Chapter Text
Jaskier doesn’t realize that he’s stopped breathing until the last of his air runs out.
Cintra. Fallen.
The implications of that are staggering. Jaskier’s no politician or social analyst, but he pays attention to the world, and he knows enough that he can watch all the puzzle pieces fall into place in his head in a matter of seconds. Cintra falls. The North has no more key defenses. Nilfgaard takes their resources, sets up more strongholds within Cintra’s tactical defenses, gets a foothold that will be near-impossible to remove them from. They branch out. The North falls. Nobody can stop it.
The sudden cacophony of noise around him does nothing to help his state of mind. Jaskier is caught up in his shock, his disbelief, but he dimly recognizes the presence of his friends on either side of him. He recognizes the panic in the voices of the crowd. He recognizes the frantic movements of the people. He recognizes their fear.
Some part of his brain, the part that runs on autopilot to regurgitate his Oxenfurt lessons and make unwarranted poetic comments, says, this is the place you’re meant to be. This is what it’s about, isn’t it? Being a historian? Being amongst the people in the midst of change?
It’s Justyna who recovers first. Jaskier feels her hand on her arm, firm, grounding, and then she’s pulling him and Kacper away from the bar, saying something that he can’t hear over the noise of the room. He breathes in and lets out a shaky breath, focuses on the touch of Justyna’s hand on his elbow. The world is in focus again.
Fuck. Cintra’s fallen.
“—back to Oxenfurt,” Justyna is saying, as she gets the three of them through the door of the tavern. The messenger has long since departed, rushing from door to door, calling the news like it’s the end of the world. It might be, in some senses. In all senses. How much can remain the same, when war has overtaken the whole Continent? Bursts of shock and panic erupt, one by one, as the messenger makes his way down the street. Jaskier can hear when he’s delivered the news to a new group of people by the way the clamor of the street is tinged by new fear, high and strung-out.
“Good idea,” Jaskier says, collecting himself. His breath still shakes. “Get more information.”
Kacper, to Justyna’s other side, looks utterly shocked. Jaskier’s been caught up by the enormity of what’s just happened, but Kacper—Kacper looks afraid, truly and properly, as if the earth has dropped out from under him. It’s not Jaskier’s emotion, but he understands. He thinks Kacper probably won’t be talking for a bit.
They make their way silently back to the university: Jaskier and Justyna in grave quiet, Kacper held by something like shell shock. The chaos culminates as they reach the university, the center of the city. The streets are fraught with panicked people, frenzied discussion of what this means, of what’s to come, of Cintra, fallen—
He doesn’t sleep that night. No, Jaskier finds himself seated in a hall full of Oxenfurt professors, discussing the political situation with an air to the room that’s too tightly-strung to truly be calm. It’s understandable. Quite understandable. The world has just turned on its head.
And that’s what it is, isn’t it? There’s fear, of course, that Nilfgaard will reach them in Redania, because they will reach them in Redania if they’ve taken Cintra; but there’s still Brugge and Temeria and the Brokilon forest between Nilfgaard and them, so that’s not what has really shaken the people. It’s the stalwart faith that Cintra had been unshakeable. The jewel of the North, it was. Unbeatable. Unbreakable. Ruled by a lioness. For Cintra to fall—suddenly, the rules of the world are less solid. The world is less solid. How does the mind restructure itself when something so fundamental is so suddenly ripped away?
Kacper does not speak, through the meeting. Justyna has comments to make (she’s thought about this before, Jaskier thinks, she’d had doubts, she was more prepared), and Jaskier could speak, if he wanted, but he has nothing to add that is not already said. Besides, he is a guest here. He stays quiet, and sits on one side of Kacper, with Justyna on the other, and grasps tight at the thread of solidarity among the people there. He worries blithely about Kacper, but there’s nothing really that he can do. He can’t restore Cintra. If this were some heartbreak, some moment of grief, Jaskier would hold his friend’s hand, but he does not think that this is the kind of emotion that warrants that kind of comfort.
All that is established in the discussion are things that are rather obvious. Things that can be extrapolated from the minimal information that they have. Cintra has fallen. Nilfgaard now has a foothold in the North. Nilfgaard has a larger, stronger force than the tacticians had anticipated, if they were able to break through Cintra. Nilfgaard truly intends to invade the rest of the North. Nilfgaard has the means to do it. Redania does not have the benefit of strongholds, as Cintra did—Oxenfurt does not have any defenses, and they must start thinking about places to store the books, to save the books, so that they are not destroyed when Nilfgaard inevitably reaches them—and the remaining Northern countries will have to unite if they don’t wish to be destroyed, because Nilfgaard has proven that they have the force to demolish all of them individually.
Jaskier hears a hint of despair in the voice of the language professor who says that the North could be defended, if only the Northern kingdoms agreed to unity. It’s a simple conclusion to come to, in a room of well-educated people, but Melitele knows that collaboration between kings is anything but simple.
Nothing much more is done. The morning dawns. Jaskier follows Justyna to find food—Kacper is regaining whatever senses he’d lost, now, and he’s offering small, spiteful inputs on the state of the world that Jaskier has heard at least twice over at the meeting—and then they all sit in Justyna’s rooms, around a fire to beat back the early spring chill, with pastries that are just stale enough to be unpleasant. It’s almost like their university years again.
They fall back into silence in the morning hours. It must be nearing nine by now. Jaskier can only think that if Cintra’s fallen, that means Calanthe is dead.
It seems impossible. Calanthe is a force of nature, so far as Jaskier is concerned; and while he’d sort of hoped he’d never have to meet her and face her fury again, he hadn’t meant it like this. Calanthe’s death is wrong in the same way that the fall of Cintra is. Jaskier had met her, seen her, looked her in the eyes, and still she seemed immortal to him. Stronger than mere armies, at the least. The stories had done her no disservices, nor any services that she hadn’t deserved. Calanthe had fought tooth and nail for her kingdom, for her reputation: it’s unsettling to know that she’s dead.
Lioness, indeed.
He’s reminded of the cub she’d been so insistent on protecting. Pavetta had been lost, of course, but princess Cirilla had survived; had she survived the fall of her kingdom? The chances must be infinitesimal. Jaskier imagines, in a flash, a young, lost girl, blonde like her mother and desperate the way Pavetta had looked when she’d thought her love would be lost.
“No news of the princess, is there?” he wonders, blithely, to the fire.
“Too early for that,” Justyna says. She’s been worrying the hem of her blouse between her fingers for almost half an hour now, and she’d been doing it at the meeting, as well. They’re all still in yesterday’s clothes. “We’ve only barely gotten the news that things have fallen. We won’t know anything politically important for weeks to come.”
“Probably dead,” Kacper says, and his voice sounds insensitive and hollow, but when Jaskier looks over, his eyes are trained on the fire with a distinct sort of aching expression. Kacper’s never been prone to flights of poetic empathy as Jaskier is (which is what had made him so fun when they were younger, brash and charming and different from the poetic waifs that Jaskier found himself associating with), and so Jaskier knows he doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s only thinking of the princess as a figure, not as a person.
Jaskier knows the face of the princess’ mother too well not to imagine young Cirilla now, resembling Pavetta and a man that isn’t a hedgehog. There’s an image of what the child looks like in his mind, and he hopes that if she’s managed, somehow, to escape, that she’s safe.
There’s not much to be done in the next day, either. Jaskier goes out on his own for a bit. It’s not a tour of the city, as he’d thought it might be when he was approaching through the snows, anticipating warm food and warm beds and a nice time in the city that he’d loved when he was younger; no, it’s an assessment, now. Of the people. Of himself. Of the state of things.
Rather bleak, he finds, on all accounts.
He sees a child clutching to their mother’s skirts as he passes through another city street, and he hears the small-voiced, “Mama, why are people scared? What’s happened?” and the answering, “Don’t worry, dear heart. We’ll be alright. It’ll be alright,” with startling clarity. It feels like a punch to the gut. Jaskier has always hated seeing people in pain.
It’s worse for those further south, he knows. There are people suffering horribly, right now. Refugees. Dying children. He tries to quell a wave of nausea as he continues down the street.
Somewhere in the midst of all of it, keeping the pulse of the people, some unconscious part of his brain finds the time to remember Geralt, out there somewhere in the world. Maybe near Cintra. Maybe caught up with his child surprise. Maybe dead. Maybe dead alongside the princess. Jaskier is too numb to his own personal affairs, at the moment, to truly worry, but it makes him feel sick to the stomach to think of. If Calanthe is dead, any number of things are possible. And hasn’t Geralt always been honorable? Tried to protect those who need protecting?
Jaskier pauses to look to the sky, though he’s never been a believer of anything in particular, and wish fervently that his friend (or less than a friend, now) is not dead. He very carefully does not let his twisted mess of feelings coalesce into anything more disastrous. He can’t be mourning a man who’s not dead. He can’t be mourning a man who wouldn’t mourn him.
Fuck. Wrong thought. He would… fuck, Geralt would mourn him, wouldn’t he? He’s not so hard-hearted not to care at all , and Jaskier is… Jaskier is annoying, but he’s a good person, he’s kind, he’d traveled with Geralt a long time, there’s got to be compassion there. Geralt hadn’t wanted him around, but… fuck. Jaskier feels tears well up in his eyes, and he puts his sleeve to the corner of his eye to quell them. No use crying, Jaskier. No use crying. You’ve been through it all before.
He wonders, with a sudden wrenching of his heart, if Geralt is worried about him at all, with the increasing disaster of the Continent. Jaskier’s a traveler too, after all. He could very well have been in Cintra. He wonders if that’s even occurred to Geralt, the awful, rubbish, selfish man.
No use thinking about it, he tells himself. No use thinking about it. He’s not going to get anything new or anything useful out of those thoughts. Better to find something to eat. Find somewhere to sleep. Focus on living.
When sunset approaches, Jaskier finds his feet on the path back to Justyna’s; not because he feels particularly tethered to anywhere or anyone in particular, he never has (lie, lie, lie), but because he thinks his friends might like his presence in this time of tumult. Kacper’s found his way back, as well, and they eat dinner together, and conversation works its way between the three of them until things start to feel alive again. Jaskier speaks about the disarray of the people. It’s just like all the wartime stories he’s read: humanity, if nothing else, is incredibly consistent. Justyna tells them that there’s been an initiative within the university to contact the crown, to advocate for cooperation between the northern kingdoms, and that they’re going to continue with spring classes as promised, with prospects of building their own defenses.
It seems grim, to Jaskier, for an educational institution to be building wartime defenses. Like it defeats the point of having a space to learn and grow to begin with.
Kacper, for his part, says that a good part of his friends are going to be heading further north. There’s a strange bitterness to his voice when he says it, and knowing Kacper, Jaskier can’t decide whether he’s loathe to be left by them or whether he thinks them cowardly for fleeing. Maybe both. Either way, Jaskier doesn’t blame Kacper’s peers. They’re only going to where they think there’ll be safety. It’s only human.
“I’m glad you’ll be staying, at the least,” Justyna says, later, as Jaskier takes a bite of sweetbread. “You can take care of yourself, I know, but… I certainly feel better knowing you’re not in the south, so close to the Nilfgaardian warpath.” She reaches over the table to place a hand over Jaskier’s and smiles wistfully. Jaskier, under the comfort of knowing that people do care for him, do worry for him, feels suddenly and immensely guilty. “I know you’ve the soul of a traveler, but you’ll be safer here than off on your own somewhere.”
He doesn’t say that the thought of staying stagnant and safe while others are in danger makes his skin crawl. She deserves a peaceful state of mind, at least in this regard, at least for tonight.
He thinks of Essi, then, and feels all the guiltier for not thinking of her earlier. Shallow, Jaskier, worrying over the man who doesn’t even care for you without a thought for your dear friend. With a moment to collect himself, he remembers logically that Essi had known not to go south, and that she is not so intimately connected to the political situation in Cintra, as Geralt is. It’s sensible not to worry so much for her. His logic does nothing to sate the growing miasma of guilt in the pit of his stomach.
Jaskier goes home with Kacper that night, and sleeps in his friend’s bed with him, as they had when they were young, and he thinks it’s probably a comfort for the both of them. It’s been a long time since he shared a bed with someone familiar, someone he cared about. There’s a simple comfort and intimacy to sleeping next to someone you love.
“I don’t know if I’m going to stay anymore,” he tells Kacper, in the morning, when they’re lying quietly in the beam of sunlight that falls over Kacper’s bed. It’s a nicer place than he’d had when they were students, poor and scrappy and living in tiny, dark rooms. Jaskier had always preferred staying in others’ spaces: it’s easier to compose, in a room that’s not your own, in a room that still holds wonder and new sights and fresh inspiration. There’s a poeticism to the living spaces of other people that Jaskier has always enjoyed (especially now that he has none of his own). “It seemed a good plan when I was traveling, something to moor me somewhere. The whole world’s been unmoored, now, it seems. I’m not sure that this is what’s best. For me or for anyone.”
Kacper turns onto his side to frown at him, one cheek pressed into the pillow. He looks exactly as he had when they were students. He looks nothing like himself. Jaskier wonders with a kind of hysteria how much people change over time, how much war changes them, what kind of toll life takes on people to leave them so similar to themselves and so different all at once.
He doesn’t look pleased with Jaskier’s declaration, certainly, but Jaskier can tell that there’s worry, under the crust of his displeasure. “Don’t leave, Jaskier,” he says, brows furrowed together. “It’s not going to be any safer anywhere else. You know that.”
“It’s not about safety,” Jaskier tells him, and fixes his gaze back on the window with a sigh. “It’s about the world being thrown into disarray, and me just sitting at my old college with a cushy little teaching job. Don’t you feel unsettled by all the stagnancy?”
“No,” Kacper says, with an odd air of disdain. “Justyna was right, you’re better off somewhere stable, with a few kingdoms between you and the conflict. Where would you even go, Jaskier? Getting further north won’t spare you but for time, and going south is a fucking death wish right now. You know they’ll advance soon.”
Jaskier frowns at a chip in the wood of the window frame. The question of where he would go, at least, is a decent one. He doesn’t bother listening to the rest of Kacper’s statements, probably because they’re sensible, and he doesn’t like that. It’s not sensible for him to be running around, right now, but Jaskier’s not in the business of being sensible. He’s in the business of being out there, in the world, knowing what’s going on, living alongside other people. He can’t just settle down now that there’s war. It only feels more important to keep moving.
“Jaskier,” Kacper calls, and Jaskier feels a thumb brush against the jut of his jaw. He turns obligingly to look at his friend, though his growing frustration tenses his body and tightens his expression. All the displeasure has bled out of Kacper’s face and his voice, leaving only a heart-wrenching kind of worry. “You might die if you run head-first into a war, don’t you know that? How can I condone you going off to your own death?”
Jaskier clenches his jaw and tries not to look guilty.
Kacper frowns when he doesn’t answer, but it’s not frustrated. Just sad. It’s far worse. “Stay for a week. Just a week, Jaskier. And then—fuck, I can’t stop you leaving, can I, but maybe you’ll see it’s fine after all, and—fuck. I don’t know. A week. At least until we have some more information on the Nilfgaard situation.”
Jaskier lets the silence hang in the air for a moment. He doesn’t really care about Kacper’s reasoning, but the look on his face has a grip around Jaskier’s heartstrings that he doesn’t think he’ll be able to pry away. The man looks crushed, and god— fuck— is it really so bad for Jaskier to be wanted somewhere? For him to prioritize the people who actually care about him? Geralt would never say a fucking word about keeping him safe from war. Geralt kept him away from battles only because he would get in the way. Geralt probably wouldn’t give a fuck if Jaskier died now. Easier to keep him away, right?
A tiny voice in his head says that Geralt did care, if only in a way that was subdued. He’d taken Jaskier to Yennefer, hadn’t he? He’d shouldered Jaskier’s panic and made sure that he survived, even if he was a dick who thought with his dick and managed to totally derail his priorities by the end of the experience. Jaskier pushes the voice away. It’s his right to be overdramatic. Especially in times of war. When fucking Calanthe is dead.
Kacper wants him to stay. Justyna wants him to stay. Jaskier won’t be happy here. He will be wanted.
“Fine,” he says, and lets his frustration seep out of him alongside any of the good humor he’d collected since his departure from Geralt. “A week.”
And he does stay for that week. And in that week, more news comes in: the size of Nilfgaard’s forces, their occupation of Cintra, the systemic destruction of refugee camps in the area. Everything is appropriately vague, for information that’s being passed on from a conflict zone. All of the Oxenfurt contemporaries are appropriately horrified. Jaskier feels increasingly sick to his stomach every day that he stays in this safe, cushioned place.
Justyna and Kacper, for all their virtues, are not always available, and sometimes Jaskier finds that he doesn’t want to see them even when he can. He thinks he’s starting to project some of his frustration onto them. That saddens him—he doesn’t want to make his friends the object of his frustrations when he’s the one perpetuating them. And so the week ends. And he kisses Justyna. And he kisses Kacper. And he gently but firmly shuts them down when they protest his leaving (though Kacper seems more sedate, as if he understands). And then he leaves.
He’s been thinking about where to go, since Kacper’s question. There’s a few options. Into the war zone, if he was daring, if he wanted to write gritty, raw songs about being in the heart of the war. Far into the North, if he was worried about himself, if he wanted the promise of some salvation, maybe if he wanted to try and get the kings of the North to unite against the invading southern force. He doesn’t really want any of those things. There is another option, though; the Great Oak Blaobheris, the druid’s seat of friendship, where there will be people from all across the continent with all different opinions and backgrounds and knowledge about the war, and that will be better. Oxenfurt, for all its charm, is the seat of academia in the continent, and is therefore removed from it. The Great Oak Blaobheris will be better. Jaskier will be among the people. He will be closer to the conflict, closer to understanding. He will not be so removed from the world. It will be better.
So he leaves. He hopes that Essi is somewhere safe. He hopes that she’s doing something that fulfills her.