Chapter Text
When Jaskier was very young - many years before he ever went by that name, when he was only known as Julian - his mother would tell him a story each night before bed.
He’d loved those stories, every one, even if he didn’t always understand them.
Like the one about the mermaid who died of a broken heart. Who gave up so much for a man who would never love her back, who made great sacrifices for that prince, who lost her voice and eventually her life.
“Why didn’t she just find someone else?” he had always asked, feeling a sort of confusing sadness as his mother tucked the blankets in around him. “Seems silly to follow the prince around on hurting legs when he won’t even love her back.”
“Love can be complicated, darling,” she would reply, kissing the top of his head before moving to blow out the candle beside the bed.
“He could try harder, if he wanted to,” he’d speak matter-of-factly to the darkness, and hear his mother chuckle quietly.
“It’s not that simple, and that might be one of life’s great tragedies.”
His mother was a very smart woman.
Unfortunately.
A few decades on, and Jaskier can’t help but think he understands that mermaid quite well, as he follows a man on stiff, achey legs, trudging through mud often well past his knees, and wondering, distantly, why fate couldn’t have saddled him with someone who was generally less interested in hunting monsters in swamps.
But he isn’t entirely like that mermaid. He won’t be giving up his voice for anyone. That’s a damned certainty.
And certainly won’t be losing his life. He trusts Geralt with that quite handily. The mermaid couldn’t say the same.
Maybe love wasn’t really that complicated.
Just a bit of a bitch.
“Alright back there?” Geralt’s low voice drifts back towards him, although the witcher doesn’t turn around. His sword is drawn, and Jaskier can imagine bright yellow eyes darting back and forth, vision enhanced with a potion and looking for signs of movement in the murky water.
“Oh yeah, completely fine,” Jaskier pulls his leg out of a particularly awful patch of muck with a terrible squelching noise, and grimaces as more mud slides down the inside of his boot. “I hated these clothes anyway. Can’t wait to burn them later, good riddance.”
He is, in fact, quite fond of the trousers he’s wearing.
Or had been, before they had started this trek.
Oh well. That’s what he gets for wearing his favourite clothes out during monster hunts.
“Someday you’ll learn,” Geralt replies, the slightest trace of a smile tinging his voice. Sometimes he seems pretty adept at reading thoughts, as well, even though that has nothing to do with his witcher senses. “You didn’t have to come.”
“And what? Expect to get the proper details from you later? Not bloody likely.”
A small shrug, a noncommittal grunt, and then they fall back into silence.
For a moment.
“What are we looking for, again?”
“A bloedzuiger.”
Jaskier nods knowingly, despite the fact there’s no one to see it. “Right, right. Of course. And what is that, exactly?”
“Bit like a leech, but pretty big. And it’s got two arms. A lot of teeth.”
“Charming.”
“It’s also got the potential to explode. It’s full of acid, could get a little nasty. If I tell you to run, run.”
“At your word, witcher.”
Jaskier knows it’s dangerous, following his friend on hunts and contracts, never mind on the long, empty roads between distant towns. He also knows he probably wouldn’t do it, if it were any other witcher.
And it’s also more dangerous for Geralt, in a way - having someone else to keep an eye on. But during the few times he didn’t tag along, Jaskier could only ever think of everything that could go wrong, of the witcher alone, and injured, and maybe worse.
So he would run, sometimes, when Geralt told him to. Usually, he did not.
He’s brought out of his wandering thoughts when Geralt stops several paces ahead of him, raises a hand to silently tell the bard to halt. Jaskier nearly trips over a root submerged in the swamp, but manages to keep his balance and then glances around.
There’s a low thrum of noise from the insects around them. A few soft rustles through the low-growing bushes that manage to make such a place home. The occasional croak of a frog.
Seems normal. Unpleasant, but normal.
Jaskier risks another question, voice quiet as he does. “What is it?”
“Something’s off.”
Jaskier nods again, ignores the shiver of unease that passes through him at those words and blames it on near nonexistent wind. “A fair few things are off. The half gallon of mud in my boots, for a start. I -”
“Jaskier,” Geralt’s voice is calm, but urgent. “Back up. Slowly.”
He’d seen why, even as the witcher spoke his warning. The water in front of them is shifting lowly, but from too many directions to be caused by the gentle wind.
He does as told, and makes a conscious effort to step over the tree root that had nearly tripped him up the first time
Except, it isn’t there anymore. His careful footstep doesn’t hit anything until it touches the swamp-bed.
He’s read a fair few books in his time, and had yet to come across any tales of swamp trees that liked to move about on their own.
“Um, Geralt? I think that maybe -”
Something strong and unexpectedly quick wraps itself around his ankle, and Jaskier’s thoughts turn out to be entirely correct when his leg is pulled out from underneath him and he’s suddenly swinging a dozen feet above the water.
He might be screaming, and Geralt might be yelling something, but it’s hard to focus on either of those things when the surface of the swamp, near motionless a moment before, all but explodes in an enormous rush of water. It’s accompanied by a tremendous growl and further mud being flung about as another half-dozen or so tentacles, all similar to the one that’s already holding him, splash out of the water and rush towards the witcher.
It’s hard to tell what’s happening - he’s not exactly being held in a comfortable or even mildly stationary manner - but Jaskier, upside down, catches a glimpse of a flashing sword every couple moments. After the first few seconds of panicked pleas for help, he’s managed to tamp down on the terror, a little bit, and thinks he can wait this one out.
Until the rest of the monster makes it’s appearance, anyway.
There’s another shift in the water, and a huge, hulking mass lifts itself from the murk. It’s lumpy, and brown, and disgusting, and Jaskier can’t see much in the way of any features.
Except for the teeth.
There’s an awfully large mouth, and an awful lot of teeth.
“Geralt!” he would like to think the word just sounds like a warning, but it’s probably more of a harried suggestion to hurry-the-fuck-up when the second syllable of his friend’s name comes out of his mouth as a rather undignified shriek. The monster pulls him closer towards it’s open maw, and the combination of the stench and hot air it’s breathing towards him is revolting.
He’s staring at all those teeth, and thinking distantly, somewhere past the terror, that that might be an important detail for the song that’s bound to come from this. But then again, Geralt’s a ways off, a dozen yards away at least as he’s slicing through tentacles in a frenzy. Jaskier amends his thought slightly, and rather hopes that Geralt will also think to add the addition to a song instead.
Would Geralt even bother to write one? It would be terrible, obviously, but Jaskier hopes he’d still try. It’s the thought that counts, sometimes.
But then he’s suddenly falling, and his thoughts are brought back to the present rather than the theoretical with a painful splash as he hits the water head first.
When Jaskier breaks the surface a moment later, he’s coughing up muddy water and taking no notice of the odd ringing in his ears. He’s in the middle of a fight between flailing, semi-maimed tentacles, attached to an enraged lump of flesh with too many teeth, and a witcher lacking a silver sword.
Geralt is wielding his second blade, the one far less effective against monsters, and paying no mind towards the bard trying to find his footing in the middle of the chaos. All of his focus is on dodging, and hacking, and the occasional burst of Aard or Igni.
There’s a detached, motionless tentacle floating beside Jaskier, several feet long and severed quite cleanly despite the fact it had been raised high in the air.
He stares at it for half a moment longer, then back to Geralt, the witcher down to an inferior weapon because he had thrown his first one to cut through the monster’s appendage before it dropped Jaskier into its waiting mouth.
But he wouldn’t have much of a chance without it.
“Geralt! Your medallion!”
The witcher appears entirely focused on keeping the monster’s attention on him and him alone, but he must have heard Jaskier’s shout, because he takes half a second to pull the silver medallion from his neck, snapping the chain and tossing it towards the bard.
He catches it, by some miracle, and is grasping it tightly with shaky, muddy fingers as he wades his way in the direction the sword must have landed.
The medallion’s magic will sense the runes on the sword, he’ll be able to find it.
He just has to be quick enough.
It’s difficult to focus on the medallion’s tiny vibrations, letting him know whether or not he’s on the right path, when his hand is already trembling for entirely different reasons. It’s difficult to ignore the monster versus witcher fight happening behind him when he’s meant to be retrieving a sword.
But he does it, somehow. Jaskier stops when the vibrations can’t be mistaken for anything else, when he can actually see the medallion moving slightly in his open palm, and he pockets it in favour of using both hands to scour the bottom of the swamp.
A sudden, sharp pain across the tips of his fingers lets him know he’s found his mark, and he doesn’t hesitate as he tightens his grip to hoist the sword out of the water. The resulting, deepened cuts are barely noticeable thanks to the relief he feels at the sight of the silver blade, and he only takes half a moment to grasp the handle instead with his uninjured hand before he’s splashing his way back towards the fight.
“Geralt! Here!”
The witcher, who seems to have been holding his own quite well with the exception of a rather nasty gash above his right eye, is already backing up towards him, and when they’re within arms reach of each other Geralt doesn’t break his rhythm, simultaneously dropping steel with one hand and grabbing silver with the other before he’s renewing his attack on the monster and giving it no choice but to begin a sluggish retreat.
Jaskier, keeping an eye on the - now far less evenly matched - fight, takes a moment to retrieve the other sword instead, with much more care than he had the last one. Once it’s safely in his hand he backs off a ways, sure to stay out of the witcher’s way while he finishes his gory task.
He watches with a strange sort of detachment, the steel blade heavy in his left hand while he feels blood slowly drip off the fingertips on his right. The pain is more noticeable now, and he feels rather nauseous, and his ankle is aching something terrible - and he doesn’t feel it worth acknowledging any of that until he watches Geralt stab his sword into the monster’s flesh a final time.
Once he’s sure that the monster is dead and Geralt is safe - completely, entirely, sure - he promptly turns away and vomits into the filthy water.
When he turns back a few moments later to see the witcher hard at work, sawing monster teeth out of its head with his dagger, his stomach flips uncomfortably again. But he just wipes his mouth on an already thoroughly ruined sleeve and begins the short trek towards his friend, taking more care to favour his injured ankle this time.
“I’m glad you’re alright,” Geralt says as he approaches, placing a bloody tooth in a bag tied to his belt before starting on the next. “Thanks for the help.”
“Wouldn’t have been needed, if you hadn’t helped me first. Thank you, for, you know. That.”
“Of course.” Geralt is still adding teeth to the bag, almost casually, but the sincerity in his tone does something to settle Jaskier’s heart back to a more steady rhythm.
“Geralt?”
“Hmm?”
Jaskier uses the sword still in hand to poke the monster’s body almost cautiously. The flesh is resistant, for a moment, before the blade slides into it with a near horrifying ease and he recoils in disgust. He speaks over Geralt’s low chuckle.
“Have you ever seen a leech before? Because let me tell you, this isn’t fucking it.”
Geralt laughs again, and finally closes the bag and turns away from the monster’s corpse. “The villagers were wrong. It’s a zeugl, not a bloedzuiger.”
“Oh, right. I mean, obviously.”
Geralt holds a hand out for the steel sword, and sheaths it on his back with familiar ease. “It’s strange, they usually show up closer to human settlements, not so far out here in the swamps...”
Jaskier is usually an attentive student when Geralt is explaining the finer points of his trade - there’s usually a lot of good details to fall back on when he needs an extra line here or there for compositions - but his head is feeling a touch foggy, now that it’s quiet again and the only monster in the vicinity is incredibly dead. The witcher’s words sound distant, but he can’t help but notice - with a strange, sharp clarity - the cut above Geralt’s eye continuing to sluggishly ooze blood. Jaskier thinks he should do something, wipe it away maybe, and it’s a strange realization to see his hand already moving to make the gesture before he’s even finished the thought.
But Geralt catches his hand, with reflexes far superior to his own, well before it reaches his face. His grip is firm but gentle as he holds it out for a quick inspection. “You should have said something.”
Jaskier had honestly forgotten about the injury again, somehow, during his short walk over to the dead zeugl. But looking down now, at the deep cuts across the pads of his fingers still dripping blood despite the mud and partial coagulation, the pain flares up anew. His head gives a rather unpleasant spin, and he’s glad there’s nothing left in his stomach to bring up.
And, staring down at his hand, he knows he won’t be playing any instruments anytime soon. “Looks worse than it is, I’m sure it’s nothing.”
But he doesn’t pull his hand away.
Geralt’s other hand is holding his elbow, and Jaskier realizes the swaying sensation he’s feeling might have translated to more than just the inside of his head. The witcher lets go of his bloody hand and instead grips his chin, forcing the bard’s gaze to meet concerned golden eyes.
Jaskier would be a damned liar if he said he’d never imagined a similar scenario before. A distantly similar scenario, anyway, because any daydreams he may or may not have had never involved a disgusting corpse a few feet away, or a swamp as a backdrop, or quite so much blood and muck.
A little blood, maybe. That would make for a better story.
And better clothes, for sure.
Maybe some music? Not his own, but -
“Concussion,” Geralt nods grimly as he lets go of Jaskier’s face, and his scattered thoughts pause as he considers this new information.
“That’s funny,” he says, finally, and doesn’t resist at all as Geralt gently pushes him back in the direction they had come some time before.
“Is it?”
The witcher’s hand stays at his back, most likely at the ready in case he starts swaying again, but Jaskier decides he doesn’t much care why it’s there. He’s just glad that it is.
“Well, just look at you? Near perfectly fine. Maybe better than when you walked in here. And me? The damsel in distress, a right mess and I didn’t even do anything.”
A damsel in distress...maybe a little exaggerated. He was a bit helpful, after all - never mind the fact his help wouldn’t have been necessary if he hadn’t been there in the first place - and he’s not even wearing a dress.
But a lovelorn mermaid...maybe.
Maybe he was that mermaid after all - his foggy mind supplies the thought almost unwillingly, as he looks down at his mangled fingertips. It wasn’t his voice he lost, but it was the next most important thing.
“What are you mumbling about mermaids?” Geralt asks, voice conveying humour and concern both, and Jaskier’s brain slips a little further into alarm when he realises he was speaking aloud.
But, apparently - luckily - not all that clearly.
“Nothing, fuck off. Mind your damned business, witcher.” His voice is completely incapable of providing even the slightest bit of scorn or annoyance. Instead he just sounds tired.
Geralt only smiles faintly, and doesn’t say another word during their slow trek back towards the town on the outskirts of the swamp.
~
“Be careful for awhile,” Geralt says sometime later, tying off a final small, white bandage around Jaskier’s fingers. “No writing. Definitely no playing.”
They’re back in their small room at the inn just outside town, sitting at the end of the bed with a small fire crackling cheerfully in the opposite corner. The water in the tub down the hall was now filthy, near the same colour the water in the swamp had been, but they’re both clean, and now Jaskier can’t think of a better idea than falling back on that bed and sleeping for the next three days.
“I’m an invalid,” he replies woefully, wiggling stiff, bandaged fingers and not bothering to react to the dull rush of pain the movement brought on. It’s far from intolerable, especially since Geralt had given him...something...when they had returned to the inn. Some mixture that was an unsettling green colour, and tasted vile, but it had already done much to clear the fog in his mind and ease the pain in his hand and ankle. For the latter he wouldn’t even know anything was wrong now, if not for the dark bruising encircling his leg where the tentacle had wrapped around it.
“Temporarily,” Geralt agrees easily, standing up to cross the room and throw more wood on the fire. Jaskier watches him go, watches the firelight glint off the medallion around the witcher’s neck - back in it’s rightful place after he’d returned it, before tossing his ruined outfit in the corner of the room and replacing them with cleaner clothes for sleeping.
“I’ll be no help at all, you’ll have to leave me behind,” Jaskier is just speaking for the sake of it, to keep the room from falling into silence. If there’s quiet, he’ll have the opportunity to consider the fact that what he’s saying might actually be true.
The prince left that mermaid behind, left her in pain, left her to die alone...
“You must have hit your head harder than I thought,” Geralt’s tone is still light, but there’s a slight frown on his face as he turns back to the bard sitting on the bed. “If you’re thinking there’s any chance I’d leave you behind. Move over.”
Jaskier does as requested, stunned silent as he processes the witcher’s blatant, unexpected words. His hands move to twist together without thinking about it, but when he realises what he’s doing he holds them still in his lap instead. “Oh. Right. Well, that’s a relief.”
Geralt hums his agreement, eyes closed and hands folded underneath his head as he’s already stretched out on his side of the bed. “You should sleep.”
He knows that, of course he does. But now his mind is reeling again, for reasons very different than a monster and a concussion. He wants to ask questions, a lot of questions.
But he won’t. He can’t.
“Thanks, Geralt. What would I do without you?” His words are lighthearted as well, even nonchalant, but there’s an edge of truth to them that he doesn’t really want to think about. He remembers voicing similar thoughts, once, outside a crumbling house in Rinde, and is grateful that this time, at least, the circumstances are much different.
The witcher is smiling slightly, but his eyes are still closed. “Have an estate and a wife and a couple dozen children, most likely.”
Jaskier makes a halfhearted attempt to fluff his pillow with one hand before settling back beside his friend. “Sounds miserable. And that poor woman.”
“I didn’t say they were all hers.”
Jaskier stares up at the timber roof, hands carefully clasped over his middle. “I guess we’ll never know.”
His tone remains light, but his expression is somber and he’s glad Geralt isn’t watching him. He meant those words to be not so much a flippant remark, but more of a hope, maybe a prayer towards any number of deities he’s not entirely inclined to believe in.
I don’t ever want to find out what I’d do without you.
He understands how the mermaid in the story felt, but he’s oh-so-lucky to have a man very different than the uncaring prince beside him now.