Chapter Text
Geralt gasped, opening his eyes so wide that he was immediately blinded by the light. Just a moment ago everything had been quiet and peaceful and Vesemir had been there, soothing his pain and murmuring comforting words. Now his body was racked with pain and fever and he couldn't see clearly.
“Vesemir! Don't go!” he croaked, but his mentor's face faded and was replaced by another's face.
“Geralt?”
Geralt searched his mind for a name. He realised that the brightness from before had dimmed, it was almost dark around him, the air only illuminated by the flickering light of a nearby fire.
“Jaskier?” he asked, grabbing for the man's shoulder. The bard. The bard had come to his aid after he had slain the basilisks. Or hadn't he? Had he only imagined it? Where was Roach? How much time had gone by?
Jaskier's face faded, just like Vesemir's had, changing to something else. Someone else’s face he knew, but couldn't remember whom it belonged to. An evil grin and malicious eyes stared at him close up.
“Who are you?” He could feel the malevolence radiating from the man like a foul smell.
The man opened his mouth for a reply, but instead of words tiny black scorpions poured out of it. His spiteful laughter filled Geralt's ears.
Geralt shot up, despite the pain from the movement that ripped through him like a bolt of lighting. Grabbing the man's throat, he put all his strength into his hands, choking the other as hard as he could.
The man's face blurred, changed again, but Geralt held on tight. Whoever it was, he was sure the man was here to kill him, taking advantage of the Wichter's deteriorating health.
His counterpart fought back and a kick against his chest finally prompted him to let go of the other's throat. The pain the blow to his injured chest had caused was unbearable and Geralt nearly blacked out. Panting for breath, he lay on his back, momentarily immobilised. He knew if he didn't get up immediately, the other man would kill him. Man or monster, Geralt thought, because he wasn't sure any more if the face had looked human at all. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadow fall over him, and without hesitation he bent his knees and kicked out, bringing it down with a yelp.
Quickly, he scanned the area around him. To his right was a fire, illuminating the dark forest that encircled them. Things he couldn't remember having seen before were scattered on the forest floor, and neither Roach nor the bard were there. His silver sword lay within his reach, and he grabbed it. With difficulty, he sat up. Movement to his left made him turn his upper body, bringing the sword in front of him.
“No, stop it, it's me!” the bard cried, staring at Geralt. “Drop the sword and for Melitele's sake lay down, you're bleeding like a butchered boar!”
Geralt scrutinized Jaskier. He looked like the bard and spoke like the bard, but Geralt knew that dopplers were not the only shapeshifters who could deceive with their appearance. There were others like aguaras, and he had even seen mages casting spells to make themselves look different. He looked around, still firmly grasping his sword. There was no one else here besides them, but he could see yellow eyes blinking in the dark forest. Other monsters were waiting for him in the dark, waiting to attack him as soon as his attention weakened.
“Where's the sorcerer?” he asked, turning his gaze to Jaskier. Or whoever it was that looked like the bard.
“There's no one here, just you and me,” the bard replied.
A horse whickered, and Geralt bobbed his head. Roach was nowhere in sight. “Where is Roach?”
“What?” Jaskier said.
Geralt stared at the bard. He saw flickers of fear and unease flash in the dark eyes, and he could smell fear and blood and something else. Something, that was definitely not how Jaskier smelled. His gaze dropped and only now did he see the weapon in the other's hand. He had no idea how he could have failed to notice this but attributed his lack of attention to his weakened health condition. With a roar, he launched himself on the other.
The being who had impersonated Jaskier shrieked and fought back violently, but even in his weakened state of health the other was no real match for Geralt. With a twist of his arm he had disarmed the imposter and held him pinned to the ground with his knees. He raised his sword to pierce the shapeshifter's heart but froze when he heard Roach whicker again. Again, he searched the periphery of the small clearing, but he only saw dark shadows crawling out of the forest towards him. The sorcerer or shapeshifter or whatever it was he held pinned underneath him must have called his underlings.
“Geralt!” the bard cried. “Geralt!”
Geralt whipped round his head, searching for the caller. Where are you?
Roach whickered again.
He reached for his amulet and wondered why it had been quiet all the time while he was surrounded by monsters and magic. His hand closed around … nothing. Geralt patted down his chest, but his amulet was gone. Stolen by whoever had come to kill him. His gaze returned to the man beneath him.
The monster now reared its ugly face, baring its teeth and showing its fangs, the face twisted into a devilishly grimace. With a forceful blow to its head, Geralt knocked it unconscious. Then he rose to face the shadows closing in on him from all sides.
He slashed and hacked but it seemed the more he exerted himself, the more monsters showed up. One of them suddenly attacked him from behind, jumping on his back and clinging to his arms so he couldn't move them any more. He dropped his sword and tried to get rid of the monster and finally succeeded when he got hold of its head and tossed it away from him.
Even though the impact must have been hard, the thing immediately sprang to its feet again and ran away. Geralt turned around, looking for more attackers. They were all gone. He was alone. His knees buckled and his head started spinning and agonising pain hit him like a bludgeon strike. The last thing he saw before darkness enveloped him was the forest floor approaching him fast.
*******
Geralt woke. He felt like he was crawling up from a deep, dark abyss and the process of waking was long and strenuous, but once his mind was clear enough that he knew he was awake, he remembered. He registered a dull throb of pain in his chest and a tiredness in his bones, but otherwise he felt not too bad.
Geralt opened his eyes and looked around. It was bright and he could see the sun twinkling through the treetops at the edge of the small clearing. He sat up, hissing when the movement caused a stab of pain. Propping himself up against the wall of rock in his back, he let his gaze wander. Roach stood to his left, nibbling on some brush. She had been relieved of the saddle and bridle and was tied with a rope around her neck to a nearby tree. She looked up and snorted at him by way of greeting, before resuming with her grazing.
In front of his feet was a campfire that had gone out, although small wisps of smoke still rose from the embers. Beside the fireplace lay his saddlebags and a heap of things. Vials, clothes, tins, a bowl. He immediately recognised them as his belongings, thrown together carelessly. Finally, to his right, away from the fire at the edge of the woods, he spotted Jaskier, curled up and sleeping in the grass.
Geralt let out a sigh of relief. So he had not imagined that the bard had come to his aid, and neither Roach nor Jaskier had been harmed or killed when the monsters had attacked in the night. Thinking of how he had fended off the sorcerer or doppler or whatever it had been, and his companions, Geralt frowned. His hand came up to reach for his amulet and he was surprised to find it there. He looked down to take a closer look, only to realise it was indeed his amulet, not a counterfeit. His gaze returned to Jaskier and he took a moment to pick up on the bard's heartbeat, smell and even breathing.
The heartbeat was a bit uneven, the breathing was a tad too laboured, the smell was a mite different than usual, but none of it was worrisome yet and so Geralt turned his attention to his own body.
He palpated his chest, shoulder and neck where the basilisk's claws had ripped open his skin. It hurt, but it didn't feel inflamed or festering. He felt the scratch on his cheek from the basilisk's venomous beak and a bump on the back of his head, and a few bruises and scratches he couldn't remember getting. Probably from his fight in the night against the horde of dark creatures. His mind was still dazed from the aftereffects of the venom that had poisoned his veins, but the venom itself had been removed from his circulation. Whatever the bard had done or given to him, it had been the right thing.
“Geralt! You're awake! Seeing you sitting upright is definitely a sight for sore eyes, I had already started to worry you would never wake up!”
Apparently, the bard had been roused from his slumber while Geralt had taken stock of himself and was making his way over to where the Witcher sat. Geralt turned his head to the approaching man and froze.
“How do you feel? Has the venom worn off? Are you still feverish? I wasn't sure...” Jaskier, now standing in front of Geralt, trailed off. “What? What is it? Geralt? Why are you looking at me so strangely?” He dropped down on his knees, grabbing for Geralt's shoulder. “Are you having a hallucination?”
“What happened to you?” Geralt rasped, still staring at Jaskier.
“Uh? What-- What do you... Oh! You mean, err...” Jaskier made a vague gesture towards his face. “That's nothing, really, that's-- it's...” Again, he trailed off.
“Is this from the raid in the night? The fight against the monsters?”
“The monsters? Yes! Yes, right, the monsters. When you fought the monsters, that's where this.. thing... happened,” Jaskier replied, a bit too eager, his voice a tad too high-pitched even for a bard.
Geralt frowned. Why had he spoken of monsters when he had asked Jaskier about the attack and his fight against them? As a witcher, he could name every monster, mutant, magical being and mystical entity that inhabited the continent, and some more who no longer walked this earth. And yet he could only think of the shadows he had fought as monsters? There was something mismatched in his train of thought, but Geralt couldn't grasp where the error was in his logic.
“What kind of monsters were they? And where were you and Roach when they attacked? I didn't see either of you, though I think I heard you call.”
“Err, well, we, that is I, I was--. Well, I untied Roach and she fled, I was afraid she would be harmed by them if I kept her tied up.”
Geralt quickly scanned the small clearing before his eyes returned to Jaskier. The bard tried very hard to shy away from the Witcher's look but wasn't doing a good job of it. Studying the cuts and bruises on Jaskier's face and neck, and the trails of dried blood on his shirt, Geralt quickly started connecting the dots.
He knew he had woken up sometime in the night and had fought hard against an unknown foe, and yet there were no hints of extensive fighting at the camp. He remembered he had seen Triss appear at the forest’s edge to give him a warning, and Jaskier had panicked about the potions and herbs and whatnot, and then Vesemir had come to him. Vesemir had healed him, eased his pain, had kept him from the jaws of death when all Geralt had wanted to do was give in and follow the call. And then another foe from another time had shown up with his underlings, but all Geralt had seen was faceless shadows. He couldn't even visualise the face of what he had thought to be a sorcerer. The only face he could see clearly before his mind's eyes if he recalled the night's events, was the bard's.
It dawned on him that neither Triss nor Vesemir could have been real, nor were all the other creatures he had seen at night. He had been delirious and had hallucinated. The only one who had been there with him in the forest, who had eased his pain and had relentlessly uttered soothing words so he would not lose his touch with this world, was Jaskier.
“There were never any monsters, right?” he asked quietly.
Jaskier fidgeted under the Witcher's stare but didn't answer.
“I am the monster. I inflicted all this onto you. You tried to help and keep me alive and in my delirious mind I thought you were an enemy I needed to kill. I hurt you.”
“Yeah, well, right. And thank the gods you were weakened, injured, feverish and delirious, otherwise I guess I wouldn't have lasted even a minute. I mean look at you! Even half dead you've more strength in these admittedly very sexy muscular arms than I would ever be able to attain in my life! But, in your defence, you were delirious and not quite right in your head and you didn't know what you were doing. So, I'm not angry with you. Maybe a little, but, erm--.”
“I told you to never follow me when I'm doing my work! It's too dangerous for you in more ways than one as I’ve told you time and time again! And yet, here you are,” Geralt growled, glowering at Jaskier. “Damn it, Jaskier, why can you never do as you're told?”
“I, err, what?” Jaskier stuttered. “Are you seriously lecturing me now for saving your life? You would have died back in that cave if I hadn't come to drag you out and pour all these witchery potions into you!” Jaskier shouted back. “And bandaged your wounds and held your hand while you tossed and turned and muttered nonsense! Can you not, just once, say thank you, well done bard, you saved my life and I'm very grateful for it!”
Geralt pushed himself up, swaying a little because the movement made him dizzy. “No!” he barked at the bard. “It could have cost you your life! There's a reason I laid down rules if this arrangement is supposed to work between you and me.”
Jaskier rose. “Oh, fine, great! Have a go at the bard because he saved your life. Obviously that's all the great Geralt of Rivia can do, shout at people and dismiss them whenever it pleases him. You're such a narcissistic, unrefined, ignorant....” Jaskier's mouth moved, but he seemingly couldn't come up with more appropriate words. “Butcher!” he finally shouted.
Scowling at Jaskier, Geralt pushed past him to where his belongings lay. He knew lashing out at the bard was inexcusable and unjust, but he needed to vent the anger he felt at himself. He could just as easily have killed the bard in his delirium without knowing it, and he knew he would never have been able to live with that fact. Unmerited fortune had smiled on him in a way that had allowed Jaskier to be able to defend himself so far that he was only harmed and injured, and not lying dead on the ground with a slit throat or split head.
Growling like an angry wolf he searched his things until he had found what he had been looking for.
He turned, only to find the bard standing directly behind him, hands on his hip and seemingly on the brink of tapping his foot like an angry child. “I'm so done with you and your sour expression and your--”
Geralt reached for Jaskier's throat, carefully pushing the shirt collar to the side, his gesture silencing the bard. “May I?”
“Erghmphf,” Jaskier stuttered. “What--?”
Geralt could feel how the bard stiffened under his touch, clearly uncertain about what the Witcher would do. “This salve will help heal the bruises and sooth the pain in your throat,” he said, holding up a small jar, all the while studying the violet strangulation marks on Jaskier's neck. “I'm sorry,” he said and started to put salve on the skin, noticing how the bard flinched ever so slightly with every touch.
“I was created for a single purpose. To fight and to kill. If there had ever been another purpose in my life when I was a young child, it was swept away by my destiny to become a witcher. Fighting and killing has become so ingrained, it's basically reflexive and hard to suppress.” He closed the jar and took a step back. “It's all I can do and what I am. But I never intended to hurt you.”
“Right. Well. Yeah, I guess I should have known. There's a reason it's so easy for me to convince townsfolk up and down the country that you'll always come back to claim your money. I've composed enough pieces of music about your epic battles against all evil that I should know how dangerous and deadly you are. Even if you're half dead. Especially if you're half dead and delirious and without a clear picture of who's friend or foe. And yet, here we are. Lesson learned though, I'd say.” Jaskier looked Geralt up and down assessingly.
“I can stitch this up,” Geralt said, pointing to Jaskier's temple where a gash ruined the bard's smooth face. Vaguely he recalled having hit what he thought was a doppler with the pommel of his sword. In hindsight, he really appreciated his decision to knock the foe unconscious instead of instantly killing him. “It will heal poorly and leave a nasty scar if you leave it untreated. The courtly invitations will recede significantly, as will the court ladies' invitations to their beds. A scar would be a real shame, what with your handsome face and all. Just saying.”
Geralt crouched down to rummage through his belongings again.
Jaskier was speechless for a moment. “Are you making fun of me or was this an attempt at being funny? I'm just asking, because with your sour expression and bone-dry nature it's hard to tell.”
Geralt grunted.
“Ah, yes, fine. We're back to grunting, that's kind of comforting, because it's so much more your usual self. In the light of this I guess it's safe to assume that the venom has worn off and you are more or less your usual grumpy self? So, can we then go back to town? Because there are some dangers out there in the forest I don't want to encounter again. There was a wild boar that scared the shit out of me and Roach, sounding like a pack of ghouls when it broke through the underbrush, causing Roach to rear and flee. It took me a while to calm her and lead her back after I scared the boar off. And I'm starting to get really hungry and you've nothing edible in your saddlebags. I looked. Repeatedly.”
Geralt smiled to himself, his back towards Jaskier. Somehow, the bard's chatter had a soothing effect on him even though he would never admit it, least of all to the bard. And he would need to have a serious talk with Jaskier once they were back. There was a reason why he had laid down rules and told Jaskier to never follow him to a fight, and a wild boar hadn't even been on his list of all the things that could happen to the bard. Especially if he was out cold and unable to protect him.
“I'll saddle Roach,” he grunted, grabbing the vial he was looking for and downing its content in one gulp. He needed to stock up his potions, and he would have to look for ingredients as soon as they were back in town. The alderman owed him money for slaying the basilisks, and it would be enough to buy what he needed to make new potions and mixtures. And he would send and pay for a healer, it was the least he could do for the bard after nearly killing him for his efforts. Even if Jaskier had just sustained cuts and bruises, there might be hidden injuries even the bard had not yet registered. He would not risk causing more harm to him than he already had.
He started gathering up his things to stow them away when the bard spoke again.
“Two things, Geralt. Eh!” Jaskier interrupted himself. “Three, actually. The basilisks. Why were there two, didn't you always say they hunt alone? And how exactly did you manage to kill them both and how does their venom work? I mean, apart from what I've seen, but how did you experience it, the pain, the delusions?”
Geralt turned to look at Jaskier, not quite believing his eyes.
The bard looked at him expectantly. He had his notepad supported on his left forearm and the small inkpot between his fingers. His right hand held the quill, ready to write down whatever the Witcher had to say or was willing to share.
Where in the world had Jaskier conjured up his writing tools?
“Secondly, what exactly did you mean when you said there might have been another purpose in your life when you were younger, before you became a witcher. What's the story behind this? Boy, human, witcher, you know what I mean. What did you really want to become when you were a child and how do witchers come into existence at all?”
Geralt rose. And glowered. And started to have second thoughts about his pangs of conscience for having fought and hurt Jaskier. He could even feel a headache starting to build at the back of his head. “You should be happy you made it out alive. Sing about that,” he grunted.
“Vesemir,” Jaskier replied, pointing at Geralt with the tip of his quill. “You talked a lot about him in your febrile delirium. And you had a great conversation with him. Who exactly is he and what's your relation to him? Is he some Grand Master of the Witchers? You never mentioned him before but it sounded--”
“Stop it!” Geralt interrupted Jaskier's stream of words, pinching his nose. “Otherwise I might start to regret that...” He trailed off, darting a meaningful look at Jaskier.
“Oh no. You're not getting away that easily,” Jaskier replied. “You owe me!”
Geralt heaved a sigh. This was going to be a long ride back to town, and probably an even longer evening and night, once they were back. Or, knowing the bard, a week.
But Jaskier was right. Geralt owed him. Telling him a little bit of his past and his relationship with Vesemir was a cheap price he was willing to pay, considering that he had very nearly killed his friend.
And he owed him for the fact that Jaskier had come to look for him in the first place and therefore risked his life. He would be dead now if the bard had not found him and given him the antidote and patched him up. Geralt could not remember anyone ever doing this for him before. Bothered about his non-appearance and caring enough for the Witcher to put Geralt's life over his own.
“All right,” Geralt grumbled. “You can ask me on our way back to town and I'll even let you ride on Roach with me. That should pay off any debts I have and be redemption enough for what I did to you. We will be square then.”
Jaskier's face lit up, a big grin lifting the corners of his mouth and his eyes sparkled with mirth.
And this, Geralt realised, this sight was worth any penance he might have to do.
He almost couldn't remember how his life had been before the bard had forced his way into it. And for the first time in his long life he thought that the Witcher life that had been forced on him might not only be all bad, but might also hold something good for him.