Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jaskier, despite his open-book disposition, is good at hiding things.

This is partially because nobody thinks to look past the facade he presents. Go around acting like an idiot, and people start to assume that’s all there is to you. It makes things a little easier, when all your behavior can be explained away by general dumbassery.

Nobody even thinks there might be something you’re hiding. This is why nobody questions the sudden wild-fire popularity of his song; this is why Geralt doesn’t even question why the djinn goes for his throat.

Of course, it’s not as if Jaskier doesn’t make an effort to hide certain things. He’s not gliding through on dumb luck. 

He’s completely aware that he’s making a bad decision when he decides to sing that night. 

It’s a bad decision for him, but Jaskier’s always been a bleeding heart. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like there’s a person that he’s met and liked that he hasn’t fallen in love with, and Jaskier doesn’t like seeing his loved ones suffer. Geralt hasn’t slept since that day with the witch (which brings up a whole host of questions, the most prominent being why hadn’t she told him? She must’ve known ), and Jaskier doesn’t think he can bear listening to Geralt toss and turn from across the still-smoldering campfire for any longer.

The forest around them is dark, and quiet. The stars up above are brilliant, but they don’t provide much visibility, at least not as much as the embers of the fire. They’re out of sight of the road, far enough that Jaskier wouldn’t be comfortable sleeping here if he’d been alone—not that he ever felt comfortable sleeping alone in the woods at night. It’s better, with Geralt there, strong and solid and capable. As much as he protests against their friendship, Jaskier’s sure that Geralt wouldn’t just leave him to die if someone were to attack them.

Jaskier isn’t helpless in the first place, but he’s got a healthy amount of fear in him. You can’t do much to defend yourself if you’re knifed in your sleep.

There’s no response from the bedroll across the campfire when he sits up, shifts so he’s sitting back against a tree. He cringes as he shifts against the grass. The sound isn’t incredibly loud, but in the silence of the night, and to Jaskier’s adept ears, it certainly sounds that way. His heartbeat starts to pick up, and he calms it as best he can through steady breathing—he’s honestly not sure just how keen Geralt’s ears are, and for all he knows, his heartbeat could be perfectly audible, which would be bad for what he has in mind. He takes another deep breath. It’s not that difficult a decision, really. It’s a bad situation either way, but he’s spent enough time considering it that, no matter how long he takes, agonizing over whether to do it now , he knows that he’s going to do it.

Another deep breath. He wants to do this. It’s going to be a good thing, if just for now, if just for this night. The morning is another thing entirely.

He keeps a close eye on Geralt, who is obviously awake but either trying very hard to get to sleep or actively ignoring Jaskier’s movements. One more deep breath. He still doesn’t move.

Sometimes Jaskier sings, and sometimes, markedly less often, he sings . This time, he sings ; a lullaby that he remembers from some hazy part of his childhood, one with a melody like the rocking of the waves, like the pull of the tides. It starts slowly, almost normally, but this song has never been one that could be truly sung with human vocal chords. Geralt moves this time.

Geralt’s movement is slow, at first, and Jaskier can almost hear the imminent ‘Jaskier, what the fuck are you doing,’ but then the song hits, and his eyes go wild with realization. Jaskier’s always liked that wild look that Geralt’s eyes get. When he’s frantic, angry. When he’s about to do something drastic. Now, his golden eyes are molten, reflecting the near-dead fire, and Jaskier can understand why monsters are so scared of witchers. Why people are so scared of witchers. He is terrified for a moment, and half out of reflex, starts to sing louder, starts to sing deeper.

“Jaskier—” Geralt starts, low and rasping and dangerous , hand moving to push himself up, but Jaskier is a strong singer, and he doesn’t finish that sentence before his words are stuttering and his eyes are starting to close despite himself.

Jaskier hasn’t sung in so long. It’s like freedom, like breathing again, when he gets the chance. It’s liberating, now, alone in the forest, doing it for the sake of someone he cares about. To be fair, though, he sings for a little too long after Geralt’s fast asleep for it to truly have been entirely for the witcher’s benefit.

Still, though, Geralt hasn’t slept in so long, and it’s gratifying to see him at peace. 

Jaskier keeps on singing for a long while. It’s the lullaby, mostly, though some derivatives pop up now and then. It’s not always necessarily melodic. He’s always liked this type of singing better. The way that most people did it was pretty enough, but it was too restrictive, kept to words and melodies. Singing had dimensions, had depth, and was rarely put to words—the lullaby barely had a melody to speak of, in terms of human songs, and Jaskier felt so much more because of it. It felt like the waves around him, rocking him to sleep, like the bubbly, distorted way the sunlight looks from under the water, like the tide pulling him home. He feels all at once more homesick and closer to home than he’s felt in years.

He watches Geralt, as he sings, when he isn’t completely caught up in the floating of the melody. He looks peaceful when he sleeps. Jaskier hasn’t seen him look peaceful since—well. He feels a bit worse about himself when he realizes that Geralt has never looked peaceful around him, but he sings deeper, and the pain, bit by bit, is washed away, like an inscription in the sand when the tide starts to come in. 

He wishes that he didn’t have to stop, but though he’s not quite as human as he lets on, he still is—just a bit. He still needs to sleep, and unlike Geralt, he gets fatigued enough after a day of traveling and witchering to need a night’s rest. 

He almost forgets what might happen in the morning as he lays down in his bedroll once more. Almost. But he supposes that there's no use obsessing over it, and his sleepy mind decides for him that what will happen will happen. And if he does remember what happened when he wakes, he trusts Geralt enough to know that he won’t try and kill Jaskier come sunrise.

Or, at least, trusts him enough to think so.

Chapter Text

Jaskier wakes slowly. The sun is warming his eyelids, in patches made by the rays of light through the leaves. It’s peaceful. The birds are chirping, so he opens his eyes, and discovers that Geralt is holding a sword to his throat. The silver one. It glitters in the early-morning sunlight.

“What the fuck was that. Last night.”

Among Jaskier’s panicked thoughts is the notion that it was awfully considerate of Geralt not to pull him from his beauty sleep. 

“Geralt—Geralt, what are you doing—” Jaskier tries to scramble backwards, but he’s on his back and the sword has him pinned down by the throat.

“Explain,” Geralt presses, both literally and figuratively. Jaskier shrinks back as best he can, terrified for the sake of his throat. He’s not sure if he’s more frightened for his life or his voice.

“I don’t know what you mean, I—” Oh. Except, of course he does, it’s just that he’s only now remembering. His mind flits through different escape routes, both physical and conversational. “Oh, that? Last night? That was nothing!” His voice is far too high-pitched and hysterical to possibly be telling the truth, but he half-thinks that with his reputation, it wouldn’t be too far of a reach to think that maybe he’s hysterical because he’s just woken up to an entire fucking sword held at his throat. The silver one. The one for monsters. “You know, you haven’t been able to sleep lately, so I thought a lullaby might be helpful—and it looked like it did help, so really, Geralt, you can put the sword away now, it’s all fine—”

“Your voice last night,” Geralt growls. That’s the only word Jaskier can think to use, to describe it; it’s too low and forceful to be anything else. “You’re not human.”

Sometimes he wonders just how human Geralt himself is, but there are other, more pressing matters to focus on at the moment. 

“Geralt, what on earth are you talking about?” He tries to laugh, casual, nonchalant, but it leaves his mouth as a high, nervous giggle. Damn. “I think you might need to go back to bed—”

“What are you.” A demand, not a question.

Jaskier’s eyes, blue like the sea, do a quick back-and-forth, searching again for a way out. He’d been so confident that Geralt wouldn’t hurt him, but the appearance of the silver sword hadn’t exactly been a gesture of good faith. He isn’t so secure in his safety now. Would he live to tell the tale if he told Geralt about his heritage? He doesn’t know, now, and the overturning of that certainty has him shaken.

He’d been so sure that it wouldn’t be a huge deal. Why on earth would he have thought that? Geralt, insistent as he is that the two of them are not friends, has no reason to keep Jaskier alive except that he likes him, and several reasons to kill him, including the fact that the reason for his existence (as far as Jaskier knows) is to kill creatures like Jaskier.

Denial isn’t working. Jaskier decides that maybe the best way to get out of this alive is to try and prove how harmless he is.

He sucks in a breath, searches for any sign of yielding or pity in the luminous gold of Geralt’s eyes. He doesn’t find any of what he’s searching for. “Siren,” he manages, swallows, tries again. “I’m a siren. Well, part siren, there’s a lot of human in my heritage, that’s why I look like this—” he moves to gesture at his body, but quickly realizes that his body is covered with a blanket and is no help for reference, and that he can’t gesture downward very well when his head is being pinned by a blade at his throat. “Uh. Not a big deal, though. I think I might be mostly human, actually. Haven’t sat in a lake and drowned people for years—” he laughs again, but it doesn’t take him long to see that his attempt at a joke will actually be far more damning than anything else he’s said so far. “That was a joke. A joke! Gods, please don’t kill me, Geralt, I promise I’m not a threat or anything—”

Geralt looks almost surprised to hear Jaskier beg for his life; he straightens up, the sword gives Jaskier a couple more centimeters, and there’s something like confusion that pushes his brows together, but the expression fades as quickly as it arrives. “Why are you here?”

Jaskier’s panicked brain takes a second to compute. “Here? Like on earth? Accident of birth, I’m afraid, I really didn’t plan to be created; or—or here? With you? Is that what you meant?” He’s rambling, now. Not that he wasn’t earlier, but he feels like it’s only gotten worse. “Gods, I told you why I’m here, Geralt—destiny, and heroics, and, and heartbreak, and adventure, and Geralt, please , I’m begging you, I’m not trying to set up some massive conspiracy to spy on you or something, I’m just trying to sing about something interesting, spend time with someone interesting, and I haven’t hurt anyone, so really, you have no reason to need that… that very scary looking sword, Geralt, because I’m really not the kind of siren that needs killing—”

“You lied to me.”

“ Lied to you!” Jaskier’s affronted tone is nearly second nature. “That is absolutely—well, true, I suppose, in some capacity, but really , Geralt, I never lied to you. Kept some things, maybe, but  people don’t take kindly to sirens, especially people who are specially designed to kill sirens, and really, it was just self preservation on my part, I’m sure you can understand that—”

Geralt’s just examining him again, which, for once, is enough to shut Jaskier up all on its own. He looks intent on figuring something out. Jaskier spots that little crease between his eyebrows. After a few more moments of Jaskier’s heavy breathing and pounding heartbeat, Geralt straightens up and moves away.

Jaskier lets out what he’s sure is the loudest breath of relief he’s ever let out. And that’s saying something, considering the kind of dramatic breaths he’s let out after running from jealous spouses and various monsters. He sits up, trying to maintain any tiny scrap of dignity he might possibly have left. 

It really is a beautiful morning. Now that the tension’s calmed a bit, and the frantic talking has stopped, the birds are starting to pick up their own songs in the trees. The sun is very pleasantly filtering down through the leaves. Jaskier could appreciate it more if he weren’t still a teensy bit terrified for his life. 

Roach knickers in the background, but she knows how to stay out of things. 

“A siren,” Geralt says, not quite standing over him but not doing anything to diminish the disparity in height, either. Jaskier knows he’s never been one for overlong sentences, but really, this is getting a bit ridiculous. These questions aren’t the least bit specific, which is really all but encouraging him to ramble, and that’s really not conducive to sparing Geralt’s patience, and he really doesn’t want to anything to push the man today of all days, but his mind’s running faster than his mouth and his words are doing all they can to keep up and that means that he’s talking even more than normal, and—

Geralt asked a question. Right.

“Yes,” he starts, hesitantly, a bit calmer and unsure of how to answer. “Since birth, actually.”

Geralt fixes him with a golden deadpan stare. Jaskier laughs awkwardly. The sound is completely out of place. “What brings a siren out of the sea?”

There’s an obvious answer, here. He’s not sure if Geralt will accept it, though. “Humans,” he says, voice as soft as he can manage it, both because this is something vulnerable and artistic for him to say and because the goal, still, is to present himself as non-threateningly as possible. “I wanted to know more.” He pauses, unsure, but Geralt doesn’t say anything, his expression doesn’t even shift, so Jaskier keeps going. “I wanted to sing their songs, hear their stories, wear their clothes.”

Geralt actually snorts at that. “Explains the outfit.”

“Hey!” Jaskier actually does take offense to that. He likes his clothes; they’re soft, and they’re pretty colors, and really, what more could one need? He doesn’t get why the humans choose to wear dull colors, and just because most of them choose to do so doesn’t mean he has to. Only the aristocracy really have any sense, when it comes to humans; living nicely and dressing prettily and eating well.

Of course he understands poverty and that not everyone can be a queen, but still, it’s a stupid system, if it can’t afford to get everyone nice clothes. “I’ll have you know that I look amazing in these clothes.”

“Sure, siren.”

Well. Ouch. That stings.

Jaskier takes a breath and raises his chin in a gesture that he hopes looks brave. “So. What’s the verdict, Geralt?” Geralt’s expression goes stony again. “If you’re planning on killing me, I have several more arguments as to why I’m more useful alive than dead, first of which being that I managed to get people to like you, and to pay you, with one song, and you can talk about fillingless pies all you want, Geralt, but I am a talented singer, and no measly human could have done what I did, I promise you that—

“Wait.” Geralt narrows his eyes. “So that was you… singing ?”

Jaskier makes an indignant noise. “Of course it was! You think it got so popular because you were such an attractive, genial hero figure? Well, the attractive part, maybe, but I’ll have you know that you are an abysmal conversationalist, and getting people to like the very idea of you was something that took a little musical persuasion, Geralt. You’re welcome, by the way. I don’t think you’ve ever thanked me for that, and given the portion of your income it’s generated, I think I’m due some thanks.”

Geralt looks hurt, which Jaskier finds curious. 

There’s a long pause between them, and then Geralt turns away, and deposits the silver sword next to its steel (or iron, Jaskier really isn’t sure what swords are made of, it’s easier to tell when he can taste them in the water and he hasn’t exactly been chomping at the bit to go and lick Geralt’s sword, especially when he knows what kind of stuff gets on that blade. The human blood he wouldn’t mind, but he’s seen monster goop from beasts killed by the steel sword that he doesn’t want anywhere near his mouth) sister. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“Well, good,” says Jaskier, feeling a little indignant now. “Would’ve been a bad choice to turn your back on me if you were going to let me live.”

Geralt sighs, and leans back against a tree near to him, arms crossed over his chest. Jaskier stands to finally diminish the height difference. He immediately has nothing to do with his hands and regrets the movement, but it’s too soon to sit down again. “Why would you choose to reveal yourself like that?” There’s an unspoken ‘idiot’ at the end, but Jaskier is graceful enough to ignore it for now.

“Well.” He sniffs, puts on a bit of a haughty tone. “I was getting tired of listening to you toss and turn all night. It was cutting into my beauty sleep. So I decided to put a stop to it.”

“I’m not going to buy that, Jaskier,” he says, one eyebrow cocked. “All these nights, and you just decide to risk your life to put me to sleep so that you can rest better?”

Jaskier puts on a quick show of being indignant so that he has an excuse to sit down again. “Well. Fine. Excuse me for caring about you, I guess. I thought you might want to get a good night’s sleep for once. Seeing as how you’ve been complaining about it.” He turns his head away haughtily for that dramatic edge, but he manages to catch Geralt’s signature I’m-reconsidering-something routine. It’s composed of a shift of his weight to his other foot, shoulders back and chin up so he’s looking down his nose at the object of his attention, and a measured exhale through his nose. Jaskier feels proud of himself in the moments when he notices these little things. Makes him feel closer to his friend.

Another moment passes. Geralt is considering him. Jaskier is very determinedly pretending not to feel that gold stare boring holes into the side of his head.

Geralt moves. Fucking finally . Jaskier moves his head back to see what he’s doing.

Packing up camp, apparently. Geralt starts to put things into Roach’s saddlebags, running a hand along her mane. She tosses her head a bit. Jaskier thinks that she might be the most dramatic one of the three of them, sometimes. 

Geralt turns to Jaskier again, speaking over his shoulder this time. “Don’t try anything like that again.” And then he turns to finish his task.

Jaskier sits back against the tree—the one he’d sat against while he sang the night before—and considers this. It went well, all things considered. He wasn’t dead. And the warning not to try it again; Geralt wasn’t banning him from their adventures. If anything, that was an invitation to keep tagging along.

Even if he’d wanted to, Jaskier couldn’t have stopped the corners of his mouth from pulling up into a smile.

Chapter Text

Besides the birds and some small mammals in the greenery, the morning is silent. Normally this would mean that Jaskier was deathly sick or otherwise indisposed, but for once, he’s glowing with some sort of pride, silent of his own accord, and not pushing Geralt’s buttons. He feels rather accomplished for getting his secret out so successfully.

It’s not until they get on the road, Geralt and Jaskier walking on opposite sides of Roach, that someone speaks: Jaskier finally gets bored of being silent, and decides to push his luck by talking to Geralt, to test where they are right now. He’s not entirely sure how well their friendship will hold up (and they are friends, whether Geralt will admit it or not, because Geralt didn’t kill him earlier, and that’s good enough for Jaskier), but things seem alright so far.

“Do you intend to speak to me today?” he asks, probably more playful than he has a right to be.

Geralt’s only response is a deep “Hm”. 

Jaskier swears he’s gonna scream one of these days, when Geralt responds to him with that noise, that isn’t even really a hum, just a sound, instead of actual words. He’ll scream, and add a little hometown ocean pizzazz so that the scream is a scream . Geralt’s ears might bleed a little bit (or a lot, he’s only tried screaming at humans a few times and they’ve kind of… broken, so he’s not sure how strong the effect would be on a witcher) but he thinks it’d get the message across nicely.

“My mother used to sing that to me, you know,” he says, instead. He can’t really blame Geralt for being quiet today. He’s probably dealing with a lot, and Jaskier’s just grateful not to be dead. He has to talk about something , though, because the silence is deafening him, and he thinks that pulling his lute out and trying to compose a song might not be well received in the current context. Geralt looks over at him from across Roach, and there’s something in his golden eyes that Jaskier doesn’t know how to describe. He’s not even sure, really, what the emotion is. “The song from last night,” he clarifies, helpfully. 

“Hm.” Geralt looks back at the road. Jaskier feels this little twinge of hurt, but he presses on.

“It’s about the ocean,” he says. “The melody is the sound of the waves, the way the tide pulls you where it wants you to go, the feel of the sun in the warmth of the water.” He pauses, and looks over at Geralt again, curiously. “It’s a lullaby. Singing’s easier to do when you’ve got a song that goes along with your purpose.”

He catches a glint of gold before Geralt’s focused on the road once more. Jaskier thinks that’s an awfully boring thing to focus on, when Geralt’s got a pretty siren right next to him. Well, next to his horse. 

Geralt does have a tendency to avoid his problems ( cough cough, child surprise ) but Jaskier doesn’t think he’s that much of a problem. He might be a siren, but that doesn’t make him difficult or dangerous. He doesn’t even kill people. Anymore. That much. 

When he’d joked about not having drowned people for years… well. It was true. He hadn’t drowned someone this whole time he’d been traveling with Geralt.

Geralt’s voice, rumbling and low, is hesitant when he speaks. “Your… mother sang that to you?”

Jaskier immediately perks up. “She’s a lovely woman, Geralt. Really.” He pauses to consider. “Well. Maybe not by human standards, but she’s quite good looking, for a siren. I get my good looks from her, you know. Not that you’re seeing those right now. I’m not quite as nice looking as a siren.”

“I’ve never seen a siren. Before you,” Geralt says, and Jaskier manages to interpret this as the question it’s meant to be.

Jaskier crinkles his nose in distaste. “Well, you’ll have to live in ignorance a while longer. I most certainly won’t show you my other form. I’ll tell you now, I’m much prettier this way, and I intend to stay hot without having to bend your mind to see me that way.”

Geralt doesn’t question any of this, which leads Jaskier to believe that he’s reached his maximum capacity on words for the day. 

“That’s how real singing works,” Jaskier offers. “By kind of shoving the listener’s mind in the right direction. The tales of pretty sirens aren’t exactly accurate. There’s a lot of songs you can use to make yourself seem prettier to someone, mainly because it’s a lot easier to entice people into jumping off ships when you’re prettier. I mean, you could tell them that you’ve got all the answers to their future, or that there’s a merdog just under the water, but people always seem to believe the pretty ones. When we were kids, we used to play a game to see the most outlandish thing people would jump for. I once told a man that the secret to alchemy lay beneath the waves, singing, of course, and he just hopped right off.” He makes an aqueous little noise, meant to imitate the sound of a body splashing into the water. He’s still not entirely sure if it’s a noise that humans can actually make, so he doesn’t use it around people. Now that Geralt knows, though, he can use it all he likes, which he’s glad for. It’s his favorite sound. He’s rather proud of it.

“And the man. He drowned?” Geralt’s voice is closer to dangerous than it’s been in a while, and that’s somewhat terrifying.

“Oh, uh—” Shit. Jaskier forgot that this story had murder in it. “It wasn’t my fault. Not really.” His mind scrambles for something that’ll make him seem less culpable. “I didn’t even drag him down or anything. He just couldn’t swim. It was kind of funny, actually.” He grins over at Geralt, the kind of grin that is borne of the time when he had a maw full of long, razor-sharp teeth. His mother had always said that he grinned like a shark with the teeth of an anglerfish (which is a shorter, less unwieldy sentence in his native language). It’d always been a fun image to have of himself.

Geralt looks almost unnerved. That’s strange. Jaskier doesn’t think he’s ever seen him like this.

“Yes, well.” Jaskier coughs awkwardly. The best defense would probably be a final disclaimer, like ‘it’s not as if I just kill people for fun’, or ‘I didn’t do that sort of thing very often’, but he doesn’t really like lying to Geralt. “I recognize now that he probably didn’t find it as funny.”

Jaskier actually likes lying in general very much. It’s fun, having secrets. You can’t do that with sirens. His native language, the language of the ocean, makes it impossible to lie: it’s made up only of truths. He thinks that’s why the sirens all enjoy singing so much. It’s the only time they get to lie. It’s certainly part of why Jaskier enjoys living with the humans so much: you can just tell people something, true or not. It’s like freedom.

When it comes to Geralt, though, Jaskier doesn’t want to purposefully lie to him. Concealing things is one thing—that’s fun, a little secret to keep close to your heart—and telling an untruth is another thing entirely. Lying to Geralt makes him feel guilty, sometimes, and Jaskier hasn’t felt guilty about nearly enough things in his lifetime to make him even remotely prepared to cope with the feeling. He’d tried to lie to Geralt, once, when he’d stolen a few of his coins to buy more ale, but that night had ended up with him breaking down, sobbing, and telling Geralt the whole story. He’s pretty sure that Geralt thinks it was because he was drunk, not just because Jaskier is wildly unprepared to deal with guilt.

Jaskier doesn’t actually get drunk quite as quickly as he lets people think. That’s one of his little things that he likes to keep from people.

They’re silent the rest of the way to the next town, except for Roach, who puts in a few whinnies here and there. Jaskier tries to pet her nose, but she bites at him. He pulls his hand away fast enough to avoid being nipped, and pouts at her. She just huffs at him, like a horsier version of Geralt.

Jaskier doesn’t have a great relationship with land animals. Sea creatures, he gets along with great—but dogs bark at him, sometimes, and he’s had a cat try to eat him before, when he was pretty fresh out of the ocean and still smelt like a lifetime of seaweed and fish (his skin still smells like seawater, even now, when he presses his nose into his arm. It’s comforting). Land creatures just don’t seem to like him very much. He thinks they probably know that he doesn’t belong on land, with them. It makes him sad. He does try very hard to blend in.

He doesn’t see (or catch) Geralt looking over at him until the houses start to appear in the middle distance, but that doesn’t mean he’s not being watched. Jaskier can almost feel Geralt’s gaze on him, which would normally not be that bad a thing, because Jaskier likes attention and he especially likes Geralt’s attention, which is both more meaningful and harder to acquire, but today it makes him feel like a misbehaved pet. The story about the drowning people had been a mistake, and he feels abashed now, as if he’s been reprimanded, even though the only thing that Geralt’s bothered to do in reaction to the tale is go even quieter. 

He doesn’t like feeling as if he’s messed up, so he imagines that Geralt sees him as a threat, a grinning shark with the teeth of an anglerfish; which makes him feel better even as it makes him feel worse. Humans, and witchers raised among humans, don’t see sharks or anglerfish as particularly positive. He’s not sure Geralt has even seen either of those fish, to be perfectly honest, but it’s a workable metaphor. Maybe he’ll describe them to him. Jaskier’s always liked storytelling, and he thinks he could paint Geralt a very nice picture of what it’s like to live among the sharks and the tuna and the anglerfish and the dolphins.

His little daydream of telling Geralt a story quickly turns into a plan for a new song about the wonders of the sea, which won’t be nearly as conspicuous or likely to ruin his cover now that he has no cover to ruin, and then is stopped just as quickly when Geralt stops. The next town has just come into sight.

Jaskier goes a few steps more, before his mind catches up to what’s happening. He spins around easily in place. “Yes?”

Geralt’s almost grimacing. “Don’t do anything. When we go into town.”

Jaskier’s heart drops. 

“Of course not, Geralt,” he says, and he’s sure that he must sound and look like a kicked puppy, because he certainly feels like one. ‘Why would I do anything?’ goes unsaid, as does ‘don’t you trust me anymore?’.

Geralt has no sympathy for kicked puppies that are actually bards that are actually sirens. He fixes Jaskier with a golden stare, and Jaskier sees the same thing he’d seen earlier, that he couldn’t identify. This time, he sees what it is; he recognizes it as distrust, and it hurts.

Chapter Text

Jaskier’s not sure what this town’s name is. He’s never really sure; he doesn’t pay too much attention to maps, and Geralt’s usually certain enough about where he’s going that Jaskier can just follow along. 

Even when Jaskier travels by himself, he sort of just wanders, rather than going anywhere in particular. Sometimes he’ll hit the coast and lose a few months in the water, before heading back onto land and starting off in another direction.

Usually, if he's curious about the name of any given village, he’ll just ask Geralt, who’ll tell him if he knows. Geralt hasn’t spoken a word to him since he told him not to ‘do anything’; and frankly, Jaskier isn’t nearly confident enough to overcome the hurt of that comment and try and speak to him again.  

So, they head into a town that will remain nameless to Jaskier for the time being, and he amuses himself by searching for any sign of the town’s name, rather than by badgering Geralt. He doesn’t like it. He prefers his and Geralt’s one-sided conversations to this awkward silence.

Typically, when they go somewhere, Geralt will go in search of the town’s mayor or alderman to see if there’s work for a witcher, if someone doesn’t approach them first. Stopping by the tavern serves a dual purpose; getting food and drink after traveling, and catching the attention of any townspeople who might need the help of a witcher. And if there’s an inn attached to the tavern, Jaskier likes to know, so that he has the information he needs to wheedle away at Geralt about getting rooms—or a room, depending on their supply of coin—for the night. Sleeping on the ground is not nearly so comfortable as sleeping in the water on a bed of kelp, and Jaskier doesn’t think he’ll ever really get used to it. He much prefers the cushion of a mattress. It’s closer to home.

Geralt must’ve been to this place before, because he leads the way through the dirt roads without hesitation. They turn a corner, and there’s the tavern, with a few people sitting outside of it. That’s when Jaskier sees her.

Admittedly, Jaskier’s fight-or-flight response goes straight to flight when he sees someone who looks even remotely like Yennefer. When he realizes that it actually is her, he has to stop him from putting his human legs to good use and bolting.

Jaskier grabs Geralt’s arm to try and tow him back, futile an effort though it may be. “Fuck, Geralt, come on, it’s that witch, the sexy one—“ 

He expects the rest of the interaction to go like this: Geralt will keep plowing ahead, still interested in her, and Jaskier will be shocked, and say ‘Geralt! We’re not just going to go up to her!’; but before that happens, Geralt pulls his arm away, almost like a flinch, when Jaskier touches him. The kicked puppy feeling returns. Jaskier pulls his hands back close to himself on instinct. 

A moment passes, and neither of them break eye contact. Jaskier works up the courage to speak again. “There’s still time to turn around and go somewhere else. She’s trouble, I’m telling you now.”

“I need work,” Geralt grumbles, by way of explanation. “I’m running low on money.” 

Jaskier is inexplicably hurt by the lack of a ‘we’, but he tries to push past that, and past the way Geralt had flinched when he’d touched him, and tries to regain his typical cheery demeanor. Well, not especially cheery right now—but energetic and unfazed by the way his friend is treating him. “Geralt—”

But now Geralt’s kept on walking, leading Roach right past him. Jaskier is too disheartened by that, and by everything else that’s happened, to do anything but follow defeatedly behind.

Admittedly, Jaskier doesn’t know much about the witch. Her name is Yennefer. Somewhere along the line, Geralt had started calling her ‘Yen’, which had led Jaskier to consider what his nickname would be. He hadn’t come up with anything good. Siren nicknames were much easier, because they never derived from the sound of a name; Jaskier’s, from his mother, had been Dandelion, for the flower he’d found floating in a lake and put behind his ear, like the girl who’d been wearing it a few minutes before. He rather likes the nickname, still. Dandelions are pretty, despite what humans say about them being ‘weeds’. He thinks that’s rather stupid. Flowers are flowers, after all. 

Right. Yennefer.

She sees Geralt as they approach: of course she does. Geralt’s rather hard to miss, with his white hair and strong build and witcher-y intensity. He’d been easy to spot when Jaskier had first met him, when he was still fooling around in tiny taverns, singing the kind of human songs that had gotten food thrown at him. He happened to like those songs. They told stories, even if they weren’t necessarily deep. He knew what a truly deep song sounded like. ‘The Fishmonger’s Daughter’, and other such ditties, had been exactly the kind of human shallowness that had been so refreshing upon his emergence from the deep sea. 

She gives Geralt a once-over, appraising. Not in the same way that Geralt is appraising when he looks Jaskier over when he starts improvising tales of the White Wolf’s exploits with gorgeous women; Jaskier’s pretty sure that Geralt is trying to figure out exactly how easy it would be to get rid of his body, when that sort of song rolls around. Yennefer looks as if she has completely different plans. 

“Geralt of Rivia,” she says, by way of a greeting, and every word practically drips from her tongue. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Oh, well, that’s something else that Jaskier knows about her. She seems to have quite a flair for the dramatic. Even her dress: it’s black, and rather modest and plain, for what Jaskier’s seen of her wardrobe; but it’s fitted and the sleeves are poofed, and it’s obvious she’s more than your average peasantry. 

“Yen. I’m looking for work.”

Yennefer completely ignores Geralt (which Jaskier thinks he deserves, given how he’s been treated all morning long) and glances behind him at Jaskier (which Jaskier is decidedly less excited about, because he decided somewhere along the line that Yennefer is mildly terrifying, and doesn’t want to be under her ministrations or her gaze again). “You’re still traveling with your friend, I see.”

Now it’s Geralt’s turn to ignore her. Jaskier, frankly, finds this kind of dance they do when they speak to be exhausting and pedantic. It’s already tiring, and they’re barely five sentences in. Sirens are so much more straightforward, and they scream at each other just as much as humans. “Why are you here?”

“Questions, questions.” Yennefer is looking at the both of them, now, considering, and Jaskier likes it far less than when she’d been appraising Geralt. She raises one eyebrow. “Lucky you, I’ve got a job that could use a witcher’s touch. Follow me.” She glances over at Jaskier again. “Your friend, too, if he’d like.”

“I’ll amuse myself hereabouts,” Jaskier says, hastily. He has no intention to stay around Yennefer any longer. Geralt has other plans, though, apparently.

“He’ll come along.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll what now?”

Jaskier’s bravado returns a bit in the face of having to walk gods-know-where with Yennefer of Vengy-whatever. 

Geralt turns ever-so-slightly to face him. “I’m not going to let you run amok in town,” he says, apparently his means of explanation, and Jaskier has to process that for a moment. That’s what he always does, after all, always has done, and the only reason that Geralt wouldn’t leave him to his own devices when he clearly wants to be left would be—

Geralt doesn’t trust him on his own around the humans.

The hurt morphs into anger this time. He makes a noise of disbelief, gnarled in the back of his throat, closer to anything siren than he’s said in the past few years. Jaskier feels his expression twist, and he moves right into Geralt’s space. He wishes he had his fangs again, so that he could hiss at Geralt and maybe show him exactly who he was trying to boss around, but he supposes that might actually worsen the problem. “I don’t know what you’re trying to insinuate, Geralt, but—”

“So, we’ll all go, then, shall we?”

Jaskier looks over to see Yennefer, smiling thinly. Her patience never seemed that high to begin with. 

“Yes. All of us.” Geralt gives Jaskier a pointed look, and Jaskier bridles indignantly. In some fickle attempt to prove that he controls his own actions, Jaskier marches past Geralt, up next to Yennefer, and looks her straight in the amethyst-purples. 

She’s got pretty eyes, he thinks. She’s also absolutely terrifying, but you can’t have everything. “Where are we off to, then?”

She smiles at him, and it looks as if there’s approval in her expression. Jaskier’s not sure he likes that. “You’ll see. Shall we?” She offers her arm to him, and despite his own reticence, Jaskier takes it—entirely to spite Geralt. They start off, leaving the witcher to lead Roach behind them.

Chapter Text

Jaskier thinks he might have supremely fucked up, linking arms with Yennefer, but she doesn’t seem to be trying to turn him into a blobfish or anything of the sort, so really, things might be alright.

It isn’t long before he figures out where they’re headed; the large house stands out in the little plaza that they emerge into. It’s much nicer than Jaskier would have expected from a town of this size. He supposes that the architecture is always nicer down south, farther from Cintra and Nilfgaard and their militaries. 

That’s something else he likes about the humans. They like to build, like to plant roots, like to make homes; sirens are nomadic, and it shows in Jaskier’s travels on land. He’d never feel comfortable settling down. The ocean is fast-flowing and ever changing, and shelter is only ever for a night, down in the deep and the blue—there, the goal is being alive, not crafting little cages. Still, Jaskier likes the human settlements, finds it interesting to see the kind of artistic flair that they put into it. They’re useful for protection from the kinds of elements that you don’t get in the sea: rain, snow, lightning. Jaskier actually likes the rain, likes the feel of water on his skin after he’s been on land for a while, but he’s not fond of lightning.

When he thinks about it, he doesn’t think Geralt has the urge to settle down, either. He’s never seen Geralt in any kind of homestead. Maybe that’s what makes them both so inhuman.

When they reach the little plaza, a squire (or butler, something of the sort, Jaskier can never really keep the titles straight) approaches them. Yennefer turns her head ever so slightly to talk to Jaskier. “The horse… Roach, wasn’t it?” Her voice is low enough that Geralt wouldn’t be able to hear them. Granted, Geralt’s hearing is very good, and for her to speak that low would likely mean that anyone human wouldn’t have been able to hear her either—and Jaskier isn’t human.

Yennefer knows this, though. Knows that he’ll hear her. 

Jaskier nods, assuming that she’s asking about Roach’s name. Her nod in return is almost imperceptible. “You may leave Roach with my man,” she calls over her shoulder to Geralt. “I assure you, she’ll be well taken care of.”

Jaskier turns his head ever so slightly to look as Geralt hands over the reins to the servant (is someone like that considered a servant? Jaskier can’t say for sure). He can feel Yennefer’s gaze on his face.

“You and I are going to have a talk later, Bard,” she says to him, quietly, with a strange sort of twinkle in her eyes. Jaskier swears he nearly has a heart attack on the spot. “Now, shall the more civilized among us lead the way inside?”

She says this last part plenty loud enough for Geralt to hear. Jaskier finds it a bit ironic that he’s considered more civilized than Geralt, who’s certainly spent more time in human civilization than him, but in the spirit of spite, he offers a gracious “Of course, my lady,” and keeps step with Yennefer without another look back.

The house is plushly carpeted inside with shades of red, over mahogany wood and stone walls. It’s an impressive affair.

“This isn’t an illusion,” Geralt says, as he enters the house. He sounds impressed.

“Yes, well. I’m not responsible for all of it. Only the decorations,” says Yennefer. Jaskier thinks that the decorations are the part that makes it so impressive.

The large wooden door closes behind them. “What’s going on, Yen?”

At that, Yennefer finally relinquishes Jaskier’s arm (he tries to let out a sigh of relief that she won’t hear) and turns to face Geralt. “Impatient, are we?” She breathes out. “I suppose there’s no better time. This town—their mayor died mysteriously, and I took charge, so I suppose I’m their leader now—don’t look at me like that, Geralt, I wasn’t the one who killed him. Anyway, there’s been a few such mysterious deaths lately, and on top of that, the cemetery hasn’t been as quiet as it should after the burials.”

“And why do you need me?” Geralt is as deadpan as ever. The only change in his expression had been the little crease in his brow at the mention of the mysterious death. 

Yennefer draws herself up. Jaskier thinks she might appreciate the drama of a silk shawl or some furs to drape over her arms, just to increase the effect. “Quite frankly, I don’t. I’m quite capable of dealing with the whole mess myself. I’d rather not wait in graveyards in the dead of night to be attacked by a corpse, however, and as long as you’re here, you might as well do your job.”

“You mean your menial labor.” Normally, a statement like this would be accompanied by animosity, but there’s a playfulness in Geralt’s tone. Jaskier frowns. Geralt never sounds playful with him. Only vaguely annoyed; or, on special occasions, grudgingly fond. He makes a mental note to work on that when Geralt isn’t occupied with being such an ass.

Yennefer smiles, and it almost looks fond except for how mischevious it is. “Well, I’ll pay you, of course. And in the meantime, I think my time will be much more productively spent finding the cause of these deaths, rather than cleaning up the aftermath. That is how leadership works, you know.”

Geralt sighs, but there’s no fatigue behind it. “Fine. What’s the job, Yen?”

“A man died today. You’ll go to the graveyard tonight. It should be an easy dispatch: if not, the people here are very competent gravediggers.” She flashes Geralt a sly look, and then turns on her heel, heading toward a set of opulent stairs. “Follow me, if you’d like. We’ll have lunch.”

Jaskier spends a lot of time during lunch reconsidering his fear of Yennefer. She seems generally helpful enough, and she likes Geralt enough that she wouldn’t do anything to hurt Jaskier, who Geralt typically likes enough to defend (although, who knows what their standing is now). Jaskier knows for a fact, though, that she’s volatile, and unpredictable, and Geralt actually likes her, which might be a bad sign. She’s beautiful and dangerous, which is something Jaskier has been and likes to be but doesn’t like to experience in others. You could probably describe Geralt with the same criterion, but Geralt hasn’t sent an entire town into an orgy and wrecked a house while trying to control a djinn all in one day (had it been one day? He’d been panicking too hard to keep track of time, really). As far as Jaskier knows, the worst thing he’s done is the whole Butcher-Of-Blaviken mess, and he’s still not entirely sure what actually happened there except that Geralt killed a lot of people.

By the end of the meal, he’s decided that his fear is justified after all.

Most of the time is spent quietly, or with Geralt and Yennefer exchanging banter, which slowly becomes flirtier as time goes on. Jaskier, as a third, unincluded person in the room, becomes increasingly uncomfortable, even more so with the fact that he’s being all but ignored. At least Yennefer glances over and asks him a meaningless question, meant to fill time, every so often. Geralt barely looks in his direction. 

When a lull falls over the conversation, Jaskier eventually gets up the courage to start a topic of his own. “So. What made you take over as mayor of this town?”

Yennefer swirls her wine. It might’ve been contemplative if she wasn’t already so sure of her response. “I wanted to try out some responsibility of my own, I suppose. Advising kings is one thing.” There’s a surprising bitterness to her voice. “Having control is something else entirely. You have to take care of things, of people—like with this whole undead mess.” She looks up at Geralt, meaningfully. “It’s almost like parenthood.”

Jaskier doesn’t know what the fuck that’s all about, and he has no intention to ask.

What he learns from that exchange is that Yennefer has advised kings before, which surprises him more than it probably should. All the mages he’s met have been in the service of kings, after all. Yennefer must have come from the same place that they did, right? It’s just that he’s never heard of her before meeting her in person, and he’d heard a lot about royal mages when he was in court. 

She must’ve done all that stuff before he’d decided to leave home. Just how old is she, anyway? She doesn’t look a day over twenty—but then, Jaskier supposes that she really doesn’t look like she’s aged at all since he met her for the first time. He hadn’t noticed that. He’s always more surprised at how quickly humans age than how slowly the mutated ones do. Sirens age slower, so his reference for ageing is far removed from the typical human.

Geralt ages slower. Jaskier wonders if this is why he hasn’t noticed the fact that Jaskier still looks the same as he did when he first started following Geralt around.

Well. Maybe he has noticed, now. Now that he’s starting to put the pieces together. 

After lunch, Yennefer requests that Jaskier and Geralt stay in her house—the mayor’s house, redecorated to her taste after his death—except it’s not really a request, because neither of them can actually say no. She tells Geralt that she can handle the situation on her own, and she doesn’t want him going out there and getting a contract from one of the townspeople and stealing her thunder.

It’s a curious little thought, that pops up into Jaskier’s head, that suggests that Yennefer wants to solve this problem not to prove her competency or her skill, but to have the townspeople be grateful to her. Maybe she wants to be a beloved leader.

Strange. Jaskier tucks that away for further consideration later.

She leaves after telling them to find a servant if they need anything. Her dress is just long enough to trail on the floor, and it makes for quite a dramatic exit, even if she’s not sweeping out of the room like an offended countess. Offended countesses have quite the affinity for dramatic exits. Jaskier knows this from experience. 

Then it’s just him and Geralt.

Jaskier stays silent for a moment. He figures that he’ll give Geralt a chance to apologize, after everything he’s done that day. Surely, by now, he’s come to his senses, calmed down while he talked with Yennefer, realized that he’s being completely paranoid and that nothing about Jaskier’s changed in the last twelve hours. He’ll do one of his grudging apology things, Jaskier will forgive him, and they’ll move on to the next adventure, the next song.

Geralt doesn’t say anything.

Jaskier’s frustrated. “If you’re going to keep ignoring me like this, you could at least have the decency to let me know. I’ll have to invest in a sturdier tunic to keep me warm in the chill that’s coming off that cold shoulder of yours.”

And yes, maybe he’s a little bit proud of his wordplay, but there are more important things to focus on, like Geralt’s response.

“I’m not ignoring you.”

Jaskier scoffs. “Well, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, Geralt, but you haven’t spoken a word to me since we started eating.” When Geralt shakes his head and turns away, Jaskier’s struck with the urge to scream , like he hasn’t in years. He doesn’t want to shatter Yennefer’s nice windows (because they’re well-made and he’s pretty sure she’d kill him), so he forces himself back down into softer emotions than anger and says what he’s been wondering. “Do you really not trust me, Geralt?”

Geralt’s expression darkens. He doesn’t deny it.

“I’m still the same person I’ve always been, you know,” Jaskier says, starting to plead just a bit. “Nothing’s changed.”

Geralt’s eyes flick up to examine his face, and then he looks away.

Cute, Jaskier thinks, he’s being purposefully obstinate. He leaves the dining room before he can get his heart broken any further.

He wanders the halls of the house for a bit until he finds a library. He spends the rest of the day there. He doesn’t actually know how to read—he can recognize a couple of words, like “inn” and “Jaskier”, but nothing beyond that. Sirens don’t write things, and written language has always been a little strange to him. His job doesn’t require any reading, anyway, just memorization, and he’s always been good with words.

It’s a nice space, though, and he still has his lute with him, so he settles himself down in one of the plush chairs and starts to pick out a little tune on the strings. He wants to sing something, so he runs over his collection of ballads and folk songs in his head. None of them feel right.

He remembers, then, that the important people in this house know that he’s a siren, and his heart thrills a little at the thought of being able to sing one of his songs, the ones he hasn’t been able to sing since he joined up with Geralt. He remembers one from his childhood, an old song about a sailor who fell in love with a siren. 

He starts to sing . It’s a soft song, and he sings under his breath, quiet enough that nobody will hear it if they’re not just outside the library. This kind of song conjures images, and he feels the story play out in his heart—watches the siren tease the sailor, pull him farther into the water until he drowns.

It’s a nice story. It makes him feel homesick.

Chapter Text

Jaskier hears footsteps three times as he sings. Twice, they’re Geralt’s: Jaskier knows what his footsteps sound like, by now, and he perks up on instinct when he hears them. The first time, they pause by the library door, and Jaskier stops singing. They leave soon after that. Something about the whole interaction makes Jaskier feel injured inside. The second time Geralt’s footsteps sound outside the door, he sings louder, in some kind of defiance. Geralt leaves again. It’s dark, outside the library window; he’s probably going out to fight whatever’s going to rise in the graveyard. Jaskier, rather petulantly, does not say good-bye or good luck. 

The third time he hears footsteps, they’re unfamiliar. He stops, again—he really doesn’t want to get screamed at by a maid or something who doesn’t know who he is—and Yennefer opens the door. Jaskier straightens up from where he’s been reclining on a cushy chair. 

Yennefer gives him an appraising look, different from the one she’s given Geralt or the one Geralt gives him. This one seems more evaluating, if anything. “Do tell,” she says. “What did you two idiots do to get in a fight like this?”

Jaskier starts to tell her that they’re not fighting, except, of course they are. That’s exactly what this is. He doesn’t think he’s actually fought with anyone before. Messy breakups, sure; and he’s gotten in fist fights after accusations of fucking around with other people’s spouses (usually justified), but he’s never actually argued with someone he’s normally close to. It’s a strange feeling. 

“I told him,” he tells her, knowing she’ll understand. There’s not much else he could mean. 

She takes it in stride, raises an eyebrow. “And what on earth would compel you to do that?”

Jaskier sighs, sets down his lute, makes a vague gesture with his hands. “He still wasn’t sleeping. I was trying to help. I did help, in fact, but he decided to get all upset about it and threaten my life this morning.”

Yennefer’s eyebrow keeps its position, but her expression softens just a bit, and she sits down in a chair near Jaskier. “So what exactly did you do?”

Jaskier lets his expression drop. Yennefer scares him, but she’s really not doing anything threatening, and he desperately wants to be vulnerable with someone. He allows himself to be just a little pitiful when he says “I sang him a lullaby.”

Yennefer considers this for a moment. She takes in his expression (which Jaskier thinks has gone back on its own to the kicked-puppy look that he’s been falling back on all day) and shakes her head. “And that’s all?”

“Yes!” Jaskier allows exasperation into his tone, clinging to what seems like understanding. “I put him to sleep, that’s it, that’s all, and I wake up with a sword to my throat! The silver one, Yennefer!” 

He doesn’t think he’s ever said her name out loud before. He’s not sure how he feels about it.

“Strange.” The look in Yennefer’s eyes is somewhat curious, but Jaskier thinks (or, at least, he pretends) that he can see pity in the amethyst purple. “I’d thought he had a soft spot for pretty monsters.”

Jaskier frowns at that, hurt seeping into his expression. “It’s been implied that I’m a monster enough times today, thank you.”

There’s a moment of silence as Yennefer looks at him. “Well. We can’t expect our witcher to be anything but oblivious, can we?” 

Jaskier scoffs. “Tell me about it.”

She huffs, a light exhale of air. 

Yennefer’s silent for a moment more, and Jaskier thinks she’s deliberating over something. She has a determination about her when she next speaks. “My father was half-elf.” Jaskier looks up, surprised, and she looks away. “No Filavandrel, to be sure, but—” her hand ghosts over her jaw. “Definitely part elf.”

Jaskier wrinkles his nose. “Well, to be fair, Filavandrel wasn’t all that great, either. Gave Geralt and I a run for our money. Nice lute, though.” He glances appreciatively down at his instrument, propped up against the chair.

Yennefer raises her eyebrow again. “That lute belonged to Filavandrel?”

“Oh, yes,” Jaskier says, far more nonchalant than he actually feels. He loves telling this story, loves showing off his own adventures as much as Geralt’s. “We were captured by a rag-tag band of elves, when we first met, and Geralt gave a very rousing speech about being ‘ready to die’—” his imitation of Geralt, for the moment, is just his own voice dropped low, with as much drama as he can put into it—”really, it was incredibly moving. They threatened to kill us, and he just goes, ‘the lesser evil,’ whatever that means, but then he goes on about ‘no matter what you choose, you’ll come out bloody and hating yourself,’ which is really quite poetic, surprised me, I’d thought he was a man of little words, but I suppose Geralt always has something fun and original to say about violence—”

Yennefer’s smiling at him, which throws him off-guard. “Do that again.”

Jaskier’s confused for a moment before he realizes that she means his impression of Geralt. He grins. “That’s nothing. You know what he says next?” He takes a breath in, and prepares himself to try something he hasn’t done in years. 

Sirens are able to imitate the voices of other people. That’s another game Jaskier liked to play—imitating the voice of a lovely young lady, or a young child, calling for help out in the lake. People would dive after you if they thought they could save a pretty girl or a little child. Charming, really, and it was fun to see the surprise on their faces when they realized who’d actually been calling them. Jaskier’d liked to cover his face in his hands before revealing himself. Like peek-a-boo, as the humans called it.

He doesn’t do it anymore, because people would pick up on it almost immediately—and humans aren’t used, as sirens are, to hearing their own voices calling back across the room. Jaskier knows from experience that it’s a bit uncanny, so he avoids it out of consideration for the humans.

(That was another fun lake game, though; when a human would wander out near the lake on a misty morning, and call out, or hum, or talk to themselves, and Jaskier would echo it back in their voice. The reactions were hilarious, really.)

Old habits die hard, though, and when he says “‘If you must kill me, I’m ready’,” it sounds just like Geralt. He quirks an eyebrow at Yennefer, playful, as if he’s back in court, playing the role of the jaunty bard.

Yennefer jumps, at first, but then she laughs, and Jaskier laughs along with her, forgetting to be scared. It’s been a while since he’s had a decent conversation with someone who wasn’t Geralt (not that conversations with Geralt were especially decent), and he finds himself sinking into the solace of talking with someone who’s comfortable with him, as Geralt never really seemed to be even when he’d thought Jaskier was human.

“Please tell me that he made that face at the king of the elves,” she says, once they’ve finished laughing.

Jaskier shrugs again, still grinning. “Unfortunately, we’ll never know. I was tied back-to-back with him. I like to imagine that it happened that way.”

What he doesn’t mention about that story is how awful he’d felt, upon discovering the hardships of the elves; it was a rare twinge of conscience, that horrible feeling of guilt that had wracked him when he realized that he’d misjudged the elves and that his golden palaces remark was out of line. He’d have hated to lose his home, and he felt bad for saying something insensitive about it, even if he hadn’t known. He really hadn’t liked that. He might’ve cried, had he not been scared for his life and back to back with a man who he barely knew. Jaskier copes with things by laughing at them, though, and this is no exception.

“So dramatic,” she muses. “I don’t know if he’ll ever get over himself.”

Jaskier shrugs. “Sometimes I think he’s just got to keep going. Like a shark. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that he’d suffocate if he didn’t keep throwing himself headlong into dramatic situations.”

Yennefer looks at him again, and she looks positively curious. There’s a quirk of a smile on her lips. “How did someone like you fall in with a brute like Geralt?”

Jaskier laughs again. “Well, I’ll tell you, he certainly wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t have much choice in the matter, though. I could smell the adventure on him. Metaphorically. I wouldn’t have stopped following him unless he’d actually killed me. I like to think we balance each other out. I talk enough for the both of us, and he broods enough for seven men put together, so really, it works out in the end.”

Yennefer laughs at that, and then offers to walk him to his room.

“You don’t look very elven,” Jaskier says as they walk, as off-hand and casual as he can make it, trying not to let on his curiosity.

“And you don’t look very siren,” Yennefer comments, eyebrow raised again. 

Jaskier can accept that. 

The room he’s shown into is just as plush and pretty as the rest of the house, and he exalts at the chance to sleep on a nice bed, the likes of which he hasn’t seen since his days at court. He tells Yennefer about this as he tosses himself back onto the mattress, complains about how often he sleeps on the ground when he travels with Geralt. She laughs softly, and after a pause, invites him to walk with her the next day. Jaskier’s a bit affronted for a moment, but he agrees, says good-night, and he gets up again to close the door after her when she leaves.

Geralt returns later that night. Jaskier can hear his footsteps on the ground floor. He doesn’t go out to welcome him back—Yennefer does, though, and they go back to the same room. Jaskier consoles himself over being alone for the night with the softness of the pillows and the fact that he’s not quite so afraid of Yennefer anymore.

Chapter Text

For anyone else, being alone in a cemetery might’ve been an awful experience; but this is Geralt, and he’s used to it.

He could call it nice, even. It wouldn’t be completely accurate, but Geralt’s a solitary soul, and as much as Jaskier’s presence can be enjoyable at times, he’s still not used to the constant companionship after a lifetime of easy solitude. He feels like he needs to recharge sometimes: that’s part of why he doesn’t let Jaskier come along on hunts. They’re his alone time, and it’s a good enough excuse to get some space, because Jaskier’s human and he can’t—

Oh. Except, well. Maybe he can.

Geralt sighs and glances across the graves again. There’s a half moon, tonight. That meant enough light for him to ride Roach over here and leave her in a safe little nook behind a hill. That means enough light to see gravemarkers, but just barely.  

Most of the gravestones are made of large rocks with carved inscriptions. There’s also a few stone headstones, but Geralt figures that most of the population here isn’t wealthy enough for that. There’s a pile of rocks that looks like it’s been kicked over, in the corner of the graveyard, but nothing had jumped out of it when Geralt prodded it a couple of times with his sword, so he leaves it alone.

Nothing’s moved so far, and he’s got a sneaking suspicion that Yennefer might have lied to him just for the fun of it. His mind’s on other things right now, though, and even if he stands out here all night, at least he’ll have had the chance to think without Jaskier around.

Jaskier . What the fuck was happening with Jaskier? Geralt doesn’t know how the fuck to process the information he’s been given. Some things are slotting into place—the way Jaskier talks and talks, but never about his childhood; his choice of career. The wildfire popularity of a song about Geralt. 

Really, he should’ve known that he wasn’t hero material. He’d let himself think, for a while, that people actually respected him, acknowledged him. He shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up. He should’ve known something was wrong when the masses started to look like they liked him.

Really, though, was there a way to know that something was wrong? Jaskier hadn’t shown many hints of being an entire fucking siren, that was for sure. The monsters Geralt had come across had all been at least decently competent, inhuman or not. Jaskier seemed… weak. And sirens were anything but.

That brings up the real issue therein. The one Geralt can’t stop thinking about. The way that Jaskier acted… it was inconsistent with sirens. It was inconsistent with people who were powerful. It was inconsistent with the cavalier way that Jaskier, bright, loud, annoying, sunny Jaskier talked about murdering a man like it was a fucking game. It throws Geralt off. More importantly, though, it has him wondering if Jaskier, his personality, the man himself, had all been an act.

For all Geralt knows, he could’ve been murdering people behind his back for years now. Jaskier tended to run off, when they got into towns, and Geralt had always assumed… well. It doesn’t matter now, because he’s not going to assume anymore.

Does he really care if people die? ( Yes, of course, but he can’t say that, can’t feel that, because he can’t care about people dying. He can’t. If he does that, he’ll have his heart broken a thousand times over, and he’s had it happen too often to let himself fall into it again. ) Well. Normally, he can ignore it, at the very least, but he can’t live with himself if he’s responsible for protecting something that’s been killing innocent people.

Some part of his brain pipes up to tell him that he’s being an idiot. Jaskier wouldn’t just kill people. Jaskier’s different. He’s your friend. He seems hurt, now. His friendship wasn’t an act, was it?

His internal monologue is interrupted by something shifting in the dirt of a fresh grave. Geralt draws his sword. The silver one. Yennefer says it’s magical, though she doesn’t have any specifics to give to him just yet; Geralt figures that if a few stabs with the silver sword don’t kill it, the iron one’s within reach.

The crickets have gone silent. The cemetery is empty, except for Geralt. Geralt and the thing in the grave. 

Slowly, slowly, something starts to push up out of the grave. Dirt shifts. Something pale starts to poke up out of the earth. It doesn’t take long for Geralt to register them as ashen, bloodless fingers.

By the time the hand’s out of the grave, another set of fingers are showing through. Geralt hovers. If he starts hacking off body pieces, that’s more mess to deal with and no guarantee that he’ll even kill the thing. Better to let it extricate itself while he assesses the situation. The corpse doesn’t seem to be in a hurry.

The body reveals itself bit by bit. Shirt cuffs, smeared with dirt, emerge after the hands. Then sleeves. Then hair; thinning, almost balding. Someone middle aged. Geralt’s been doing this for years. He’s had practice. He doesn’t think about whether or not the man has children.

The arms plant themselves on the ground, and shoulders emerge. Geralt sees a face, finally. It’s bloated. Looks like poison, for sure: sloppily done. It’s obvious now that the thing, corpse or puppet or whatever it’s functioning as at the moment, isn’t alive, or moving of its own accord. That’s interesting. There’s smile lines and crows feet on the dead, lifeless face that Geralt erases from his memory as much as possible.

There’s a difference between him and Jaskier. Jaskier likes the past. Likes telling stories. It’s torture, for Geralt, who prefers to try and forget. 

At least, he’d thought that Jaskier liked that. He’s not so sure now. Maybe Jaskier does it because that’s the only way he can sing for a living.

There’s no time for reminiscing now, though. He watches a torso emerge, wearing a very decent shirt with the buttons all polished, even after going through layers of dirt.

The body’s wearing nice clothes. Funeral clothes. Geralt takes a deep breath. He sets his jaw. He attacks.

A few stabs through the heart with the silver sword and the body slows. It’s almost disappointingly anticlimactic, but Geralt has never turned down a quiet night. Before he’d left, Yennefer’d asked him to bring her the body, so he pulls the corpse out of the ground, stills his thoughts, and takes a back path through the hills to get to Yennefer’s house. Roach is waiting dutifully a little ways away, and he has her carry the body. He does apologize. She doesn’t really seem to mind.

Yennefer greets him at the door. In all honesty, she seems a bit more interested in the body than him, but Geralt isn’t often offered intimacy with someone he likes that he doesn’t have to pay for; so once the corpse is stowed in a locked room (next to another one, he notices) he doesn’t turn down her offer for the night. They go back to the same room.

Chapter Text

When morning comes, Jaskier makes his way down the stairs and follows the sound of quiet conversation to a room with a locked door. Contrary to the typical way he might have discovered this, he does not try the handle—frankly, he’s still too scared of Yennefer to go into a room with her without knocking first, so he knocks, and hears the sound of the door unlocking. She opens the door with a smile. She’s got a nice smile, Jaskier thinks. He likes people with nice smiles. 

“Jaskier,” she says. “Do come in.”

Geralt is the other occupant of the room, which Jaskier knew, because he’d heard his voice. This doesn’t mean that Jaskier doesn’t hesitate for a moment when he sees Geralt behind Yennefer. 

The room inside is sparsely decorated, with a plush red couch, a dark wooden table, curtains to match the couch, two bodies on the table, and a rug over the same light wooden flooring as the rest of the house. He’s surprised to see the bodies. He almost takes a few steps closer, to investigate, maybe see how they’d died: and then he remembers that humans are much more particular about the whole matter of life and death, and it’s not going to help his case with Geralt if he starts prodding at the bodies.

His brain works for a few moments before he decides to look over at Geralt, wide-eyed and nervous-looking. The whole ‘I’m innocent, promise,’ thing works better when you pretend to be afraid. “Is this what you were doing last night?”

“Don’t worry,” Yennefer cuts in, closing the door behind her and moving back to the table without looking at Jaskier or Geralt. Her dress today is purple velvet, conservatively cut but certainly lavish. The sleeves are see-through, made of lace. It’s the kind of dress that Jaskier would want to wear, if humans weren’t so picky about the whole gender thing. He really does like fun clothes. “He only stole one of the bodies. I’m responsible for the other.”

Geralt furrows his brow just slightly more. 

“As I was telling the witcher, it looks like he was only poisoned.” 

“It moved last night,” Geralt pipes up. “It isn’t just poison.”

Yennefer turns around to perch on the edge of the tabletop, back to the bodies. “Yes, that does complicate things a bit.” She sighs. “Unfortunate, but situations are never simple when you show up, Geralt.” She looks suddenly over at Jaskier, who doesn’t have the time to hide his alarm. “I’m taking your bard on a walk, Geralt. I hope you don’t mind.”

Jaskier swears that Geralt opens his mouth to protest . He frowns, and opens his own mouth to interrupt, maybe deliver a few scathing lines to hammer home his point, but Yennefer continues before either of them can get a word out.

“Wonderful. Keep yourself occupied inside, will you? I’m afraid you’ll scare the children if I don’t supervise you, and I really don’t have the time for that today.”

Jaskier follows Yennefer out the door, and casts a glance back at Geralt as he does so. The witcher looks exasperated, but mainly just tired. Jaskier wonders if he got any sleep at all last night. He follows his instincts and waves goodbye with a smile—a little olive branch of sorts. Geralt turns back to the bodies. 

Jaskier feels his smile fall, and tries to conceal the hurt as he trails after Yennefer.

Once they’re out the door, he gets up the courage to ask her a question that he hasn’t been able to get off his mind since the last time he met her. 

“Yennefer,” he starts, and it’s weird, her name feels unfamiliar in his mouth, but he forges on ahead. “Why didn’t you tell Geralt?”

Yennefer looks over at him, one eyebrow raised. “What? That he’s overcautious and rude? He knows that already, Jaskier. I’m sure he thinks it’s part of his charm. He’s dense, but that’s something for him to work through. It’s not my job to solve your relationship issues.”

“Well, he’s got enough relationship issues without factoring in yours truly,” Jaskier says, thinking specifically about the weird fucking thing that Geralt has going with Yennefer but not saying anything about it because he and Yennefer are definitely not close enough for that, “but that’s not what I was talking about.” He lowers his voice for the next part. He can see people at the edges of the little square in front of Yennefer’s house. “You knew I was a siren. But you didn’t say anything to Geralt.”

Yennefer snorts. It’s less ladylike than Jaskier typically imagines her behavior to be, but there’s still a refinement to it. “I’ll say it again, bard. It’s not my job to solve your relationship issues.” She levels him with that appraising glance again. “I might have thought you were whiny and annoying, but it’s not my place to air your dirty laundry.”

Jaskier finds several things he to take offense to in that statement. He straightens his shoulders and tries not to bluster too much. “It’s not dirty laundry . It’s heritage, thank you very much. Just because humans have this sense of superiority doesn’t mean that they have any advantage over anyone else. Just because they can read and write —”

Yennefer holds up a hand. “I’ve had all these thoughts before. No need to reiterate.”

Jaskier bites his lip to stifle any further argument. There’s a moment of silence before he speaks again. “So. You don’t think I’m whiny and annoying anymore.”

The look he gets from her is almost playful. “Well. I can see that you have other facets, now.”

He gasps as if supremely offended, but really, he just likes to play up the drama. It’s like a tiny lie. He thinks it’s fun.

They leave the little plaza in front of Yennefer’s house, and as people, out in the morning sunshine, start to pass by them, Jaskier gets up the courage for another question. “So, where are we going?”

“Full of questions today, aren’t we?”

Jaskier feels a little bit like an abashed child, but Yennefer continues on good-naturedly.

“Nowhere in particular. Think of it as a tour of the town, if you like. It’s a pretty place.” Her voice gets a more somber tone to it. “I want to talk over the murders. It’s helpful to have someone to talk it out with.”

Jaskier gets the feeling he’s being used as a receptacle, in this exchange, but he supposes it beats being flinched away from or spending the day alone in the library. Besides, he’s curious about this whole situation. “Right, the murders. So. What happened to the corpses in that room this morning?”

“Well. Geralt dragged one of them home from the graveyard. I dragged the other one. It looks like they’ve been poisoned, which would be a simple enough problem, but they’re also rising from the dead with no reason for it.” There’s a tinge of frustration to her voice, and it reminds Jaskier of at least one of his reasons for being scared of her. “It’d be simple enough if all I had to do was track down a would-be assassin. But now I’m dealing with magic. And not a good kind of magic.”

“Necromancy?” The idea excites Jaskier. Ghouls are all well and good, but he’s never had an opportunity to actually write a song about someone rising from the dead.

Yennefer sighs and shakes her head, but Jaskier thinks it’s more disapproval than disagreement. “Idiotic thing for a person to do. It’s dangerous and near-fucking-impossible to get right.”

“Like harboring a djinn in your own body?” The words are out of his mouth before he actually thinks about them. Yennefer shoots him a glare that makes him want to go hide in a cave somewhere.

“Like a siren following a witcher around.”

Jaskier wants to say ‘low blow,’ but he’s said enough already, so he bites his lip and holds his tongue.

They emerge into a small marketplace as Yennefer says her next words. It’s not quite bustling, not this early in the morning, but a good number of people are talking quietly in the early-morning sunshine; buying goods, discussing life. “I suppose the best way to go about solving this is one step at a time. Find the poisoner. If they’re the necromancer, as well, problem solved. If not…” she sighs. “I’ll find the necromancer next.”

“It’d probably go quicker if you asked Geralt to help.”

“Not everything is about Geralt,” she snaps, but it’s not far removed from her usual tone, which is snappy and sarcastic at the best of times. It does calm down a little bit with her next statements, though. “I’ve taken the responsibility of leadership in this town. I’m going to solve the problem on my own. I have no problem paying him to do brute work, but this is for me to do. This is my job. Not his dumbassery. Not your relationship issues. My job now is to take care of my town.”

“Quite the speech,” Jaskier mutters, as Yennefer turns and starts to walk briskly. Either she doesn’t hear him or she doesn’t want to dignify him with a response.

Just then, a scream sounds from across the marketplace. Yennefer turns and immediately starts pushing past people to get to the origin of the sound.

“Well. This’ll make for an interesting song,” Jaskier says, under his breath, trying to contain his excitement as he rushes after the witch.

Chapter Text

The screaming turns out to be quite relevant to their walk, considering a man had dropped dead in a market stall. 

From what Jaskier sees, as Yennefer talks to the woman who’d screamed and the other various humans who’d gathered around for a look, he hadn’t died recently. That is, if the pale face and slightly blue lips were any indication (he makes sure to remember that—colors are great little details when you’re telling a story). 

Jaskier whistles under his breath, looking over Yennefer’s shoulder at the corpse. That’s what humans do, he thinks, when they see something impressive; he’s seen it before, at least. His mind chooses then to go off on a tangent about whether he should whistle again, but this time do it like a bird—he really does like birdsong, and his thing with voices isn’t hindered by language. He’d spent many an afternoon, before he travelled with Geralt (and even when he was with Geralt, really: alone time in a forest lends itself to that kind of thing), sitting in clearings and singing back to the birds. He was never sure what they were saying, but he liked to imagine that they were love songs, or tales of adventure—or that they just sung because they were happy.

He’d tried perching in a tree like a bird, once. He’d learned something new about himself in the process. Heights, apparently, made him very uneasy; if just because of his capacity to be injured. Water was a lot safer than air. Heights were fine, in water, because water was just water, and you weren’t clinging on to tree branches for dear life. In air, on land, Jaskier found that he was afraid of falling.

He hadn’t liked that discovery. 

Jaskier realizes, a few moments later, that his thoughts of birdsong have distracted him, and that he’s just been staring absently at a dead body for a while. Not that it bothers him, but humans have this weird thing with seeing other dead humans. They’re all very susceptible to get upset over life and death. Jaskier finds it strange. 

He considers that, for a moment, and then tunes in to Yennefer’s discussion with the woman. He does like mentioning distraught onlookers in his songs. Adds a dramatic touch to the story, when the hero is a savior for a gaggle of helpless townspeople. Jaskier likes to use that sort of flair in his songs about Geralt (well, the ballads about his adventures, at least).

“I was just coming to buy some fruit,” the woman says, hysterical, “and there’s Abel, dead on the ground—”

“He owns this stall?” Yennefer asks, calm. The woman nods her head. Jaskier can see tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

“He’s here every morning, but today, when I came over, I didn’t see him, so I looked inside, and—” she looks like she’s overcome, and cuts off with a sob.

Yennefer exhales, almost imperceptibly. “Interesting.” She turns to the crowd, then, who’ve been whispering amongst themselves in hushed, scared voices. “Someone return this man to his family for the proper burial, please.”

It takes a few seconds, but somebody moves from the crowd to do as she asks.

“Let’s go. We need to talk to some people,” Yennefer says to Jaskier, under her breath, before turning on her heel and leading the way away from the dead man. 

She knows where she’s going, and Jaskier can’t help but think that he’s surrounded himself with people to follow around aimlessly. He supposes it’s helpful for his nature, to have something to keep him going somewhere. He has this habit of losing time, in places; the ocean, especially, but there’s been times when he’s entered a forest and left it to find that the styles in court have changed. Time flies with Geralt, but he can mark the passage of it with different adventures, different stories. It’s a different sort of way to travel. Less freedom, maybe, but he likes the company. It’s nice having someone to talk to, really, even if they’re less than receptive and the longest response they’ll offer in any given conversation is a ‘hmmmmmmmm’.

Yennefer leads the way to the healer’s home, a building which Jaskier identifies by the starkly herbal scent coming off of it and the way that Yennefer says, “This is the healer’s home.”

Yennefer knocks, and the door is opened by a red-haired young woman, who looks startled to see Yennefer—almost afraid. Jaskier can empathize with that, being intimidated by Yennefer. He smiles at the girl when she looks at him. She offers a thin smile in return.

“My lady,” she says to Yennefer. “I’ll get my mother.”

The inside of the house is clean, sparsely decorated, with several rooms behind closed doors. The main room, which Jaskier and Yennefer are led into, houses several shelves of ingredients, as well as a table with several stains that are most probably from blood. 

The healer—the girl’s mother, apparently—is a broad-shouldered woman, with hair reminiscent of her daughter’s, though it is streaked with white and lacks vibrancy. She holds herself in a way that makes Jaskier think he’d trust her to heal him; confident, strong. She raises a skeptical eyebrow at Yennefer before she speaks. Jaskier admires her bravery. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here to talk about the recent deaths,” Yennefer says, taking a seat in a wooden chair close to the table. 

“I thought you might be.” The healer sighs, and takes a seat herself. 

Jaskier and the healer’s daughter (who’s name he’s learned is Hanna, after a short burst of conversation between her and her mother) exchange a glance over the heads of the women they’ve been following. Neither of them say a word. Jaskier leans tentatively against the wall.

“I take it you’ve examined the bodies?”

The healer inclines her head. “Most of the recent ones, yes. I take it you want to know about the poison?” Hanna, behind her, takes in a breath. Jaskier leans forward, just slightly. They’ve certainly skipped to the interesting part of the conversation.

It’s Yennefer’s turn to raise an eyebrow, now, and Jaskier gets the strange sense of a power struggle between the two women. “That would be ideal, yes.”

The healer sighs heavily. “Can’t tell you who it is that’s running around poisoning people, I’m afraid, but the poison’s nightshade. Large amounts, too.”

“Nightshade,” Yennefer mutters, as if she’s trying to fit it into her mental puzzle.

Jaskier thinks of several rhymes for nightshade (afraid, man-made, blade), as well as an excellent stanza about love being a deadly poison, and surprises himself by asking, “Anyone in town seem suspiciously murdery?”

Everyone in the room turns to look at him. Normally, Jaskier likes being the center of attention, but he shrinks under the Yennefer’s sharp gaze, reminded again of why exactly he was so afraid of her.

The healer looks more sympathetic, but he still wouldn’t dare say anything out of turn to her again. “Not that I’ve seen. If you’re looking for a reason, though…” she sighs again. “Well, many of these people have come here lately, looking for assistance. All of them have, actuallyTrouble breathing, trouble with memory, things like that. If you want my guess, young man, whoever is doing this is targeting the weak ones, the ones who’ll die easy. Maybe they think the deaths will look less suspicious.”

Yennefer glances at Jaskier again, but it’s softer this time. He feels rather proud of himself, for asking a question with a significant answer. Maybe he’s picked something up from Geralt—like cynicism, or paranoia, or a really awful stench. “Is there anything else that might be important?”

The healer shrugs her shoulders. “I’m afraid I can’t do much for you in this circumstance. I work with people who are dying, not people who are dead.”

Yennefer leans forward on her elbows, clasping her hands together and bracing her arms on her legs. “And what about those who don’t stay dead? Do you happen to have any expertise relating to that?”

“Can’t say I do.” The healer squints at Yennefer. “Do you suspect me of necromancy, madam mayor? I’ll have to protest, if you do. There hasn’t been magic in this town for years, and considering it was the reason it was destroyed in the first place, I can’t think of a reason for anyone living here to meddle with forces like that.”

“Destroyed?” Well. Jaskier might have promised himself not to speak out of turn a few moments ago, but he can’t let information just go past him. 

“Burned to the ground,” the healer tells him. “They lit a wizard’s house on fire. Things escalated. We haven’t had any magically-inclined folks around here since.”

“Nobody?” Yennefer asks. “You’re sure? Not even someone who’s moved here recently?”

“Not to imply anything, your ladyship, but you’re the only one who’s come here recently,” Hanna pipes up. “We’re a bit out of the way. Everyone here’s lived their entire lives here.”

“Well.” Yennefer sits up, drawing her shoulders up and behind her. “I suppose that does complicate things, doesn’t it?”

“One moment. If people are being revived…” The healer lets out a breath. “The people should be informed. For their protection.”

Yennefer keeps her almost regal posture. “They’re in no danger, so long as they stay away from the graveyard at night. I have this under control.”

“I don’t question your competency, but if there’s even a chance that someone could be hurt—”

“I said, it’s under control,” Yennefer repeats, firmer this time.

The healer does not seem convinced, but doesn’t press further. Her tone is begrudging when she speaks. “Very well.” A pause follows, as both women consider each other. Jaskier thinks that Yennefer’s won the power struggle this time. “If that’s all…”

Yennefer stands, brushing the wrinkles off her skirts. “Indeed. I’ll return if there are further questions.”

“Of course.” The healer gestures to the door. Yennefer leads the way outside. Hanna waves to Jaskier on his way out.

“That woman,” Yennefer mutters, as they walk. Jaskier thinks they’re probably going back to her house. The sun is high in the sky, now. “She knows no respect.”

“Well,” Jaskier reasons, “I suppose being a healer would give you a certain amount of leverage in life. Can’t exactly be rude to the person who might need to save your life one day.”

Yennefer scoffs. “She acts like the rectoress. It’s ridiculous.”

Jaskier doesn’t know who the rectoress is, but he doesn’t press it.

Geralt’s waiting for them when they return home, in the sitting room, polishing his weapons on a red futon. Jaskier thinks it’s quite sweet, really, the way he looks up when they enter the room. 

“Good news,” Yennefer says, “there’s been another murder.”

Geralt does that ‘hm’ thing again. Jaskier wants to launch into a story of what happened while he and Yennefer were gone, but then he remembers that his standing with Geralt is less than great.

“The woman I suspected of being the necromancer says she’s not, and…” Yennefer sighs. “Well. I may not like her, but she’s not lying. Besides, she says the people who were murdered all saw her recently, as the healer. It’s suspicious, but there’s no reason for her to provide so much information if it was only going to implicate her.” She shakes her head. “Which leaves me right back where I started.”

Geralt raises an eyebrow at her. “You’re sure you don’t want my help?”

“That’s an astonishingly considerate offer, Geralt, but no. I have this handled.” Yennefer shakes her head. “There’s other things to be taken care of.” She sighs, and turns to leave the room. “Don’t kill each other while I’m gone.” She leaves with a dramatic sweep of her gown.

After a moment, Geralt goes back to his swords, very obviously ignoring the other person in the room. Jaskier watches for a moment, steels himself (which is funny, because Geralt’s sword is steel; or at least he thinks it might be, he’s still not sure whether it’s steel or iron and it’s really not the ideal time to ask) and sits down on the futon next to Geralt. The witcher doesn’t look up.

“Geralt. Would you talk to me, please?”

This gets him a response, even if it’s less than ideal. Geralt turns, and his tone is tired. “What do you want, Jaskier?”

Jaskier takes the opportunity to be taken aback. “Well, civil conversation might be nice.”

Geralt scoffs and goes back to polishing (or maybe he’s cleaning it; either way, it’s making it shinier) his sword. 

“There’s no reason for you to be like this, you know,” he says, suddenly intent on letting Geralt know just how much of a fool he’s been the past day or so. “To ignore me, or distrust me. Or threaten me with a silver sword like I’m some kind of monster.”

“I didn’t know if you were still Jaskier.” Geralt turns his gaze on Jaskier, and for something that’s not a glare, it feels awfully like it. “I still have no way of knowing.” Jaskier tries to formulate an answer to that and only manages a couple of distressed noises. Geralt shakes his head and turns away again.

“I really was only trying to help, you know,” Jaskier offers, after a few moments of silence. “It’s…” he drifts off for a moment, suddenly weighed down by a sort of melancholic nostalgia. “It’s something my mother used to do for me, when I was small. Sing a lullaby. That’s what it was—not some… malevolent sleep spell. Just a lullaby.” He goes to touch Geralt’s shoulder, but Geralt pulls away from him. He retracts his hand, disappointed. “Well. I just wanted to tell you that you’re being ridiculous. I’m…” he takes a moment, trying to find the word, and sighs. “I’m still Jaskier. The same one you’ve travelled with for years. And I haven’t been murdering people all this time, in case you’re wondering, because that would be an awful idea for someone travelling with a witcher—” he cuts off again, because that little part definitely didn’t help his case—“Geralt, I want you to know that I told you—well, showed you, really—because I trusted you. And I thought you trusted me.” He waits for a response. Nothing comes. Hurt, Jaskier stands. “Well, I suppose I was wrong. And I’ve said everything I have to say, so…”

Geralt’s hair falls like a veil over his face, from where Jaskier’s standing. He’s stopped doing whatever he was doing with his blades. He’s listening; but obviously with no intention of responding. 

“Well,” says Jaskier, his heart aching in a way that it hasn’t since he left the sea behind for the first time. “I guess I’ll be going, then.”

Chapter Text

Jaskier spends the rest of the day in the library, coaxing melancholy tunes from the strings of his lute. He doesn’t sing. He thinks it might make him feel better, except that all the spite has drained out of him, and he’s pretty sure that purposefully singing despite Geralt’s presence would only make him hate Jaskier more. And he doesn’t really feel up for that. 

Really , though, he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand why Geralt is so wound up about this. It’s not like he’s any different from how he’s been. He still sings, and talks, and wants to go on adventures. That’s all the same. He hasn’t started talking differently, or started throwing rocks at people on the street, or started raving like the madman they saw outside Darel. Geralt must have known other non-human people, and frankly, Jaskier thinks, it’s quite biased of him to behave like this just with Jaskier.

It’s not like Jaskier lied to him. He doesn’t lie to Geralt; he can’t, really, it makes him feel all strange inside, despite how much he likes to lie, and so he doesn’t do it. He never claimed to be human. All he did was just… conceal the truth. A bit. Everything else, he was totally open about. 

For a millisecond, he wonders if Geralt knows that. He wonders if Geralt thinks he’d been lying to him all this time. 

It’s a strange feeling, getting inside someone else’s head. He doesn’t like it. Things are much simpler when he just has his own head to worry about. He goes back to picking out little melodies.

Shortly before night falls, there’s footsteps outside, and then a knock at the door. Jaskier glances up with a hopefulness in his expression that he can’t quite keep down—he’s been awfully lonely, lately, and he’d be delighted for some company. Yennefer’s servant opens it (the same one he’s seen around all this time, who he thinks is probably a butler or something of the sort), to Jaskier’s surprise.

“The lady says that you’re welcome to come to dinner, if you’ll stop moping around.”

Jaskier sputters for a moment, but the man is already gone, closing the door after him. 

When Jaskier gets to the dining room (which, admittedly, takes him a few minutes to find; he doesn’t quite remember where things are in this house. Finding the library the second time had been an adventure all its own), he goes straight to Yennefer. “I was not moping around, thank you! If anyone’s moping, it’s—”

He realizes that Geralt’s in the room, as well, and cuts off the end of that sentence. Yennefer, at the head of the table, raises an eyebrow at him, almost teasing. Jaskier sits at the extra place setting, across from Geralt, to Yennefer’s right, and glumly focuses his attention on the stew in front of him. 

“Eat fast,” Yennefer says. “We’ve got a vigil to keep.”

“We?” Geralt says, at the same time as Jaskier asks, “A vigil?”

“Yes,” Yennefer says, to the both of them, before directing her attention to Jaskier. “This necromancer, whoever they are, has been going after the bodies at night. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before, but we’re going to wait at the graveyard to see who shows up.”

“The man’s already been buried?” Jaskier looks over at Geralt, but he’s staunchly avoiding eye contact.

“They move fast,” Yennefer mutters, glancing out the window. “It’s almost dark. Let’s go.” Her attention shifts to Jaskier. “Unless you’d rather stay here?”

Jaskier glances across the table at Geralt, who he thinks is probably concerned about something or other but who actually looks a bit constipated. He’s quite sure that Geralt doesn’t want him around: but at that moment, he thinks he’d prefer grudging company to the solitude that awaits him back at the library. He’s a social creature, after all. 

They leave soon after. The night’s a bit cold, but Jaskier doesn’t mind. He’s good with temperature regulation; the deep sea is cold, and he’s typically warmer on land than he needs to be. He glances over at Geralt. Witchers (or the ones akin to Geralt, at least) seem to be relatively unaffected by temperature. He wonders if Geralt ever noticed that Jaskier doesn’t tend to bother with cloaks and the like: and then he wonders if Geralt ever noticed anything that might have been a sign that Jaskier was a siren. It certainly doesn’t seem like he ever noticed anything like that. He wonders if Geralt even paid attention to him at all. 

Surprisingly, when they get to the graveyard, it seems that Yennefer wasn’t the only one who thought to pay a visit. 

Jaskier pulls close to Yennefer, just behind her shoulder, to point to the girl in front of the freshly-dug grave at the edge of the yard. It’s something he does with Geralt, he realizes: get close behind him, so that he’s protected, but he can also see. He shakes off the melancholy feeling that accompanies that. “There’s someone over there,” he whispers. “The necromancer?”

Yennefer glances over at him for a moment, and Jaskier doesn’t have the time or the knowledge of Yennefer’s expressions to interpret the sharpness that he sees in that glance. Before she can say or do anything else, the girl notices them.

“Oh! Milady, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there,” the girl, who can’t be more than seventeen, hurriedly turns to curtsy. Jaskier finds all of it entirely suspicious until he sees her wiping tears away in the light of her lantern. “I was just…” she looks over her shoulder for a moment, despondent. “The funeral’s not ‘till tomorrow, but I had to…” she cuts off, biting her lip. “I wanted to say goodbye to him on my own.” The girl wipes at her eyes again. “I’m sorry, if you want the yard to yourself—”

Yennefer holds up a hand, cutting her off. “No need. He was your father?”

The girl nods. Yennefer shakes her head. “Take all the time you need. Have you seen anyone else here tonight?”

The girl shakes her head no. “Just… just me. My little brother wanted to stay, but I sent him home with my mother. She needed the company.”

Yennefer nods. “Very well.” There’s a pause. Jaskier would call it tentative, if it was anyone but Yennefer. “Do you mind if I ask you another question?”

The girl shakes her head again.

“How did your father die?”

Jaskier looks over at Yennefer, confused. They know how the man died. Poisoning. Why would she ask for information she already had?

The girl swallows. “He’s been… or. He was , sick, I suppose.”

“Just recently?”

“For a while, now,” the girl clarifies. “It wasn’t… it wasn’t bad , though, not bad like this.” She turns, just slightly, to look back at the grave. “He was coughing, but Mum figured it was just because he’d been out in the rain a little while back.” She grows obviously more distraught as she speaks. “I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be this bad. He only went to the healer yesterday, and she said he’d be fine, gave him medicine and everything so he’d get better, but then—” her words are choked off by a sob.

“Interesting,” Yennefer says, gaze on the grave.

“Interesting?” The girl manages to keep the tears at bay long enough to speak again. “Why? Is it—oh, god, is it to do with the other deaths? Were they all sick, as well? Is there an epidemic?”

Yennefer’s tone, when she speaks, is strangely calming. “Don’t panic. It isn’t that.”

“Well, then…” the girl trails off, looking back at the grave. Jaskier sees the moment that something horrible dawns on her, just before she looks frantically back at Yennefer. It’s a familiar expression. “You don’t think… someone killed him? Killed those people?”

“Was he connected to them in any way?”

“No, I—we didn’t know any of them, we’d just heard of the deaths—”

Yennefer opens her mouth, ostensibly to interrupt, but Geralt cuts her off.

“Yennefer.” Geralt has a hand on the hilt of his sword, but the other one points at the grave. When Jaskier looks at it again, he sees the same thing Geralt must’ve: it’s shifting.

“Oh my god,” the girl says, backing away slowly from her father’s grave. Hysteria slowly starts to creep into her voice. “What’s… my lady, what’s happening?”

“Are you doing this?” Yennefer’s tone is sharper than Jaskier’s heard it in a while. It’s terrifying, really. She moves rather threateningly toward the girl.

“Doing what? I don’t know what’s happening, please! What are you talking about?”

“Don’t lie to me.” Yennefer grabs the girl’s hand, looks her in the eye. The girl makes several panicked sounds, and Yennefer throws her hand down with a frustrated noise, looking over at Geralt. “It’s not her.”

“You mean she’s not the necromancer?” Jaskier asks, because he’s been without context for a while, but the glare Yennefer sends his way is enough to shut him up.

“There’s a necromancer?” the girl squeaks, before she gets a taste of one of Yennefer’s nastier expressions as well. 

“Go home,” Yennefer says, before directing her attention to their surroundings. Jaskier thinks she’s probably searching for a necromancer in the hills. He glances around, himself, and doesn’t see any movement. It unsettles him, a bit, to think that someone might be watching them; but they’ve got a pretty good line of sight, really, and he’s not sure what the rules of necromancy are, but he thinks that he would’ve been able to see if anyone got close enough to 

“But—my lady, this is my father —”

“Fine, then,” Yennefer snaps. “Stay. But get back.” She motions for her to get behind Geralt. Jaskier thinks that’s probably a wise move for himself, as well, and follows her.

Though he’s not helpless, Jaskier can’t do much in a fight that’s not going to affect everyone around him, and he doesn’t know if sound would even affect whatever’s in the grave. Not to mention that Yennefer would probably kill him if he pulled his favorite destructive move and screamed until the ears of everyone in the vicinity bled, including her. Self-preservation is the name of the game, he thinks, ducking behind Geralt (as he’s grown accustomed to doing).

As he’s craning over Geralt’s shoulder, to get a better look at what’s happening, the girl grabs onto his arm, holding it to her like a patchwork doll. Jaskier thinks she’s probably looking for comfort. He doesn’t mind. Nobody’s really touched him, much less hung onto him, in a while, and he doesn’t mind the contact, doesn’t mind being safe in someone’s eyes. “Is that my father?” she asks, barely louder than a whisper. Jaskier nods wordlessly, still trying to get a good look at the action. The girl makes an anguished noise and clings tighter to his arm.

For a moment, Jaskier considers what it must be like to be her right now. To have just found out that your father was killed, to see the leader of your town at his grave, to see something stirring in the dirt where your father was laid to rest. His heart sinks at the thought of his own mother dying. It’s an awful feeling, really, tragic and all-consuming, and he most certainly doesn’t like it, so he cuts off that train of thought right there. It’s another reminder that day of exactly why he doesn’t play games where he gets into other people’s heads. It’s far more comfortable just staying in his own. 

A hand makes its way out of the ground. It’s wearing a ring; a wedding ring.

Geralt draws his sword, the silver one. The blade rasps as it’s pulled out of the sheath. Jaskier can feel the girl tense next to him, and she throws a hand out, as if that’ll stop a witcher. “No! You can’t!”

“It’s not your father anymore, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Yennefer’s gaze roams over the surrounding hills. She swears, almost violently. “There’s nobody here. Can’t be. So how…”

A head appears from the grave, next. The girl buries her face in Jaskier’s shoulder with a sob. For a moment, Jaskier awkwardly pets her head, unsure of how to grant solace in such a strange situation. From what he can see, the corpse is extricating itself rather slowly from the grave. It’s a bit of an anticlimax, really. He looks forward to the thrill of a fight, for the kind of story he’ll be able to tell later, and ‘The Ballad of the Sluggish Corpse and the Witcher who stood around for a while, waiting for it to Painstakingly Claw its way out of the Ground’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as ‘Toss a Coin’ did.

The whole affair is over in another couple of minutes. Geralt stabs the thing through the heart until it stops moving, and the girl gets Jaskier’s sleeve wet with tears, which he thinks is really quite inconsiderate of her, because now he’ll have to go around with a damp sleeve all night.

Yennefer looks at the body, half-slumped out of its grave, and sighs. “Well. This was monumentally unhelpful.” She turns to the girl, who is still clinging to Jaskier like he’ll keep her from being swept out to sea, and raises an eyebrow at him. He shrugs, best he can with someone holding his arm. “We’re going to take your father’s body to the healer. You can come with us, if you want,” she says to the girl. “But don’t get in the way. If you go home, you aren’t to say anything of what you saw. Understand?”

The girl nods, and from her unrelenting grip on Jaskier’s arm, he would bet that she’s planning on going along.

Chapter Text

Is Jaskier exactly sure why Yennefer’s going to the healer? The answer to that question is no, but he thinks he’s managed to make friends with the girl (still clinging to his arm as if he’s going to be any help to her), which must amount to something. She’s still a bit too busy crying to be a great conversational partner, but he knows that her name is Amelia, at least.

Yennefer and Geralt are leading the way, at the moment. Jaskier and Amelia make up the rear of the party. Ostensibly, this is because Yennefer knows where the healer lives, and because Geralt can see better than most in the dark. Jaskier’s not sure if either of them know that he can see just fine in the dark, as well. Light can be hard to come by in the deeper parts of the ocean. He can also echolocate fairly well, a trick that little sirens tend to pick up from the dolphins, but it’s an awkward trick to use out of the water, and he’s a bit out of practice.

He’s shaken out of his thoughts when Geralt turns around, looks at him (and, by default, at Amelia, who he thinks must count as a part of him at this point; she looks terrified when Geralt looks in her direction, which is probably justified because the man just killed her father a second time and is carrying his body), and considers something for a moment before actually addressing him unprompted. Jaskier’s heart soars for a moment before he hears the way Geralt says, “Stay close.”

If Jaskier didn’t know better, he would say that tone was mistrust. And Jaskier most certainly did not know better.

He scoffs and turns to Amelia. “Can you believe him? Really, it’s ridiculous; doesn’t speak a word to me, unless he’s forced to, and all of a sudden, walking down the street, he’s a font of wisdom. Preposterous.” He’s absolutely aware that Geralt can hear him. That’s part of the fun.

Amelia stops, suddenly, dropping his arm, as Yennefer starts to say something to Geralt. Normally, Jaskier might listen in (or really, normally, he might not, because he’s pretty sure that Yennefer would be able to tell if he was eavesdropping and she’d probably turn him into a tadpole or something—which wouldn’t be that bad because tadpoles are fun little things, but then how would he sing and follow Geralt), but the look of panic on the girl’s face is actually interesting. “My lantern,” she says, quietly.

“Yes? What about it?” Jaskier asks, matching her soft tone just in case this is a secret they’re keeping from the people up ahead, which he thinks would be very fun.

“I left it at my… at the graveyard,” she says, and it’s like a confession, really.

Jaskier gives her a questioning look.

“I don’t want to inconvenience the lady,” she whispers, and oh. Alright. She doesn’t want to derail what Yennefer’s doing, which makes sense, and Jaskier can absolutely get behind that. A determined Yennefer is the scariest kind, and she’s definitely got a plan as of that moment.

Something occurs to Jaskier, then. The girl looks a bit unnerved, which Jaskier thinks probably means that he’s got a mischievous look in his eyes, which he thinks is very fun of him. “Well, of course not. How about we just hang back for a little bit, run back and get your lantern, and then catch up with them? They’ll never have to know we’re gone.”

Amelia looks at Jaskier, and then up at Yennefer and Geralt (still deep in conversation, thankfully), and seems decidedly uncomfortable. She tucks a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and avoids Jaskier’s eyes when she says “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Jaskier. You heard what—”

Jaskier laughs, partially in an attempt to seem less intimidating. “What the big scary witcher said? Oh, he’s a big softie, really. I’m sure he won’t mind if we just pop over for a moment.”

Jaskier forgets, sometimes, the thrill of lying to people who aren’t Geralt. It’s very fun.

Amelia looks very unsure, but Jaskier smiles as nicely as he can, and she mutely nods. Jaskier holds a finger to his lips to call for silence, and once she nods, he slowly starts to walk back in the other direction.

The process takes quite a few frantic glances at Geralt, but luckily, he doesn’t notice them, and neither does Yennefer—and since the trio didn’t bring a lantern for themselves, choosing to navigate by moonlight and night vision, it’s easy for Jaskier and Amelia to disappear into the darkness.

The graveyard is notably more eerie than when Jaskier entered it with Geralt, but he reminds himself that the immediate threat’s been taken care of and that he can probably out-scream a banshee, if one appears and tries anything. He’s strong and competent and he can take care of himself, and take care of Amelia, no matter if Geralt thinks they need to stay close to him. Who cares what Geralt thinks, anyway? Obviously Geralt doesn’t know him, and doesn’t care, so there’s really no point in listening to a word he says.

The light from Amelia’s lantern is still there, glowing softly, behind a few gravestones. It’s at the very edge of the yard, casting shadows on a haphazard pile of rocks.

Amelia’s voice is a bit strange when she says, “I forgot. Someone’s knocked over the cairn.”

Jaskier looks to her for an explanation, but she shakes her head. “It’s nothing. That pile of stones… it’s been here as long as I can remember, and it looks like someone’s knocked it over.” She shakes her head again. “It’s nothing, it’s been like that for days now, since that first funeral, it’s just…” she looks around, uneasily. “Strange.”

“Well!” Jaskier claps his hands, eager to perform a task successfully without Geralt’s reproach or assistance. “Your lantern’s right over there.” Amelia gives it an uneasy glance, and Jaskier, as probably the most generous, chivalrous person in the entire world, says, “Worry not, fair maiden, I will retrieve it for you.” WIth a jaunty grin and a self-indulgent, flourishing bow, he makes his way across the graveyard, picking his way around several gravestones in the process. It’s not long until he’s in front of the lantern. His gaze falls upon the pile of stones—the cairn, Amelia had called it. 

“My condolences,” he says, for the purpose of dramatics. “I hope you’re set right again some day.” With that, he reaches down to pick up the lantern, and hears two things at once: a rustle in the grass behind him, and Amelia’s scream. 

Jaskier turns to find himself face-to-face with another corpse. He curbs his instinct to scream and manages a panicked yell instead as the body lunges at him.

It’s almost insulting, how easily he’s tackled to the ground. Amelia is absolutely no help, screaming in the background. “Get off of me, you—” as he’s struggling to push the thing off of him, it bites at his throat, of all things. Immediate panic floods his system as he remembers the last time something went for his throat on one of these adventures. “Oh, no, no no no no no, none of that,” he says, and his voice is betraying far more of his panic than he’d like it to. “That’s for living people, thank you, and you’re not—” His voice gets far higher than usual as the corpse, stronger than he’d given it credit for, goes for his throat with its hands this time.

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” He tries to wrest its hands away, but the body’s bony fingers are tight around his throat, and only getting tighter by the second. A thought flashes through his mind: I could die here . He makes a strangled noise (rather appropriate for the moment) and starts thrashing, trying to get away. The lantern behind him illuminates the corpse’s face, pale and emaciated, long dead. He wants to sing , to try anything, but the thing is dead, and why would it listen to him? He doesn’t think he could make a coherent noise, anyway, his air supply’s getting lower and lower and his throat hurts and oh, gods, what if he dies without ever seeing Geralt again, without ever making things up with him, what if he dies —

Something shiny suddenly appears on the corpse’s torso, reflected in the lantern light. The hands around his neck loosen, and he recognizes the shiny material as silver; the blade of a sword.

“Geralt,” is the first thing he manages to say, before the corpse, dead for real this time, lands on him and knocks the air out of his lungs.

The body’s hefted off of him a moment later, and he looks up to see gold eyes, reflected in the light of the lantern. They’re glaring at him, but he figures that’s a problem for later, and looks up at Geralt like he’s rediscovered the stars.

“What the fuck were you doing out here.”

Well. Not the chivalrous words he might have expected from his savior, but he can work with it.

“Amelia left her lantern,” he says, and does his best imitation of an abashed smile. “We came back to get it.”

There’s a flicker of confusion on Geralt’s face that tells Jaskier that he doesn’t know who Amelia is, but judging by the glance behind him, he figures it out quickly. Geralt sighs, long and beleaguered, and offers his hand to Jaskier.

Jaskier takes a moment to look at that hand like the calloused, wonderful olive branch that it is before he takes it and is hauled to his feet. 

“I swear, Jaskier, if you ever—”

Jaskier cuts him off by throwing his arms around him. He’s got this overwhelming sense of… something , in his chest, and it’s accompanied by the thought of he saved my life he saved my life he saved my life over and over again. It’s different, somehow, than from the times when Geralt had been all grudgingly heroic and Jaskier had thought he was pretty and wrote a song about it; Jaskier had been scared. So scared. And Geralt had saved him.

He did care. He must’ve. The realization washes over him like a cool current on a blazing day. 

Geralt pats his back, rather awkwardly, but he doesn’t push him away. It makes Jaskier want to sing. 

When Jaskier pulls away, of his own accord, and looks up at Geralt’s (adorably awkward) face, he thinks he can identify what he’s feeling; gratitude, and something else entirely.

“Adorable,” someone says, from across the graveyard. Jaskier looks over to see Yennefer, arms crossed, next to an absolutely ashamed-looking Amelia. His heart drops like a stone (although the warm feeling from before still persists). His prevailing thought, for a moment, is that he supremely fucked up, and he remembers exactly why he was afraid of Yennefer. “Now will someone please explain to me what the fuck is going on?”

Chapter Text

Jaskier, in a moment of panic, whips out his most charming smile and aims it at Yennefer. “Yennefer. Fancy seeing you here.”

“Jaskier.” She’s obviously unmoved by his beautiful face. Damn. “Your flirting might work on Geralt, but don’t even entertain the idea that it’ll distract me. Explain.”

Jaskier sighs, and drops the smile, gesturing at the lantern by his feet. “Amelia forgot her lantern. We came back for it.” 

Yennefer rounds on Amelia, who looks as if she’s about to cower out of her skin. Jaskier, who he’s sure has the most experience with being intimidated by Yennefer, is suddenly hit by this awful feeling. Amelia looks as if she feels terrified, and Jaskier feels it along with her, recalls when he felt that way, and he’s struck by the sudden urge to help her. 

“She wasn’t at fault, Yennefer,” Jaskier says, quickly, trying to preempt anything else. “I was the one who suggested we go back for it.”

For a moment, he thinks he’s supremely fucked over, but Yennefer just sighs heavily and says, “You’re an idiot, Jaskier.”

He doesn’t appreciate being talked down to, like that, but his survival instinct tells him not to press it. Not right now.

“What happened?” Geralt asks, glancing between Jaskier and Amelia. Jaskier feels elated to be addressed in this way, and practically leaps into a story.

“Well, we got back here, to the cemetery, and everything was quiet,” Jaskier says, keeping his tone jovial to try and lighten the mood in the graveyard. “It all seemed safe enough, but Amelia looked very uneasy, and I could see the lantern light, so I offered to go get it for her, because I really am a gentleman, you know.” He smiles at both Yennefer and Geralt. Geralt raises a dubious eyebrow. Yennefer all but glares at him. Jaskier hurriedly continues on. “I went to go get the lantern, and the next thing you know, I’m attacked by a corpse! It was awful, really. It tried to bite my throat out, and—” he cuts off for a moment as the memory hits. He runs a protective hand over his neck and takes a shaky breath before focusing on a less sensitive detail. “Breath like the dead, I’m telling you.” He laughs shakily at his own observation. “Except he was actually dead, so I suppose it makes sense—”

Yennefer squints at him. “What do you mean.”

Jaskier looks at her for a moment, trying to discern whatever on earth she’s talking about. The confusion distracts him for a moment from the horror of his experience. “Well, he was dead, so it’s only sensible that he had breath like the dead,” he says, a bit slower this time. “I don’t suppose he had time to chew any mint before attacking me.”

“But it was breathing?”

Jaskier has to think on that for a moment. “Yes, I suppose it was. I did feel—” his hand ghosts over his neck again, almost self-consciously. “A bit of a breeze. When it tried that.”

Yennefer frowns. “Continue.”

Jaskier has to think, again, to remember where he left off in the story. He fights back a grimace as he remembers what comes next.

Jaskier likes to think that he’s not scared of much. Unfortunately, that is not the case, because heights make him uneasy at the best of times and the thought of his own mortality terrifies him. Sometimes it takes a moment to set in, but it’s never the monster he’s afraid of. It’s the thought that he’s capable of losing his life.

Or his voice. That particular fear crops up far more than he’d like it to.

“Well, it gave up on teeth, and tried with the hands,” Jaskier says, forcing a smile onto his face. He keeps his tone as upbeat as possible to keep the alternative at bay—a trembling, shaken voice. Jaskier’s voice is strong. He needs to be able to depend on that, if nothing else. “And then—” he looks over at Geralt, and a smile appears on his face that he doesn’t need to force. “Geralt saved me.”

“I’m going to stop that right there,” Yennefer says, as Geralt makes startled eye contact with Jaskier before suddenly clearing his throat and looking elsewhere. “We still need to go to the healer’s. And as for you—” she turns to face Amelia. There’s such menace in her movement that Jaskier gives up any hope of helping her and hopes that she has a nice afterlife. “What were you doing here?”

Amelia looks ready to cry. “Saying goodbye to my father, that’s all, I swear! I haven’t had anything to do with anything that’s happened tonight, or—” she takes a breath, and it’s a heaving, rasping sound, on the edge of tears. “Or with that awful thing going after Jaskier, or—or any of it, I swear to you!”

“She could be the necromancer,” Geralt puts in, “but neither of us saw her when the other bodies rose, Yen.”

Yennefer looks torn. “Not to mention that subjects of necromancy don’t tend to breathe.” She takes a breath and levels a glare at Amelia. “You’re staying with us, now.” With that, she turns on her heel, skirt whirling around her, and starts off back in the direction of the healer. “No more detours ,” she calls, over her shoulder. “Geralt, bring one of the bodies. It doesn’t matter which one.”

As they make their way out of the graveyard, Geralt pauses by Jaskier. He clears his throat before speaking, his voice low. Jaskier thrills at the thought of possibly having a secret between the two of them. “Don’t…” Geralt sighs. “Don’t do that again. Run off and get yourself into trouble.”

Jaskier beams at the show of concern. “Don’t fret, Geralt. I’ll stay right by you.”

This time, they make it to the healer without further ado. Geralt brings up the rear, this time around, with Yennefer leading the way and Jaskier and Amelia safely sandwiched between the two; though, Jaskier can’t really decide if it’s for their safety or everyone else’s. There’s no talking, just a silence that brings Jaskier back to feeling like a scolded puppy. Amelia carries her lantern as close to her as she can, considering there’s a fire inside of it.

Hanna answers the door again, once they arrive at the healer’s home. Her face pales when she sees Yennefer, still looking pissed, and whatever she was going to say chokes in her throat when she sees the body that Geralt’s holding over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

“We’re here to see your mother,” Yennefer tells her, and pushes past the slight redhead into the house. 

Jaskier offers Hanna a small smile as he passes, because he does like to be friendly. She gives him a very peculiar distrustful look. Jaskier supposes it’s because he’s shown up with a friend who’s carrying a dead body. Humans are really so particular when it comes to life and death. He’s never understood why they care so much about deaths that aren’t even theirs.

Still, though, he’d thought that they’d built up a rapport, both of them standing silently behind their respective strong women. Ah, well.

Though momentarily distracted by Hanna’s expression, he does catch a look that passes between her and Amelia. It’s obvious that the blonde doesn’t want to enter the house, especially Hanna shoots her a particularly nasty glare. Even through her still-teary eyes, Amelia reciprocates the glare, her nose scrunching up ever so slightly.

Interesting. Jaskier would ask them about it, to get the story, but he thinks Yennefer might frown upon the distraction. 

The healer, mixing something at a large table, doesn’t look nearly so surprised to see them as Hanna. “I’ve seen that man once already today,” she says, preemptively. “It was poison. Same as all the rest of them.”

“Yes, well,” Yennefer says. “That doesn’t explain how he crawled out of his grave again.”

The healer looks up sharply. “The necromancer.”

“Well, I thought so,” Yennefer says, “but unless that girl is responsible, there’s nobody who was close enough to control the bodies; there were two of them, tonight, and one of them breathed .”

The healer frowns, glancing up at Geralt. Or, more precisely, at the corpse still over his shoulder. “That one?”

Yennefer shakes her head. The healer sighs. 

“Well, you might as well put him down anyway.” She stands and gestures to the table. Geralt lays the body down across it, and she goes to work investigating it, opening the corpse’s eyelids and placing a hand against its neck. Amelia winds herself around Jaskier’s arm again, lantern left on the front steps, and he glances down to see her stifling a sob. He’d forgotten that it was her father they were carrying around. Hanna, to his other side, is standing rather stiffly, still looking pale. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but from what I’ve heard, necromancy simply reanimates, like a puppet. It doesn’t actually bring the subject back to life.”

“That’s true.”

The healer looks back up at Yennefer. “This body’s warm. This isn’t the work of a necromancer.”

Yennefer curses rather creatively under her breath. “Well. That convolutes the problem.”

The healer’s eyes are back on the body, evaluating. “I may have something we can try. Hanna, bring me a knife.” Hanna looks glad to have an excuse to leave. She wastes no time going to get the requested tool.

“What’s the knife for?” Geralt asks, voice rumbling and even.

“This heart’s been pumping blood,” the healer says, still looking at the body. “Albeit slowly, perhaps. And if it was breathing, the lungs were pumping air. Might as well get a better look at those things.” She glances up at Amelia. “I’m sorry, my girl.”

It only just then seems to dawn on Amelia that they’re going to cut her father open. She buries her face in Jaskier’s sleeve to cry.

“You knew that this was her father?” Yennefer asks. Jaskier gets the feeling it’s not just out of curiosity.

The healer hums her agreement. Hanna returns with a slim knife. “They used to be friends, her and my daughter. Before their dramatic falling out.” She takes the knife, and Hanna retreats back into the corner of the room. “Not the time for that, though. Don’t look, Amelia.” With that, she slices open the corpse’s shirt. Jaskier wonders why she pauses before cutting into its chest, until he sees the strange raised, reddened circle over the heart. There’s a rather obvious stab wound through it already—Geralt’s handiwork—but it’s obvious that the anomaly isn’t a result of the sword. “Well. There’s something that necromancy certainly didn’t do.”

Yennefer frowns. “And you’re sure that wasn’t there before?”

The healer shakes her head. “I saw this man just yesterday for a slight sickness. There was no mark like this.”

Yennefer curses, as if she’s realized something. “I may know what this is.” She gestures impatiently for the healer to continue.

The healer raises her eyebrows at Yennefer, but continues on all the same. Jaskier watches with interest as the knife reveals layers of the man’s body; skin, blood, muscle, ribs (and Jaskier thinks of an excellent idea for a stanza that’s something along the lines of ‘ skin torn apart/to get to its heart ’). There’s blood everywhere, but she doesn’t seem to mind: dealing with such things is her job, after all. The healer pauses again. “Well. There’s something.” She reaches into the man’s chest.

Jaskier leans forward to see what she pulls out of the chest cavity, forgetting for a moment that Amelia’s rather attached to his arm. The healer’s hand retracts from the corpse with what looks like a thin maggot, red with the blood of the dead man. She looks over at Yennefer. “I don’t suppose you know what this is?”

Amelia chooses this moment to peek at what’s happening, and stifles a scream. Jaskier appreciates that. He’s got rather sensitive ears, and screams leave them ringing for a bit.

The little worm thing, though? That’s interesting. Although he’s going to have to find a better word for it than ‘little worm thing’.

Yennefer curses again. “It’s a parasite. A magical one. Gets into the heart of something dead, gets the body running again, uses it to hunt. They usually use animals, but if they’ve gotten into a graveyard…” She sighs. “Fuck. There’s no reason for them to even be near civilization, unless someone cursed something—”

“The cairn,” Amelia says, looking rather shell-shocked. Yennefer gestures impatiently for her to continue. 

“The little rock pile in the graveyard,” Jaskier says, happy to contribute something that he knows. “It was knocked over.”

“I saw that, as well,” Geralt says. “First night we got here.”

Yennefer whirls on the healer. “You said nobody here knows magic.”

“I didn’t lie to you,” the healer says, evenly, dropping the parasite (or half of a parasite; there’s a strange angle at the end of it that Jaskier thinks is probably from Geralt inadvertently stabbing it) back into the corpse’s chest cavity. “There hasn’t been magic here since the wizard, generations ago.” She raises an eyebrow at Yennefer. “As I said, there’s no reason for anyone living here to be tampering with those kinds of forces.”

“Anyone living here…” Yennefer suddenly turns to Amelia. “How long has that cairn been there?”

“What’s so important about a rock pile?” Jaskier asks. Yennefer glares sharply at him.

“It’s like a grave,” Amelia tells him, eyes darting over to her father’s body every so often. She starts to tear up. “It’s been here as long as I can remember.”

“A grave, yes, but they’re also used to keep things in the ground. Specifically magical things.” Yennefer looks up sharply, purple eyes alight with realization. “Or both. Did that wizard of yours ever have a burial?”

Chapter Text

Yennefer looks up sharply, purple eyes alight with realization. “Or both. Did that wizard of yours ever have a burial?”

The healer scoffs. “How should I know? That was decades ago. None of us were alive to see it.”

Jaskier glances at his compatriots, all of whom were alive decades ago, probably long enough to see it.

Yennefer shoots a very specific look at the healer, and Jaskier still doesn’t know her well enough to pin down what it is. He thinks it’s some mix of ‘shut up’ and ‘don’t test me’. The healer doesn’t look the least bit concerned about it. “Those parasites… they usually use the bodies of animals, but if someone planted them in a graveyard…Well. The intention’s obvious. A curse of some sort, maybe by a vengeful wizard whose house had just been burned down.”

“It’s possible,” the healer admits. “This town was rebuilt around the graveyard. It’s the only thing that survived.”

“You built a town around a graveyard?” Jaskier lets out a huff of air. “What is it with humans and death?”

The humans in the room must brush the use of ‘humans’ off as a synonym for ‘people’, or perhaps as an insightful reflection on humanity itself, because none of the three of them comment on it. Hanna looks decidedly on-edge, but Jaskier chalks it up to the presence of a body. Again, humans and death. He doesn’t get it.

The look he gets from Geralt is far less passive. He grins sheepishly. Yennefer barely spares a glance his way, a quick glare for the interruption before she moves on. 

“So. Wizard, or someone related, leaves magical parasites in the graveyard. Someone builds a cairn to contain them, someone knocks it over during a funeral service, and they’re set loose.” She shakes her head. “The burials must have attracted their attention.” 

“The new graves are closest to the cairn, as well,” Amelia puts in, voice still shaky from crying. She wipes at her eyes. 

Yennefer nods. “Hence why the recently buried have been rising again.”

Jaskier frowns. “There was only one murder today, though, and the one that attacked me wasn’t recently buried. Believe me, that smell wasn’t fresh.”

“They’re branching out,” Geralt says, finishing the thought for them. “Fuck.”

Yennefer sighs heavily. “If they’ve only just started going into older graves, we should have some time. We’ll go back to the graveyard, look over the cairn. First, however…” Yennefer directs her attention back to the healer. “There’s something else I needed to speak to you about. Regarding these murders.”

The healer shakes her head. “If you’re asking about who did it, I have no idea. There’s nothing I can think of to connect any of the victims, except that most of them were old and ailing.” She glances down at the man, cut open on the table. “Except this gentleman.”

“The poison was nightshade, yes?” Yennefer’s question has a suspicious sort of tone to it.

Jaskier thinks of nightshade; a poison, tailor-made, for a poor man, cruelly betrayed, part of the murderer’s masquerade—

“Yes. As I told you earlier.” The healer regards Yennefer evenly, unfazed.

“Where, pray tell, does someone get nightshade in this town?”

“Well, it doesn’t grow naturally around here. It has to be cultivated, but anyone with a pot and a cutting could grow some of their own.” The healer draws herself up, shoulders set. “And what, pray tell , do you mean by that tone in your voice?”

“I assume you have some. For medicinal purposes.”

The healer narrows her eyes now. “If used properly, belladonna can be useful for treating certain coughs, and it may not be as quick for pain relief as willow bark, but—”

Yennefer cuts her off this time. “See, you say there’s nothing to connect these victims, but there is.” Movement catches Jaskier’s eye; Hanna, in the corner behind her mother, frowns. “You told us yourself that all of these people had been to visit you. The old, the ailing, the dying. All of them killed by deadly nightshade, which you have easy access to.”

“In their medicines,” Amelia says, softly, to Jaskier’s side. He glances down at her. Her tears have subsided for the moment, and she’s staring at the healer as if trying to figure something out.

“Exactly,” says Yennefer. “So. Care to tell why every piece of evidence here leads directly back to you?”

The healer glares, now. “How dare you. How dare you insinuate that I would kill my own people. I have been caring for this town for my entire life, as did my mother before me, and as will Hanna after me.” Behind her, Hanna’s expression darkens. “Why the hell would I start killing people out of nowhere, with a trail that leads straight back to me?”

Yennefer calmly regards her. “May I see your belladonna plant? Maybe someone got in and took some,” she adds, almost magnanimously. Jaskier does know her well enough, by now, to understand that this doesn’t mean she’s even slightly put off of her suspicions.

The healer scoffs. “You don’t think I’ve thought of that? I keep my medicines under lock and key, thank you. But sure. Why not. Come along, then, let’s go see my belladonna.”

The healer leads them to a locked door, and opens it with a key in her pocket into a room with high windows, filled with vials and pouches and plants on shelves. “There,” she says, pointing to a light green plant with a couple of dark purple berries. “That’s—” she breaks off, suddenly, attention pulled elsewhere. “There’s berries missing. Oh, god.”

“Was there a point to this farce?” Yennefer says, and Jaskier unconsciously leans away from her as her anger starts to show through her calm exterior. “Admit it. You were the one to kill all those people.”

“No,” Amelia says, and Jaskier’s not the only one to turn to her with surprise on his face. Amelia’s attention, however, is on Hanna, at the very back of the group, away from the rest of them. After a moment’s pause, she points at the other girl. “It’s her.” New tears start to brim in her eyes, though her expression lacks grief, now. She’s composed more of anger and determination. “Isn’t it. It’s been you from the start of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hanna says, but there’s an edge to her voice, a glint in her eyes. Geralt edges forward.

“It is you. Isn’t it. The only other one who could get to the poison.” Amelia’s voice drifts further and further toward hysteria. “God, you’re sick! All of those poor old people, and then—you poisoned my father’s medicine, didn’t you? Because of this—” she makes a frustrated noise, glancing down as if she’s searching for a word. “Because of this grudge you have against me? How dare you!” Tears start to stream down her cheeks, and she starts forward, ready to launch herself at Hanna, but Geralt grabs her arm before she can do so.

“Hanna,” the healer says, disbelieving. “You didn’t.”

Hanna stays silent, starting to back away, jaw working as if she’s considering saying something.

“Well?”

Jaskier thinks Geralt’s demanding voice is a great trick to force people into accountability. He’d certainly confess everything he’d ever done in his entire life if Geralt demanded it from him like that—and not just because of his strange incapability to deal with guilt, though that makes up a substantial part of it.

Hanna glances around for a moment, distrusting. “Fine,” she finally spits. “Fine, sure, you caught me. It was me! Big joke,” she says, and hysteria creeps into her voice, as well, as she starts to laugh. Her laughter is nervous, forced, but her tone is aggressive. “What are you gonna do, huh? Kill me? Punish me for my crimes? What’s done is done!”

“Why?” The healer sounds heartbroken, behind them. Jaskier glances back at her, just for a moment, and there’s a forlornness in her expression that he thinks will be a great detail when he sings about all of this.

Hanna shrugs, expression determined. “To see if I could get away with it.”

“You bitch !” The vitriol in Amelia’s voice as she struggles against Geralt’s hold surprises Jaskier.

“Oh, and it felt good , getting away with it,” Hanna says, shifting her attention to Amelia, taunting. “It made me feel powerful . Your daddy was just the icing on the cake.”

Amelia screams. The sound is strong, clear; fueled by anger and frustration and loss.

Yennefer steps forward, addressing Hanna. “Shut up.”

Hanna sneers at her. Bad decision, Jaskier thinks. “Or what?”

Fed up, Yennefer waves her hand, and Hanna collapses.

“She’s not—” the healer’s voice chokes off. “She’s not dead, is she?”

“Not yet.” Yennefer looks down at Hanna, no remorse in her expression. “Come on, Geralt. Jaskier. We’ll leave this one with the town guards. We’re not done for the night.” She turns to the healer, and her expression softens, just for a moment. “I’m sorry.” Her attention shifts to Amelia, who’s devolved into silent sobs, almost entirely supported by Geralt. “Take care of her, please. She’s been through a lot.”

With that, Yennefer turns again, expression hardened once more. She’s addressing Geralt and Jaskier, he’s sure, but her gaze stays straight ahead, on the door. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

Jaskier’s third trip to the graveyard that night is relatively uneventful, but far more purposeful than the first two.

Having called the city guardsmen to take Hanna into whatever custody they have (Jaskier imagines a single cell in the guardhouse, like the one he’d been locked in once), Yennefer leads Jaskier and Geralt back to the graveyard. Geralt carries his swords on his back.

“Quite the night, hm?” Jaskier says to Geralt, in an attempt to strike up a conversation. Geralt doesn’t seem particularly amused.

“Not the time, Jask,” Geralt says, and Jaskier thinks of how Geralt calls Yennefer ‘Yen,’ and thrills at the thought of finally having a nickname of his own. It’s a dismissal, but it’s enough to keep him happily quiet for a little while, at least.

The first body has already made it to the gates of the cemetery, by the time they arrive. It looks emaciated; the body of a young woman, the left side of her face an ugly mess. Animal attack, Jaskier guesses. She snarls, like the animal that might’ve killed her, as their little group approaches, and launches herself at Yennefer.

Geralt steps in front of Yennefer and calmly, measuredly, runs the body through with his silver sword. It doesn’t stop moving; the young woman struggles against the blade, as if unbothered by the pain, and swipes at Geralt as if she had claws. He stabs her through the heart again, and this time she stops moving. Jaskier imagines the pale little worm in her heart being run through.

A lyric runs through his head ( and the parasite, it struggled, but the witcher, he prevailed; continued through the darkness now to later be regaled / by the people of the town; as a hero, ever hailed ). Jaskier quite likes it, though it needs some workshopping. It comes with a snippet of melody that he hums, earning him a strange look from Yennefer.

He runs the lyric through his head a couple of times, and tries his best to commit it to memory by putting it to the tune. He remembers things better when they come with music. His memory is notorious, really, for thinking up brilliant things and then forgetting them a moment later. Melodies stick in his head forever, probably as a result of his heritage, but sometimes words will just be dumped unceremoniously out of his memory. 

He doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that only two more bodies have risen since they left. These ones seem faster—Jaskier thinks maybe the parasites have had more time to get used to the new hosts, more time to get the blood flowing again—but the bodies, further on the path to decay, seem to make for worse vessels, and they stumble as they rush toward Geralt.

Jaskier is markedly less anxious about these stumbling, human-sized things than he is about the kind of monsters he usually sees when he accompanies Geralt on hunts. Alghouls and kikimoras and selkiemores and genies, for that matter, tend to pose more of a threat. That said, he’s not an idiot, and he learned his lesson the last time he was in the graveyard. He sticks close to Yennefer, as Geralt deals with the corpses, just in case he’d miscounted and one decides to attack.

“That’s what the girl was talking about?” Yennefer asks him, pointing to the rock pile on the edge of the graveyard; the one Amelia had identified as a cairn. Jaskier nods. Yennefer narrows her eyes at the cairn, and starts over, Jaskier not far behind.

“More light would be helpful,” Yennefer mutters, glancing over the pile of stones. 

“What are you looking for?” Jaskier asks, feeling rather chivalrous and helpful again. 

Yennefer glances over at him as if something had just occurred to her. “You can see better in the dark?”

Jaskier nods. “Not much light to come by in the ocean, you know,” he jokes, and it feels nice to refer back to his past, back to who he is, out loud. It feels good to speak about the ocean, even just fleetingly. He makes a note to himself to tell Geralt all about the ocean, when they’re traveling on their own again.

That is, if they will be traveling on their own again. Much as he likes Yennefer, Jaskier suddenly feels very insecure at the thought of Geralt asking her to travel with them again, wanting Yennefer’s company even though he already has Jaskier’s. It’s not a good feeling. Jaskier doesn’t think he’s ever felt… replaceable. Insecure. Before.

Yennefer quirks a quick smile at him, which is a slight boost to his overall disposition. “Funny. We’re not looking for anything in particular. This cairn… it was made to keep something in. I have a feeling that this wizard, the one that keeps popping up, may have put a curse in the ground here. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to destroy it.” She pushes her sleeves up to her elbows. “I think I’m partial to fire, tonight.”

A wind blows through the cemetery, and Jaskier shivers despite himself. Odd, he thinks, considering the cold doesn’t bother him. 

“Going after my curse, are we?”

Geralt, with his sword embedded in the chest of the second corpse, lets Jaskier know that he’s heard the disembodied voice as well, from the way he mutters, “What the fuck .” The body slumps to the ground.

“I hate to disappoint, but you’ll have to try a bit harder than fire. ” The voice laughs, accompanied by another chilling breeze as it speaks. “ No subtlety, anymore. What are they teaching at Aretuza? I have to say, I expected more than this. ”

“I’d say that I hate to disappoint, as well, but I’m not a liar,” Yennefer says, glancing around. “You’re the wizard, then?”

The wind blows once more. “That is what they call me now, I suppose. I’ve had many names here. Do you know, just after I died, they called me the scourge of this town? And then they figured out that I was still moving, still listening, and they put me under this damned cairn. Really, quite insensitive.”

“Well,” Jaskier mutters. “If you’d done enough to warrant them burning down your house, I’d think you deserved the name.”

“Oh, that was nothing, really. I mean, sure, a few people died, but in the name of science! To study this scenario exactly, actually. See if those clever little creatures could figure out how to operate a human body. They’re quite versatile, really.”

“Wizards,” Geralt snarls, and Jaskier gets the feeling he’s dealt with something similar before.

“Do you want to know how I’ve done all this? You, in the purple, you’ve got control of chaos. You look as if you’d appreciate a good scientific study. Not so much the brute in black, though. Handy for you to have around, but really, is he quite necessary? You feel quite powerful, my dear.”

“If you’d care to tell us how to stop this and shut you up, it’d be greatly appreciated,” Yennefer says, coolly.

“Well, I suppose I could, but really, it’s far more interesting to tell you about my experiments with the parasites. Someone has to carry on this knowledge. Did you know nobody’s ever given them an actual name? They do stay rather isolated from society, I suppose. If you do come across any scholars, tell them that I propose ‘Necro-sites’ as the informal name. For the formal one—well, my earlier statement was a bit inaccurate. The elves gave them a name. Now, do excuse my Elder, try as I might I never seem to get the pronunciation quite right—” The voice—the wizard—says something in Elder.

Jaskier frowns, and repeats the word (with far improved pronunciation, might he add; he’s always been good with languages, and though written speech doesn’t come naturally to him, words and speech are so closely connected to music, voice so close to melody, that he picks them up rather easily). “Corpse-dwellers.”

“Ah, yes! Quite an eloquent translation there, young man.”

“Not that young,” Jaskier mutters, as Yennefer speaks again.

“How are you doing this? What’s your goal?”

The wizard, disembodied voice carried on the wind, sighs. “Always in a rush, you young people. I don’t think I’ll tell you. After all, you’ll just try and stop me, and then how will my experiments continue?”

“These were all part of an experiment?” Geralt gestures at the bodies, voice dangerously close to a growl. He’s angry.

“Oh, yes. It’ll be rather revealing, I’m sure, seeing what these bodies can do. It’s been very interesting, already, watching what they try to do as they attack. Watching you dispatch all of my test subjects has been rather upsetting, and the older bodies aren’t quite as good for consistent results, but I suppose I can always get more.”

“What do you mean, more?” Jaskier’s the one to ask a question, this time.

“How can you be sure of that?” Yennefer demands. “Unless—you’ve gotten yourself involved with the healer’s child.”

“Oh, and isn’t she an interesting specimen! Rather intriguing, actually. The kind of psychological case I would have brought to a panel. She seems to experience little to no empathy, and is predisposed to violence. Quite ironic for the daughter of a healer. She is a bit self-obsessed, I have to say. She was rather insistent on talking to me about her falling out with her friend, after she knocked over that cairn. Ah, but it was rather easy for me to convince her that she could kill those people and get away with it. I take it you’ve figured her out?”

“Yes,” Geralt says, “and she won’t be killing anybody else.”

“Ah. Well. Shame. I suppose things can continue with the older bodies; I have yet to see them actually kill someone, so perhaps they plan to take over the fresher body. I was rather hoping they’d kill the young man or the blonde girl earlier tonight, but really, I can wait. Time is no issue, you understand.”

“This experiment of yours will not be continuing,” Yennefer says, firmly. “Geralt, come and watch my back. I have to do some excavation.”

Chapter Text

“I fucking hate wizards,” Geralt mutters, rather sullenly.

He stands facing the graves, watching for any movement in the dark. Nothing moves; he hopes it’ll stay that way. He’s got enough shit to deal with as-is.

“And why might that be, my boy?”

If Geralt were less experienced, he might’ve jumped at that, at the sudden cold breeze and the voice that echoes across the graveyard. As so, he glares at the air, as if that’ll make the problem go away.

(It won’t, but the aggressive gestures, small and inefficient as they are, make him feel the slightest bit better.)

Why does he hate wizards? There’s a history, there, full of cryptic phrasing and the murders of several young girls. He offers this wizard a similar answer to the last wizard that he hated. “Wizards are all the same,” he says, to the air. “You act high and mighty, considerate, benevolent, when you have no intention of doing anything that won’t aid your harebrained schemes.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call this harebrained, my boy. It’s research.”

“Fuck off,” Geralt spits, with as much vitriol as he can muster.

To his left, Jaskier appears, a curious look in his eyes. He wants something, wants the story, probably; he’s always asking for stories. As if Geralt’s life is romantic and exciting, instead of the endless waves of mud and steel and blood that Jaskier must know it to be, by now. He’s not so entirely oblivious as to miss it. 

Geralt catches Jaskier’s eyes, and looks away. Thankfully, for once, Jaskier doesn’t press. Answering his questions would mean telling him about Stregobor. More importantly, it would mean telling him about Renfri, and Geralt hates that story. He can’t forget it, can’t take away the fact that he is the Butcher of Blaviken, now, but he can refuse to spread the story, can refuse to acknowledge to himself that he’s scared that Jaskier’s going to go the same way as Renfri. He can lie to himself, tell himself that the reason he was so apprehensive about Jaskier being a siren wasn’t because he’d killed before, so casually; that it wasn’t because the last time he cared about a nonchalant killer, he’d had to kill her.

Renfri and Jaskier are nothing alike, he knows this. But his mind refuses to stop drawing similarities between the two.

He blinks, steadily, reroutes his thought. For a moment, he focuses on what Yennefer’s doing behind him; lifting huge blocks of dirt out of the ground, digging up the wizard’s grave with magic. It doesn’t seem to be as intuitive as he’s seen when she does other magic. It’s methodical. A process, rather than a gesture. The grass is dying around her.

“This won’t help anything, you know,” the wizard says. “Digging me up, I mean. There’s nothing to achieve here, no… dastardly plan to stop. Just some bones.”

Geralt grits his teeth and does his best to ignore the voice, upbeat and carefree, as it resonates through the graveyard. He focuses his attention back on the graves.

“Why are we digging up the grave, Yennefer?” he hears Jaskier ask, from behind him. He’s whispering; though, to what avail, Geralt doesn’t know. 

“He’s lying,” Yennefer says, and there’s an audible grit to her teeth too; ostensibly from the magic, but Geralt thinks she’s probably just as frustrated as him. Her whisper is even softer than Jaskier’s. It occurs to Geralt that Jaskier’s hearing might be as good as his. “He’s either a ghost, or he’s performing some kind of posthumous necromancy, and either way, there has to be something down there that I can destroy to kill him. Whether it be unfinished business or some kind of spell. He’s tethered to it.”

“You know, I considered having the parasites use my body, as a host,” the wizard continues. Geralt hopes that that means he didn’t hear Yen and Jaskier talking, but he’s learned not to hope too hard for these sorts of things. “Once I was dead. The townsfolk didn’t waste much time sticking me under this cairn, though—me and the—” he says the elven word that Geralt recalls to mean ‘corpse-dwellers,’ from Jaskier’s translation. “We’re kindred spirits in magic, I suppose, all stuck under those rocks together. Anyway, by the time that girl knocked the cairn over, I’d already decomposed and been eaten by the hungry things. And in case you’re wondering, results show that they cannot take over a skeleton. They have to have a functioning body that they can get up and running again, which is fascinating, honestly, the implications of that—oh, and that’s why I needed fresh bodies, of course, to observe their behavior unimpeded by damaged or decaying receptacles.”

“Oh, well, that’s just disgusting,” Jaskier says from behind him, and Geralt would attribute it to the wizard’s speech if not for the sudden stench that reaches his nose. He turns to see what it is.

Yennefer, it seems, has uncovered the aforementioned skeleton of the wizard. The bones writhe with parasites, and the whole thing stinks like death and decay. The parasites look like pile upon pile of maggots in the grave. Geralt wrinkles his nose in disgust.

“I did tell you that there was nothing of worth down there,” the wizard says. “Do an old man a favor and cover my bones, would you? It feels a bit indecent, leaving my remains out in the open like this.” He sounds casual, but Geralt picks up on a twinge of something in his voice. Anxiety. Panic.

“Destroy it,” he says to Yennefer, on impulse. “You’re right. He’s hiding something.”

“What? No! I’m not hiding anything, all I want is to cover my bones—”

Yennefer’s either tired or frustrated or both, considering the look on her face, but she rolls her shoulders back and holds her hands out in front of her. 

“No!”

The sound, the scream, is accompanied by a wind so strong it nearly knocks Jaskier off his feet. Geralt grabs his collar to keep him steady, and gets a hand around Yen’s elbow to keep her from falling into the grave.

“You cannot destroy them. You cannot destroy me,” the wizard howls, and suddenly, the parasites, almost glowing in the moonlight, are crawling out of the grave. “They’re hungry. I suppose now we’ll see what they do with no bodies in sight.”

“Fuck,” Geralt says, and tows Jaskier back, away from the grave. “Yen, whatever you were going to do, do it now.”

“No!”

“Subtlety,” Yennefer spits, as if it’s a curse. Stable on her feet again, she thrusts out her hands, and fire erupts from her palms. The maggots cook in the flames, and Geralt can hear shrieking. It’s faint, but the sound at once makes him shiver and tense with disgust.

The wizard screams in frustration, before going silent. The accompanying wind has Jaskier grabbing onto Geralt’s armor to keep his footing. Yennefer staggers, but keeps herself steady. She takes a step forward to direct the fire into the grave, creating a pool of flame.

“You think the parasites are the thing keeping him around?” Jaskier asks, peeking nervously around Geralt’s shoulder. Geralt glances down at him for a moment, before he put his attention back on Yennefer.

“That or the skeleton,” Yennefer grits out, teeth clenched with the effort of sustaining the fire. After another moment, she lets out a heaving breath, and the flames subside. The ground in front of her, and inside the grave, is charred black. “I hope it’s the fucking worms.”

“No such luck,” the wizard says, and his voice sounds like a growl this time. There’s none of the amicable air around it anymore. 

True colors revealed, Geralt thinks.

“It’s the fucking skeleton,” Yennefer says, and goes to raise her hands again, but there’s obvious fatigue in her voice. 

“What are you going to do, little witch? Try and burn me again? You don’t have the strength for it.”

“Yen.” Geralt puts a warning in his tone. 

“I’m fine,” she snaps, and he goes to protest, but then Jaskier calls his name urgently from behind him.

When Geralt turns to face him, he’s pointing mutely toward the graves. There’s movement. 

“Oh, would you look at that? My kindred spirits, here in my time of need. They do so well, with a bit of encouragement.”

A host of bodies are determinedly crawling out of their graves, and two are already on their feet. Geralt lets out his most exhausted, “Fuck,” and moves to attack. 

The first few go down easy. Geralt twists his sword, in the heart of the corpse, and the technique seems to be effective. The bodies are slower now. The corpses are older; the signs of decay show in the emaciated limbs and the way they shuffle as they lunge toward him. It makes them easier to defeat, with slower reflexes and faulty limbs, but there’s more of them. He has to bat away attempts to bite at his shoulders and arms. 

The voice of the wizard doesn’t stop. “Sending in your warrior to fight your battles, witch? In my day, we dealt with threats ourselves.” Geralt sets his jaw and does his best to ignore it.

As he steps around the bodies on the ground, the corpses still standing start to surround him. His heartbeat picks up. Just a little bit. He doesn’t like not having an exit; he cuts through the encroaching wall of dead bodies, taking off a head in the process. The body falters, once or twice, as if unsure how to proceed, and keeps moving. Geralt curses under his breath and stabs another corpse in the chest.

There’s a scream. It only takes a moment for it to register in Geralt’s mind as the wizard. Light catches his eyes, and he turns to find Yennefer directing another bout of flame, this one white-hot, at the grave. The flame curls back around, reflected off the dirt and bone, so that it looks like a hot spring of fire. Jaskier stands a little ways away, rocks from the cairn in his hand, and—ah, fuck. He’s being attacked too. The rocks, despite Jaskier’s accurate throws, don’t do much to deter his undead assailants. 

Geralt groans and starts making his way back toward his friends. Fighting his way toward something means double the work; having to get through the host of corpses while also fending them off from behind. It’s not entirely too strenuous, but the wizard has started speaking again, desperate taunts this time, and it really pisses him off.

“How long are you going to be able to hold out, huh? Are you going to be able to keep the girl safe for long enough for her to—”

“Shut up ,” Yennefer yells, and the fire goes white-hot again, and the wizard goes quiet. The flames stop. The grass around the grave, dead and dry, burns quietly; Jaskier manages to catch Yen as she slumps from exhaustion, but it leaves him open to attack. Geralt shoves a stumbling body aside to place himself between the undead corpses and his friends. 

From behind him, Geralt hears Yennefer mutter, “I’m fine,” and extrapolates from her slurred words and the fact that she can’t stand on her own that she is definitely not fine.

“Hold on, dear,” he hears Jaskier say, slightly panicked. “We’ll get you home, just give Geralt a minute to…”

Jaskier trails off just as Geralt gets his sword into the heart of a corpse. He twists the blade; the body falls to the ground, lifeless, with a sickening squish. Somehow, there’s still three left. He supposes he had to spend a lot of time driving them off without killing them.

Something moves on his back, and he whirls around to find Jaskier, holding his remaining sword, the steel one, looking sheepish. “I thought I’d help—fuck, though, this is heavy.”

Geralt doesn’t have time to give this rational thought, with corpses still lunging at him from several directions. It shouldn’t be too dangerous. He sighs and shoves his bloodied silver sword into Jaskier’s hands, taking the steel one into his own.

Jaskier looks almost dazzled. Geralt shoves the thought out of his head and moves to dispatch the rest of the parasite-driven bodies.

Geralt takes down two of them; Jaskier manages one of them on his own. Geralt’s almost proud.

The cemetery is littered with bodies in various stages of decay. It stinks like all get-out, Yen can barely keep her eyes open, and Geralt is more than happy to leave. He beats out the remaining fires with his boots, and when he glances into the grave, there’s only ash where there had been a skeleton minutes before. “We’ll help Yen take care of this in the morning,” he decides. “Let’s get her home.”

Jaskier nods, cheeks flushed with excitement. Geralt sighs. It’s been a hell of a night.

Chapter Text

Yen’s easy enough to get into bed. She’s exhausted enough that she doesn’t fight Geralt every step of the way, as she has a tendency to do when he’s trying to help her.

Jaskier helps, too, carrying things, offering support when needed. He opens the door to Yen’s room as Geralt carries her in. Geralt could have done it himself, but… well. It’s nice, he supposes, not having to do everything himself. That’s always the way it is with Jaskier, isn’t it? What he offers isn’t strictly necessary, isn’t for the purposes of survival, but Jaskier’s always been more focused on living than surviving.

That’s especially obvious, considering he’s a nonhuman creature that consciously chose to reveal himself to a witcher. That might’ve gotten him killed with another witcher.

What strikes Geralt about how Jaskier revealed himself is that he trusted him not to do anything… rash. It says something about the trust between them. It scares Geralt, quite frankly. Yennefer knows that he’s not a good person, not someone to be relied on or trusted. Whether he tells her or not, she recognizes his sins, and she presents the things she’s done wrong, in exchange. He and Yen have no illusions with or about each other, and that’s why they get along so well. Geralt thinks Yennefer needs the security of being seen as she is, all of her, not just the pretty exterior, as much as he needs it. It wouldn’t work, if either of them were good people; it’s not vulnerability, not really, if the person you’re exposing your soul to has a soul just as black.

Jaskier seems to have nothing but illusions about Geralt.

There’s no other explanation, is there, for why he’s still around. He thinks Geralt is much better, much more honorable, than he actually is. He writes ballads about Geralt, for god’s sake. He paints him as a hero, and Geralt, in moments of particular weakness, almost believes it. He almost lets himself think he might deserve the way people smile at him, sometimes. He almost lets himself think that he might deserve the way Jaskier, who asks about his hunts as if they’re adventures, who sings songs about him, who stays with him day in and day out for months on end, smiles at him.

It’s all the more ridiculous, now, because now Geralt knows that Jaskier is a siren. Traveling with Geralt was a risk, a calculated one, and he’s beginning to think that Jaskier has no sense of self-preservation.

Jaskier wants to be close, wants to be friends. Geralt, as much as he wants that, doesn’t want it at all. Being close to someone means dependence, and Geralt has promised himself that he won’t let anyone else be dependent on him. There’s a child surprise growing up in Cintra right now that serves as living proof of this. The only person he’s been even remotely open with, in the last few decades, is Yennefer, and Yennefer can take care of herself. Jaskier… well. Geralt doesn’t know, actually, but he’s done so much protecting, at this point, that he can’t help but be inclined to say that Jaskier needs him around.

The thought is terrifying.

When Yennefer’s in bed, and Geralt’s about to head off to his own room, Jaskier effectively corners him in the hallway. He really shouldn’t be able to do that, but Jaskier’s never been one to care about what he should or shouldn’t do, has he?

“I want to talk,” he says. It’s a determined statement.

Geralt sighs. He doesn’t know why he’s feeling so reticent (except, oh. Yes, he does) but he gets the feeling he’s not going to be able to get away as easily as he had the previous times. Jaskier’s got that determined look on his face, and the last time he’d been so determined, he’d ended up almost getting himself killed by a genie. “About what, Jaskier.”

“You know perfectly well about what.” Jaskier, frowning, steps closer. “Are you done, now? Ignoring your very best friend in the whole wide world?”

Geralt really doesn’t know how to answer that. There’s a perfectly good reason he’s been ignoring Jaskier, and it’s that he doesn’t want to have to deal with the uncertainty he feels regarding him. He turns his head away.

“I don’t understand,” Jaskier says. There’s a pleading tone to his voice. “You don’t hate me. I know you don’t. You care, and you know me, you know I’m not some… some hideous monster, some threat to mankind. So why do this? I don’t get it, I—” he cuts off with a frustrated exhale. He looks at Geralt as if attempting to puzzle out the mystery just by watching his face.

It works, apparently.

“You’re scared of something,” Jaskier says, as if he can barely comprehend it. “Is that it?”

Geralt falls back on an old lie. “Witchers don’t feel, Jaskier.”

Jaskier scoffs. “That’s bullshit. If witchers didn’t feel, you wouldn’t have ended up in half of the trouble you get yourself into. Stop avoiding the question, Geralt.” His voice goes just a shade softer. “What are you so scared of?”

Geralt sighs. “I—” he exhales, disgruntled. He doesn’t want to have this talk, but in all honesty, he doesn’t think Jaskier will leave him alone if he doesn’t answer. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Jaskier laughs. “You’re not going to hurt me, Geralt. Is that what you’re worried about?”

It’s Geralt’s turn to scoff, now. “You don’t understand.” He’s given an answer. That’s good enough. He moves to make his way around Jaskier, to go and lie in bed all night and pretend that he’s rested the next morning. 

Jaskier darts around him to cut off his exit. “Then explain it better! Really, Geralt, your communication skills are past dismal.” When Geralt levels a glare at him, he huffs self-righteously. “Well, I’m only telling the truth! This is my second language, and I can articulate myself perfectly well; what’s your excuse?”

“Fine. You want an answer?” Geralt turns on Jaskier. It’s a bad habit, venting his pent-up emotions on his friends. He knows this. It doesn’t stop him from growling the next part at an astonished Jaskier. “The last person I cared about, who I knew wasn’t a monster , wasn’t a threat , I killed her. Have you heard that story, Jaskier? The tale of the Butcher of Blaviken? Ever heard a ballad, a poetic epic, commemorating that little adventure ?”

The memory hurts; it stings , like a blade through his heart. Like the blade through her heart.

Jaskier doesn’t say anything; just stares at him, lips slightly parted, looking as hurt as he is taken aback.

Geralt scoffs and steps around him. 

“You’re not the only one who’s killed people, Geralt.”

That gets him to pause. Everything in his body is still tense; angry, frustrated, channelling the emotions he doesn’t want to deal with into tension.

“I—” There’s a pause. Uncertainty. “I understand why you’re upset. You’re human, and death is upsetting for humans. And don’t try to tell me that you’re not human, please. You’re as human as they come. More than most of the people we come across, anyway.” Geralt turns, enough to see Jaskier’s gaze flit away almost self-consciously. A moment passes before he speaks again. “I would be… upset. If I lost you. I can… imagine it, if I really try, and it is decidedly unpleasant.” 

“You’d get over it,” Geralt grumbles. He knows Jaskier; knows that he’s a flighty person, easy with his affection. “It’d be no great tragedy.”

Jaskier’s gaze finds its way back up to Geralt’s face. He looks hurt. The determination returns to his expression. “First off, don’t tell me what I would or wouldn’t do. Second, I know you think you’re a bad person, but really, you’re being a bit dramatic. You should know that I don’t give a fuck about your stupid human morals, Geralt. I don’t care if you think you’re the worst person on earth. I like you, and I like being your friend, and I’m not going to let you push me around and push me away because you’re scared of hurting me.”

Geralt turns away. It’s all he can think to do.

“You had your chance to kill me. And you didn’t, even when it might’ve been justifiable by your convoluted moral system. I don’t think you ever really planned to kill me. You know, I’ve been trying to understand, lately, trying to get into your head—” Jaskier makes a frustrated, disgusted noise. “Quite frankly, I don’t like it, I don’t like trying to feel emotions that aren’t mine, but I can see some things better now. I can understand why you thought I might’ve been lying this whole time, and I can see why you would’ve been scared that morning, and why you might be scared now. But you do trust me, don’t you, Geralt? Even if you won’t say it. You trust me, and you care about me, enough to save my life more times than I can count, and that should count for something, shouldn’t it?”

When Geralt turns around, Jaskier’s looking rather sullenly at the floor.

“I has a point I was getting around to,” he mutters. “I think I rather forgot how I was getting there, but—” he looks back up at Geralt again. “Point is, you can be scared if you’d like, but don’t push me away. I am far too wonderful to be kept at arm’s length, and I can take care of myself, when it comes down to it. If you trust me enough to give me your sword and let me fight…” he sighs. “Trust me enough to know that you’re not going to hurt me. Or kill me. Or whatever it is you’re frightened about.”

Geralt lets out a breath. “It’s not that simple.”

Jaskier’s mouth quirks into a smile. “Sure it is. I’ve killed bigger men than you, if that makes you feel any better.”

The image of Jaskier killing people proves itself to be just as unsettling as it was when first introduced. “It doesn’t.”

Jaskier looks rather guiltily down at the floor.

There’s really no good way to end this conversation, but there’s a sort of guilt creeping up on Geralt, himself. He sighs. Fuck it. “I’m sorry, Jaskier.”

The slow smile that creeps over Jaskier’s face is bright enough to be almost unbearable. “Well. That’s all I really wanted. You’re quite forgiven, Geralt.”

Geralt watches rather warily as Jaskier moves right up into his personal space and places a hand up against his cheek. The movement is careful; gentle. Jaskier smells like smoke and burnt maggots.

“I don’t regret revealing myself the way I did, you know.” Jaskier looks up at Geralt like he had when Geralt had killed the corpse that was attacking him; like he has stars in his eyes. “I care about you as well, you know, and it’s hard to watch you suffer every night. At least… well. You look peaceful in your sleep. I won’t do it again, but... I really do think that more regular sleep might help with your attitude. You’re a bit of a grumpy ass, you know.” He grins and pats Geralt’s cheek rather impetuously. “Goodnight, Geralt. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

Jaskier goes off to his room, stepping out of Geralt’s space as if he’d never been there at all. Geralt stands in the hallway for a few moments, processing the conversation, before he shakes his head and heads off to his own room.

He takes off his boots and collapses back onto the bed. He’s not going to sleep, but there’s a bit of a warm feeling in his heart, a warm feeling where Jaskier pressed a hand against his cheek. It battles with the cold feeling of dread. He turns Jaskier’s words over in his head. Sure, he trusts him, to some degree. But… god, it’s only becoming more and more clear that there’s more to him than what he’d ever shown Geralt, and yet, he seems like the exact same person. 

Geralt’s not an idiot. He knows that what it really comes down to is that he cares about Jaskier, and the vulnerability of that scares him. He can care about Yen, because she can take care of herself and he’s vaguely sure that she doesn’t care that much about him, but Jaskier? Caring for Jaskier, and actually acknowledging that, would mean dependency and vulnerability on both sides. He’s not nearly brave enough for that.

Was he in the wrong for ignoring Jaskier the past few days? Sure. But he knew what he was doing. Distancing himself from Jaskier made things easier to deal with, to compartmentalize. It would’ve made it easier to cut Jaskier off, if he’d needed to.

Geralt sighs, irritably. Considering how many different directions his thoughts are going in, they’re not actually achieving much. He closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind.

In the end, he supposes, he does feel better, having apologized to Jaskier. But the rest of the situation is unclear, and all he can see in his mind’s eye for the rest of the night is Renfri’s face as she died.

The next morning, when he sees Jaskier outside of Yen’s room, ostensibly there to check on her as well, he’s brave enough to sigh and say, “Good morning, Jaskier.”

Chapter Text

Jaskier, the next morning, feels oddly compelled to make sure that Yennefer’s okay—he chalks it up to a budding friendship and gets dressed. As he’s pulling his doublet over his head, the events of the previous night strike him, and he remembers that he’s not fighting with Geralt anymore. He laughs suddenly, because that is absolutely delightful, and now he can leave his room without feeling that awful dread of seeing Geralt and not being able to talk to him like he wants to. 

He’s elated as he covers the distance to Yennefer’s room, and even more elated when Geralt walks up, just as he’s poised to knock, and says good morning. 

Sure, it’s grudging, but grudging in Geralt terms is downright jovial. Jaskier responds with a jovial greeting of his own, directing the sunniest smile he can manage at him. 

“Have you seen her yet?” Geralt asks. 

The casual conversation is most certainly the best thing that’s happened to Jaskier in entire decades, and he promises himself that he’s never going to let himself fight with Geralt, ever ever again. He’ll have to stand up for himself, have to call Geralt out on his bullshit, but he can do it—and it’ll be absolutely worth it if he never gets ignored like that again. “Not yet,” he tells his friend (his friend , because Geralt’s his friend , and they’re not fighting anymore, which is so exciting). “Shall we go in together, then?” He puts on his cheekiest grin, not the slightest bit perturbed by the way Geralt sighs and shakes his head, before knocking on the door.

“Come in, I suppose,” Yennefer calls, from inside. She’s already seated at a mirror when Jaskier and Geralt make their way into the room, brushing out her hair—the picture of elegance, honestly. Jaskier could think of several noble ladies who look far less put together in their daily lives than Yennefer does now, after a long night of uncovering murderers and burning skeletons into dust. 

She’s dressed (as one would hope a lady would be, before inviting two men into her chambers), and Jaskier has to say that he likes the black, high-necked dress that she’s wearing. It’s conservative, really, for Yennefer’s sense of style, but it’s got lace detailing at the edges for a little bit of flair, and Jaskier’s sure she’s got her reasons.

“You’re alright,” Jaskier says, and he’s almost surprised by his own enthusiasm. She does look a bit tired, but Jaskier knows better than to comment on a lady’s looks—and he especially knows better than to comment on Yennefer’s looks—unless he’s complimenting her. Other than that, though, she really does seem to be doing fine. 

“Yes, no thanks to you, siren,” Yennefer says, but there’s no malice in her tone. It’s light-hearted teasing, the kind that she and Geralt do with each other, and Jaskier’s heart does a couple of happy little things when he realizes it.

“Are you sure, Yen?” Geralt asks from beside him, voice low and rumbly.

Yennefer sighs. “I’m not going to fall over, if that’s what you’re asking, and you won’t need to carry me like a delicate maiden down the stairs.” She turns, raising an eyebrow at Geralt. “Will that be answer enough, Geralt?”

Geralt has the decency to look a bit embarrassed, and diverts his gaze over to the window, where the sun shines through light linen curtains.

“If you really must play hero, I’m sure Jaskier would let you carry him,” Yennefer says, blithely, returning to brushing her hair. Jaskier tests his luck and makes his way over to perch on the table that holds her mirror, without blocking her view. She allows him, even glancing up with a shadow of a smile, and it’s a nice, familiar feeling, sharing the space with her.

“I certainly wouldn’t object,” Jaskier says, grinning over at Geralt, who doesn’t look back at him. “Legs are a pain, you know. I don’t know what convinced you humans to walk upright, but it was a truly awful choice.”

Geralt mutters something under his breath, so soft that even Jaskier’s keen ears can’t catch it. 

Yennefer looks up at Jaskier again, one eyebrow delicately arched. “Oh?”

“Swimming’s much easier, milady,” Jaskier promises her, as sincerely as he can. “It took me a while to get used to—well, legs.” He shoots her one of his dashing grins. He hasn’t been in a good mood like this in such a long while (has it even been a week? He’s not sure, Jaskier’s really not the best at keeping track of time. He always thinks he knows how much time has passed, and then he thinks about it, and he never really knows at all. He never did keep track of time in the ocean as he does out on land—people are less sensitive about things like time in the eternal twilight in the depths of the ocean) and it’s really a delight to be back to his own charming self, unembarrassed by everything. “I looked a bit of a fool, those first few days, but there weren’t many people around.”

“Why did you leave?” Yennefer asks, after a moment. Jaskier glances up, but Geralt’s not paying attention—he’s not looking over, anyway, which means that he doesn’t want to seem like he’s paying attention.

He’s already told Geralt why he left the ocean, anyway, whether he believed him or not.

“I wanted to be closer to the people,” Jaskier answers. “The light, the life, the music. Not that your music is any great feat, but it was different. Interesting.”

Yennefer hums, almost a laugh, and goes back to the mirror. “Well. Our music may be mediocre, but only one of us here chose to make a career out of it.”

Jaskier gasps as melodramatically as possible. “You are a nasty woman.”

“I do make an effort,” she deadpans. Jaskier laughs, and it feels good to be able to laugh and share space with her.

They really are friends, he realizes. It makes him feel all warm and giddy inside. He glances up at Geralt for whatever reason (really, he thinks, he wants to share this feeling even just through a glance), and Geralt actually looks at him, and Jaskier thinks that there’s something softer around his eyes than there had been before.

“Well, at the very least, my mediocre music has made a good name for Geralt. I’d say that’s worth making a career out of.”

Geralt looks over at him, and there’s something between surprise and confusion on his face. Jaskier just beams at him, entirely too caught up in his enjoyment of the day to even try and decipher that look.

Yennefer’s finished brushing her hair, apparently; the atmosphere of the room shifts as she places her hairbrush down on the little dressing table. Jaskier admires that, about her, that she has such control over every space that she’s in. Is it magic? Does it matter? “We’ve still got other things to attend to, today. Hanna was her name, wasn’t it?” She stands, so Jaskier does as well; it only seems fitting to follow her lead, sometimes. Yennefer sighs heavily. Jaskier thinks, for a moment, that she might be more tired than she’s actually letting on. “I’ll have to discuss with the people what they want for her.” With that, she makes her way to the door, leaving Jaskier and Geralt standing where they are. “I’m going to gather some people. You two can eat, if you wish. I’ll be back shortly.”

“Yen—” Geralt starts, but she’s gone in a moment, leaving behind the scent of lilacs and something sugary that Jaskier can’t really pin down, as much as he tries. He figures Geralt might know—he knows for a fact that Geralt’s got a good sense of smell, and he’s had enough time around Yennefer to know what it is that she smells like, and—well. He’s certainly been close enough. Something in his stomach sours at the thought, and he doesn’t ask what the second scent is.

“Breakfast?” Jaskier suggests, after a moment, pulling his cheery smile up again and directing it full-force at Geralt. Geralt raises an eyebrow at him, but Yennefer’s yelling from down the stairs before he has a chance to respond.

“Jaskier! Someone here to see you!”

Jaskier looks quizzically at Geralt, who shrugs, which Jaskier would make some frustrated comment about if he wasn’t so elated to have Geralt actually responding to him normally again. “Shall we see who it is, then?”

As it turns out, when Jaskier descends the staircase to the lower floor, it’s Amelia waiting at the door. She’s visibly relieved when she sees him, though she still looks a bit awkward, standing in the doorway with Yennefer holding the door open. Her hands are clasped politely in front of her, though, as she speaks, Jaskier can see her fingers start to twist into the skirt of her dress. 

“Jaskier! Oh, good. I just thought—well, obviously Lady Yennefer had called for you, that isn’t what I mean, I just—” she casts a nervous glance up at Yennefer, who raises an unflinching eyebrow at her. Amelia almost visibly cowers, takes a deep breath, and says what she means. “I knew you were going back to face those awful things in the graveyard, and I wanted to see if you’d—if you were alright, I mean.”

“Charming,” Yennefer deadpans, and Jaskier doesn’t pity Amelia the least bit. “Go inside, if you wish to talk to him. I have business to attend to.”

Amelia follows orders and scurries inside, and Jaskier can see just the tiniest hint of a smile on Yennefer’s face before she leaves and closes the door behind her. 

“I really am sorry,” Amelia says, all in a rush, visibly less restrained now that Yennefer’s gone. “I didn’t mean to show up unannounced, but everyone said that you and—” she glances up at Geralt, looking awfully intimidated (though not as much as she had been by Yennefer), and Jaskier wonders how she was going to refer to him. “Well, they said that you were at the mayor’s house, with Lady Yennefer, so I thought I might just come see, but I didn’t expect her to answer the door —”

Jaskier laughs. “You caught her right on her way out. Lucky you.”

Amelia smiles somewhat sheepishly, and her gaze flits nervously back to Geralt, who suddenly looks far less upbeat and charming than he had ten minutes prior, which is saying something. “I—” she clears her throat, and looks at the floor. “I never thanked you. For saving me.” Jaskier remembers that Amelia had probably been in danger, too, when Geralt had swooped in and saved him from that corpse at the last moment. “And for killing the… creature. In my father’s body.”

Geralt actually seems surprised to receive the thanks. He clears his throat, brings his expression back to a generally menacing neutral. “Oh. Sure.”

“He’s really not very good with words,” Jaskier confides in Amelia, which earns him a golden glare from Geralt. He laughs. “Well, really, Geralt, if you wanted a reputation for being a well-articulated, gentlemanly conversationalist like myself, you could try actually responding with something other than a ‘hmmmm’.”

Geralt rolls his eyes. The gesture is strikingly companionable, to Jaskier, exasperated as it might be. He turns to go back, deeper into the house, presumably to find something to eat. “Maybe I would, if I could get a word in edgewise,” he rumbles, as he leaves, but his tone is playful .

Jaskier still squawks indignantly and turns to face Amelia, grinning. “Can you believe him? The absolute nerve.”

Amelia, bless her, does her best to smile as if she’s at all comfortable.

Jaskier glances back at Geralt, and then back at Amelia. “Have you eaten yet?” She shakes her head, and he makes a quick decision, gesturing for her to follow him. “Come with me. Yennefer’s got enough food, I’m sure she won’t mind sharing.”

The problem is, though, that Geralt’s gone when he turns back once more, curse his quiet footsteps. Jaskier’d been planning on following him to breakfast. “Well,” he says, with a sigh that’s just a bit indulgently dramatic, “let’s try and find our way to the dining room, shall we? It’ll be an adventure.”

Chapter Text

“Just through here, I think,” Jaskier calls over his shoulder, leading the way through the carpeted halls of Yennefer’s house. Does he know exactly where he’s going? Well, not exactly, but he’s reasonably sure that he won’t get totally lost. He managed to find his way to the library more than once, after getting there on accident the first time, so it’s not totally irrational to think that he can find the dining room where he’s been more than once (though admittedly, he’s followed someone sort of absentmindedly any time he needs to get there, but no point in dwelling on it). Besides, he’s got the faint scent of food to follow. He’s no bloodhound, but he can tell when he’s getting closer to the kitchen, and ostensibly, the kitchen should be closer to the dining room.

Amelia looks distinctly uncomfortable anytime he glances her way, which he doesn’t really blame her for. She seems a little nervous about Yennefer in general, so her house shouldn’t be particularly comforting.

Oh, yes. And there was the whole thing the night prior. That would probably do it, too.

“I’ve never been in this house before,” says Amelia, who, now that she’s out of the duress of necromancy and murder, seems to have the same compulsion that Jaskier does to just talk whenever she’s thinking something. Jaskier is absolutely delighted to finally have a pleasant, casual conversational partner, and practically glows at being spoken to; today is really just going marvelously well. 

“It’s a lovely place,” Jaskier assures her. “Yennefer’s done the decorations, and there’s a lovely library. Can’t comment as to the quality of the reading material, but it looks quite pretty.”

“The mayor was well-read, I think,” Amelia says. “He always seemed to know what he was talking about, at least.”

Ah, right. Dead mayor’s house. Well, that wasn’t such a big deal, but again , humans really did like to make a big deal about death. Maybe that was why Amelia looked so uncomfortable.

It strikes Jaskier that Hanna actually killed her town’s mayor. He thinks that it’s quite an accomplishment, to pull off something of that caliber, but he has the presence of mind not to say any of that out loud. 

“I’m sure he was,” Jaskier says, not having anything else to add, and opens a door that seems familiar. The smell of meat and fresh bread is closer, so he thinks it might be at least worth a try. The space revealed is the dining room—Jaskier grins as he sees Geralt sitting at the table. “Aha! Success! We’ve done it, Amelia.”

Geralt quirks a smile over at him, and then seems to catch himself and goes back to his menacing neutral. 

Two other plates sit in front of Geralt; Jaskier assumes they’re for him and Amelia. He flounces over to sit down next to Geralt, because by the gods, he will not let the man be rid of him. Amelia carefully takes a seat across the table from them, and Jaskier pushes a plate over to her.

Geralt says nothing. Jaskier’s obviously expected to keep up the conversation, so he does so—he does pride himself on being a conversationalist, after all. “So, how have you been, Amelia?” he asks, not because he’s really trying to find out, but because people do like to talk about themselves and that’s usually a reliable way to start up a new conversation. He falls for the same thing more often than not, so he uses that little trick when he can. The only one who he’s discovered it does not work on is Geralt, enigma that he is.

“I’ve been…” Amelia very carefully dances around saying anything definitive. “I didn’t sleep much last night. Even after I returned home. My mother was worried sick about me, as was Tanek—” she pauses for a moment, and provides the clarification of, “my younger brother.” She lets out a shaky breath. “He wanted to stay with me, after the funeral. At Father’s grave. Thank Melitele he didn’t. I don’t know what I would’ve done if he’d seen—if he’d heard—” she shakes her head, swallows thickly, and cuts herself off. “Apologies. I don’t mean to…”

Well. That was a bit heavier than Jaskier had expected, but he did ask. He assumes that’s what Amelia means when she says she didn’t mean to do something. “It’s alright,” he assures her, because he’s a courteous gentleman. “You know, I’ve been wondering,” he says, “what happened between you and Hanna? The healer said you’d had a falling out…” 

Amelia looks decidedly queasy, and looks almost pleadingly at her food before she exhales through her nose and looks up at Jaskier. The eye contact doesn’t last long. “She’s…” She cuts off, making a helpless noise. “She’s unstable, you know. Always has been.” There’s a silence before Amelia actually gets into the story. 

“She kicked my cat,” she starts, as if that explains anything. Jaskier raises a quizzical eyebrow at her. Next to him, in his peripheral vision, he sees Geralt’s gaze shift up to look at her as well. Amelia’s discomfort intensifies. “That’s—it sounds strange, but that’s how it started. My cat, little Axa, she accidentally scratched Hanna. She didn’t mean to!” She looks up at Jaskier as if begging him to believe her. “She just—Hanna wasn’t holding her properly to begin with, and Axa fell, and she only scratched because she was scared and trying to find something to hold onto, but then Hanna yelled and kicked her.”

She sounds profoundly sickened. Jaskier frowns. “Was that it?”

Amelia scoffs, getting more heated as she gets into the story. “Well, I told her not to kick my cat. I’d seen her, you know, doing that to other animals. She actually likes when rats get into her house, you know,” she says, as if divulging a piece of gossip, “because then she has an excuse to squash them, and I’ve seen her kick stray dogs. Well, I told her she wasn’t going to do that in my house, not to my pet, and then she got upset at me !” She scoffs again, angry and disbelieving. “She told me that I was—that I was irrational , and domineering , and that I had no right to tell her what to do. And then she—” Amelia takes a heaving breath—”she kicked Axa again , so I told her to fuck off, and get out of my house!”

Jaskier sees the same dry anger in her eyes that he saw the night before, when she’d screamed at Hanna.

“She told me she’d never talk to me again, and I said good , and she started screaming at me, the crazy bitch , said she’d get me for this, that she’d make my life a living hell, and thank fuck Tanek and Mother weren’t there, because I said some things that would have shocked them —” Amelia pauses, and suddenly looks a bit pale. “Oh, god. She was serious. Oh, fuck, she was serious .”

“Unstable people,” Geralt says, quietly, in the voice he uses when he’s about to provide some advice taken from his own life experience. “Sometimes they mean the threats they make.”

“I knew she was fucked, but i didn’t think she’d… she’d…” Amelia’s eyes dart across the table, as if searching for some explanation. “She’s done stupid, childish things, leaving menacing notes, leaving shit on our doorstep, pushing Tanek, but—”

Jaskier tries to lighten the mood a little bit. “Are you going to eat anything?”

Amelia shakes her head, horror dawning on her expression. She actually looks a bit green.

What Jaskier doesn’t expect, in that moment, is for Geralt to say something. 

“It’s not your fault, you know.” Amelia looks up, tears starting to brim in her eyes again, at the low rumble of Geralt’s voice. Jaskier looks over, as well, but this time, Geralt’s golden eyes aren’t directed his way. “You're not responsible for her actions. You can’t put that fault on yourself.”

Jaskier thinks that Amelia might’ve been the kind of person to argue, had she not been talking with someone who intimidated her. As it is, she wordlessly nods.

“It wasn’t as if it was just your father, either,” Jaskier says, which seems to alleviate a bit of the shock and horror. “She killed a lot of people, from what I understand, like your mayor here and the other couple of corpses—”

“Jaskier.” Geralt cuts him off with a sharp glance. Jaskier obligingly goes quiet, although he thinks that his input was actually quite sensible.

There’s heavy silence for a moment longer, and Jaskier decides fuck it, he’s perfectly charming, and he’s got another point to make. “Besides,” he pipes up, “you’re the reason we caught her, instead of letting her kill even more people.”

Amelia scoffs lightly, ducking her head. “And if she went off the deep end in the first place because of what I said to her? Doesn’t exactly even out, Jaskier.”

“Well, I think the wizard might have had something to do with it,” Jaskier says, and Amelia looks up, somewhere between confusion and shock. “Ah, right! We didn’t tell you the rest of the story!”

Amelia looks a bit lost as Jaskier launches into the tale, but he figures she’ll probably catch on at some point, so no harm done. He tells her about the disembodied voice, the chilling wind, and adds a few gory details about the worms that earn him one of those sharp warning looks from Geralt. He tells her about Yennefer burning the parasites and the bones, and about Geralt fighting the corpses, and then about himself fighting the corpses at Geralt’s side, which is a delightful memory despite the whole undead-decaying-assailants thing and the smell of burning maggots that he can’t seem to get out of his head (oh, wait, no, maybe that’s just how he and Geralt smell, he doesn’t think either of them have bathed since, which is probably something that they should do—and oh , there’s a thought, but he’s got other things that he’s doing right now and probably shouldn’t dwell on it), and he gets a bit sidetracked from the actual point of his story.

Amelia doesn’t look any less queasy. If anything, she looks closer to throwing up, after hearing about the maggots and the amount that there were and the way that they smelled when they burned.

“Oh,” says Jaskier, suddenly remembering why he’s telling her all this in the first place, “and he mentioned her. Hanna, I mean. The wizard did. Said that she was an interesting case, or something.”

“Sick bastard,” Geralt mutters, under his breath, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed. 

“So you think…” Amelia trails off, and Jaskier’s not sure if she even knew what she was going to ask.

“Well, he certainly influenced her,” Jaskier says. “She might’ve been predisposed to murder, but he most definitely asked her to do it.”

“Oh.” Amelia glances down at the table, and Jaskier has absolutely no idea what’s running through her head, and he’s not anxious to find out.

Nobody eats much more after that. Jaskier thinks Amelia might throw up, Geralt doesn’t seem too interested in the food anymore, and he doesn’t eat because it seems a bit strange to be the only person eating while everyone else in the room just sits in silence.

The silence is finally broken when a portal opens in the dining room, just shy of the table. Geralt’s immediately at attention, and Amelia looks scared out of her wits, but it’s only Yennefer that steps out. Amelia is not at all comforted by her appearance.

Yennefer casts a cursory glance around. “Well. Good to see you haven’t torched the place while I’ve been gone. Come along, now.” She looks over at Amelia, who seems very determined to hide behind a curtain of her blonde hair. “You too. If nothing else, you’ll be closer to home.”

When Jaskier goes through the portal, swirling and purple and all fun and chaos-y, he finds himself in a little by-street that turns out to be just a little ways off from the town jail. When he asks Yennefer why she didn’t just cast one right outside the jail, where she’d been headed to the whole time, she gives him a sharp look. Her and Geralt, two of a kind.

“People aren’t quite fond of blatant displays of magic, Jaskier. You know that.”

Amelia casts a strange glance over at him. Geralt avoids his eyes.

As it turns out, the people that Yennefer went to gather are a sort of village council. Jaskier’s not sure if that’s their actual title, but they all look very old and wise and qualified, so if they aren’t a village council, they might as well be. They’re gathered around the jail.

A smart move, Jaskier thinks, on Yennefer’s part. She still carries the responsibility of the decision of what to do with Hanna, but now it’s somewhat spread through people who’ve been there longer than her, and she’s got advice as well as less culpability for whatever does end up happening. Well, Yennefer’s smart. He knew that already (although, that move with the djinn? Maybe she’s not so much smart as ingenious or creative).

The healer’s there with them, too. She’s standing tall as ever (not actually tall, she’s rather average, but the feeling of it is there), shoulders back, jaw set. She’s a strong woman, obviously, but it’s a hell of a thing, to realize that your daughter was responsible for something awful and that it was your position that allowed her to do it. Jaskier wonders if she’ll still be allowed to be a healer, after all is said and done. He supposes they don’t have much choice, but still… well, it’s something to think about.

The healer’s stoic expression cracks, for a moment, when she sees Amelia, before she takes a breath and averts her eyes. Amelia, for her part, ducks her head and moves so that Jaskier is between her and the healer.

“Everyone is here,” Yennefer announces. “Now. Shall we decide what happens to the girl?”

Chapter Text

“The way I see it, we have two choices,” says one of the ostensibly wise elders. She’s a white-haired old woman, and the way that everyone looks to her, she seems to be the de facto leader. Jaskier supposes he’ll pick up her name at some point in the conversation. “Either we imprison the girl, or we execute her.” 

The healer’s face blanches, and her mouth parts just slightly before she sets her jaw again. Her distress is obvious. 

Amelia, as she had the night before, has glommed onto Jaskier’s arm and doesn’t seem to have any intentions of letting him go. Her grip tightens when the old woman proposes killing Hanna; either that, or her whole body has just gone tense. When Jaskier glances down at her, he can just make out her expression through strands of blonde hair. She’s intent. He can’t discern much more than that.

“What are the logistics of imprisonment?” asks one of the elders. It’s a man, this time, wizened with a short-cropped beard. 

“We simply don’t have the space for it,” says another, the third of five. She’s the youngest there; or she looks it, at least. “Or the people. Our guards are brave, but are they well-equipped enough to watch a girl for the rest of her life?”

“She’s still young,” agrees another old woman. The fourth. 

Jaskier starts thinking of ways to rhyme ‘the council of five’ into a song. Maybe something to do with ‘alive’; then came to shape the girl’s fate/the wise and wizened council of five/and to their wisdom put they the dilemma;/to kill her or leave her alive?

He says it over in his head and it sounds almost like a limerick. Fun.

“Can you imagine how long she’ll have to be guarded? An entire lifetime,” the fourth council member continues.

“What choice do we have?” the fifth member says, the younger of the two men. 

Jaskier has an idea, but as he opens his mouth to say something, Geralt pins him with a piercing glare. Jaskier gets the message; it’s not his conflict to get involved with.

“Can you imagine keeping a murderer in our town for a lifetime?” the young one (relatively) retorts. 

“Alya, please,” says the fourth, holding a placating hand out to the youngest. “There are larger cities near here. We could ask them to… hold her. For us.”

“We cannot rely on the kindness of others,” says the younger man. “Who knows if they’d even agree?”

“We should kill her.”

Jaskier is startled to hear Amelia speak, as she steps forward; so are the others, from the looks on their faces. Actually, it seems a bit of an overreaction to him. She’s a quiet girl, but it’s not as if she’s mute—Jaskier’s found her to be quite opinionated, in the time that he’s known her and she hasn’t been clinging to him as if he can save her from the horrors in front of her.

“Amelia,” says the healer, voice pained and insubstantial.

“She has killed people,” Amelia says, and her voice shakes, either from anger or distress or from both. She points an accusatory finger toward the jail, where Jaskier assumes Hanna is being held. “She killed my father. And others. She killed our mayor. She deserves to die.”

“Amelia.” Geralt, who has been perfectly quiet the whole time, speaks up.

Amelia turns, as if surprised to hear her name in Geralt’s mouth.

“You don’t want this,” Geralt continues, slow and calm. Jaskier sees Yennefer watching him out of the corner of his eye—she looks interested.

“Yes, I do ,” Amelia says, hands dropping to clench into fists at her sides. “I want justice.”

“You want vengeance,” Geralt says, and there’s something sad in his voice. “It’s not the same.”

“I want her to repent,” Amelia says, raising her voice. Jaskier can see tears brimming in her eyes.  “I want her to die like my father did! She deserves it!”

“You already have one death on your conscience,” Geralt says, and Amelia stills, shocked. Jaskier remembers the chat they had about Amelia’s feud with Hanna—about Hanna’s threats, about the correlation between the threats and the death of Hanna’s father. Jaskier’d thought they’d offered her some pretty good reasons as to why she wasn’t at fault. Apparently, judging by the look on Amelia’s face, it wasn’t enough. “It’s one you may still come to terms with, given time. You have the chance to absolve yourself, to forgive yourself. If you take action now, if you kill this girl, the act will never leave your heart, no matter how justified you may feel in the moment.”

Amelia doesn’t speak further. As she had when Geralt had spoken earlier that morning, she falls quiet—as if admonished into silence. Jaskier’s gaze catches on the healer. She looks immeasurably sad. It catches at his heartstrings before he cuts off the ugly feeling.

“A stirring speech from the witcher,” the man with the short beard says, breaking the heavy silence. “But I’m with the girl. The one who has committed all of these atrocious acts cannot be trusted in our society, and to leave her to rot in prison would simply be a drain on our resources.”

“Please,” says the healer, and her voice is practically ragged. Jaskier takes note of that adjective—it’s a particularly good one. “Please, you can’t.” 

Jaskier, though he’s only known her for a couple of days, never thought that he would hear the healer beg. She’d always seemed… impenetrable. Strong in the way a stone pillar is strong. In this moment, he gets the distinct feeling that the universe has found the one crack in the pillar that, when widened, will bring the whole structure crumbling down. 

“And why not?” the man asks, somehow looking down on the healer despite her having the advantage of height. 

“Piotr!” the fourth woman, who’d appealed to Alya, speaks up again, obviously dismayed. “That is her daughter .”

“You bring up a good point, Maia. The healer has allowed her child to kill five people. How do we know we can trust her? How do we know she wasn’t an aide to these crimes?” Piotr turns on the healer, who practically cowers away. The fourth elder, likely Maia, makes a despairing noise.

Yennefer steps in this time. Domineering as Piotr seems to be, Yennefer’s presence is far more overbearing. Jaskier suspects that she might be older than him—of course, however, he doesn’t say anything. It’s rude to mention a lady’s age. “That’s enough of that. I can vouch for her.”

It surprises Jaskier, to see Yennefer support the healer, but life mimics the tides, he knows this. Things appear and then pass. In the ocean, as in life, nothing is solid—everything changes.

“Lady Yennefer is right,” Amelia pipes up, though her voice still shakes. “It—” she cuts off, momentarily. “She wasn’t involved. It was all Hanna’s doing.”

“I’m not entirely convinced,” Piotr says, squinting at the healer. This time, she takes a shaky breath and squares her shoulders. Jaskier likes to imagine that she’s strengthened by the support of Yennefer and Amelia.

“Enough, you fool,” says the older woman, the leader. “Maria has cared for this village for decades now. She has no reason to begin killing now. Would you imprison her? Leave us without a healer?”

“I—”

“Quiet, now. You have said your part. Let us return to the discussion of the girl’s fate.”

“Thank you,” says Maia, sounding relieved.

“I have a proposition,” Yennefer says, stepping forward and commanding the attention in the group. The woman who appears to be the leader nods to her, and Yennefer nods back. “It’s clear that this woman cares for her daughter. This is no implication of involvement. Children are precious to us, no? I suggest, that if she wishes to, we allow her to continue to care for her child. Keep the girl imprisoned. It is the duty of the guards to keep the village safe, is it not? They will simply guard her; it will be up to the mother to provide food and clothing. No resources will be spent but time.”

“And if the girl escapes?” Piotr says, and Jaskier is struck by how indescribably stupid it is to challenge Yennefer like that. By the looks of it, Piotr is having a similar revelation, as Yennefer turns and pins the old man under her gaze.

“It will be to the advantage of all if the guards do their job properly. If you are worried about that eventuality, perhaps you could take a shift in the prison.”

Piotr stutters for a moment, and Yennefer narrows her eyes.

“Will that be all?”

Piotr nods wordlessly. Jaskier feels Amelia’s arm slip around his own again. He glances down—her attention is fixed on Yennefer, and she looks a bit scared.

“Is the rest of the council satisfied with this proposition?” the leader asks. Jaskier is very gratified to find that they are, in fact, a council—he congratulates himself on his poetic powers of observation. 

If reluctantly, the other four elders all nod. Jaskier thinks that Piotr’s vote was motivated by fear, which: all for the better, if it meant that he learned to respect Yennefer in the end. 

“Very well. Maria, in regards to your daughter: the village will guard her, but you will be responsible for her care. Is that understood?”

The healer nods, quickly. “Yes. Of course. Thank you.”

“Well. The matter’s settled, then,” says the leader. “Lady Yennefer. Accompany me, if you would, to inform the girl of her fate.” Yennefer nods and sets off, walking side-by-side with the older woman. With his adept ears, Jaskier hears the old woman mutter, “We’ll let the rest tell the town—they’re running off to gossip as we speak, no doubt.”

Indeed, even if the woman had said it loud enough for someone like Amelia to hear, the other elders wouldn’t have heard. Jaskier watches amusedly as they make their way down the hill back to the town.

“Go back to the house if you’ve nothing else to do,” Yennefer calls back to them, over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you there shortly. Don’t even think about leaving without saying good-bye.”

“Of course, dear lady,” Jaskier calls back, sending her off with a smile and a wave.

The next voice he hears is the healer’s, but she’s not addressing him—rather, she’s addressing Amelia, who happens to be sort of an extension of Jaskier’s arm at the moment. He’s gotten kind of used to the feeling, over the past twelve hours. “Amelia. My dear. I’m so sorry.”

Amelia has the wherewithal to look somewhat ashamed for advocating the death of the healer’s daughter, glancing down so that her hair falls in her face. “You’re not at fault.”

“I am as much as anyone, and more,” the healer says, sighing. She glances up at Jaskier. “I have no doubt that I will speak with the lady again—” he assumes here that she’s talking about Yennefer, since he hasn’t met anyone else who uses the term ‘lady’. He is surprised to hear the healer speak about Yennefer with any sort of deferential respect. “But when you speak with her next, please tell her that I appreciate what she has done.” Her gaze shifts again to Amelia, and a profound sort of sadness seems to come over her. Jaskier makes sure to isolate his heart from the feeling. “Amelia… please don’t be a stranger. You were welcome in my home before, and you always will be. And…” she drifts off, apparently unsure. “If you do wish to learn to heal. There must be someone who will take over the duties of healer when I am gone, and the one who I had hoped would do so…” her gaze flits over to the prison, before she shakes her head. “It is better not to think of what could have been. I hope you’ll consider my offer. I’m sorry, dear.”

Amelia nods solemnly at Jaskier’s side. The healer nods back and, with that, turns to make her way down the hill back into town.

“Quite a couple of days, wasn’t it?” Jaskier asks brightly, in an attempt to lighten the mood. The dramatics were all very entertaining, but he is in a supremely good mood today and he intends to enjoy it to the fullest.

“Yes,” Amelia says, and unfortunately, she has not responded with even half of the enthusiasm that Jaskier has put out into the air. She’s watching the healer’s retreating back. Her gaze shifts to look up at where Yennefer and the council leader are disappearing through the prison door, and she sighs. “Jaskier—” she lets go of Jaskier’s arm as she looks up to address him, and then, as if suddenly remembering, looks over at Geralt. She seems to struggle for a name, and settles for, “Witcher. I hope you’ll forgive me, but I think I should be getting home now. My mother… she’ll be worried. As will Tanek.”

“Of course,” says Geralt, which rather surprises Jaskier. Now that he’s decided to stop being a complete ass, it seems that Geralt can be quite the amicable figure. “Go home to your family.”

Amelia looks sad for a moment, and smiles, just barely. It’s a bittersweet expression. She turns to leave, and waves to Jaskier and Geralt. They both wave back, and she disappears down the hill, blonde hair bouncing behind her.

“Well,” Jaskier says to Geralt, “that all feels rather settled and final.”

Chapter Text

Yennefer specifically said not to leave without telling her, so Jaskier and Geralt stay. At least, that’s how Jaskier interprets it. He and Geralt haven’t actually… talked, about what they’re going to do after this. He remembers a flash of insecurity, a few days ago, when he’d thought that Geralt might not actually want to leave.

It might not be that bad, to stay with Yennefer. Although—Jaskier’s never been anything but honest with himself, because why should he lie to himself when he can lie to others, and he would much rather have Geralt to himself again, out on the road.

He sits in the front hallway of Yennefer’s house for ten minutes in Geralt’s absence, thinking nonsense about what’s going to happen, before he realizes that he and Geralt aren’t fighting anymore and he could very well just go ask. He feels a bit ridiculous, but then he thinks that maybe this was what had been going wrong the whole time: a lack of communication. He goes to find Geralt.

“What are we going to do now?” he asks, once he finds Geralt, sharpening his swords in the room where Yennefer had kept the bodies. 

Geralt looks up, eyebrows pressed together in something that’s either confusion or concern. Jaskier realizes that he’s probably lacking in context, given that they haven’t said anything else since Jaskier opened the door to the room.

“Are we going to stay, I mean?” he clarifies, leaning up against the doorframe.

“Oh,” says Geralt, in a way that makes Jaskier think he’s been interpreted wrong.

“What did you think I meant?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Geralt answers, gruff in the way that tells Jaskier he’s deflecting, and goes back to his swords. Jaskier narrows his eyes, but resolves to let him keep his secrets as long as he answers his original question.

After a few seconds of deliberation, Jaskier comes to another decision. “Well?” he prompts, and his tone is gentle, as opposed to teasing. Maybe, just maybe, the key to getting Geralt to talk to him is to be soft about it. It had worked the night before, hadn’t it? Well, it had worked after Jaskier had yelled, anyway. “Are we going to stay?”

Geralt looks surprised when he glances up at Jaskier, yellow eyes just imperceptibly wider than usual. A moment passes, and he finally says, “I don’t know,” which really wasn’t the answer Jaskier was hoping for, mostly because he was hoping for an answer.

The rest of the day, after the sentencing, goes by relatively uneventfully; Jaskier finally gets a bath, to wash away the smoke (a more pleasant smell) and the stench of burnt maggots (a decidedly unpleasant one). 

Yennefer’s tub is larger than any Jaskier thinks he’s ever been in, and it’s delightful . He doesn’t often get to just… submerge himself, except for when he goes back to the actual water. As it is, he takes the opportunity to bask in the faux depths.

Yennefer cuts straight to the point that night, over dinner. “You can stay as long as you need. Don’t think I don’t want you out of my house, though. Things will be easier with you two out of my way.”

Jaskier decides to be grateful, for once in his life, and smiles at her. “You love us, though.”

Jaskier’s got a lot of words, from his time up on land. He’s got practice using them, too, and the one word that he can find to describe Yennefer’s answering smile is fond . “I would sell you both to the elves for a single mushroom.”

They spend another week with Yennefer. Jaskier doesn’t get a straight answer on when Geralt wants to leave, or if he wants to leave, but he must want to leave, because that’s what his whole life is, isn’t it? Running around, killing monsters? 

Amelia stops by a couple of times. Jaskier, shocked and incredulous, starts to think that she’s actually coming to see Geralt, rather than him. She asks to see Jaskier, of course, but Geralt’s around Jaskier more often than not, lately, and Amelia often ends up talking to the witcher as much as the bard. It’s a little startling. Not that Amelia would talk to Geralt, because Jaskier gets the sense that she’s actually very brash when she’s not traumatized by the death and subsequent resurrection and dissection of her father (which Jaskier has been thinking about, lately, against his will; it makes him feel sad , to think about what she’s gone through, and he doesn’t know how he feels about that anymore), and Jaskier knows from experience that once you get over all the scary stuff, it’s very fun to talk to Geralt. 

No, the surprise is in two parts; the fact that Amelia comes to see Geralt, and the way that Geralt talks to her. Gently. Jaskier honestly hadn’t thought he had it in him, despite his faith in Geralt’s compassion and humanity.

“The way you talk to that girl…” Jaskier hears Yennefer say, one day, nearing the end of the week. He pauses by the door to listen further to the conversation (because even if he knows that eavesdropping is rude, it’s not going to cause any offense if he simply doesn’t get caught, and even if he does, he can always play dumb). “Every time I think I know you, you surprise me.”

Jaskier can’t see him, but Geralt’s voice is softer than he’s heard it in a while. “I could say the same of you, Yen.” A pause. “Almost like parenthood, hm?”

Jaskier gets the distinct feeling, all of a sudden, that he’s intruded onto something that he has no business seeing (or hearing, in this case), and he very quickly takes his leave.

The week spent with Yennefer without any pressures or engagements (other than the petty things that Yennefer has to deal with, seeing as she’s the leader of the little town which Jaskier still hasn’t heard the name of now) is actually quite pleasant. Yennefer, all the while acting caustic and aloof, offers to teach him how to read. Jaskier takes her up on the offer, and they spend hours in the library, when Yennefer has free time, poring over the little symbols until they start to connect to the sounds. Jaskier finds reading quite exciting, actually, and he gets his hands on some books of poetry to practice even if he can’t quite discern some of the words.

He hadn’t played his lute much while they’d been with Yennefer, except to mope in the library, so he takes the open time as an excuse to practice what he’d been missing out on. Testing his luck, on the second day of that week, he invites Geralt to go out with him to the tavern, to listen to him play. His heart thrills when Geralt accepts, and he’s reminded once again why he never wants to fight with his friend, and he’s reminded once again why he wants, deep down in his heart, for it to be something more. He actually catches a small smile on Geralt’s face, that night, when he plays one of his more foppish love songs, and Jaskier thinks that if he were back in the ocean, he might just have melted into the water and become one with the sea.

The smile falls, when Jaskier plays Toss A Coin, for reasons that he can’t fathom. Jaskier resolves not to play it again, when Geralt is around—at least, not before he gets a chance to talk to Geralt about it (and he can talk to Geralt about it! Because they’re talking now! And Jaskier doesn’t think that the thrill of having something open between them will ever get old).

All in all, the week with Yennefer is actually quite nice, and a large part of that is due to Yennefer itself. Jaskier doesn’t think that he’s ever met a person who he’s liked that he hasn’t loved, and he’s quickly realizing that this is no exception. It’s not in a romantic capacity, despite the fact that Yennefer is objectively a very comely woman (he’s still got a healthy amount of fear and respect for her, and besides, she’s had that thing with Geralt that is complicated because Jaskier’s not entirely convinced that it’s healthy, and his own feelings about Geralt are all twisted up in his perception of it, and he still doesn’t know what’s going on between Geralt and Yen). They’re just… close, now, and he calls her Yen, and she calls him ‘bard’, and ‘siren’, but it’s affectionate enough that he dares to call her ‘witch’ in return and she’ll actually grin at him for it. Jaskier gets the feeling that she likes to be challenged. He’s happy to oblige, on days when he’s not too scared.

He loves Yennefer, he thinks—he wants to know her and spend time with her and he counts her as a friend, and he’s pretty sure she does the same (and even if she doesn’t, at the very least, she’s humoring him). He stores the happy, familiar feeling next to what he has for Geralt.

Speaking of—the week comes to an end, and he decides that he really needs to talk to him.

-

After their talk, the night before Hanna’s sentencing, everything undergoes a paradigm shift. Geralt’s not quite sure what to do anymore.

Yennefer’s house starts to become familiar. He gets the feeling that the little blonde girl is coming to talk to him, more than Jaskier, which is fucking weird.

… He tries to be soft, when he speaks to her. She’s had a hard time. If he can help… Geralt was the cause of enough murder in his youth that he knows she’ll be having a hard time, if she’s blaming herself. At the very least, he can offer some scant words of comfort.

He talks a lot. It’s strange, but nobody will leave him alone, so he acquiesces. Jaskier looks so delighted when he offers an actual response; he makes an effort, with Jaskier. For reasons that he doesn’t know how to bring up with himself.

He talks a lot with Yennefer, as well. If not more, than more productively than they ever did in the time they spent together prior to this whole thing.

“I’m breaking off… this,” she says, gesturing between herself and Geralt, one night when they’ve sat and talked after dinner. 

Geralt’s surprised, but he takes it in stride.

“I think we both knew it wasn’t going to last,” Yen sniffs, haughtily, the way she does when she doesn’t want to appear emotionally invested. “Really, though, Geralt, the least you could have done was not bring another man into my house.”

Geralt pauses a moment before he answers. “It’s not like that.”

Yen raises a single eyebrow at him, and Geralt would have felt pinned if he’d spent less time getting used to the feeling. She lets a moment pass before she speaks again. “So. You two made up, obviously. What convinced you that he wasn’t a threat to society?”

Geralt finds it in himself to give her a sidelong glance. “It’s not like that, either,” he says, and sits back heavily in his chair.

“Well, I hope you’re not still thinking that he is a threat to society,” Yennefer says, tone dry as ever. “Because, frankly, that would be ridiculous even for you.”

“I know, Yen,” Geralt says. “He’s… the same as he’s always been.”

Jaskier seeks him out, a few days later. Geralt doesn’t think much of it; he barely looks up from the book Yen gave him about magical creatures, when Jaskier enters the room. It never hurt to be more informed.

“Geralt…” Jaskier starts. He’s more hesitant than Geralt’s seen him in a fair bit. “Are you… ready? To leave, I mean.”

Well. There’s a question.

Geralt thinks about it for a few moments. Truth be told, he’s been considering it the whole time. There’s nothing keeping him here anymore. Much as he’s enjoyed the peace, the quiet, the stability, it’s time to go back on the path. “Yeah,” he says finally, and Jaskier visibly brightens.

“Great,” Jaskier says, and then there’s another pause. “Did you... have anywhere you wanted to go?”

“Not particularly,” Geralt says, after a moment. “I take it you do.”

Jaskier, for once, seems at a loss for words. He ducks his head. “I’m glad we’re not fighting anymore, you know. I didn’t like it when you were angry with me.”

Geralt feels a wave of guilt wash over him. It’s not a particularly new feeling, except for the fact that it’s because of Jaskier. In the spirit of the… new things, that they’ve been doing lately, in terms of conversation, Geralt tries an apology. “I’m sorry.”

Jaskier looks up, obviously surprised, before his expression softens. ”You’re forgiven.”

A moment passes, and Jaskier speaks up again. “When do you think you were going to notice?”

“Notice that—”

“That I was a siren.”

Geralt answers with a “Hm,” and then after further consideration, “I don’t know.” It’s an embarrassing point. You’d think that a witcher would have been able to notice that his companion was a magical creature.

“Well, don’t beat yourself up about it,” Jaskier says, and Geralt glances up sharply. Jaskier practically glows when he grins back at him. Geralt thinks… maybe, that Jaskier’s proud of himself for being able to read him. “You’d have gotten it eventually. I’m a terrible liar, when it comes to you. Really, though, how many years has it been? You must have picked up on the fact that I don’t age like a human.”

Geralt blinks. Oh. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Really?” 

Geralt shakes his head and closes his book. “Time… feels different. For me. I think.”

Jaskier breathes out heavily. “Well, here I was, worried for nothing. It’s been stressful, you know, trying to hide it all this time.”

Geralt quirks a brow at him. “I can imagine.” And then, after a moment, “So. Why stay?” With me , is the unfinished half of that sentence. 

Jaskier pauses as if he’s been caught in something, and actually goes slightly red. “The same reason I sang to you, Geralt.”

Something clicks in Geralt’s brain; like puzzle pieces, finally falling into place. Things make a lot more sense. 

Because what else could that mean, Jaskier following him for years despite the danger, and singing him his mother’s lullaby, and continuing to try with him, even when Geralt did his best to push him away? Geralt’s missed more than the fact that Jaskier’s a siren. “Oh,” he says, for lack of something better.

“Oh,” Jaskier agrees, flushing a shade darker.

Geralt clears his throat. He’s not… ready, for this conversation. He needs time to think on it. To process. “Did you actually have somewhere to go?”

Jaskier looks like he would go even redder, if he could, and struggles for the words; it’s an odd sight. Geralt’s never seen him have trouble talking before. “The coast,” he finally says. The words are rushed. “The ocean,” he says, and then, quieter, “My home.”

“Oh,” Geralt says, again, quieter than he means to. And then, after a moment, “Alright.”

-

Jaskier feels like he’s floating, the whole day before he and Geralt leave.

Everything’s still a bit… foggy, between them, but it’s much clearer than before, and this is mostly a fog of things that are unsaid that he’s sure are going to be said at some point or other. He’s been trying, to see things from Geralt’s perspective, and he thinks he’s doing a pretty good job, and he thinks maybe the little fantasies he’s been entertaining about the two of them have a chance of coming true after all.

And even if they don’t, he’s taking Geralt to the ocean. To his home. Jaskier thinks that might be enough.

They say their goodbyes in the morning; Amelia shows up to see them off, and he hears her quietly say, “Thank you, witcher,” to Geralt. It’s awfully sweet.

Geralt says goodbye to Yennefer, and then Jaskier does, chancing a hug. Yennefer reciprocates, and Jaskier thinks it’s a wonderful little moment.

Before he can pull it away, Yennefer grabs his arm, looking at him as if she’s examining his face. “Take care of yourself, siren.”

Jaskier laughs and smiles as charmingly as he can. “And you, witch.”

Yennefer glances between him and Geralt, who’s waiting with Roach’s reins in his hands. Jaskier smiles at the sight, and Yennefer raises an eyebrow at him. “You know, it looks to me like you’re in love with him.”

Well, Jaskier would absolutely be lying if he said he hadn’t come to that conclusion earlier. He laughs again. “How ever did you figure it out?” he jokes, sarcasm light on his tone.

Then they set off again, and it’s all like it was before, except Jaskier glances over as they walk and sees Geralt actually looking at him, and Geralt will respond if Jaskier asks him a question, and it’s—different. But nice.

Night falls, and they make camp for the first time in a while. Jaskier doesn’t even try to hide his contemplative stares at Geralt across the last embers of the fire. They haven’t shared a space in weeks, since Yennefer gave them separate rooms, which leaves Geralt free to pretend that he’s slept—but Jaskier knows better.

He takes a breath and takes the plunge. “Geralt—would you like me to sing to you?”

Geralt looks up, golden eyes reflecting the last light of the fire, and he looks more apprehensive than angry. It fades into some other emotion a moment later. “The lullaby.”

“You should get a full night’s sleep at least once in your life,” Jaskier quips, but it’s still a… serious moment.

Geralt considers him for a moment before he says, softly, “Alright.”