i carry your heart (i carry it in) - teamfreehoodies (2024)

Chapter 1: The Conjunction

Chapter Text

Oxenfurt has the largest library to be found anywhere on the continent. They keep meticulous records of every discipline: from musical compositions to astronomical proofs, from the trivarium to the quadrivium: all knowledge is welcome and recorded and offered freely to anyone in need of it. There is no larger collection of accumulated academic work, and none so finely archived.

When Jaskier arrives at Oxenfurt, fresh from temple school with scabs still healing over his knuckles, he falls in love with the library first. With its rows and rows of books stacked higher than he can even reach, this is possibly the most fantastic and awe-inspiring place he’s ever been.

His time at Oxenfurt is spent in equal devotion to his studies and to his passions, of which there are many, best pursued in taverns and pubs and dancing on the streets, music and coin and fine company— of any persuasion.

Jaskier grows like a weed in the six years he spends learning there, but still, the library with its many splendored offerings remains his fondest memories. After all, that’s where he learns everything there is to know about soulmates.

They first learn of the conjunction in a history of the continent lecture, dry old Professor Davan, droning on and on about celestial orbits and espousing boring theories about the metaphysics of where the Spheres came from: no one cares at thirteen years old, though later Jaskier will think back on these lectures with a fondness born of distance, and take inspiration for new ballads from those tedious lessons, delivered in monotone as they were.

Davan was something of a cantankerous bastard, and refused to teach them about soulmates, though they nattered at the foot of his robes until he would kick them away, cursing up and down on their lives that he wouldn’t teach them anything until they stopped bothering him. (They never did, too caught up in the fun of messing with him, which (very secretly) he knew was likely to happen, and encouraged anyways).

So Davan never taught them about soulmates, though they did once get the musical theory lecturer to go off on a tangent about love in all its forms, and the first hint of that grand romance came to their minds in this way. She was a young woman, though to their pre-pubescent minds she surely must have been very old indeed, and Jaskier was half in love with her.

Professor Astaire tells them of the fates who weave their tapestries, three sisters who witnessed the Conjunction and so went blind, went deaf, went mute, in response to the great glory of Chaos Ascending. The sisters pull their thread from the cosmos, deepest black from the yawning void where space even now is expanding away from itself; brightest white from the centers of stars burning with life for eons on whispers of hope; blues and greens and purple violets from the gaseous giants which scuttle onwards in their silent orbits; oranges and yellows and bright shining pinks from the magic which sparks and sputters and flares up so beautifully against the backdrop of empty mundanity.

They weave with the colors given to them, designing gorgeous narratives and stories and lives caught up in the great tragedies of their ages; death and destruction and entropic decay; they create and so, by necessity, must also destroy.

All things in perfect harmony.

The youngest sister, blind to the beauty of the tapestry they weave, yearns for a thread more tangible to play with: Chaos guides her fingers to the magic sparking and plucks out for her a single red thread, glowing with power which hums a melody as it’s plucked, vibrating with all the coiled potential of splitting atoms.

She brings it to her sisters, who speak and hear and know. This is Love.

It takes all three of them together to weave the Red String of Fate between the mortals, a string which has stopped wars and started them, made glorious art and wrought endless destruction, made friends become foes, and lovers of enemies. This, the fates promised, was their best gift and brightest plaything. Chaos connects them, and, often, Chaos disconnects them. The Red String comes and goes, and only few are granted its promise.

The students are rapt listeners, sitting in her pews, starry-eyed youths with dreams so new they just might make it. Professor Astaire, who always planned to tell this story anyways, pulls a single red thread from her pocket, holding it up for the pupils to see: “This is the string that tied me to my soulmate.” They gasp, shocked by her tragedy, though it’s too large for them to see the shape of it.

“When she died it became physical as it unwound, and I only managed to save this much.” It is the length of her pinky finger all told, frayed where she painfully unknotted it herself, a cut-fast line where it was once connected to a woman born with disease in her body, wasted away before they had the life they wanted to promise each other.

(Or at least, this is what she wants the children to believe.

In truth, this string is just a string, though her story is real enough. She’d always been a big believer in practical demonstration, and what harm was there in showing children that love is something tangible?

What harm, indeed.)

Julian, who falls in love twelve times a day, is openly crying; most of the students listening have tears in their eyes, or heavy hearts, save for the two boys in the back who are sneering at Julian. “Like anyone would fall in love with you,” the meaner one laughs, and Julian pulls back; hurt by the callous words.

Professor Astaire doesn’t hear, which emboldens Valdo; he shoves Julian to the ground, then turns and bolts before Julian can retaliate. Instead he bolts too, ashamed of his sudden anger, and the library comforts him, welcomes him back with the steady thrum of shared purpose.

It’s not true, he thinks fitfully to himself, staring blurry-eyed at a book on the conjunction, hot-tears dripping off his chin, I’ll have a soulmate, I know it. I’ll meet them soon.

Fate, those fickle sisters three, weave their tapestry and pluck a single red thread from Chaos’ palms: they know exactly what to do with this one.

Jaskier, eighteen and boundless, is out on the road now, free to roam and wander in search of grand adventures and high romance and all the splendors of the continent, her great bountiful opportunities laid out before him. Anything could happen!

He’d quite like something to happen.

It’s been three months of slowly making his way up the Pontar river, following his muse and singing his best bawdy ballads in taverns and receiving precious little in the way of either recognition or compensation.

He keeps a running tally of the best things he’s had thrown at him by virtue of edibility and monetary value, and so far he’s got a slightly cold mince pie that had landed crust up and intact at his feet, thrown just shy of exploding on his doublet, and also a tarnished silver bracelet that had flown off the wrist of a woman with a surprisingly effective throwing arm, who’d very nearly gotten oats in his lute, on the top of that list.

He’d kept the bracelet until he could pawn it in the next town, and that had bought him a hot bath, a warm meal, and a bed in a private room at the tavern in Reideburne for one night, before he’d f*cked the tavern keeper’s son and had to leave early the next morning before the young man’s father woke.

He’d kept moving east after that, heading towards the Edge of the World because it sounded poetic and because he’d really no other direction in mind when he’d first set out to make it as a traveling bard. He had to make a name for himself somehow.

And besides, experience was great for song-writing! Like Professor Astaire had always said, the power of a good story was in its specificity: people don’t relate to generalities. So he needs to court experience, to really feel the specifics of love, and heartbreak, and adventure— needs to gather stories he can make into ballads and songs and lyrical prosody— He needs to live first, and then he can make himself famous and show that two-bit good for nothing lout, Valdo Marx, who’s really worth his marbles.

He arrives in Lower Posada foot-sore and weary and on his last penny. Or, well, his last Oren to be exact, which apparently carries precious little worth in the Valley of Flowers, as the inn-keeper had been so kind to tell him he only accepted ducats at this fine establishment. f*cking sh*t. There’s no treasury here either, and none of these folk look well-traveled enough to have anything worth exchanging, even if he could be certain they’d give him the fair running value.

So, no coin, no bed, may as well try and earn some food at the very least. Perhaps someone will throw an apple at him, preferably one that’s not been bitten, though he keeps a knife in his pack, and he’s cut rotted portions off of more than one type of foodstuff in his months on the road.

His latest composition, a monster ballad, has had, frankly, pretty universally terrible reception, although he’s quite fond of it himself.

It’s no different here and he grumbles cantankerously to himself as he packs his lute away, muttering surly invectives under his breath about the utter troglodytes he’s met for audiences these past three months. “Unbelievable.” he says to himself, before shrugging it off and turning to collect his ‘payment.’ Food is food, and at least bread is mostly still good even when picked up from the floor.

It’s as he’s bent over, gathering bread and filling his pockets, (and his pants— no use wasting any, just for lack of storage space after all,) that he feels the faint tug in his chest as he looks up and spots the man in the corner.

Soulmates are supposedly able to feel each other within certain distances, but even without the tugging in his chest as he stands up and approaches the handsome stranger, Jaskier would want to know more about this man. A tavern full of disgruntled listeners, and he’s not said a single peep in response; that’s worth investigating.

“I love the way you just... sit in the corner and brood.” Perhaps not his best opening gambit, but it wasn’t like he could go up and accuse him of being his soulmate now could he? There were meant to be sparks! Passion! Overwhelming lust and glory as their souls were pulled inexorably towards each other! It was supposed to be magical, a last gift from the Sisters Three before Melitele and Lilit had inherited the earth. Instead the tug sat, insistent in his chest, inert: steady, but quiet.

“I’m here to drink alone,” Possible Soulmate says, a growl in his voice that raises the hair on the back of Jaskier’s neck. He looks up, revealing yellow eyes, slitted pupils growing round in the darkening light as he meets Jaskier’s gaze.

“Good. Yeah, good.” Jaskier stutters out, caught off-guard by the gruffness of tone and the arresting quality of the other man’s gaze. Nothing for it but to push forward. “No one else hesitated to comment on the quality of my performance, except,” he says, leaning slightly forward, “for you.”

No answer from the brooding man in the corner who may very well be Jaskier’s soulmate, though the taciturn nature of a man like this had not really been what Jaskier was expecting. “Come on, you don’t want to keep a man with...” bollocks. He’d let his mouth carry away without him on that one, but he’d come this far, might as well just say it, “bread in his pants waiting.”

Perfect, oh what a stunning first impression he’s making on his potential future partner, honestly. f*ck it, he thinks, pushing off the support beam he’s been leaning against and taking a seat at the man’s table. No harm in seeing this thing through.

“You must have some review for me. Three words or less.” He didn’t really look like a man who needed more than that, to be honest.

“They don’t exist.” Brilliant. Confounding, but at least he’s engaging with him. The tug in his chest flickers, a sudden pulse of warmth or recognition maybe.

“Uh, what don’t exist?” He asks, trying to follow the seeming leap in topic back to his song.

“The creatures in your song,” growls tall, spooky, and handsome. Jaskier isn’t too big to admit he takes some offense at that.

“And how would you know?” But even as he asks it he spots the swords, and the white hair and yellow eyes and oh sh*t, yes, that is a wolf’s head medallion sitting proudly out on his chest there isn’t it. “Oh fun. White hair... big old loner, two very... very scary-looking swords.” There’s only one man on the entire continent who could possibly match that description. “I know who you are.”

f*ck.

Icy disappointment rears in his chest, an aching sense of loss, pre-realized, as the yawning void bubbles into place where hope had been just moments before.

Everyone knows that Witchers have no soulbonds. They aren’t capable of it. Bitter disappointment leaves a sour taste in his mouth, and he almost misses the witcher’s next move for the sudden hurt stilling his tongue.

Geralt of Rivia is synonymous with the worst kind of witcher these days; the Butcher of Blaviken surely can’t have a soulmate.

But something in his breast still yearns, unhappy with the witcher’s back presented to him, and Jaskier watches with the subtle knife-edge of warring hope and sorrow behind his sternum as a young farmer stands up to offer the witcher a job. A contract. Geralt will be in town a little longer, it seems.

Maybe... well it wouldn’t hurt to have more stories would it? And he is right. None of his monsters are real. Perhaps it’s time to fix that. And if, maybe, he gets to know more about the witcher, see what kind of man he is, then... well.

Maybe this can be salvaged after all.

It’s not exactly a fairy tale meeting. Jaskier’s man enough to admit that, but he can see how he may have come off a little bit strong, in hindsight, and— well.

It’s not the first time he’s been a little too overenthusiastic up front. He’s been told he’s a bit much at times, and he’d be the first to acknowledge that he was rather more likeable on a second meeting than a first one. But still, as he follows after the witcher on his horse, rubbing his stomach where the punch still aches slightly, he can’t help but hope this witcher might be an exception to the rule.

The tug is already fading to the background of his awareness, so steady and sure that he’d almost think he imagined it except, he thinks, as he trips after the witcher, for the tangible yearning to get closer.

It feels dangerous to open his mouth again after the witcher’s last reaction, but Jaskier’s not stupid, and he can put two and two together: Don’t call him the Butcher. He doesn’t like it.

Fine, image problem, Jaskier can work with that, he just needs to come up with something better. Something that sounds like a real proper epithet, one that would play well in all sorts of ballads.

This might work for both of them, actually.

Witchers don’t have soulmates. He knows this, but even still Jaskier starts half a dozen times to ask if Geralt feels the tug too: he’s dying to know, feels positively feral with the idea of it, but the longer the witcher keeps moving forward, the less certain he becomes that he’s felt it at all. Maybe it’s just heartburn. He has been taking in a lot of carbs lately.

He’s so lost in thought that, when the witcher finally does speak, he jumps with the shock of it.

“Whatever it is, you’d be better off just asking.”

“Do witchers really not have soulmates?” f*ck, he hadn’t actually meant to address it so readily, but foot-in-mouth was a flavor Jaskier was, unfortunately, intimately acquainted with.

“No.”

Right, then. That’s... succinct. Except—“I’m sorry, did you mean ‘It’s true, yes, witcher’s have no soulmates,’ or was it more like a, uh, ‘No, it’s not true, we do have soulmates, it’s just not widely known,’ not that it matters, of course, I was just—”

“We have soulmates. Sometimes.” Geralt interrupts. A shiver of pure hope works its way up from Jaskier’s belly and he trips over his feet slightly to get just another step closer to the witcher.

“And would you say, ahh—”

“It doesn’t work out.” Geralt cuts him off again. Alright. So he’s prickly, Jaskier can work with that. If it hurts to hear his potential soulmate dismiss the very concept, that’s a hurt to be examined later. Time to pivot, and give himself a fighting chance to get to know the man.

“You know, reading between the lines, and the gut-punches, chum, I’d say you have a bit of a— an image problem. Were I to join you on this… feat to defeat the devil of Posada, I could relieve you of that title. All the North would be too busy singing the tales of… Geralt of Rivia, the— the white Wolf or— or something.” Actually that sounded pretty good for being the first thing his mind came up with.

“Butcher is right.” That is either an attempted threat, or Geralt really thinks the tough-guy act is working. If he hasn’t told Jaskier to leave him alone yet, he certainly won’t mind if he just... keeps following.

“You know, the elves called this Dol Blathanna before bequeathing it to the humans and retreating into their golden palaces in the mountains. There I go again, just… delivering exposition.” Jaskier muses aloud, looking around to see if maybe he can spot some of those golden palaces in the distance. Geralt doesn’t deign to respond to this, and when Jaskier looks back he’s trekking forward through two stone pillars, closer to the cliffs. “Geralt? Geralt? Wh— Where are you going?”

No response from Geralt, so Jaskier puts on the speed to get closer, chattering all the while. “Geralt, don’t leave me.” This is not a place to be left alone, incidentally, especially not with a monster on the loose. “Hello? What are we looking for again?”

“Blessed silence.” No, actually, if he remembers Nettley’s story right, it’s a devil.

“Yeah, I don’t really go in for that. Have you, uh, have you ever hunted a devil before, Geralt?”

“They don’t exist.” What sort of witcher spends all his time denying monsters?

“Right, obviously.” What monsters do exist? “Then uh... then what—what are we doing?”

“Sometimes there’s monsters, sometimes there’s money. Rarely both. That’s the life.” Geralt is creeping forward towards a bush, hardly paying attention to Jaskier even as he offers him more words than he has all day. Really, Jaskier knows that he’s more of a talkative bastard than most, but how do people like Geralt manage, keeping all their words bottled up—

“sh*t!” Geralt cries, reeling back, fingers flying to the sudden bloody welt on his forehead.

Now things are getting interesting. “Act Two begins! What was that?” Jaskier asks as Geralt leans down to pick up the glinting projectile that smashed into his chiseled face. “Looks like a tiny cannonball from a…'' tracing the object’s path, Jaskier spots a pair of horns, just through the bushes. “Oh my gosh. Geralt… it is a devil.”

Finally, a real adventure, real stories to turn into songs! “Ooh. I have to see this magical, this mythi—” and then another tiny cannonball hits him, and everything goes dark.

Jaskier wakes up with a pounding headache, without his lute, and tied back to back with Geralt. Or at least he hopes the person tied behind him is Geralt. Seems like he’s got a much better chance at escaping if it is the witcher.

He’s never been kidnapped before and this isn’t exactly the type of new experience he was hoping for when he followed Geralt initially. His head aches, and his wrists are scraped raw from the rope, but other than that he’s mostly fine.

The little cave they’re in is fairly empty, just a table by the door really with their effects on it, dry dusty walls, dirt floor. He’s been in worse places, if he’s honest. Never by force, though, which probably explains the strange tightness in his chest. And the lack of oxygen too, is probably explained by the ropes keeping him there, the restless energy with nowhere to go.

He goes through several cycles of calm and then fear and then calm and then fear again before he feels Geralt stir behind him. The witcher wakes violently, and immediately starts pulling on the ropes.

“This is the part where we escape.” Jaskier offers; a reminder in all of Geralt’s senseless thrashing that he is very much tied to another person, actually, and he might do to be a bit gentler about it.

“This is the part where they kill us!” Geralt growls back, sounding, for the first time, actually angry, and maybe afraid too, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

“Who’s they?” And as if the universe herself is listening, the ‘they’ in question arrive, two elves, green garments ragged and torn, thinner even than the few elves Jaskier had seen before. One makes a beeline for the table, picking up his lute, and he nearly goes cross-eyed trying to keep track of both of them as they split. The other, a female, takes two short strides to where Jaskier and Geralt are bound on the floor and kicks him hard in the chest, shouting something in Elder, the meaning of which is lost in the sudden bolt of pain that curls Jaskier forward over the blow, gasping for the breath driven out of him.

“Elves,” Geralt answers behind him, as if Jaskier didn’t already know that, thank you.

Jaskier rolls his eyes, although the witcher can’t see him so most of the effect of the gesture is lost. The scrape of wood on stone alerts him to the corner table, and as he whips his head around to check on the sudden noise, he spots the second elf, picking up—

“Oi! That’s my lute! Give that back!” Pointless, of course the elf won’t just give it up. f*ck, he’s had that lute for nearly six years now— “Quick, Geralt! Do your, your bloody witchering—”

“Shut up!” Geralt cuts him off, which, massively unhelpful, that, thank you oh so very much, Geralt. His lute is in danger! Why does he not appreciate the severity of their situation?

Gods, but this is going to Korrath in a wagon, isn’t it. The lead elf shouts again, a roughened form of elvish, too fast for Jaskier’s more academically trained ears to parse so quickly. “My Elder Speech is rough, I only got part of that,” he mutters, not really expecting a response.

“Humans, shut up.” she repeats in common, voice dripping with disgust. Lovely, always fun to land in the middle of interspecies conflict, truly, it’s Jaskier’s favorite place to be.

“Ah, got it, thanks so much.” He can’t help showing off a little, replying back in the Elder he learned at school.

“Do you want to die now?” the elf with the nasty habit of sticking her boot in his gut asks. Clearly his Elder didn’t impress her.

“As opposed to later?” Geralt interjects, earning Jaskier another kick to the ribs.

As Jaskier tries to breathe through the pain of being beaten, he catches sight of the other elf, fondling Jaskier’s lute still. Unforgivable. He raises it suddenly, preparing to break the lute over his knee.

“No, please, not the lu—” Jaskier cries, cut off by both the discordant twanging of the lute’s strings breaking as the elf manages to smash it in two, and all the air being driven out of his lungs by the female elf’s continued assault on his torso.

“Leave off!” Geralt shouts, “He’s just a bard!” The protection and care in Geralt’s voice makes the tug in his chest light up, thrilled with the fledgling acknowledgment.

The elf laughs, a caustic sound, and then she disappears out of Jaskier’s view, though he can hear her directly behind him, clearly standing in front of Geralt. “You don’t deserve the air you breathe,” she murmurs, dangerously low, and then Geralt heaves himself forward, drawing an unwitting Jaskier with him by the ropes that still bind them to each other. Jaskier hears the sick thunk! of their heads colliding and then she appears in the corner of his vision, staggering back, coughing and choking as she falls to the cave floor.

Elves are more hardy than this— something isn’t right here. “What’s— what’s wrong with her?” he asks, again, not out of expectation of an answer but just because he’s never really been able to control his mouth.

“She’s sick,” yet another elf says, coming into their little cave.

“Oh, and who’s this?” Jaskier cries, thoroughly fed up with this entire situation. The devil from earlier comes scampering in behind the new elf, immediately tending to the female still trying to stop her nose from bleeding. As a whole they present a sorry image, and Jaskier feels some of the fear dribbling away, replaced by a strange sort of pity for the pathetic picture they make, hiding in these mountain caves.

It’s the devil that answers, reverence infusing his every word. “He’s Filavandrel, King of the Elves.”

“Not a king. Not by choice.” The newly identified Filavandrel interrupts.

“You were stealing for them.” Geralt says, clearly still focused on the contract that landed them in this mess in the first place.

The devil sounds unnaturally calm for their situation when he responds: “I felt for them. They were forced out of Dol Blathanna.”

“Forced out?” That doesn’t sound like what Professor Davan taught them. “No, they chose—”

“Do you know anyone that would choose to leave their home? To starve? To have a sylvan steal for them?” King Filavandrel cuts an imposing figure, for as little of him as Jaskier can see; his voice carries enough power all on its own.

“Toruviel, no one was supposed to get hurt.” The devil seems to be the most sympathetic to their plight, for all that Jaskier’s head still hurts with the remembered force of his unerring aim.

“What’s two humans in the ground when countless elves have died?” Toruviel clearly lies far far on the other side of that particular spectrum.

“One human. And you can let him go.” Geralt growls, and against his better instincts the bond in his chest flares hopefully, an aching yearning that brings tears unbidden to his eyes, overwhelmed by both the instant relief he feels to hear Geralt sticking up for him, and the icy empathy that drops into his heart, hearing the witcher mark himself inhuman.

Filavandrel scoffs, moving closer to Geralt, out of Jaskier’s peripheral. He drops his head, saving his neck from the awkward craning he’s been engaging in, trying to keep track of everyone's movements. This is officially the longest and strangest (and only, to be fair) kidnapping Jaskier has ever been a part of. “Then Posada will learn that we’ve been stealing. The humans will attack. Many will die— on both sides,” the king says, genuine regret coloring his voice.

“The lesser evil,” Geralt rejoins, as a tiny flicker of hope rekindles in Jaskier’s chest. They may get out of this yet. “No matter what you choose, you’ll come out bloody and hating yourself. Trust me.”

“That’s the problem. I can’t. This is necessary.” Ah, so perhaps the hope was too eager in its appearance— Jaskier can’t help the shiver of fear licking up his spine as he catches the drag of metal on leather as a knife is drawn somewhere behind his back.

“I understand.” Not the most comforting thing to hear his soulmate say as they’re about to be murdered. “As long as you understand… that it won’t be long before you follow me in death.” Yeah, Geralt is definitely losing points in the fledgling trust category. At least, if Jaskier dies it will be by his soulmate’s side. That’s better than most people get.

Panic whites out his hearing, heavy in his chest like a solid weight, muting the bond temporarily as he tries desperately to breathe past it.

It’s the devil’s cry that brings his awareness back, just in time to hear him plead their case.

“The witcher could’ve killed me. But he didn’t. He’s different. Like us.” Geralt’s shoulders relax against his, his spine losing some of the rigidity that has faded into the background of Jaskier’s awareness until it suddenly flees. The tiny movement pulls Jaskier backwards slightly, and he has the inane thought that at least he’ll die pressed against the solid warmth of the witcher whose soul is a perfect match for his own.

“If you must kill me… I am ready. But the Sylvan’s right. Don’t call me human.”

Everything between Filavandrel deciding to spare their lives and how they wound up here, standing in a slightly lopsided circle at the base of the cave system the elves kept them in, is honestly a blur.

Geralt and Filavandrel are having some kind of conversation just to the side of him, but Jaskier’s attention is stolen entirely by the approaching figure. Galath, the elf who still hasn’t spoken, has been sent to pack up their items, Geralt’s stolen armor and swords, and Jaskier’s lute too. Or— the remains of his lute at least, which Galath has brought out to them wrapped in cloth.

Jaskier can’t help the wounded sound that’s ripped from his throat if he tries, and he’s not exactly keen to spare anyone his grief over this.

What is a bard with no instrument? A mere minstrel? A town-crier?! Galath has the good grace to at least be gentle with the pile of lute-turned-kindling that he sets down in front of Jaskier, not that it soothes any of the pain Jaskier feels as he kneels down to see if there’s anything at all salvageable about the mess they’ve created of his life’s blood.

The body almost looks still held together, but when he tilts it to inspect the joins, it bends, revealing a massive crack that runs down its length. The neck is beyond a lost cause, and the strings are frayed, scored in places by the wood as it cracked. The tension did him no favors here. f*ck.

He brushes his hands together as he stands up slowly, mourning already the loss of his greatest source of income, worry and dread for his future filtering in before he’s interrupted by Toruviel suddenly just— appearing before him. He’s not so petty he can’t admit he jumps: for all that’s she an impressively tall elf she’s also f*cking silent as a mouse.

“You’re to take this, then,” she says, still surprisingly haughty even as she... apologizes? Is this an apology? Is it a bribe?

Any worry over motivation slips from his mind as he registers what it is she’s shoving into his chest. An elven lute, finely-made, exquisitely crafted— and oh, she’s gorgeous too, delicate lines smoothly leading into the fret, with golden inlay in a pattern of complicated intersecting lines across the bowl. It’s far finer than his sh*tty lute that’s now in pieces, no matter how sentimental it may have been.

“Thank you,” he breathes out, strumming the lute once, just to hear its tone.

“Don’t thank me. If it were up to me you’d be dead, human.”

“Ah, well, that’s—” He thinks better of insulting Toruviel, and changes tack, sidling closer to Geralt as he sketches a bow of, if not thanks, then something close enough, to the incredibly terrifying (sexy) elf.

He’s close enough now he can hear their conversation as they discuss the coin Geralt is trying to give to them.

“We won’t forget this, Geralt of Rivia.” Filavandrel seems to have done, if not a total reversal, then at least a very tight turn on his opinions of them since Geralt’s little speech that saved their lives. For all that Jaskier had barely been able to tease full sentences out of the witcher on their way into the valley, he’d been down right eloquent as he bartered for their lives.

“Please do,” Geralt says, dry enough that it almost startles a nervous little giggle out of Jaskier before he catches himself, not wanting to anger Toruviel anymore. She’s still watching him the same way a cat watches a mouse and it’s honestly disconcerting.

“Thank you, Witcher. This coin will help my people, whether you seek recognition for it or not.” Filavandrel nods at Jaskier then, who is once again struck by the elegance of this man’s regalty. He may not have been born a king, but he wears the title well. “Our apologies bard, for the destruction of your instrument. May my lute serve you well.”

Jaskier nods, oddly struck for words in the face of Filavandrel, King of the Elves, apologizing to him. It sounds like farewell, and Geralt has already turned to leave when Filavandrel calls after them, “A word of advice, Witcher, before you go.” He doesn’t turn fully back, just enough to look sideways at the Elf King. “You’re touched by destiny, Geralt of Rivia, and you’d do well to not ignore her.”

Jaskier, the bond in his chest as of yet unacknowledged by the witcher in front of him, feels it thrum to life, reaching out, desperate for recognition.

Geralt laughs, dry and short, and the space in Jaskier’s chest where the bond should be shrivels, and folds in on itself, small and suddenly colder as Geralt shakes his head. He does Filavandrel the courtesy of looking him in the eye, at least, as he delivers the most painful string of words Jaskier has ever heard.

“Destiny is horse-sh*t, a pretty lie. Nothing real ever comes of it.”

Jaskier is lost in thought all the way back to Roach, back down through the Valley of Flowers, and like in all things, it’s Jaskier’s music that saves the day. What does Geralt need that would give a bard the perfect excuse to follow a witcher? A barker, a story-teller, a one-man chronicler of all things White Wolf; Geralt is noble and kind and deserves to be known as such the continent-over. If it takes Jaskier all his life, he’ll make this happen.

So fine, Geralt doesn’t believe in destiny. Maybe he can believe in Jaskier. Maybe that can be enough.

Besides, a witcher’s adventures really will make for better song-writing.

Chapter 2: The Journey

Chapter Text

For all that Geralt’s a witcher, most of their time on the Path is actually fairly quiet and devoid of monsters or slaying entirely. They can sometimes go whole weeks in-between contracts, traveling off in search of one or convalescing from injuries as the case may be, but either way it lends itself to a lot of time spent in companionable silence, or telling stories to each other simply to pass the time. This is how Jaskier learns all about Lambert and Eskel and Vesemir too, how Geralt learns of Priscilla and Shani and even Little Eye. Jaskier talks of his years at Oxenfurt, and Geralt shares stories of Kaer Morhen before the pogrom, though he won’t speak to the Grasses or the Trials in anything but name.

Jaskier respects that a man needs secrets, but the smaller hidden part of him that still yearns for the recognition of a red string tied to a pinky finger watches, and waits, and wants desperately to be told; to be given all of him, nothing held back.

Jaskier rubs the base of his pinky with his thumb, and tries to ignore the phantom bump of a red string tied there. He knows it’s not real, that soul-bonds don’t actually manifest physically, no matter what Professor Astaire told them all those years ago. He’s had to deconstruct more than one myth Oxenfurt told him over the years, though this one was certainly the most personal.

Still, he thinks, picking out a new chord progression, it’s an arresting visual. Certainly, it had had quite the impression on him as a child. Geralt hums, sitting across the fire from him, and Jaskier smiles slightly, distracting himself from his thoughts as he picks up his lute again.

It’s been nearly three years since they first met at the Edge of the World, and though Jaskier wouldn’t trade their time together for anything, sometimes the ache for something more, something deeper— to be bonded, to know, one way or the other if destiny had really meant them for each other, rises up like a particularly stubborn weed to wrap ugly vines around his ribcage, constricting his breath and stabbing his heart with irregular enough jabs that it manages, somehow, to stun him every time.

There’s something to be said for the quiet pain of living in your soulmate’s pocket, of being so desperately in love with someone who spurns the entire concept of soulmates as nothing more than fanciful wishes and self-delusion. Geralt’s insistence that destiny could f*ck off had seemed strange on the face of it, but the longer Jaskier follows him, the more it becomes apparent that Geralt, for all his gruffness, is hiding a dangerously soft heart for the profession he’s been molded into. Few men feel with the intensity that Geralt does, and fewer still have the heart to carry on a life as thankless as Geralt’s in spite of that.

How could Jaskier not love him?

Geralt violently cracks the ribcage of the rabbit he’s field-dressing, quick and efficient movements as he preps the carcass for roasting. Even this behavior, boorish as it is, fills Jaskier’s chest with equal parts longing and melancholy, aching for the undefinable.

He strums the opening bars of his latest composition, trying to tease out the lyrics underneath his breath, needing the distraction that comes with writing. Though his latest song isn’t much of a distraction, and is in fact, half the reason for the nature of his melancholy thoughts this evening.

It should have been an easy enough tale to spin, a town saved from a bruxa preying on their young men, and it would have been that straightforward... except the bruxa’s soulmate had begged Geralt to stay his sword, or take them out together.

Geralt would have let them go. Had been planning to scare them both, and send them packing, but the bruxa had gotten impatient, and lunged for Jaskier, and— well. Geralt wasn’t the only one of them that had walked away that night covered in blood.

Jaskier anxiously wipes his mouth, feeling again the phantom warmth of her heartsblood on his skin.
The pain on the young woman’s face as she begged Geralt to spare her soulmate won’t leave Jaskier’s mind, an aching sympathy curling through his chest.

They don’t talk about the bond. It’s easy enough to ignore, paper-thin as it is, and with three years worth of careful silences underneath their belts it would have been unutterably strange to bring it up at all.

Still, Jaskier finds it hard to stay his tongue. “I didn’t know bruxae could have soulmates. Rather thought the whole ‘lack of a soul’ thing would have, uh, necessarily curtailed that.”

Geralt snorts, pulling his dagger out of its sheath to begin butchering their dinner. He doesn’t stop working as he answers, “Anyone can have a soulmate if they delude themselves enough.”

Ah. Right. This is part of the reason they don’t talk about it, Jaskier thinks, stilling his fingers on his lute as he fights down the instinctual flash of hurt Geralt’s words engender. “That woman believed it enough to die for it. Doesn’t that make it real enough on its own?”

Geralt is shaking his head even before Jaskier’s finished talking. “You’re too soft, bard, of course you’d see love in that. It’s no matter what the effects are, if the logic is flawed in the first place.”

“And what does that mean?” Jaskier asks, puffed up already at Geralt’s insinuations. “You think there’s no such thing as soulmates? What about the Conjunction? What about Aelirenn and Darraen?”

“Just stories, bard. You ought to know.” Geralt’s calm surety is infuriating, and Jaskier sets the lute down, wary of damaging it with the restless anger thrumming through his blood.

“Just stories?” he asks, turning to face Geralt head on over the fire, wanting to look him in the eye for this. “As if stories aren’t based on truth, aren’t how we keep our history alive? You can’t just deny it because it’s personally inconvenient for you, Geralt.”

“It’s not inconvenient.”

“Oh, no? Then why deny it at all? Why react so poorly to the mere mention? It’s love, Geralt, the most grand emotion in all the Spheres, the very reason Shaerrawedd fell to Darraen, the pinnacle of the human experience, it’s—”

“That’s why,” Geralt interrupts, setting aside the rabbit and the knife to meet Jaskier’s gaze finally. “It’s human.”

“Oh, and what? You’re not human? Come now, don’t be ridiculous—

“I’m not.”

“Not being ridiculous? Yes, I rather think you are, it’s silly to—”

“Not human.” Geralt growls, the first sign of genuine emotion leaking into his voice since they started this entire conversation.

“Well that’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said, Geralt.” Jaskier sighs, feeling the anger wisp away, replaced instead by the growing sadness for all the ways his friend has been mistreated, made to feel less than what he is. Geralt may be a mutant, but as far as Jaskier is concerned he’s still alive. Still capable of love and joy and misery, guilt and hate and sorrow, same as any person. Same as any human, for all that he’s been turned into something more.

“You’re still a man, still capable of feeling, don’t try to tell me you’re not, I’ve seen you with your bleeding heart when a widow can’t afford to pay you, leaving behind coin, taking less than you’re owed—”

“That’s not—” Geralt cuts himself off, looking away and picking up the knife to attack their dinner again.

“That’s exactly it, isn’t it.” Jaskier presses, on the edge of some great discovery— Maybe Geralt’s never acknowledged the potential bond because he doesn’t know he can. “You think it’s crap because you’ve convinced yourself witchers don’t feel and so of course, of course you think it’s bullsh*t, well I’ll tell you something, Geralt of Rivia, it’s entirely possible for you to have a soulmate and—”

“Stop.” Geralt’s interruption pulls the winds right out of his sails, and just in the nick of time too. He was about to directly mention the red string, this thing they’ve never talked about; mentioning it now would do neither of them well. “It’s not that I don’t think it’s possible.” Geralt continues, talking over Jaskier’s panicked thoughts, bringing him back to the present.

Geralt sounds upset, and Jaskier is aware that he’s touching troubled waters here. But he can’t just let it go.

“Then why?” he asks, gentling his tone enough to show he’s listening, that he means to give Geralt the space to talk about it.

In the silence of his question, Geralt sets their dinner on the spit, setting it up over the fire.

“There were two witchers, once. Soulmates,” he says eventually, sitting back down across from Jaskier.

“Well you can’t leave me hanging, Geralt, that’s the lead-in to a story if I ever heard one.” Geralt shakes his head, but he’s lost the brittle edge that means he’s about to snap, so Jaskier lets the tension from their almost-argument fade away.

“They felt the tug, found each other on the Path. They were from different schools, Cat and Viper.”

Jaskier doesn’t know this story, and he’s consumed all of the literature on soulmates he’s ever found, any mention in the entirety of Oxenfurt’s archives, driven to know everything about the bonds.

Geralt’s voice takes on a dreamy quality, something almost reverent coloring his tone. “It’s not supposed to be possible, you understand, not for witchers. They cut it out of us, take it away when they take away our other emotions, to make more room for the mutations. These two are what made them start carving at our souls.”

A shiver of fear and disgust and pure horror dances up Jaskier’s spine, lodging like a stone in his heart, which aches for the injustice of what Geralt is admitting to him. He tries to imagine that kind of violence, pieces of his soul taken away, and shrinks back from a visceral wrongness that turns his stomach. Feeling sickened, he leans forward, closer to the fire, both for the warmth and because the far-away quality to Geralt’s voice makes him feel so terribly distant, as if he’s somewhere else entirely, telling this story.

“But the Cat and the Viper were before this, and it’s their story the mages used to justify what they did to us. Viper died young, bad hunt, bad luck, whatever you like— left the Cat alone. Cats are unstable already, don’t follow the same rules the rest of us do. Losing his soulmate sent him over the edge. He massacred an entire town, would have kept going except the Brotherhood sent a mage to put him down.”

“Geralt, that’s horrible.” Jaskier says into the tortured silence, near whispering under the weight of what Geralt’s just revealed to him. His heart has turned to ice in his chest, and he wraps his arms around himself, horrified by just imagining that kind of loss. Nevermind living through it. It’s unspeakable.

“It’s just a story,” Geralt grunts, disaffected as he turns their rabbit on its spit. “It’s how they explained away the mutations, why they were necessary to make us into what we are.”

“You don’t believe it?”

Geralt sighs, looking briefly out into the forest around them before he meets Jaskier’s gaze across the fire. “I believe what I know and what I see in my own life. Nothing more, nothing less. If soulmates are real for humans, I’m inclined to believe it’s something they f*ck up more often than they get it right. If soulmates are real for witchers?” Geralt shrugs, sitting back down now that he’s got their dinner sorted. “They say many things about our kind that aren’t true, and many more that are. I only know that I’ve never met a witcher who’s had one, and that’s more compelling evidence to me than a story told by word-of-mouth.”

“I make my trade in stories told by word-of-mouth,” Jaskier muses absently, rubbing at the persistent ache in his chest, the tug-that-might-not-be-a-tug. “Would you even know it if you felt it?” He continues, nursing a fragile fledgling hope. “If you and your kind are constantly told you don’t feel? Couldn’t you just... miss it entirely? Isn’t that possible?”

Jaskier needs it to be possible, needs to imagine that maybe they’ve never discussed it, not because Geralt doesn’t feel it, but because he hasn’t recognized it. Jaskier once thought it was just biological— maybe Geralt has spent all this time thinking the same.

“When you’re a century or more old, you take notice of novel situations. Trust me,” Geralt says, laughing drily, “we’d pay attention to something new.”

That’s... pretty damning. For the first time, Jaskier resents the potential in his chest. It’s not fair to lead him on like this, he thinks, digging his knuckles into his breastbone, a lump caught in his throat, and that horrible ache sitting astride his heart. Destiny, thou art a heartless bitch, he thinks viciously, to make a promise with no intention of honoring it.

Here’s the thing about love:

You can’t touch it.

You can’t hold it in your palms, can’t unravel it or pluck it apart to view what makes it tick. There is no deconstructing love, no breaking it down into component parts to make sense of it, nothing but a feeling, an intangible knowing.

How do you know you’re in love? You just do.

No, but really. Tell me honestly, how do you know? What are the clues? What are the signs, the symptoms? The diagnostic criteria?

A feeling? A flush? A notion?

A tug?

So maybe Geralt’s not his soulmate. That’s— well. It’s about what he expected in his secret heart of hearts, to be entirely honest. “Who’d ever fall in love with someone like you?” Valdo’s words, though decades old, haunt him even now. It’s infuriating that a child’s insult, and one as mild on the surface as Valdo's, still has the potential to hurt him so deeply.

Just because no one will ever love him doesn’t stop him from falling in love himself. He can’t spend all his time circling anxiously around Geralt, and as the years pass it becomes more and more apparent that even if he were to tell Geralt of the potential soul-bond, he wouldn’t take it well.

He gets close only one other time, weak and wanting and desperate to test the waters.

“The last thing I want is someone needing me.”

There weren’t many other ways to interpret that, as it were. And yet, here we are, indeed.

If the way Geralt left the banquet is any indication, Geralt is not much a fan of destiny, for all that destiny certainly seems a fan of Geralt. Jaskier secretly hopes that maybe this is why he still feels the tug, that destiny isn’t done with them. Maybe accepting his Child Surprise will cue Geralt into the inevitability of fate, that it’s just a fixed point, not the end of free will.

It’s only ever been potential, and Jaskier has to believe that it’s mutual, has to believe that the only reason he feels it still, twelve years later, is because Geralt feels it too. He’s never read of anything like this; an unrequited soul-bond?

Unheard of.

Impossible.

Apparently his f*cking lot in life.

Jaskier catches up with Geralt just outside the city gates, out of breath and still riding the high of actually witnessing a soulmate consummation: The red thread of the hand-fasting mixed with the golden lights of Pavetta’s and Duny’s souls dancing around each other as the fates themselves played out their history— their story had brought tears to Jaskier’s eyes, and made his own heart ache for the bittersweet hope that someday that might be him and Geralt. The shape of their dance would certainly be an interesting one.

“Geralt!” he calls, finally slowing down his sprint enough to come alongside Geralt. He has to lean over to catch his breath, bracing one hand against Roach, who stomps her foot and flicks her tail at him but holds him up regardless. He pats her haunch gratefully as he finally straightens, smiling winningly at Geralt.

“It’s good I caught you, that was marvelous wasn’t it!? I mean, truly, I’ve never been so close to one of those before, but they really are as beautiful as everyone—

“Jaskier,” Geralt cuts him off, quite rudely, but he doesn’t let that deter him for long.

“Yes, yes, alright, I know you’re anxious to run away from your most recent problem, I assure you I shan’t hold you long.”

“I’m not—”

“I know, it doesn’t matter, look, Geralt, I know we don’t really talk about it, but I just thought, well... I mean—”

“Spit it out, Jaskier,” Geralt sighs, “Though I warn you there’s nothing you can say to me that Mousesack didn’t already cover.”

“I highly doubt Mousesack mentioned this.” Jaskier laughs, stepping closer, following the tug in his chest. Is he really going to mention it? He almost has to, doesn't he.

“You saw, Geralt, you saw what happened when they tried to ignore it, right? Absolute chaos! Crazy! Insane, even! So...” his stomach is practically crawling up his throat, butterflies and helium giddiness and he lifts to his tiptoes, straining forward towards Geralt. “So we shouldn’t ignore it, right?” He holds his breath, hoping, waiting—

“We” Geralt stresses, “aren’t ignoring anything. I am going to ride far away from Cintra to avoid Calanthe’s wrath, and stop getting involved with the damn nobility.”

As if a lance had struck him true, the giddiness flees, dragging his heart with it to land somewhere in his boots. “No Geralt, I meant—”

“Save it, bard. I’m not interested in whatever romantics you think are to be found in this evening. I’ve no use for a child, and no interest in one that’s tied to the Lioness of Cintra. Go back to the party and leave me be. I won’t be bullied by notions of destiny.”

“It’s not—” It’s not a curse, though Geralt clearly views it as such. “It’s not a life sentence, Geralt! It’s love! It’s just potential, you still have to make it your own!”

“It’s horsesh*t.” Geralt growls, turning on him, “It’s a mistake, a f*cking accident. And I won’t allow it. It’s not worth it.” He spurs Roach on, riding away, and Jaskier, helpless, hopeless, heart in shattered pieces at his feet, watches the only person he’s ever truly loved, the only person he’s ever felt the tug for, ride into the darkness of a velvet night and leave him behind, cold and alone and f*cking heartbroken.

That’s... pretty godsdamnded definitive.

Jaskier will be the first to admit he’s become something of a cynic as he’s aged. He’s been in enough marital beds to know that love does not always equal fealty, that it’s nothing more than any other emotion, just as susceptible to the ichor of humanity; it’s not sacred, nor pure, nor anything else besides a promise made from a fond heart.

He expects that this is the truth; that potential does not equal surety, and that just because someone’s soul is a match for yours does not actually mean anything beyond what you’d individually make of it.

(If his songbook is full of love ballads to a certain white haired witcher, it’s only because they make good money— nevermind that they’ve never been sung for an audience, nor made him a single coin.)

The tug won’t let him go, and no matter what his heart and soul want, Geralt is Jaskier’s best friend; he’ll put up with an unfulfilled soulbond for just the chance to keep him in his life that little bit longer.

It may not be worth it to Geralt, but love has always been the single most motivating force in the world for Jaskier. Unrequited or not, he’s a bard, and there’s a story to be told.

He’ll be the one to tell it.

Whatever happened in the mayor’s house between Geralt and Yennefer, Geralt won’t talk about it. When pressed he snaps, and Jaskier isn't exactly chomping at the bit to unpack that particular heartache himself. It was bad enough to watch them f*ck through the window, having to hear that there might be emotions involved?

That’s more than he can stomach.

Still. He can’t help his distaste for Yennefer. She saved his life, then immediately threatened it again. Saved his voice, and then f*cked his best friend-soulmate, so his feelings about the witch are... complicated. To put it mildly.

So when she keeps. f*cking. Finding. Them. Jaskier is not best pleased.

They’re in Ard Carraigh this time, nearly two years out from Rinde now, and Jaskier’s getting ready to play a set in the tavern where they’ve got a room for the night when Yennefer blows in through the doors. Dramatic little twit, he thinks, nevermind that he’s almost envious of the casual way she commands attention through her every action.

Sensing correctly that his day is about to be ruined, Jaskier takes the time to scratch out the opening lyrics to a ballad about a saucy witch befalling a series of unfortunate deaths. Comedic ballads are not his main oeuvre, but there’s always room for expansion, especially when inspiration strikes. And strikes often, he thinks sourly, irritated that the witch’s visits seem to be getting more and more frequent as of late.

But still, Jaskier’s just about resigned himself to his fate, content to take what he can get and love Geralt from afar, in his own way. It would have been fine if Geralt had fallen for anyone else he thinks, though he knows, deep down, that’s not really true. It would hurt this much no matter who Geralt fell for— the real pain is that he fell at all.

“Yennefer.” Geralt stands up to greet her, enough warmth in his voice to rival a hearth, and Jaskier, feeling distinctly sour, scribbles out another idea for a potential death in his upcoming ballad. He doesn’t want to watch them embrace, and certainly doesn’t want to know if they choose to kiss each other.

“What brings you down from your tower, witch? Children in need of eating?” he asks, not bothering with hiding his displeasure. They’ve an honest hatred of each other, and Jaskier’s not particularly given to being the bigger person about it.

“That would leave only you to feast on, bardling, and I’ve a more refined palate than that.” She simpers, a dangerous sparkle in her violet eyes.

“Yenn.” Geralt warns, though she ignores him to smile nastily at Jaskier.

“Refined,” Jaskier scoffs, also ignoring Geralt. He can fight his own battles, dammit. “I—

“If you must know,” she interrupts, still staring Jaskier down, “I’m here to satisfy... other desires.” Yennefer smirks, pressing further into Geralt’s arms. She must do something else because Geralt, wonder of wonders, blushes, jumping slightly in response to whatever it is she’s done to him. The witch laughs in the back of her throat, smiling warmly as she releases him to sit in Geralt’s empty seat, directly across from Jaskier. Geralt sits down too, watching Yennefer with— Jaskier looks away quickly, not wanting to know what those golden eyes look like when they’re blown wide with lust, not when they’re watching someone else.

It’s fine. Really. Jaskier is resigned to his fate. There’s even something a little poetic in a tragic love like this; Yennefer and Geralt dance around each other like courting swans, and for all that Jaskier is trying to be reasonable, he can’t help that it f*cking aches to bear witness to Yennefer getting everything he’s ever wanted.

There’s a story to be told here. If Jaskier can’t get the love he wants, at least he’ll have that.

“Yes, well,” he says brightly, snapping his song book closed as he picks up the thread of their conversation again. “There must be time for all sorts of heinous acts in a life as unscrupulous as yours.”

“Must be difficult for you, using your entire vocabulary in one sentence. A fine alumnus you make, Oxenfurt must be so proud of their bards these days.”

“Well— I— You—!” Yennefer turns back to Geralt, ignoring Jaskier, which is just as well because he can’t seem to get the sentence in his head out of his mouth. So much for being skilled at rhetoric. Eat your heart out, Professor Odase.

Yennefer caresses Geralt’s cheek, pressing her tiny hand into the side of face, and Jaskier knows exactly what that stubble feels like under his palm, the prickle against his skin— fire licks its way up his chest and he has to beat down the instantaneous flash of jealousy before he can do something ridiculous and give away his thoughts.

f*ck. He stands suddenly, grabbing his lute; he can’t stay here and watch this.

“I’ll meet you after?” he asks, carefully looking just past Geralt, ignoring Yennefer entirely.

“I’m actually going to steal him for the evening, bard,” Yennefer answers instead, soft as ice. “You don’t mind terribly, do you?”

Oh, she’s the devil, isn’t she. “Not at all!” Jaskier cries, strumming the opening notes of My Succubus Lover on his lute, “be my guest.” It’s not the subtlest of insinuations Jaskier’s ever made, but it flies right over Geralt’s head, and elicits a nasty sneer out of Yennefer, so he’s going to count that as a very, very petty win.

Jaskier’s set goes well. Of course it does, he’s a professional for f*ck’s sake. It also, unfortunately, ends with a request for The Fall of Shaerrawedd.

Jaskier’s been doing his damndest to avoid the entire concept of soulmates and soul-bonds since Geralt essentially admitted to viewing them as aberrations, but this ballad, from his halcyon youth when he still believed in the power of love to conquer everything, really seems intent on kicking him in the teeth as often as it can.

and oh the Rose of Shearrawed, so boldly did declare/ the heart of my heart, the light of my light, my maiden lover fair/ I give to you my soul, and I give to you my heart/ no matter the fight, no matter the stars, we’ll never be apart

There’s got to be a happy ending for him. Jaskier throws back the rest of his Est Est, irritated at the maudlin turn his thoughts have taken. He is happy. So Geralt doesn’t love him, he’s still his soulmate. There’s hope, still, that Geralt might change his mind. Might come around.

And even if there wasn’t, just being his friend is enough. He won’t risk that for anything.

Determined, Jaskier pulls out his songbook, intent on writing that down. His vision is a little blurry, and there are two of his songbooks in front of him, no matter how close he leans into the damn book.

sh*t, maybe he has had a few too many drinks.

He marks a line across the page, but instead of looking anything at all like his normal penmanship, it’s just a streak of ink down the paper. He snorts at himself, even as someone lifts the book out of his hands.

“Oh wait!” he calls, reaching out after it, only to stumble face-first into the solid wall of muscle that is Geralt. “That’s mine.” He pouts, looking up at his friend, who’s very, very blurry.

“You’re drunk, and you’ve spilled more ink than you’ve written anything.” Geralt says, sounding unbearably stern.

“Oh, pshhh,” Jaskier blows a raspberry at him, planting his palms on Geralt’s chest to give him some space. The force propels him back to sitting upright on his barstool, though it starts carrying him all the way over the back of it, and would have dumped him on the floor if Geralt didn’t have a hand suddenly in his shirt collar, holding him up. “Hello!” he says to Geralt’s hand, patting it between his own, and enjoying the warmth the other man exudes.

“How much have you had to drink?”

“Not as much as you!” Jaskier replies nonsensically, then shakes his head even as he laughs at himself, because holy f*ck but he’s deep in his cups isn’t he. “I think I’m pissed.” He observes, then nods because yeah, that’s right he is. “Hey, hey. Hey!” Jaskier cries as Geralt suddenly heaves him over his shoulder.

“What?” Geralt growls, as if he was the one being picked up like a sack of flour. Rude, honestly.

“This is undignified.” Jaskier slurs into Geralt’s back. He winds his arms around Geralt’s middle in a sort of ridiculous, upside-down hug, trying to maintain his balance, minimize the cartwheels his stomach is turning and also (shamelessly) luxuriate in the solid bulk of Geralt underneath his hands.

“Dignity has never been your color, bard,” a voice interrupts.

Right— Yennefer.

Jaskier picks up his head enough to glare at the surly witch, though he has to push up off of Geralt to get the right angle, which makes Geralt quite cross with him, incidentally, as they both nearly topple to the ground before Geralt rights himself. “Your color is very... purple.” He declares, then drops his head again, suddenly tired.

The two of them had left just after his set had started and it’s been hours since he finished and started drinking. Who knows what they’d gotten up to in that time, be it f*cking or fighting or whatever it was that kept that horrid harpy circling their lives.

It isn’t fair, he thinks suddenly, fighting the wobble in his chin as Geralt lugs him up the stairs like nothing so much as an unwieldy package. It isn’t fair that he should spend all his life chasing after something, knowing it isn’t on offer, coming to terms with that, only to find out that oh, actually it is possible, had been all this time— just not for him.

Geralt loves Yennefer, not Jaskier, he wants the witch, not the stupid bard that followed him, wants tit* and a pretty face not— whatever the f*ck Jaskier is to him.

How can he possibly compete with that?

Yennefer becomes a semi-recurring figure in their lives, popping in unexpectedly while Jaskier is with Geralt, and who knows how often they see each other when Jaskier isn’t there, when he’s off either teaching for a term or attending to his bardic obligations to defend his titles and appease his publisher with more poems.

If it’s painful to watch them circle each other while the witch is actually around, then it’s downright unbearable to observe the sharp dip in Geralt’s mood when she disappears suddenly, how genuinely affected he is by her absence. It’s becoming clearer to Jaskier, pushing into his middle-years, that he doesn’t have the same effect on Geralt. When Jaskier leaves it’s merely the absence of a friend, (are they friends? Geralt won’t say,) not the absence of someone dear to the damnable witcher.

Jaskier needs to find some way to save his heart from this.

Nevermind, of course, that he’s been in love with Geralt for twenty-two years, nevermind that in all that time the tug in his chest, that marker of the red string of fate between them, has been reaching out, yearning for any single sign of recognition from Geralt. Nevermind the way Geralt sees the workings of destiny and tries to run in the opposite direction.

As if all those reasons aren’t enough marks against the many feathered nuisance in Jaskier’s chest, (hope, that damnable wellspring of f*cking hope— ever eternal) the tug keeps jumping to attention whenever Geralt smiles at him, whenever Geralt laughs, or stands, or stretches after a long day’s ride. It seems not to matter the action, every time, every f*cking time, the bird in his chest, the tug of fate, flutters like a loon or a sparrow or a f*cking hummingbird, too fast, too fast, and so f*cking fragile.

Jaskier scratches out another lyric, irritated with himself. He’s wanted to confess at so many different points over the years, held his tongue sitting across campfires, bit back the words while lying side-by-side in too many too-small tavern beds, kept his silence over countless nights spent drinking ale and sharing stories, teasing details out of Geralt under the guise of needing them for his songs, but just wanting to hear them, just wanting to know him.

After all, he thinks, (and writes that down,) isn’t love just being known, and knowing in return? Isn’t love just— intangible, not a thing you hold in your hands, but a truth you hold in your heart, a warmth cradled close in the chest, a desire held at the core of you— one you wrap yourself around and ache to fill; a desire you cannot fill, nor sate, nor even see the full shape of— isn’t love just that?

Knowing, and being known in return?

The shape of a ballad unfurls beneath his ink-dipped nib, and slowly, but with the surety born of years of knowing, years of cradling close a tug with only slack on the other end of it, he brings to life the story of love, unrequited, a soulbond, untethered.

The tale of Shaerrawedd has always been told as a heroic one— watch Jaskier expose the tragedy sitting at the core of it: that Aelirenn loved Darraen enough to lead her people into war, only to fail and become the arbiter of her own destruction.

Who asked Darraen whether she loved Aelirenn? Did no one ask if she wanted a war fought in her name? Would not heartbreak lead to such devastation?

Doesn’t that make a more compelling narrative?

(Who’s the more tragic figure here? The loved or the unloving?)

It’s simple enough to retell a myth— more of a test to subvert it, to flip it on its head and make it new again: if Jaskier can’t have the love he aches for, then at least he will have the glory of his name known far and wide— for the first time, not for a White Wolf composition.

If he is going to leave, after all, and spare his shattered heart, he’s going to need a soft-landing. Having a body of work to stand on will certainly help with that.

He doesn’t leave. Of course not.

He’s in love.

Barefield is a terrible place, but it’s made bearable by the company. (Geralt, of course, not the men who’ve hired him.)

Lament for Aelirenn has been wildly successful, and Jaskier has bought himself a new traveling outfit to celebrate. It’s the latest fashion for Redania— perhaps a little showy for this part of Kaedwen, but that’s never bothered Jaskier before. It doesn’t bother him now, though he feels the eyes of the butcher and the alderman on him as they wait for Geralt to come back from killing their little beasty.

They’ve been easy enough to ignore while he works on tweaking his latest song, and he would have happily kept ignoring them, except the butcher, clearly looking for a quick coin, attempts to steal Roach.

And then has his neck snapped for it. A tad bit overkill, perhaps, but one doesn’t disrespect a Zerikkanian without suffering the consequences, clearly.

Yennefer appears again when they get to the tavern, and the bitter flash of ugly jealousy when her mere presence has Geralt sitting up to heel like a well-trained dog is no less irritating for how often it’s been felt.

What had once held the potential to be a rousing new adventure was now shaping up to be something decidedly... different.

For three days they journey up the mountain, and Jaskier makes the best of it. He keeps scratching out new lines for his ballad, keeps attempting to charm Téa and Véa into telling him how they came to be following an old man like Borch, keeps following, always following Geralt, following the tug, following the bond, following his stupid hopeful heart all the way to the peak.

And then...

The first sign, of course, that this is going to go poorly for them is when they reach the treacherous bridge the dwarves have heralded as a shortcut to their prize, but that looks like nothing so much as a shortcut to certain death.

He hadn’t wanted to be proven right on that.

The loss of Borch and his companions weighs heavily on Geralt, who tried to save them (that damned nobility, always, and isn’t that part of why he loves him?) but what comfort Jaskier has to offer seems... paltry, in the face of that loss.

Temporary as it is, apparently, for when Jaskier finally makes it to the dragon’s cave, clearly several hours after everyone else, he discovers none of them have actually died, and Borch Three Jackdaws, who Jaskier had pegged more as a fellow poet and adventurer than anything dangerous, is somehow also a f*cking dragon?! (Why did no one wake him? Why didn’t Geralt?)

Something is shifting. Whatever conversation Borch is currently engaging Geralt and Yennefer in seems... intense. Jaskier chose this spot so he would be far enough away to respect their unspoken request for privacy when they’d gone off at first, but he'd forgotten to factor in the wind.

He can’t hear everything, sitting where he is, though the breeze carries most of their words to him in broken snatches.

“...why I feel this way. You made a wish.”

Oh no.

“It’s not real. It’s magic.”

Oh sh*t.

“I made that wish to save your life!”

Oh. f*ck.

Is that...? Since Rinde? For that long, Geralt has been bound to Yennefer?

A man who refused to even entertain a conversation about the nascent soulbond between himself and Jaskier, would turn around after nearly twelve years of ignoring it, of keeping Jaskier purposefully at arm’s length, and bind the first pretty sorceress he sees to himself?

On purpose?

Jaskier had thought he’d known the shape of heartbreak standing outside a shattered window, but apparently there are further depths to plunge.

Yennefer stalks past him, and Jaskier stands up, head buzzing, a strange sort of churning in his chest. Borch says something to Geralt, drowned out by the whine building in his ears, and then he too walks away from the witcher.

He has to... he has to know. The silent question, sitting behind his teeth all these years, needs an answer. Why not him? Why deny this destiny, only to go and forge a different one?

“What a day!” he laughs, brittle and cracking, walking to the edge of the rock he’s standing on, closing the distance between Geralt and himself. “I imagine you're probably—”

“Damn it, Jaskier!” Geralt explodes, whirling back around to face him, fury like nothing Jaskier has ever seen from the man in all their years together shining in his golden eyes. (They’ve fought before, of course they have, but never— never like this.) “Why is it whenever I find myself in a pile of sh*t these days, it's you, shoveling it?”

And oh, if Jaskier thought this adventure had been going poorly before.

“Well that’s not fair.” He’s never been guarded against Geralt, never thought he had to be, but this is not— this isn’t a sentiment that comes from nothing.

“The Child Surprise, the djinn, all of it!” Geralt shouts, advancing on Jaskier with fury apparent in ever rigid angle of his body; ice sheets down Jaskier’s spine and the buzzing in his ears hits a fever pitch— it’s impossible to think, impossible to do anything but listen, as Geralt unleashes the fury in his heart. “If life could give me one blessing,” oh, oh no, oh please don’t—” it would be to take you off my hands.”

Ah.

So that’s what it feels like when a heart breaks.

All this time, Geralt has known. Known and ignored it and— gods, how pathetic, how stupid Jaskier has been.

“Right. Uh...” he’s overly aware of his body, his fingers rubbing together, the wind pushing his hair around, the chill where it cuts through his open doublet, the scratch of his shirt against his neck, the pebble beneath his boot, which he imagines, distantly, would just about receive this level of ire were he forced to suffer its pain for twenty-two years.

“Right, then. I'll— I'll go get the rest of the story from the others.” Just a business transaction.

Twenty-two years, and all this time, all this time, his soulmate had not held back from him because he hated destiny, but because he—

“See you around, Geralt.”

Chapter 3: The Reclamation

Chapter Text

The bard was... unexpected.

Witchers don’t have soulmates. That’s been true for as long as Geralt’s been alive, a necessary sacrifice for a life spent on the Path. There’s no place for the attachments that humans define themselves by.

(If, secretly, in his heart of hearts, Geralt dreams of meaning that much to someone, of being loved because the fates willed it so, then it is only as small as the part of him that wanted to be a knight, and is just as easily swayed into silence.)

So he has no right to be so gutted. To be furious and irritated and to feel, in his chest, in that silent space where he has ignored a gentle tug for as long as he’s known it was there, the aching emptiness of grief, and loss, and the kind of fierce sorrow that steals his breath when he remembers the blood on his hands and the brooch on his sword.

And yet, here he is, grief heavy in his chest as he walks the Path, colder and lonelier and more miserable than he’s been for the past twenty-two years all told, since a mouthy bard walked into his life and begged for the chance to improve it.

He thought... Yennefer would have been easier. Would have been able to take care of herself, fierce and powerful and ageless; they had more in common than most and she’d burned bright enough for both of them.

Loving her was easy, it was... safe. It was more for him than for her, even at the start.

Because she burned like star-fire, like brilliance enough to outshine any diamond, as she flared out against the restrictions he unwittingly placed upon her, the binding he didn’t know would be that literal.

Oh, he knew, as soon as he made that wish, that she wouldn’t ever thank him for it. No one ever thanked witchers for saving them. But she saved Jaskier’s life, and she was fascinating, and fierce and powerful, and so transparent about her desires— f*cking shameless, honestly, and that was intoxicating in its own right.

So yes, he knew she wouldn’t thank him, but to feel shackled by him? To feel as if everything they did, everything they became to each other was false, illusory, a trap he’d sprung upon her?

Geralt slices viciously into yet another drowner’s neck, taking visceral satisfaction in the gristly friction as his silver slides through flesh and bone and cartilage, a spray of ichor arcing across the clearing to join the rest of the bloody carnage he’s spread across this particular riverbank. It’s not enough to distract him from his thoughts, but it’s a release of sorts, and as he slides the flat of his blade against his thigh to clear the blood and ichor from his sword before he sheathes it, he has to admit to feeling slightly more clear, at least, on what exactly it is he has to do.

Borch was right, after all. His destiny is still out there. It’s about damn time he stopped running from it.

The child, the bard, the sorceress. All three tied to Geralt, all three denied by him. He turns Roach to Cintra, figuring that, of the three, the one he hasn't actually met yet ought to be the easiest to fix.

It—

goes about as well as anything does for Geralt, these days.

When Ciri finds him in the forest, his thigh still burns with ghoul venom, and his mind is only just free of visions; it’s the clearest he’s felt the hand of destiny in his life and with the warmth of his child bundled in his arms, the tug in his chest, that soul-bond he’s spent two decades ignoring, flares to a bright sudden life as he releases the careful damper he’s been keeping it buried under.

He wouldn’t condemn a child to this life, nor a soulmate to his side; but if they are going to follow him anyways, if they are going to find him regardless of the obstacles he leaves behind him, then it seems as much a choice they make as an edict from destiny.

He made a mistake, on the mountain. Made a mistake, in an attic room in Rinde. Made the same mistake, continuously, for six, then twelve, then twenty-two years— a promise made must be honored, even if the promise is made from destiny’s palm. Perhaps, especially then.

He stays with the kind farmer and his wife who found him and Ciri both until his leg is healed enough to roam freely; they leave with many thanks, and more supplies than the farmer can really spare, gifted against Geralt’s wishes as a reward to soothe the farmer’s pride when Ciri’s previous status as already being his in truth was revealed. A child twice promised to him— alright, destiny, well-played. He can take a hint.

“You said Yennefer was your friend?” Ciri asks, once they’re far enough down the road that the farmer’s house is hidden behind the bend as they follow the path heading east.

“Something like that.”

“What’s she like?”

Geralt twists Roach’s reins around his palm, trying to think of a description for Yennefer of Vengerberg.

“Have you ever met a mage?” he asks instead, looking back over his shoulder as he leads Roach around a dip in the path that’s filled with rain water.

“One, I think. My friend, Mousesack.”

“Mousesack’s a druid. Slight difference.”

“You knew Mousesack?” Ciri asks, voice rising with her surprise.

“I did. He was an old friend. Spent some time searching for a plague-cure with him.”

“He helped raise me, but— he died. A little while ago, I think. A doppler—” Ciri’s voice dies as she swallows audibly around a half-choked off breath. Geralt pauses Roach, walking back to stand at Ciri’s knee where she’s in the saddle, staring resolutely forward as her chin wobbles. Geralt’s never been good with others’ tears, but he’s never been able to ignore them either.

“It’s alright,” he pats her knee, wanting to ease the distress in her scent and the salt-tang of her tears on the wind. “Mousesack was a good man. A good friend. Yennefer’s not much like him though.”

“Is she a good friend?” Ciri asks, voice thick with the emotion she’s trying to blink away.

“I’d like her to be.” Geralt says, perhaps too honest for talking to a child— but Geralt’s never gotten in the habit of deception, and though it’s been more than a century since he was a child last, he knows he didn’t like being lied to. Still doesn’t.

“How do you know her?” Ciri asks, full of questions. She’s gathered her wits and seems calmer now, as she taps his hand where it’s still resting on her knee, smiling tremulously at him. Geralt nods back, taking up the reins again to lead them on.

“Friend of mine got attacked by a djinn. She saved his life.”

“With her magic?”

“Yes, with her magic.”

“I can do magic too.” Ciri asserts. The hint of royal haughtiness in her voice almost covers the trepidation hiding underneath her words, the slight anxiety souring the wind as she reveals what she must consider a sort of secret.

Geralt looks over his shoulder at her, raising an eyebrow and smiling to soften it. “Can you?” he asks, unable to resist teasing her a little.

She sticks her tongue out at him, but she smiles, and the anxiety scent disappears with the slight breeze. “She could probably teach me though.”

“I bet she could.”

He hopes she will.

“Where are we going?” Ciri asks him finally, nearly two days later as they’ve made camp for the night.

In truth, Geralt doesn’t know their first destination-— he’s following the tug in his chest, hoping he’ll find Jaskier on the other end of it. Conveniently it’s still pulling him in the direction of Kaer Morhen, the safest place he can think of to take Ciri to keep her hidden from her pursuers.

“Witcher’s keep,” he tells Ciri, preparing their dinner over the fire. “Kaer Morhen. It’s where I hail from.”

“Aren’t you Rivian?” Ciri asks, blowing on the cup of tea in her palms to cool it slightly.

“Not really,” he grunts, standing up and brushing his hands off on his pants. He pulls his medallion out from his shirt and sits next to her on the bedroll he’s already laid out. “School of the Wolf,” he says, pointing out the shape to her. “Old witcher tradition.”

“Will I become a witcher too?” she asks suddenly, looking up from where she’d been leant over his medallion. She sounds excited about the possibility, not horrified as most would have been. Interesting that he should come across so many people who didn’t think the way they ought about mutants like him.

Destiny, again. Or just the right people, kind in their own right.

“You won’t go through the trials. The mutagens have been lost, but I’m sure Vesemir is itching for a new pup to train after so long without. If you ask nicely he’d show you anything you like.”

“Cool,” Ciri whispers, slurping with great satisfaction at her tea as she snuggles further into the heavy cloak he wraps around her shoulders.

The tug, which for so many years Geralt has trained himself to ignore, takes them to a tiny village just east of Sodden Hill. It’s not a perfect homing beacon, but the first tavern they’ve seen in four days seems a decent enough place to start. Maybe, if they’re extremely lucky, Jaskier will be playing.

Geralt tries to picture what Jaskier will do when they meet up again, how a reunion might unfold— he’s prepared for screaming, though it will hurt and be uncomfortable. He’s ready for crying, or a fight, or for Jaskier to do none of those things and surprise him with some other reaction entirely. What he’s not prepared for is to walk into the tavern and find Yennefer at the bar.

“Yenn?”

“f*ck off.”

Yeah, that’s Yennefer all right. He helps Ciri into the seat next to her, bracing himself against the back of her stool as he signals the barkeep to bring them over two small ales. Yennefer laughs, a short barking exhalation when she notices Ciri. “Ah, so this must be your child, then? I see you’ve changed your mind about the benefits of sterility.” She shakes her head at them both. “Men.” she mutters darkly into her beer, peering interestedly at Ciri over her cup.

He ignores her ire, figuring quite rightly that addressing that particular injury would do more harm than good for either of them. “How are you, Yenn?”

She looks wrecked, run-down and ragged. Her makeup is smudged, as if it’s been on for several days, and for the first time since he’s met her she’s not wearing a dress. Her traveling breeches are a dark black, of course, and tucked into her boots, and her white blouse peeks out from underneath a similarly black vest. Her cloak appears to be wool, grubbier than the luxurious furs she wore on the mountain, and she seems... rumpled. Her hand trembles minutely when she lifts her cup, and she’s practically slumped over the bar, rather than holding the careful posture that’s so characterized her for as long as Geralt’s known her.

Yennefer bares her teeth at him in a grimace he’d call a smile only if he’d never seen her actually happy to see his face. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, witcher.”

“Yenn,” he sighs, regretfully. He’s... bad. With words. But she’s always been easy to talk to. He just has to... talk to her. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, are you apologizing to me? Really?” she laughs, deceptively lightly as she turns to face him for the first time since they’d entered the tavern just moments ago. “This ought to be good. Watch, child,” she says to Ciri, gesturing at Geralt with an imperious flick of her fingers (her nails are cut shorter than normal, and one of them is ripped almost to the quick— what happened to her?) “You’re about to witness a miracle.”

Geralt frowns at her.

“Go on then! Dazzle me with what you could possibly have cooked up as an apology, I’m all ears.”

“I don’t want to fight.”

“No, that’s right, and it only matters what you want, then, doesn’t it?” She challenges, sitting up, back ramrod straight, feet planted firmly on the floor, chin tilted up to stare at him.

“That’s not—” he pulls up short, flexing his hands to release the tension built up in his own spine in reaction to her. “I wanted to say that I’m sorry. I have... thought about—” he looks down at Ciri, thinking again about what it means to be bound. “I know it wasn’t what you wanted.” He looks back up at Yennefer, meeting her steady violet gaze. “I’m sorry I took your choice away, and that I didn’t tell you about it either. I— didn’t know what that meant. To you. To not have a choice.”

“You’re a man, of course you wouldn’t know.” But she’s still here, and her spine has lost some of its ice-cold rigidity as she thinks about his apology. “So if I told you I could undo it? That I could break the chains you’ve placed between us? What would you say to that?”

“I’d ask what you need from me; you have it, whatever it is.”

“Damn noble fool.” Yennefer mutters, downing the rest of her drink. The barkeep drops off the two small ales for Ciri and Geralt while Yennefer thinks, and when she stops him from leaving to ask for another drink, Geralt tentatively takes that for a good sign.

“So, you’re sorry then,” she says finally, turning back around to face him. “You’re sorry, and apologizing, and you’ll give me what I need to undo your damn wish?”

“Within reason.”

“Ah ah, witcher,” she says, waving a finger at him tauntingly, “you said anything. Don’t go backing out now.”

He hums in response, picking up his drink to cover the awkward pause. He can’t help but feel tentatively hopeful about this; he’d thought he’d lost all of Yennefer, after the mountain, after the reveal, but here she is, teasing and brilliant and so fiercely wonderful still, so f*cking brilliant, always.

“Have you seen Jaskier?” he asks, because they’ve lapsed into a heavy silence, and the tug is dormant now, no longer pulling— he must be close by, though there’s no bard playing and he hasn’t seen him anywhere yet.

“Why would I know where to find your bard?”

“Who’s Jaskier?”

Ciri and Yennefer’s questions overlap, but a horrible realization is dawning on Geralt as he stares at Yennefer. The tug had brought him to someone, hadn’t it. Just not the person it should have. Not his actual soulmate, but Yennefer, Yennefer who he’d bound with a wish when he—

Bound with a wish. f*ck.

“He’s a friend.” Geralt says, because they’re both looking to him for answers, and through the terrible sorrow of realizing the actual scope of what he’s ruined— not just Yennefer’s and his relationship, but his and Jaskier’s too, a genuine soul-bond, rare as star-steel, and he’d ignored it, and ignored it, and then wished it out of existence.

“Now, you admit it,” Yennefer rolls her eyes, but it’s softened by the smile she offers Ciri. “He’s an annoying little pest that turns all of Geralt’s exploits into songs and simpers along behind him like a dog brought to heel— honestly, I’m surprised he’s not with you now. What,” she asks, turning back to Geralt, “did you tire of his yapping and send him away finally?”

He chugs the remains of the beer in his cup, flagging the barkeep down to come pour him another. “Something like that.” He admits, heart heavy as stone in his chest.

Yennefer raises an eyebrow at him, but thankfully doesn’t push it farther, leaning back over the bar.

“Are you... okay?” Geralt asks, when she shows no sign of reigniting their previous conversation.

“Do you know what it’s like to pour fire through your veins and open yourself so completely to Chaos that it turns your blood to lightning?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“Of course not, your little signs are a tap against a hurricane.” She sighs, deeply, rubbing her hands against her thighs. “I need to think. Don’t—” she looks up at Geralt, taking stock of him for a moment. “Don’t leave. I’ll meet you at the stables tomorrow morning, wherever your horse is. I am extremely tired of this sh*tty backwater. The sooner we get on our way the better.”

“Can’t be that sh*tty if it has a bed.” Geralt points out, though he nods to let her know he’ll be there.

She stands up, leaving a few coins on the table to cover her drinks, and ignoring his comment. “You’re going to explain to me more about the stink of Chaos that you’re steeped in tomorrow,” she directs at Ciri, who jumps to be addressed but nods quickly to show she’s listening. “Good.”

Yennefer dances two fingers across Geralt’s shoulder as she passes, lilac and gooseberry and enough ozone stink to rival Ciri, who came to him steeped in it, though he’s gotten accustomed to it over the past several weeks. He can feel the tremble in her hand as she passes, smell the distress and pain and hurt in her scent. She’s doing worse than she looks, though that’s hardly a surprise with Yennefer.

She’s always wielded her beauty like a particularly effective weapon.

As she retreats, leaving him alone with Ciri again, some of the tension seeps out of his spine, and he slides smoothly into her now abandoned seat.

“That’s Yennefer?” Ciri asks, spinning her cup idly between her palms.

“Hmm.” Geralt offers, mentally trying to calculate if he has enough coin to feed them both and get a room for the night. They ought to, if they only get one room. Geralt can meditate, but Ciri needs real sleep, and a meal more substantive than travel rations.

“I like her.” Ciri asserts, stilling her cup. “Are your other friends like her?”

Geralt thinks for a moment about brilliant people, about ferocity and shamelessness and wearing your heart on your sleeve because f*ck everyone who told you to hide it.

“Yeah,” he says, rubbing at the tug gone dormant in his chest, stilled by the wrong person’s presence. “All my friends are like that.”

Yennefer meets them early the next morning, impatient, but more put together than she was yesterday. The sleep seems to have done her good.

“You’re lucky I’d already done most of the legwork by the time you stumbled upon me again,” she says, peering disinterestedly at the scenery around them as Geralt settles Roach’s tack. “I only need one more item gathered, and I was on my way there when you found me.”

“Convenient,” Geralt grunts, as he finishes adjusting the final strap, tightening it enough for Ciri to ride.

“Yes,” Yennefer agrees, turning to stare at him. “Awfully so.”

Destiny at work again, it seems.

“What is it?” Ciri asks Yennefer, as Geralt boosts her into the saddle.

“A knife.”

“A knife.” Geralt repeats, casting a sideways look at Yennefer, who misses it entirely, too busy looking disinterestedly around the stables at the other horses.

“I hardly expect you to be interested in the theory behind it, but yes.” She refocuses on them, answering his question. “All we need is a knife and then we can, quite literally, undo the ties that bind us together.” Yennefer pauses, a distasteful moue crossing her face. “It’s all disgustingly poetic.”

Geralt shakes his head, hiding his smile behind his hair as he leads Roach out of the stable now that Ciri’s ready. “How’d you come across this? I thought djinn wishes were binding.”

“They are unless you’re me,” she says simply, moving aside to make more room for Roach and Ciri as they come out from the stables.

“So why do you need me if it’s as simple as getting a knife?”

“It’s not quite that simple.” Yennefer admits, then spins a portal into existence just ahead of them. sh*t. He hates portals.

It’s as absolutely dizzying and horrible this time as it is every time, but at least this Roach is used to them enough to not startle as he leads her through.

Ciri gags as they come out the other side, though thankfully the worst she does is spit, panting roughly as she hangs over the side of Roach’s neck. He turns back just in time to catch Yennefer as she falls through the portal, stopping her from hitting the ground more by virtue of still being in the way than any expectation she would have tripped. She’s clearly much more affected than she’d let on yesterday.

“Don’t say anything,” she warns him, though he’s not stupid enough to have been planning on opening his mouth, so he just sets her silently back on her feet again and takes stock of where she’s brought them.

“This is Shaerrawedd.” he says, surprised and a little confused too. Shaerrawedd is nothing but a pile of ruins and mass graves, long reclaimed by the earth and the mountains. Where are they meant to find a knife here?

“You made a soul-bond, didn’t you?” Yennefer asks, pushing past him to pick her way towards the ruins at the mountain’s base. “Need a subtle knife to cut that particular thread.”

Whatever hope Geralt had been clinging to, that this bond was a mere mockery, that once the djinn wish was fixed he’d be able to feel Jaskier again, dies a sudden painful death. f*ck.

Yennefer leads them around piles of rubble and debris, winding through what once was the sprawling capital of nearly a million-fold Elves, an entire civilization, already on the brink of dying, wiped out to near extinction, driven out of their own lands by the advancing humans. What happened to the Elves of Dol Blathanna is a mere drop in the bucket of water that is the tragedy of Shearrawedd, though it isn’t a story widely told. No tragedy ever is, unless it’s made palatable first.

Humans know of the lovers, helped along by songs and plays and “the grand romance of it all” as Jaskier had once claimed, but they know of Shaerrawedd itself only in name, and not in story.

Their journey takes them past the Doll’s Lament, a landmark Geralt has used to give directions more than once walking the Path these many years. Ciri gasps when the fossilized skeleton comes into view, an evellian child, curled into the cradle of two large boulders, a broken memento of the violence wrought here.

“What is this place?” she whispers, horrified, an audible tremor ringing through her voice.

“It used to be a great city, home to the Kaedweni Elves. When the Second War was fought the elves here decided they’d rather salt their earth than see it defiled by humans. Their general, Aelirenn, had taken their best fighters on a suicide run against the humans. They never came back, so the rest of her people died here. All of them.”

“That’s terrible.”

“That’s war.” Geralt says, though not unkindly.

“That’s not the whole story,” Yennefer interjects, stopping short at a slightly domed mound of earth, two great slabs of stone set against it like cellar doors. “You probably know the tale the way the bards spin it, yes?” she continues, rolling up the sleeves of her shirt, meeting Geralt’s eyes briefly before she looks back to the earth in front of her. “It’s just a pretty fable. The real story is far more mundane.

“Aelirenn was the Elves' favorite general, and her lover, Darraen? In the stories they say she was the daughter of the king, captured against her will and that when Aelirenn went to retrieve her she died in the attempt, losing half their army and dooming them to their fate.”

This so far fits in with what Geralt knows of the tragic fall of Shearawedd, and isn’t too far off from Jaskier’s ballad. Ciri seems familiar enough with the tale too. He helps her dismount from Roach while Yennefer continues talking.

“In truth, Darraen and Aelirenn were soulmates, but Darraen was human. They were planning for peace, almost had both sides convinced and then the King, a self-righteous fool of a man, decided the match was cursed. Daerren was visiting to finalize the plans, and the King of Shearrawedd locked them both in this tomb here and offered them a choice.” Yennefer’s voice drips with condescension, clearly derisive of the King’s offer as she continues, “They could sever their bond, and Dearren would never again be welcome in Shaerrawedd, or they would be sealed in and doomed to die together.”

“What did they decide?” Ciri asks, but Geralt thinks it’s pretty damn obvious. Who would willingly cut a soul-bond?

“They chose to die in this tomb, the knife with them.” Yennefer says, the final reveal.

“What kind of knife can cut a soul-bond?” Geralt asks, surveying the tomb again with fresh eyes. Time has clearly eroded most of the surface away, any decorations or other structures worn down by the elements. The doors are all that remain, and he can see already it’ll be a struggle to move them.

“The kind that eats Chaos.” Geralt raises an eyebrow at Yennefer, but she’s entirely serious.

“Dimeritium?” he asks, trying to imagine how one would go about slicing the metaphysical.

“And silver, and obsidian, and no small amount of star-steel.”

Geralt fits his fingers into the seam between the two slabs. “Great.” he grunts as he pulls back, ignoring the scraping sound of stone over stone as he slowly reveals the entrance.

It’s a heavy task, even for him. It would have taken more than just the King to lock them in here, though Geralt doesn’t exactly find that detail surprising. Evil like this was rarely the work of just one man.

The slab falls to the ground with a heavy thud that shakes the earth, allowing the first air for centuries to escape the tomb. It smells of decay and rotting things, rank, oppressive dampness; Geralt grimaces and Ciri gags and Yennefer rolls her eyes at them, already moving forward into the tunnel before Geralt can stop her. He follows with Ciri close at his heels.

The tunnel abruptly turns to stairs maybe five feet back into the hillside, so steep that Geralt can smell the change in altitude as they continue their silent descent. The end of the stairs brings them to an open room, lit only by the silent ball of light Yennefer holds cradled in her palms.

As she locates the torches around the perimeter and lights them, Geralt approaches the silent sarcophagus in the center. It’s smooth marble, like the tomb he’d laid in while curing Princess Adda, and it’s the only feature of note in the otherwise bare room.

“If they were locked in, shouldn’t we see their skeletons?” Ciri asks, drawing one finger through the thick dust across the top of the coffin.

Geralt ignores her, meeting Yennefer’s gaze briefly before he sets his hands against the lid, sliding it out of place. As the stone pieces grind against each other, dust and death rise up and Ciri sneezes in surprise behind him.

“I assume you need me for more than just brute strength?” he asks, suspicious for how simple the process has been so far. If life has taught Geralt one thing, it’s that nothing is ever this easy.

“I can’t touch it.” Yennefer admits, crossing her arms as she peers into the open tomb. Geralt has only opened it enough to see the shoulder and arm of the body inside, though wrapped in its shroud as it is, little except for the merest suggestion of shape is actually visible.

“It’s not cursed, is it?” Geralt asks drily, even as he reaches in to feel for the knife. “I’m not exactly princess material.”

Yennefer laughs, and he smiles into his shoulder as he feels over bone and rough fabric, searching for the first glint of metal.

“It’s just a knife made of a dangerous material. Don’t worry, you’ll not fall into enchanted sleep for this one.” He wouldn’t mind all that much if he did, actually, supposing Ciri was taken care of while he slept.

His questing fingers finally find the knife, the first hint of cold-steel as it kisses his finger-tips almost enough to startle him. He has to shove his hand into the rib-cage of the body to get enough of an angle to actually grasp it, and he mutters a nearly inaudible apology as he yanks the knife back out of where it’s half-buried in the tomb.

It’s beautiful. Pure black steel until he tilts it, the faintest iridescence reflecting a muted rainbow as he brings it closer to the light. “Is this your cure?” he asks Yennefer, holding it up for her inspection. He feels strangely powerful with the knife in his hand, invigorated, but colder too. Like it’s a heat sink, pulling every ounce of warmth he’s ever felt out of his body. His knuckles ache with the force of how hard he’s gripping the knife, turning white around the obsidian handle.

Yennefer’s fist cracks down hard on the inside of his elbow and his hand flies open in reflexive surprise, the knife clattering to the ground between them. “f*ck,” he gasps, hollowed out, surprised at how quickly the knife took over his senses.

“Yes.” Yennefer says, in answer to his question, though he almost forgets asking it. “That’s the cure.”

They bring the knife out of the tomb by the simple expedient of wrapping it in cloth, provided by Yennefer. If he’s upset she used him as a guinea pig to test the knife’s abilities, it’s an upset that fades quickly; there’s worse things done between them.

Yennefer directs them to a conveniently chest height boulder, flat enough they can set out the knife and leave it stable as they plan how exactly to go about this.

“This it?” he asks, surprised at the simpleness of the answer.

“What, did you want a rhyming incantation and sparks and potion-work too?” Yennefer glares at him, but there’s a playful edge to it that he’s missed since the mountain.

“All good magic rhymes,” he tells her, torn between the warring sense of hesitation and excitement, painful hope sinking its claws into his chest. He’s no right to hope that his bond to Jaskier will come back, not when he’s ignored it for so long, not after the mountain. But still, he wants it. Wants the chance, deserved or not, to make things right. Hopes, dangerously, that he’s not ruined this for both of them.

“Give me your hand.” Yennefer demands of him, and he offers it up to her, palm first.

Her hands are warm against his, nearly burning, and he wonders, again, what’s happened to her since they parted. Before he can ask, she places his hand on the boulder, rearranging his hand until it’s to her satisfaction, which seems to mostly involve stretching his littlest finger out so it’s a mirror to her own.

“The trick of this,” she says, finally explaining herself as they both stare at the knife between them, “is that we have to do this together. The longer we hold the knife the more it’s going to hurt both of us. You saw how quickly it affected you, and your own connection to Chaos is a mere trickle compared to the open faucet of my own.”

“Why together?”

“Soul magic requires equaled desires. You can’t do anything with it unless both souls are willing.”

“Kinder than most magic,” he observes, though he wonders what that means for them, their djinn-wish bond.

“Yes well, djinns are famously bad-tempered,” she sighs, “and one of the few creatures able to override that particular requirement. It's not so hard to trick a soul when you can alter reality itself.”

“Hmm,” he agrees. No arguing that.

“What’s it going to do?” Ciri asks, popping up suddenly at Geralt’s elbow in between him and Yennefer. He doesn’t jump, but it’s a near thing. He was so focused on the dagger and the potential it represents that he’d almost forgotten she was there.

“It’s going to free us both.”

Geralt's chest tightens involuntarily at Yennefer’s answer, and he meets her gaze over the blade, steady as stone.

“On three?” he asks, and Yennefer nods.

He hovers his palm over the weapon on three, feels her palm press into the back of his hand on two, let’s her guide his hand into place on one.

The chill of the blade pulses through him like a shock wave, and he opens his eyes where they’d closed involuntarily to see the red thread between them stretched taut on the rock, connecting their littlest fingers to each other.

“Oh, it’s beautiful.” Ciri whispers, and Yennefer tips the knife down, point-first, just above the thread. Tears prick at the corner of his eyes, and Yennefer is trembling faintly where they're pressed together, but she doesn’t hesitate, sliding their combined hands backwards, dragging the blade through the thread— through the soul-bond, which breaks like cracked ice, loud and sudden, crashing through the Chaos around them violently enough that even Geralt can feel it as his medallion jumps nearly off his chest with the force of its vibrations.

“Let go!” Yennefer shouts, and he opens his hand, letting the knife fall to the ground— the chill recedes, leaving behind space to finally feel the yawning emptiness in his chest, a gut-punch lack where before there had been light; Yennefer laughs, a sharp, glorious bark of sound and then his chest lurches— the tug brought back to life— but not for her— she’s right here but this hurts, stretched thin and breaking, weak but still there— still held fast for all the years and miles between them.

“Jaskier,” he says, because it came back, he didn’t destroy it, didn’t lose this; not permanently, not even for much longer— he needs to find him.

“Wait,” Yennefer says, because he’s already lurched to his feet, senselessly following the aching pull of his soul. He hadn’t even noticed.

“What?”

“Help me up.”

He pulls her to standing with Ciri’s help, letting the girl take most of Yennefer’s weight as she leans heavily into the contact.

“You never answered me about where your bard is.” The non-sequitur is perhaps more surprising than it should be.

“I wasn’t... Kind. To him. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“And yet you were going to go haring off after him just now?” Yennefer scoffs, straightening up. “You want to find him?” she asks. Then, co*cking her head at Ciri, “What about this one?”

She’s right. He owes it to Ciri to see her to safety first. Jaskier is... will be, fine. He’s probably teaching. Might not even want to see Geralt, not after how he sent him away.

The fierce ache in his chest will hold— if it’s held for two decades while Geralt ignored it, it can hold a little while longer— just until Ciri is safe.

Chapter 4: The Reconciliation

Chapter Text

Halfway across the continent, Jaskier drops the book he’s reading, grasping at the sudden fire in his chest, a bond which for half his life has been just a tug, transforming into a sudden terrible yank— he takes half a step forward on instinct, then stops, anger whipcording through his limbs as he scoops the book back up and launches it at the wall. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not f*cking fair—

Destiny has made his heart a plaything, fragile and shattered, and f*cking broken, over and over again, and for what?

He sinks, aching, to the floor, clutching his doublet over his sternum, pushing back against the feeling like his heart wants to leap out of his chest, like he should run screaming north and hope desperately that Geralt takes him back— and how often, how often had he thought that, thought if only he had done this, or not done that, or changed a million and one insignificant details, how much kinder could it have ended for them?

But he still loves him, never stopped, not really, because love isn’t something tangible, it’s not a thing you can touch or a force you can manipulate; it just is, it’s just knowing, just wanting, just aching, desperately, to be known in return, to be loved back, to mean as much to someone else as they mean to you—

it’s just this; a tug in the chest, a wanting from the heart, your soul reaching out to be held by someone else’s.

He would have been fine, been happy, just to follow, just to be allowed that close. Would never have pushed for more, despite the ache in his breast, the tug of his soul reaching out, endlessly, unceasingly, unabatingly.

He would have. He would have.

He couldn’t.

Gods, but what is love, unrequited? He curls over the fierce warmth in his chest, the fire burning that wants to boil his blood, pushing his face into the stone floor, soothing the sting of silent tears as they escape his closed eyes, catching sobs in his clenched teeth. f*ck, f*cking hell but this isn’t how it was meant to go, isn’t the sort of love story that he’d felt promised, and oh, but isn’t that pathetic, to yearn this fiercely, for a man who thought him a burden, who blamed him for “shoveling sh*t,” for all the ills which troubled him?

f*ck. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not— It’s sh*t, it’s hell, it’s still in him, still a love he feels so desperately he could choke on it, is choking on it— he screams, furious again, sobbing through the pain of the yank that even still hasn’t let up, is pulling towards the other side of this soul-bond he’s been cursed with, this burden he’s been made into, this hopeless, hopeful, f*cking ache.

“Hey, hey, hey, what’s wrong?” the voice startles him, but it’s just Carlotta, the Countess de Stael, who’d he’d almost forgotten was here— embarrassed, he turns away from her, but it’s no use as she picks him up from the floor, pressing his burning face into her chest, wrapping gentle arms around him and rubbing at his back, cradling and rocking him like a child. “Gods, Jaskier, what happened?”

He shakes his head against her dress; he can’t— there’s no way to explain this, not now. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, shh,” she mutters lowly, dropping a kiss into his hair, “It’s alright, whatever it is, we can get you through it, it’s okay, it’s okay,” something in him breaks, and he can’t hold back, unwinds his arms from his chest, slides them around her waist, sobbing freely— a release, catharsis of a sort, a building relief he’s needed but been afraid of the consequences for. “Shh, it’s alright, I’ve got you,” Carlotta whispers, letting him weep into her neck, unmindful of the mess he’s making of her fine dress— why couldn't he have been bound to her? Wouldn’t that have been kinder for all of them?

“Oh, Jask, I’m sorry, it’s okay, hey, shh,” she keeps whispering reassurances into his hair, and slowly the sobs taper off, the misery dulling, the aching sadness fading until it’s only a bruise, and he feels wrung dry, purged of— everything.

Empty, maybe. Weak, definitely.

“Sorry,” he mumbles into her neck, afraid to look up and meet the disgust in her eyes; he feels fragile, still, like a sponge, dried out and liable to dissolve into ash if brushed the wrong way.

“Nothing to be sorry for, Jask,” she assures him, pressing a kiss to the shell of his ear, running her fingers through his hair, a soothing comfort which makes him melt, more tension seeping from his bones. “I’m just worried— this isn’t like you.” He doesn’t want to look at her, but she places her cool hands on either side of his neck, pulling him back enough that she can look into his eyes. “Will you tell me about it, or do you just want to sit for a little while more?”

What has he done to deserve this kindness? Tears anew prick at the corner of his eyes, and he smiles at her, watery, so, so grateful that he knows her. “Why couldn’t you be my soulmate?” he asks miserably, then closes his eyes against his own honesty, grimacing. f*ck, he hadn’t meant to put that on her.

“Oh, baby,” she laughs, pressing him back down into her neck and resuming petting his hair. “We’d be too good for each other, be a bad look for all the other soulmates out there. They’d never let it happen.”

He laughs wetly, closing his eyes against the emotions still coursing through his blood. “I love you,” he whispers into the hollow of her neck, because he does, because it’s true, because he’s always been overfull of love, leaking out of him, his heart too f*cking desperate to be kept contained.

“I love you too,” she says, and holds him tighter, letting him sink, boneless, into her grip on him. She’ll hold him up. She always will.

They can’t sit on the floor forever— Jaskier isn't a young man anymore, and Carlotta has bad knees. But she follows his lead, letting him take the comfort he needs to get through this.

Eventually he does sit up, wiping his eyes on his sleeve, laughing drily to cover his embarrassment. “Sorry,” he mumbles again, voice scratchy with the strain he’s put on it. “I don’t think I’ll be up to playing at your banquet this evening.”

“f*ck the banquet,” she cries, startling a laugh out of him, “it’ll just be the same bunch of annoying nobles exchanging the same idle gossip. You’re more important than those fools, I’ll tell you this much right now.”

His chest fills with warmth at her words, more love than he knows what to do with forcing fresh tears to slip over his eyelashes; he wipes them away, but Carlotta just smiles softly, pulling him up by his hands.

“Come on, we deserve a nap after that. Let’s go.” He loves her so fiercely he could cry again, but he doesn’t, following her mutely out of the library and down the hall towards her room.

Piotr, Carlotta’s head of staff, passes them in the corridor, and it only takes a few short words that Jaskier tunes out for Carlotta to cancel the banquet, though thankfully she doesn't say anything about him being the reason for it.

It’s the middle of the afternoon, but Carlotta’s inner chambers are dark, and as she drops him off on the decadent mattress to start pulling the curtains of her four-poster, it gets even darker. He takes off his own boots, though he allows her to help pull his doublet off, offering his assistance in unlacing the outer layer of her dress. When they’re both more comfortable, she bullies him into the center of the massive bed, tugging the covers down until they can slide underneath.

It's warm, intimately cozy and comforting to lie in the darkness with Carlotta curled against his back, holding him tightly. He drags in a shaky breath, letting the darkness and her tiny breaths puffing against his neck soothe him, drawing out the hurt as she traces tiny circles and idle patterns on his chest, dragging her nails through his chest-hair on every other pass.

He toys with the edge of the blanket pulled up to his ear almost, pulls on one of Carlotta’s curls that has landed above his own head on the pillow they’re sharing, and closes his eyes, finally, letting the exhaustion rise up to take him.

He wakes to fingers in his hair, and the soft sound of pages in a book being turned. He feels better— calmer certainly, though the pull in his chest is still as present as it was when it first flared to life and started this whole little spiral.

“Hey, you awake?” Carlotta asks, brushing gentle fingers across his forehead, “How do you feel?”

“Like a wrung-out sponge, if I’m honest,” he admits, pushing himself up to sit against her, resettling the blanket on his lap. He drops his head onto her shoulder, pressing in slightly to the hand still running through his hair. “I’m sorry, again, I was— rather taken by surprise, there, I didn’t mean to throw a fit like that,” he says, toying with the ties of his shirt, which are open, and rucked awkwardly across his chest. He feels debauched, for all that what he did was to weep like a child and then sleep like the dead.

“No apologies necessary, Jask You’ve done the same for me before.” She bumps companionably into his shoulder, startling a quiet laugh out of him. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I must tell you, I’m very worried.” She sets her book aside, bringing the hand not in his hair around to grab his own, pulling the tie out of his fingers to slip her palm into his. Her hands are warm, a perfect counterpoint to the chill of his skin, and he wishes, once again, that life or destiny or the fated sisters three had been just a little kinder to the both of them. “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” he promises her, squeezing her hand. “I told you about— about Geralt,” he says, stumbling over the pain he still feels for that particular ending. “And the—” he gestures uselessly at his chest with his free hand, hoping it’s enough to convey the whole... everything about this.

“Well, there I was!” he continues on, pushing past the discomfort with false cheer in his voice, “just minding my own business in your library, doing some research for my latest composition when out of nowhere it just—” he mimes an explosion with his hand, blowing his breath out in a blustery sigh, “I guess it came to life again, though it really felt like an—” he pauses again, reaching for the right words, “I don’t know, it felt like being pulled, like suddenly there was a force on the other end to match my own, and it’s just—” he swallows the sudden well of emotion sitting in his throat, “it’s never felt like that before.”

“Never?” Carlotta asks, terribly soft.

“Well, you know my witcher,” he laughs bitterly, rolling his eyes at himself. “We’ve been doomed from the start.”

“So dramatic,” Carlotta chides him gently, pressing her cheek into his hair to soften the sting of her words. “It’s a soul-bond Jaskier, they don’t make those on accident.”

“I wish I still believed that, but I just don’t know anymore,” he sighs, heavy, tired, pressing his fist against the fierce pull in his sternum, “It’s been so long, and you didn’t see his face, Lotts, gods, he was so angry with me.”

“I’d never have believed that witchers could even have soulmates if I didn’t know you so well, Jaskier. He’s a f*cking idiot if he doesn’t see how amazing you are. You say the word and I’ll shove a cactus up his arse.”

That startles a laugh out of him, and he pats her thigh, taking simple comfort in her love, which is uncomplicated and fierce and far more calm now than in their youthful days of passion. “I’d like to see you try,” he giggles, entertaining the strange mental image of Carlotta bending a witcher over her knee, “If anyone could, it would be you.”

“And don’t you doubt it. You know that after Henrik, I don’t suffer fools.” Jaskier thinks she’s rather selling herself short there— she’s never been a woman that just takes what is given to her, regardless of Henrik’s (blissfully) short stay in her life.

“Can I just say, once again, that I never liked that pompous ass, and you’re much better off with the courtier that stayed with you last spring. What was her name again?”

Carlotta blushes, pushing playfully into his shoulder, “It was Magdalena, you little tart, and you’ll be happy to know that I’ve invited her back this spring as well and she’s agreed already.”

“Oh, how delightful,” Jaskier cries, wiggling his eyebrows at her, “and are you going to be... planting that garden or would you—” the rest of his sentence is cut off as Carlotta slaps a pillow into his face, and he falls back laughing like a loon around his sudden mouthful of feathers.

“Shut up! Gods, what I wouldn't give to muzzle you some days,” she cries, but the flush in her cheeks is at least partly due to the huge smile she can’t keep hidden, and he loves her so much he could burst with it.

“Carlotta, light of my life, darling dearest, the only woman I’ve ever bedded twice,—”

“That’s not the compliment you think it is, you horndog—” Carlotta interrupts.

“The most wonderful Countess in all the lands!” he cries, raising his voice to drown out her insult, as he moves to kneeling in front of her, miming a handfasting proposal “I love you most ardently, and wish to pledge myself to you for all my days, what say you?”

“No! Sit down, fool,” she cries, laughing even as she pulls him back down to the bed. He flops into her lap this time, affecting a silly pout as he blinks up at her.

“Alas! I knew it was too good to be true, I fear I shall die a lonely, unloved man, cast out by my—mpph!” Carlotta’s hand over his mouth effectively silences him, and she raises one eyebrow imperiously at him.

“You’ve been muzzled, cur, so listen here.” She’s serious again, setting aside the playfulness as she holds his gaze. “You are not unloved.” Her simple declaration cuts straight through to the core of him, the single fear that’s driven all his actions suddenly laid bare and discounted, easy as breathing. Tears immediately jump to his eyes, though she doesn’t let him go. “You are wonderful, and amazing, and the very fact that you still feel the tug even after all these years is proof that it’s not one-sided. You know this, Jaskier, the tugs are just potential. That’s all they’ve ever been, just a nudge in the right direction.” She lets go of his mouth, patting his cheek when he smiles weakly at her in response. “If it’s come back now, and stronger like you said, then I can’t help but think that just means your witcher has finally pulled his head out of his arse.”

“I can’t hope for that, not after what he said to me.”

“I know, I know, baby, I’m not trying to hurt you, I just—” it’s her turn to struggle for words it seems, and in the silence as she thinks he sits up, rearranging himself so he’s sitting in front of her, legs crossed beneath him. “I don’t want you to close yourself off to the possibility just because you’ve been hurt before.”

“It was a pretty big hurt,” he whispers, rubbing his knuckles against his chest again, looking just past Carlotta’s shoulder because the earnest hope in her gaze is almost too much to handle.

She places a hand on his knee, waiting until he meets her eyes before she speaks, “You’ve got strength enough to do this. You’ve never let the world harden you before, don’t let this be what stumps you. Not when staying open to it could give you everything you’ve ever wanted.”

“How?” he whispers, agonized, pushing back against the yank of his soul-bond with his fists, as if he could physically reel it back in, though it accomplishes nothing except to draw attention to his hands, which Carlotta grabs between her own, rubbing circles into the meat of his palms. “How do I try again, knowing how much it can hurt?”

“I don’t know, Jask,” she says, reaching up to cup his cheek, rubbing away the single tear tracing its way down his cheek with her thumb. “But I know you can do it. This world hasn’t broken you yet. Don’t let this be what does it.”

He smiles tremulously at her, leaning forward when she reaches up to grab his neck, pulling him in so their foreheads touch. She smells like cedar, and vanilla, and the soft sleep-scent of human warmth. Like home, insomuch as a bard that lives primarily on the road can have a home.

“I love him,” he admits, safe behind the curtain of her hair. “I love him so much it scares me.”

“You’re braver than you think, Jask. You can do this.”

It only takes half a weeks’ worth of travel before his doubts creep back in. He left Carlotta’s full of excitement, and while he also harbored no small amount of trepidation in his chest, he let the yank carry him forward, trusting in Carlotta’s advice, her gentle reassurances that it had to mean something.

But now...

He dithers along the path, slowing his pace almost to a stop as he worries over his decision. The yank hasn’t lessened any over the past several days— if anything it’s only gotten fiercer the longer he follows it. But he keeps replaying Geralt’s words in his head, worrying over the reception he might face if he just... shows up uninvited. Though, that is how he’d normally shown up before, usually stumbling into Geralt’s path entirely on accident, finding him in the corner of taverns after a performance, or stumbling into him at crossroads, or once, memorably, literally tripping over him while he was trying unsuccessfully to entice a cat to eat a piece of fish out of his hands.

What if Carlotta was wrong, and the reason the soul-bond has suddenly flared to life is only so Geralt can sever it completely, drawing him in just to cast him aside permanently? Or what if he shows up, and it turns out that Geralt still hates him, still sees him as a burden he’d like taken off his hands? What then?

He groans unhappily, kicking at the dirt beneath his boots as he picks up the pace again, irritated at himself for this incessant worrying. He won’t know until he does it, until he comes face to face with Geralt again and just— f*cking asks him, outright, the way he should have all those years ago, instead of talking himself into silence, letting it go unaddressed to spare Geralt, while Jaskier suffered silently.

That was stupid, he knows now, to think he could spare himself pain by taking it on in the first place. Not anymore. Now he’s going to get his damn answers, no matter how awkward or painful they may be to face. The discomfort in the moment will spare them both in the future.

But... if he puts it off another day, who is there to call him on it? Yeah, yeah... exactly. Alright. He’s just a few miles outside of the next town, a trading post more than a village, though it has a tavern which serves the best ale this side of the Yaruga, if Jaskier remembers his geography correctly. He’ll get himself a drink, maybe play some songs, distract himself for a night, and— maybe turn around, actually.

He groans, frustrated with himself, but keeps walking, determined to stick to this plan at the very least. He can decide tomorrow if he intends to keep moving or give the whole thing up as a bad job.

For tonight, he’s going to play his lute and not think about Geralt of f*cking Rivia.

So of course every single song he’s asked to play is from the White Wolf cycles.

The problem with building your professional career around the person you’re desperately, hopelessly in love with is, of course, that there’s no escape from the man. They’re happier songs for the most part at least; the rousing adventure stories, interspersed with the comedic ballads, transitioning into the rowdy drinking songs as the night wanes on. This is a crowd that wants to drink and be happy, two goals he can certainly sympathize with.

The door opens, letting in a gust of autumn air, and Jaskier shivers, midway through a rambunctious rendition of My Succubus Lover. He stomps on the table he’s co-opted as his stage, encouraging the audience to sing with him as he spins, showing them the dancing jig that goes along with this particular ditty. There’s a disturbance from the door, and Jaskier pulls out of his spin, laughing through the final lines as he—

Comes clattering to a sudden halt, staring at the figures who’ve just entered the tavern, every thought in his head winking out as the tug, which he’d been ignoring all night, suddenly quiets, gentling as the other end of it meets his eyes across the crowded room. Geralt is... here.

f*ck.

The world narrows until it’s just them, the rest of the tavern falling away. Panic whites out his hearing, a sudden well of dread bubbling up from his core; oh, fuck, this was a terrible idea. This was stupidly, monumentally idiotic, fuck, Geralt is advancing on him, moving closer like he’s— Jaskier doesn’t know actually, can’t read the strange light in Geralt’s eyes, though he also can’t look away from them, trapped in their amber depths.

A noise from the bar distracts him, and he looks up, reality filtering back in as he breaks Geralt’s gaze. Yennefer is at the bar. (A weight like a sinking stone falls down his throat— he shouldn’t have hoped.) She rolls her eyes, says something to the child— a child? next to her and then they both turn to the bar.

The crowd is crying out now, irritated that he’s stopped playing, and he smiles awkwardly, pushing through the devastation in his lungs as he smiles at the audience. “My apologies!” he cries, sketching a bow, just overblown enough to soothe them, “It seems I’m needed elsewhere, though it’s been a fine evening playing for you all.”

Geralt is nearly at the table he’s standing on, so Jaskier bends down to pick up his case, snapping it closed without putting his lute inside, just needing to make a quick escape, “It’s been a joy, truly, but I must be going, places to be, witchers to write songs about,” he laughs, slightly manic, dancing around tables as he makes his way to the back of the tavern— he’s snuck out of more than one tavern through the staff entrance, this shan’t be his last. “Don’t forget to toss a coin to your witcher, the White Wolf himself!” he cries, strumming the opening bars as the audience turns to see Geralt stalking through their midst; they stand up cheering, slowing him down enough that Jaskier can slip out of the tavern, unaccosted.

The air is cold and bracing on his overheated face when he finally makes it outside, and he hardly pasuses to slip his lute into its case— f*ck this was a mistake. He’s not ready, should never have even tried; of course, of course, he’d be with Yennefer, the tug was never for him, not really.

Tears prick at the corners of his eyes, and he bolts, dashing past the stables where even now he knows Roach will be. As badly as he wants to see her, he can’t stop, driven on by the panic burning his lungs, the thrumming in his blood, fighting against the yank in his chest that even now wants him to turn around, painful betrayal or not.

He’s almost free, nevermind that he’s barely passed the edge of town when Geralt catches up to him.

“Jaskier, wait!” And he stops, instinct and hope, that feathered bastard, stilling his feet. He looks up, hoping gravity will do him the favor of hiding his tears, though he rather thinks that cat’s already out of the bag, what with how quickly he tried to flee.

“Jaskier. Look at me.” Fury, sharp and hot, whips through his gut and he laughs, though it’s ripped from his chest, thick with the tears in his eyes. “Please.” Geralt says, sounding small, and sad, as if he has any right to sound like that when he was the one that brought them here.

Jaskier turns around, spreading his arms like the consummate showman, ready to dazzle. “And how have I ruined your life today, hm? Come to tell me I can’t sing my own songs?”

“No,” Geralt says, hands outstretched towards Jaskier like he’s a spooked horse that Geralt needs to calm, as if Jaskier were the one being unreasonable. “I just want to talk.”

“Oh, right!” Jaskier cries, really properly angry now, practically shaking with the force of his own emotions, “Now he wants to talk, twenty years go by, can’t get a single word out of you about this, but now he wants a chat.”

“Jaskier—”

“No!” he cries, stalking forward, “Twenty-two f*cking years of my life I followed you, two decades Geralt! And you cast me aside like a stone in your shoe, and then blamed all this sh*t on me I never did— it wasn’t my fault!” he screams, close enough to touch, angry and bitter and so f*cking furious, a cracking facade, rapidly shattering, “I didn’t force you to find the djinn, didn’t make you claim the Law of Surprise— you did that yourself, all I did was take you to a f*cking— party, I just—” he gasps around a sob, hating himself, trying to keep going even as the misery takes the place of his anger, “I just loved you, you stupid man,” he cries, near hyperventilating for how loud and gasping his breaths are, misery and sorrow sitting too heavy in his chest to speak around, though he keeps trying anyways. “Say something, you arsehole, you wanted to talk!”

Geralt reaches for him, pulling him into a spine-cracking hug, tucking Jaskier’s face into his shoulder.

He smells like he always has, like horse and onion, heroics and heartbreak and home, godsdamnit— it’s not fair that this is still the thing Jaskier’s wanted most since the mountain. He lets Geralt hold him, arms crushed awkwardly between their chests as he stares resolutely to the side, the landscape nothing but a watery blur through his tears.

“I’m sorry.” Geralt tells him, a quiet statement without fanfare, though it loosens the knot of pain in Jaskier’s rib cage to hear it. “I’m sorry I treated you poorly. You deserve better from me.”

“Yeah, that’s f*cking right I do,” Jaskier mumbles into Geralt’s shoulder, holding himself stiff and stunned while Geralt says his piece.

“I was afraid at first.” Geralt continues, though Jaskier can feel the ghost of his smile against the shell of his ear, even though he’s not looking at him. “You were so young, in Posada, and I didn’t want to condemn you to the kind of life I lead.”

“I can make my own choices,” he grumbles.

“I know.” Geralt assures him, no more blustering or pandering, just continuing on. “I didn’t realize how long it had been until Rinde, and by then—”

Jaskier tenses again, not wanting to hear about Yennefer and how much better she is than him. “We’d ignored it for so long I thought it was gone. Witchers don’t get soulmates.” he says, and Jaskier snorts, ready to protest that he does exist, thank you very much, but Geralt squeezes him in warning, so he subsides again.

“I was angry at everything but I took it out on you, unfairly, and I’m so sorry, Jaskier, more than you can know.”

“I’m getting a sense of it, I think,” he says, because Geralt sounds wrecked, like maybe he suffered through their separation just as much as Jaskier did.

“No one’s ever stayed, before you,” Geralt confesses, and it is a confession, pulled out from the center of him, where his fears have long been buried. “I love you.”

It’s a revelation, an epiphany, a godsdamned eureka moment— his heart sings, the bond suddenly flaring with the feedback of emotions as incandescent happiness zings back and forth between them. The tug, completed, flares star-bright and envelopes them, the red thread arcing out to spill across the sky as golden figures dance around them, tiny recreations of their story, their brightest moments, their darkest lows— it’s too much stimulation for Jaskier, so he ignores it all, staring instead into Geralt’s eyes, basking in the love he finds there.

It’s like coming home, like finding his place in the universe and knowing, without a doubt, that he is loved and wanted and happy, here, at Geralt’s side; his soulmate.

f*cking, finally.

Of course they still need to talk.

Jaskier loves him, of course he does, he never stopped, but he’s also so so so angry at him, and that doesn’t just go away. No amount of love confessions is enough to plaster over that kind of hurt, not even one that’s written in the stars. But it’s so much easier to talk through anger when there’s an assurance of love underwriting all of it.

So much easier to breathe, knowing his love is returned.

They still have to get Ciri to safety, (and hadn’t that been a hell of a story to hear; his heart aches for Ciri, but he knows that between Yenn, Geralt, and himself, she’ll have everything she needs.) Still need to make it to Kaer Morhen, and fix whatever is wrong with Yennefer, (she’s surprisingly similar to him when he’s not busy being so blindingly jealous of her; they get along like houses on fire and enjoy teasing Geralt when he goes monosyllabic on them.) Still have to live in a world where Nilfgaard is on the march North, the future of the Continent an unfamiliar shape for the first time in any of their lives.

But at the end of the day, he’s facing all that with his soulmate at his side, part of a family, surrounded by love; there’s nowhere he’d rather be, and no one he’d rather be with.