Work Text:
Geralt doesn’t remember when the nightingale appeared.
For most of his life, he’d been without a soul companion—the physical manifestation of a soul that complements one’s own. In other words: a soulmate.
Witchers aren’t meant to have soulmates, they say, and therefore would have no need of a soul companion. Witchers have no soul, they say, because they are monsters, and monsters don’t have souls.
It’s not wholly unfounded. Witchers live long lives, and very few souls in the world are up to the task of being something they need—which is why, when asked, Geralt always says he needs nothing but his horse and his coin.
But it’s not accurate, either. Geralt knows Vesemir to have had a soul companion at a point, though he’d never asked outright. He thinks the companion eventually faded, when his soulmate had passed away, years before Geralt was left on the side of the road for Vesemir to find and bring to Kaer Morhen.
Either way, unfounded or inaccurate or not, Geralt had not had a soul companion for the first many years of his long existence. He hadn’t minded the loneliness, had ignored the empty feeling in his chest when people would laugh together, their soul companions curled by their feet or on their shoulders. It wasn’t something that could be his, and he’d made his peace with it.
Until it could be.
Until it is.
Renfri’s blood has not quite dried on his shirt and the anger of the people of Blaviken is not quite behind him when Geralt notices a small brown bird following him, flying gracefully in the air above his head. At first, he thinks nothing of it, but the longer he and Roach travel, the nightingale never leaving, he starts to wonder.
To hope .
The emptiness starts to fade, and the loneliness with it, because he isn’t alone now. He talks to it, like he does to Roach, and it becomes a true companion, always with him, always there. It chirps back at him sometimes, as if in answer, and it’s calming, reassuring in a strange but pleasant way.
Geralt wonders what the person it represents is like, if they’re as chatty, as flighty, as loyal. They must be, if the nightingale is.
Almost two decades later finds him in a tavern in Posada, there to hunt a creature described as a devil that’s started pushing into where it isn’t wanted. He nurses an ale, content and wanting to be left alone with only his alcohol and his nightingale.
There is a bard playing raunchy songs in a vain attempt to liven up the crowd, but his music draws Geralt’s attention anyway. His nightingale certainly finds it exciting, if its lively chittering is anything to go by. He watches the dark-haired bard move, steps graceful and light, and when he turns in Geralt’s direction, Geralt’s breath catches at the blue of his bright eyes and the way he pauses for a heartbeat before a smile breaks out over his face.
The bard ends the song to lukewarm applause—more sarcastic than anything—and picks up the food thrown at him, stuffing it in his pants. Geralt moves his eyes back to his ale, a sudden warmth filling his veins, and he forces himself to sit still and not shift uncomfortably like he wants to.
He knows it’s the blue-eyed bard that slides into the chair at his table, and he looks up only when he speaks.
“Oh, such a pretty bird!” he says, and he reaches out fingers to run gently down the nughtingale’s spine.
Geralt opens his mouth to tell him off—one social etiquette rule Geralt knows intrinsically is to never touch another’s soul companion without permission, but he’s a witcher and he doesn’t have a soul companion, according to them —but it’s too late.
The nightingale just preens at the praise, and Geralt is...confused, then curious. The warm feeling in his chest intensifies, and a thought stirs in the back of his mind.
He finds words wanting off his tongue, so he says, “You’re not supposed to touch a soul companion.”
Blue eyes meet his, sparkling in the afternoon light pouring in from the window, and the bard just gives him a sweet smile. “True,” he agrees, still petting the bird, then adds, knowingly, looking down at his side, “unless they’re your own.”
There it is .
Geralt looks off to the side too, a thickness in his throat, slow heart beating just a little too fast as he sees the wolf lying at the bard’s feet, glowing eyes staring back at him.
A white wolf with gold eyes.
You always know your own soul , Geralt remembers hearing somewhere. The companion is a representation of you , after all, and like knows like, or something to that effect.
“You’re Geralt of Rivia,” the bard says, and Geralt looks back at him. The smile on his face is wide and bright, like he’s been waiting his entire life to meet Geralt, and it makes his heart do something funny behind his ribs. “I’m Jaskier.”
Jaskier .
The emptiness is completely gone, and so is the loneliness.