he could manage.
He wandered through the market a little more, though he didn’t need anything else. He bought some food and supplies, but not in a coordinated fashion, more in a desultory kind of whatever-caught-his-whim way, since he had coin and his satchel was empty.
People mostly didn’t cringe away from him, though he caught some fearful looks. It was how he could tell Jaskier hadn’t been here, he caught himself thinking-- nobody sang the song at him. Maybe it was also just that the fad for it had died down.
He stepped out of the crowd as he wandered past the mouth of an alley, and was considering his next course of action, absently scenting the air, when he caught a hint of something familiar, and focused on the scents around him. A person, something familiar in a person’s scent, a sweet sort of spicy note-- he corrected for the breeze and turned to look, it wasn’t any of the people who’d brushed past him, it was someone he had passed a moment ago, who was standing nearby, to the east, at the mouth of the alley which was drawing air-currents down it.
There was a person there, a man, tallish, pale skin, shabby cap, drably-dressed, leaning on a cracked hogshead barrel that had been left there. Fine-quality boots. The man noticed Geralt looking at him, and visibly reacted, starting in recognition.
Geralt did the same: it was Jaskier. Of course; that’s whose scent it was. He stepped closer, and said, “It’s you.”
“Geralt,” Jaskier said, tipping his head back a little and smiling a bit hesitantly as Geralt approached. For Jaskier, it was an extremely subdued greeting, and his demeanor matched it-- he looked sad, and tired, and much older than the last time Geralt had seen him. He smelled of not enough food, no recent baths, too much drink, and mostly he smelled of distress, fear, and misery.
“You look like you need a drink,” Geralt said. Actually he looked entirely like the opposite of that, but Geralt lacked the vocabulary for it. “I don’t have a drink but I do have something better.”
“And what’s that?” Jaskier asked, half-smiling. He must be exhausted, if that was all he could muster.
Geralt produced the napkin-wrapped half of a pastry. Jaskier took it in some confusion, unwrapped it, and then laughed. “Why do you have this?” he asked.
“I do treat myself sometimes,” Geralt said. “But you can have the rest, it was too sweet for me to manage the whole thing.”
“Really,” Jaskier said, feigning nonchalance, but as soon as Geralt told him “yes, really,” he set to it and devoured the rest of the pastry. Likely, he hadn’t eaten in a day or two, from the look and smell of him.
“Why don’t you come back to where I’m staying,” Geralt said. He’d spotted a lute case and a satchel and he’d bet anything that was all the luggage Jaskier had. He picked up the lute, and Jaskier put up a token protest, but let him.
“I guess I don’t have anything else going on at the moment,” he said, with almost-convincing nonchalance.
The inn was rowdy for the time of day, and Geralt didn’t have to pay very much attention to see the way Jaskier flinched at the noise as they came through the door, an expression of real fear crossing his face. “I already have a room,” Geralt said, “just come up, I’ll get food and bring it up.”
“You don’t mind?” Jaskier asked.
“I still owe you for that ice cream,” Geralt said. He led Jaskier up the stairs and into his room, then went back down and had a bath sent up for him. He came back up with food, and took all of Jaskier’s clothes once the kid had climbed into the tub to wash-- every stitch, he had far less luggage than he usually traveled with and every single garment was filthy. Jaskier didn’t look as thin as he had after the plague-- he was on the thin side, but obviously, the lack of food was a recent short-term thing, because he otherwise seemed in decent condition, just a bit pinched. Geralt collected his own laundry as well and brought it all down for the inn to launder, because he had the coin and might as well.
Clearly, something awful was going on with Jaskier, and now wasn’t the time to be stingy.
He came back up one last time, and found Jaskier asleep in the tub. “Don’t drown,” he said, and Jaskier’s head jerked up with startlement. “Come on, get out of there if you’re clean.”
Jaskier obeyed sleepily, and Geralt gave him one of his own clean shirts to wear since all of his things were in the wash. He pulled it on, and since Geralt had been occupying the room’s chair, he sat on the bed and picked desultorily at the food, winding up just sitting there holding a mug of small beer in both hands and blinking red-eyed down into it. It struck Geralt, then, that he’d known the kid nearly a decade, and he wasn’t a kid at all, by anyone’s standards. He had filled out some; he was less reedy, his jaw a little thicker, and Geralt’s shirt didn’t actually hang off him entirely, and-- well, he just looked awful at the moment. Worse than when he’d been rail-thin and freshly recovered from the plague. He just looked beaten-down. Someone had hurt him, not physically, and Geralt steeled himself, sat back down in the chair, and said,
“Do you need anything else?”
To his alarm, Jaskier looked stricken, and his eyes welled over. The bard wiped his face on the cuff of his borrowed sleeve in annoyance, and said thickly, “Why are you being so kind to me?”
“I’m not doing anything for you that you haven’t done for me,” Geralt said, instead of saying something stupidly soft that would surely come out wrong anyway. “When’s the last time you slept in a bed?”
“I’m,” Jaskier said, and wiped his face again. “I’m kind of-- on the run,” he said dully, keeping his eyes averted.
“What did you do this time?” Geralt asked. “No, don’t tell me.”
“I didn’t,” Jaskier began, hurt, but bit it off. “No, you’re right,” he said, in a moment, and he sounded so-- defeated, was the best word for it. “You and I are sort of--” he flopped a hand, gesturing back and forth between them, “--predicated on not talking about it, whatever it is, so it’s best not to.”
“I’m like that with everybody,” Geralt said. “Don’t take it personally.”
Jaskier looked at him in clear exhaustion, a wave of misery coming off his scent, and then nodded and looked down into his mug again. “Of course,” he said quietly.
Geralt had been a kind ear for more people than one might think. He was a terrifying inhuman monster, sure, but Witchers sometimes were there for people in their worst moments, and had a demonstrable track record of solving arguably the worst of their problems, and sometimes he’d been the only person who cared about what had really happened, and the only reason for justice getting served. He’d sat with widows, carried orphans to safety, locked his arms around grief-crazed fathers so they wouldn’t run into a pyre after the bodies of their children. He knew how this worked, had a fair notion of what kinds of noises a person made to comfort another person in a situation like that.
It just took some preparation. But this wasn’t the demeanor of a man who’d been dumped by a pretty lady or was on the run from a jealous husband, or any of the usual Jaskier types of drama. The Missing notice in the broadsheet hadn’t mentioned any such thing either. Obviously, there was something worse going on. He took a quiet, deep breath to fortify himself, rubbed his face, tilted his head, and said, “Maybe you’d better tell me.” He dug out the broadside, folded it to the right section, and handed it over.
Jaskier read it, at first with curiosity, then dismay, and finally with a bleak grimness. “Of course,” he said.
“That is you, then,” Geralt said.
“Where’d you find this?” Jaskier asked.
“In the marketplace,” Geralt said. “Today.”
“Of course,” Jaskier said grimly, looking utterly miserable. “I have to keep running.”
“Wise not to get the lute out either,” Geralt said. But without it, Jaskier’s options for earning coin to support himself were few and unappealing.
Jaskier sighed. “It’s,” he said, then his face worked its way through a number of expressions, none of which Geralt could really parse. “I didn’t do anything,” he went on eventually. “It’s not like that.”
“I didn’t really think it was,” Geralt offered.
“Well, to be fair, it usually is,” Jaskier said, with a watery laugh.
“Right,” Geralt said. He expected Jaskier to take off chattering, but he didn’t, and they sat there quietly for a moment, Jaskier clearly composing himself.
The silence went on a while, and usually Geralt was the master of outlasting anyone else in an awkward silences kind of contest, but he’d resolved to be helpful, so finally he played the one card he figured he had, which was deadpan self-deprecating humor. “If it’s something really sad, there’s likely not very much I can do, seeing as Witchers don’t have emotions.”
Jaskier gave him a shocked look. “That’s horse shit,” he said.
“Not at all,” Geralt said, putting on his best deadpan-serious face.
“I’ve witnessed you have a full spectrum of emotions that would put a professional actor to shame,” Jaskier said. “You don’t even believe that bullshit.”
“Mm,” Geralt said, and drank a little more from his cup. “You think that’s what you’ve seen. I’ve been deluded by it too, don’t get me wrong. But I had it all explained to me, a while ago, by a friendly mage. You see, what seem like emotions in Witchers are really mostly reflexes, instincts, faint echoes of what it is that humans really feel. So what it is that I really have, are just those-- the reactions a sentient creature needs to have in order to understand other sentient creatures. But that doesn’t make them really emotions.”
Jaskier stared at him open-mouthed. “Someone said that to you?” he demanded, soft and incredulous and horrified, which was a much more sincere response than Geralt had been hoping for.
“Mm,” Geralt assented, raising his eyebrows in a parody of earnestness. Jaskier usually caught on by now, this wasn’t a good sign.
“I hope you put your fist through his face,” Jaskier said, indignant.
Geralt made a contemptuous face and shook his head. “You can’t punch a mage,” he said. “Doesn’t work. Gets you dead.”
“But it would be such a tidy demonstration of how wrong he was,” Jaskier said.
Geralt shrugged. “No, anger is a base emotion, an instinct really.” He smiled, showing all his teeth. “I get those. It’s the higher emotions I can’t fully comprehend. The finer feelings, you know? Altruism. Love. The stuff they make art about.”
“They make art about everything,” Jaskier said.
“I wouldn’t know,” Geralt said. This was more sarcastic than he’d meant to get, as well. “But you can console yourself that’s why I never seem excited about your songs. I simply don’t have the parts required to understand them.”
“ What parts,” Jaskier said, wildly indignant. “Emotions happen in the same parts of your brain as speaking and you obviously have those parts.”
“Reflex,” Geralt said. “Instinct. Listen, whatever your problem is, if it’s a monster, I can help, but if it’s feelings, I just can’t relate.”
“You’re having me on,” Jaskier said finally, after far too long a blank pause.
Geralt gazed at him for a moment, and then finally said, “Well. A little.” And he gave Jaskier a wry grin. “I appreciate the defense, though. I mean, not that I have the capacity to appreciate loyalty, mind you.”
“Stop,” Jaskier said, laughing reluctantly. “You’re an asshole. I can’t believe that was a joke.”
Geralt made a little mock-bow without stirring from his chair. “At your service,” he said.
Jaskier looked less miserable now, at least, and he looked down into his mug with a little sigh of laughter. “Oh, Geralt,” he said. “I do appreciate the reminder that my problems are not really that big, in the grand scheme of things.”
“I didn’t say that,” Geralt said, frowning. That wasn’t what he’d been trying to get across, at all. Trust him to find a way to be an asshole to someone in the midst of a studied attempt at the opposite.
“No,” Jaskier said, waving a hand. “No, of course you didn’t-- but, Geralt, there you are being dehumanized all the time in these fundamental ways, and I’ve got my poor little rich boy problems. I’ll be fine, and I appreciate your kindness.”
Geralt had figured out ages ago-- basically, from his first look at the kid-- that Jaskier came from money. Nobody was flamboyant like that, nobody wore perfectly-tailored little fitted jackets like that and rolled around in the dirt in them, nobody switched accents so seamlessly and unselfconsciously and always defaulted back to a ridiculously high-class one when they weren’t paying attention, who hadn’t come from money. And Geralt had known his share of nobility-- for so almost all of the rich were, in this part of the world, whether by breeding or having married into it once they had money, or what-- and generally knew what to expect from them. Jaskier generally managed not to be quite like any of that, which was what made him tolerable.
“I promise I won’t laugh at your poor little rich boy problems,” Geralt said, “since most of the time I’ve known you, you’ve been broke.”
Jaskier sighed. “And extra-broke at the moment,” he said. He sighed, and then said, “Well, my father’s dying.”
“I’m sorry,” Geralt said, sincerely enough. Jaskier didn’t speak for a moment, looking down at the cup in his hands, so sad-looking Geralt felt like he had to try another conversational gambit. He went for personal revelation, since Jaskier was always trying to draw him out about things.. “While that’s not a specifically rich-boy problem, I have to admit that I actually specifically can’t relate.”
“Your father’s alive?” Jaskier asked, giving him an amused but sad look.
“No,” Geralt said. “Just--” He shook his head. “Never knew him, never knew of him, can’t fathom what it would be like to know whether he were alive or dead, can’t imagine it being relevant.”
“Must be nice,” Jaskier said hollowly, and then shook himself and looked up, grimacing in horror at himself. “See? See! Stupid poor little rich boy self-pity.” There was a self-directed viciousness to his tone that was jarring.
Geralt looked at him for a moment, then looked down at his hands, this time making much of gathering himself, for humorous effect. “I can’t believe,” he said slowly, “that I am going to have to be the one to say this to you, Jaskier, but-- your feelings--” He paused, breathed out, and breathed back in again. “Are valid, and other people seeming to have it worse or not doesn’t change that.”
It worked; Jaskier laughed. “Did that hurt?” he said. “It sounded like it hurt.”
“It did hurt, a bit,” Geralt admitted. “Now don’t make me say it again. I’m sorry to hear of your trouble.”
“Thank you,” Jaskier said, subdued.
Something occurred to Geralt, and he hesitated a moment. “Is it that you can’t make it there... in time?” he asked delicately.
Jaskier glanced up, then away. “No,” he said. “I-- can’t go at all.”
He was on the run, after all. “Oh,” Geralt said. He frowned, puzzled. “Is it-- related to you being a fugitive?”
Jaskier sighed. “It’s a stupid story,” he said, and rubbed his face.
“All your stories are stupid,” Geralt assured him. Jaskier looked up again, and laughed reluctantly. “No, I mean it, go on.”
“It’s,” Jaskier said, and gestured with one hand. “I mean, part of our deal, you and me, is that we don’t talk about-- things, right?”
“Well,” Geralt said. “That’s my deal with everyone, but it gets awkward if it’s not reciprocal.”
“Right,” Jaskier said. “Anyway. So, the no-details version is, my relationship with my family is very strained and has never been good. Part of my father’s deal is, he’s got this job, and it’s hereditary. When he dies, the job goes to his heir. It’s actually an important job, not just a figurehead-y one, has real responsibilities and things. It is a job I am extremely unqualified to do. Fortunately for all of us, I have an older sister. She is very competent. She will do this job very well. She is his rightful heir, and there is no problem with any of this.”
“I sense that there must be a problem,” Geralt said.
“My older sister is really my older half -sister,” Jaskier said. “Her mother died, my father remarried, I am the product of this remarriage. This is no problem, except that my mother is very ambitious. At first she wanted to just marry me off to someone powerful but when that didn’t work, she set her sights on having me, her son, be the heir instead. It seemed obvious to me from the start that this was stupid, and bad, because of many things but in part just sort of-- how I am? As a person? If you’d ever wondered, I have always been like this.”
“I hadn’t wondered,” Geralt said, but let himself sound fond.
“See, no one wondered,” Jaskier said. “But I thought, I would make it easier on everyone, and simply absent myself. If I am not present, nobody can start to think that maybe my mother is right and I should inherit instead of my older sister, who is dutiful and well-behaved and competent and good at keeping track of things and nice to all the right people and just in general a much better person than I am-- well, if I’m just not there, then they have no choice but to put her in charge of things, as she ought to be.”
“Makes sense,” Geralt said.
“Thank you,” Jaskier said. He sighed, and sat back. “So I have just. Not visited home much, and. Well. If maybe more scandalous stories spread about me than were even strictly true, well-- I mean, it’s not that there wasn’t a grain of truth in most of them.”
Geralt inclined his head. “And meanwhile your sister has never done anything wrong.”
“She is so respectable. She got married,” Jaskier said. “A couple of years ago. Mm, it was after I’d met you, but not long after, I think. Early in the spring, one year. I turned up. It was perfectly lovely. She picked a very suitable, very sensible, very respectful young man who is very nice to her and they’ll be very happy together and make perfectly reasonable heirs for the inevitable time when it’s her turn to-- exit this mortal realm.” He waved a hand. “They’ve got one already, a boy I think. Anyway. It was so nice.”
He looked dreamy, but with a brittle edge to it, and without changing his expression, he continued, “And then my dad locked me in a room and it took me nine days to break out.”
“He actually locked you up?” Geralt said, startled.
“He did,” Jaskier said. “It was. Well, it was-- horrible.” He leaned over to set his empty mug down on the table, and wiped angrily at his eyes with the cuff of his sleeve, still grinning viciously. “It’s such a stupid, melodramatic story,” he muttered. “He’d reinforced the windows and the door. He’d been preparing for me to come. He’d planned it. He and my mother.”
“That’s awful,” Geralt said. These were the people who’d thrown that beautiful boy away, in Solon’s words. These were the people Jaskier had been informing that he’d survived a plague only by sticking them with a resort bill. It all made a great deal more sense now, awfully; you wouldn’t go in person to see people who’d locked you up in the past.
“It is,” Jaskier said. He covered his face with his hands a moment, breath hitching as he tried to compose himself. He was trying so hard to keep himself under control, and it was futile. “There were accompanying lectures and such, strategic denial of food and so on, and it was clear to me that all my work on distancing myself had been wasted. I would have to give up everything I know how to do, to do this job that my sister would love to do instead,” and he gestured emphatically, “and I know to you that doesn’t seem like-- but I do things besides this, I’m not just a bard, I have-- other jobs, and things, it doesn’t sound like much when I say it like this but I have a whole life besides annoying you, I promise I do.”
“I never said you didn’t,” Geralt said, and he had mostly never really considered where Jaskier went when he wasn’t following him around, though he knew the man had mentioned Oxenfurt, had mentioned publishing books, had mentioned poetry. He’d never let himself be more curious than that. But he never saw him in the winter, and now that he thought about it, usually ran into him in fairly predictable places at regular intervals.
“And maybe that’s selfish of me,” Jaskier said, “to want to hang onto the life I have, the things I’ve devoted my life to studying-- but I only did that in the first place because an alternative exists. Tristina is competent, she has been educated for this, she has been observing my father at work since we were small. She is prepared for this role and she wants to do it. If I take it instead, she is left with nothing.”
“She does seem like the obvious choice,” Geralt said.
“And in the beginning, our father had chosen her,” Jaskier said. “She was carefully educated for that purpose at his encouragement! It is only in later years that my mother has swayed him. And now there’s no logic to it at all.” He waved wildly, and then wrapped his arms around himself. “For the record, I already checked-- if I take the job, and then later back out, I technically become an oathbreaker and a traitor to the King, and, well. It’s not good.”
“So you can’t go home,” Geralt said.
“I can’t,” Jaskier said. “And I can’t--” His mouth worked for a moment, and his eyes welled up and he had to be quiet for a moment before he could continue. He looked so miserable Geralt felt awkwardly that he ought to do something, but had no idea what. “I found out he’s dying because he tried to have me abducted and brought back there, to put back into that prison he’s made for me until I submit. I escaped and have been on the run ever since. It’s so stupid, Geralt, but.” His eyes welled again, and he shoved his wrist against them, as if he could keep it from happening.
“It’s not stupid,” Geralt said.
“It’s so melodramatic I couldn’t even put it into a poem,” Jaskier said. “It is utterly stupid. But, anyway. I’m on the run and I’m just. I guess. Waiting to hear that the old man is dead.”
“I’m guessing he wasn’t always horrible to you,” Geralt said.
Jaskier shoved both hands over his face, and sobbed. “No.”
“Ah,” Geralt said. “That’s, well, it’s a shame.”
“I’m stupid and ungrateful,” Jaskier said, and he couldn’t push back the tears any longer, so he was just crying now, “but he never cared who I actually was, just what he wanted, and I tried to-- I tried, Geralt, and I can’t, I’m not, but he did love me, once, maybe--” and then he was crying too hard to talk.
Geralt sighed. There was nothing for it, now. He got up, and went over, and sat on the bed, and put his arms around Jaskier. “Oh, no, don’t,” Jaskier said feebly, fending him off, but Geralt wrapped his arms around him and pulled him in tightly, and it took less than two breaths for all the resistance to go out of his body.
Jaskier sobbed against him for a moment, and then tried to pull himself together. “No, you don’t have to let me-- this is embarrassing,” he said, but his whole body was wracked with shudders and he clearly was nowhere near controlling his breathing or anything else at all.
“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” Geralt said, not letting go.
Jaskier didn’t try to speak again, and Geralt held him until he fell asleep, and a little beyond until he was sure he was really out, and then put him into the bed and pulled the blankets up, and went back to the chair to meditate.