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The first time Jaskier had seen it, it gave him the fright of his life.
He’d been out in the woods, having resolved to spend the night on the forest floor for a single reason: sleeplessness. He could sense he was in for a long night, and took to strumming his lute and composing more ballads to cope.
He didn’t want another complaint from the inn’s other tenants, or further simply untrue rumors to be spread - he never played out of tune! - so he simply spent those awful nights out in the woods with nothing but the moon and her stars as company.
He remembers a time he was afraid of the woods. How every breeze sent a shiver down his spine, how every creak of a branch he was certain had to be some intruder with ill intent.
He remembers years spent traveling with a certain man, the horrors they had seen together. The woods were never so scary after all that.
He was strumming his lute idly, finding satisfaction in the simple existence of the notes, discordant though they may be. His lute had a simple existence, one he envied at times.
Oh, to be an instrument. Only there to provide music, to bring joy to those who would bother to listen.
Jaskier supposed he himself was an instrument, just more complicated. With organs, feelings, and a carefully crafted sense of fashion.
A twig crunched in the distance, and Jaskier plucked a truly dissonant note in response.
More curious than anything, Jaskier sat up. “Anyone there?” he called out.
A blur of white moved amongst the trees.
Jasker set down his lute, and raised his hands. He called forth light, centering it in his palms. He couldn’t do much with it, but some creatures found it intimidating.
“You can come out,” Jaskier said to it. “I won’t hurt you. Hopefully you won’t hurt me.”
The white mass crashed through the underbrush, leaping over the fire and almost onto Jaskier.
“Holy shit!” Jasker scampered back from the massive absolutely huge white wolf now taking up the majority of his camp.
The wolf didn’t move, though. It just sat there. Looking at him.
Jaskier stilled. “Hello, massive, large, very huge wolf creature. Are you going to kill me?” Why was he talking to a fucking wolf and why was this wolf so goddamn large?
The wolf just shook its head.
“You’re… not going to kill me? Or eat me? I don’t taste very good, I promise you that.”
The wolf shook its head again.
“You’re not going to eat me, that’s very nice of you - holy shit, you understand me!”
The wolf nodded.
Jaskier could only blink. He’d seen a lot in his fairly long life, and yet, he’d never seen a wolf that was almost the size of a horse , sitting in front of him and definitely sentient . “How the hell can you understand? What are you?”
The wolf tilted its head, looking at him with a level of sass Jaskier never thought a wolf could possess.
“Right, okay, you can’t tell me. So, you’re just a sentient wolf, a very large one at that, and you’re here to what? Listen to my singing? Share my fire?”
The wolf laid down in response, resting its massive head on its pristine paws. It kept its eyes on Jaskier, though.
He was more than a little put off from the whole situation. But he wasn’t going to attempt to tell this beast to look elsewhere.
So he resumed his playing and singing and then recomposing his singing and writing.
When he got tired enough that he kept misplucking, the wolf lumbered over and settled behind him, allowing Jaskier - after much hesitation and many repeated questions if he was allowed to do this - to use the beast as a pillow.
It radiated so much heat that it warded away the night’s chill effortlessly. It’s fur was softer than the finest of silks, and more comfortable than the most expensive of beds.
The wolf even had a familiar scent about him. It was arguably just a beastly smell, but there was something inherently familiar, inherently warm about its scent.
That was the best sleep Jaskier had for months.
When he awoke, the wolf was gone.
The second time had been when Jaskier received the most horrible news in all his life.
He’d been singing at a tavern, giving a small show for no other reason than to lift the spirits of the patrons. They had all been dreadfully silent upon his entry; hell, the entire town seemed to have been steeping in sorrow.
It was when Jaskier was halfway through a ballad full of his adventures with a certain unnamed, ashen-haired man did a drunken woman stomp up to him and attempt to throw her ale in his face - thankfully her tankard was empty.
“Will you shut up with those horrible verses?” She screeched, face red with alcohol and her apparent grief. “The White Wolf is dead and you mock him with these songs!”
Jaskier’s hand twitched, striking a chord that resonated with his frozen mind. “What did you say?” His voice was hardly a whisper.
“The White Wolf, Geralt of Rivia, he is dead!” The woman wailed, throwing herself upon the bard in her fit. “He was slain by ghouls not a fortnight ago, and you mock him!”
Jaskier merely held the woman, frozen in time. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breath, he was just… there. There in a world where the White Wolf was no more.
It couldn’t be.
He couldn’t tell someone how he ended up in the woods; his world was a haze as he fell to his knees and let loose all of the emotions that had been building up over the last twenty goddamn years since he met the man that captured his heart.
Jaskier wailed.
He sobbed and shouted and cursed the world for taking the White Wolf from him far too soon.
His lute, abandoned some distance behind him, vibrated with the power of his cries.
His hands reached forward, intertwining with the grass in his pitiful attempt to stabilize himself.
Then his right hand was covered with something heavy, and something light brushed his face.
Jaskier jerked back, falling onto his rear in a sudden motion.
It was the white beast again, sitting and staring.
Jasker threw his arms around it, much in the way the drunken woman did to him.
He sobbed into its fur, holding onto this beast that could maim him any moment for comfort that no other living thing could provide him in this moment.
Something about the beast, the wolf, whatever it was, calmed him. It allowed for coherent thoughts, many of which were the calm before the storm.
“He wasn’t supposed to go so soon!” He sobbed, finding the need to voice his woes to his companion. “He was a fucking Witcher!”
If it was even possible, the beast froze. Jaskier didn’t notice amidst his sorrow. He merely cried into the fur that was whiter than snow, purer than a fresh drink of water on a hot summer’s day.
He entangled his hands into the delicate fur, fighting off the images of his Witcher’s ashen hair, and how it felt entirely too similar to the wolf’s fur.
Jaskier felt the wolf curling around him, protecting him from the world as he mourned. All he could feel was the silken fur, all he could smell was the painfully familiar yet foreign scent of beast.
It calmed him more than he thought it should.
His breathing grew normal, his tears dried, and his pool of emotions began to drain.
He slept, wrapped within the wolf’s hold.
The third time was months later.
Jaskier had felt like he was going mad. He would swear the wolf was following him, that he could feel its presence near him only to search and come up empty.
He would see a blur of white in the corner of his eye, but if he searched, there would be nothing.
But for the past few weeks, the blur of white had been missing entirely. It was unnerving to be without the beast.
In an idle search, Jaskier left the town during the full moon, and headed for the woods.
Perhaps he was being foolish, but his concern for his life had dwindled ever since he found out that his protector could no longer protect him.
He traversed the forest, lute in hand, absentminded melodies spilling from his lips.
He walked for what must have been a couple hours. His feet were hurting - he’d left his travel boots at the inn in favor of his showman boots, and he was feeling the effects of them now.
Heart aching and soul burning, Jaskier sat down on the forest floor. He stopped playing, not finding it within himself to continue.
The quiet of the forest was its own kind of music. Owls hooting, trees whispering in the wind, the occasional creak of a twig.
“If you’re there, I’d like to see you,” Jaskier called out with wild abandon. He didn’t think he would be heard, but it seems that the world was granting him a favor.
The white wolf appeared through the trees, stepping so quietly that Jaskier couldn’t hear it.
It might as well have been a ghost for all the noise it made.
“You’re back,” Jaskier breathed, finding himself inexplicably soothed by the wolf’s mere presence. “You were gone for a while, wherever did you disappear to?”
Only then did Jaskier remember that the wolf couldn’t talk; that didn’t mean it couldn’t answer, though.
The wolf crept forward until it was right in front of him, towering over the man as they both sat on the forest floor. The wolf gave him a low growl, and puffed out his chest.
Something reflected the moonlight, peeking out from the sea of ashen fur. Jaskier reached for it, fingers trembling and heart pulsating.
When his hands closed around metal, he could’ve cried.
It was a wolf medallion. A very familiar, very unique wolf medallion that only belonged to a single person in the entire world.
There was the scratch from when a drowner had gotten too terribly close to the man who wore it. There was a scuff from where the man had been thrown by the force of a griffin’s wings.
Jaskier looked up into the wolf’s eyes that weren’t a wolf’s eyes. They were a cat’s, the pupils slits of darkness against swirling amber.
His heart dropped.
“Geralt?” He whispered, clenching his hand around the medallion.
The wolf huffed, as if exasperated that only now did everything click for the bard.
“Geralt!” Jasker threw his arms around the beast, burying his face into the mass of warmth and fur. “Fuck, you’re here, you’re… how?” He pulled back, bringing his hand up to the beast’s face and examining him from all over. “How did this happen?”
The wolf hummed, fucking hummed , and leaned forward; he nuzzled his cold nose against Jaskier’s neck, running the length of the very thin scar left from-
“The djinn?” Jaskier breathed, his hand coming up on instinct to rub at the wisp of a scar. “You wished for this?”
Geralt nodded.
“You used your last wish to bind yourself to me?” Jaskier could only stare with horror at the wolf before him.
Geralt nuzzled Jasker’s cheek, and fuck if that didn’t hurt him more than it should have.
“Oh, you stupid, stupid man!” Jaskier cried, covering his mouth with his hands.
If Geralt had an eyebrow to raise, he would’ve.
“I’m not human!” Jaskier couldn’t control the volume of his voice, or the light emitting from his hands. “You’re to be stuck like this for so long! You’ve bound yourself to this existence for decades!”
And Geralt only gave him a look that said I knew what I was doing .
Tears sprang to Jaskier’s eyes, threatening to overflow with every breath. “You, you stupid Witcher, you absolutely brash idiot!” He flailed his fist into the wolf’s chest, letting it thunk against the solid mass of beast and then flop to the ground.
Geralt’s silence only provoked him more.
Jaskier jumped into a standing position and began pacing. “Is this a blessing or a curse for you? You were always quiet, painfully so, but I never imagined you to take this route. You sacrificed everything that makes you human! You can never speak again! You can’t tell me to fuck off, or to do that stupid ‘hmm’ thing that you seem to think passes as an acceptable answer for everything, or call me an annoyance ever again!” Jaskier felt something hot drip down his cheek, and finally noticed that he was crying. He wiped away the rest of his tears with rough movements, firmly keeping his gaze away from the wolf off to his side. “You can’t do this! We don’t speak for months, and then you reappear like this! A speechless beast, bound to me? Why? Why would you do this? ” Jaskier’s voice rose in volume until he was almost screeching, hands tangled roughly in his hair and mindlessly wearing a hole in the ground.
Geralt barked once and lept into Jaskier’s way, firmly planting himself right in the middle of the path Jaskier’s boots had created in the dirt.
“Why?” Jaskier asked, falling to his knees before the beast. “The last things you said to me, on that mountain, and now… you died , and I had to find out from some drunk woman at some random town we’d never been to! And then you’re now bound to me and I’m just supposed to be okay with that?”
Geralt made some kind of sound that sounded far too close to a whimper , and laid down with his head on his paws.
It broke Jaskier’s heart all over again to see Geralt give him the closest thing to an apology he would ever give, human or not.
“Why,” Jaskier breathed, leaning to press his forehead to Geralt’s. “Why would you do this to yourself?”
Geralt made a sound that, even when emitted by a wolf, sounded the same as it did when he was a man. A sound that told him you know why .
Jaskier laughed, a hollow, broken sound. “Idiots, we were. Never truer idiots than us.” He thought of every moment he spent pining away after the Witcher, of every instance he tried to convince himself that it was futile.
Only for him to find out now that his feelings were reciprocated. Only when the man he loved had died.
“Imagine what we could’ve been,” Jaskier whispered, closing his eyes and focusing on the warmth emanating from the beast in front of him. More tears fell, landing on the wolf’s fur and vanishing.
Geralt shuffled until he surrounded Jaskier, shrouding him in warmth and security.
Jaskier cried. He let himself mourn a relationship that never was. He mourned the Witcher, the great Geralt of Rivia, he mourned himself and the loss of a life he could’ve had.
When he had exhausted himself, he slept with the wolf curled around him.
“Geralt, is it a stretch to rhyme done and gone?” Jaskier asked, glancing at his wolf companion as they trekked along a path. They were on their way to a minor lord’s court for a ball, where Jaskier’s performance had been requested. He’d been trying to compose a new song for the lord, to show his gratitude, but he was struggling more than he’d like to admit.
Geralt growled, and slowed his pace, unbeknownst to Jaskier.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” Jaskier plucked a random chord as he kept walking on. “I fear the lord won’t have his own ballad by the time we get there. Perhaps I shall perform one of the songs I’ve written about you.”
Another growl, definitely one of disagreement.
“Ah yes, but you can’t stop me, darling. You are ever my muse, and who am I to shun her gifts of inspiration-”
“Stop right there.” A man appeared from the trees, dressed in worn armor and wielding a dented sword. “Hand over all your coin!”
Jaskier swallowed and tightened his grip on his lute. “Listen, friend,” he heard leaves rustling, saw two more men approaching from behind him, and quickly amended, “Friends, come on. You really don’t want to do this. Surely you value your life more than my sad stash of coin, so I implore you to walk away unless you wish to meet your end.”
The leader laughed, an ugly snort of a sound. “You trying to intimidate me, little man? What are you going to do?”
A low growl sounded from Jaskier’s right, and he sighed. “I warned you,” he said. As fast as he could, he grabbed for the dagger at his waist, and threw it at the leader. He didn’t wait to see if it had hit, he merely turned and ran into the woods, holding his lute tight to his chest as the sound of a battle erupted behind him.
He found a spot to hide, and waited.
Not for the first time, he was glad Geralt and him had worked out this little routine.
Coming up with it was a painful process, hours of charades and one-sided arguing and an incredible amount of stubbornness, but Geralt pushed it enough and now it paid off.
Two quick barks echoed throughout the forest, and Jaskier emerged from his hiding spot. Geralt came running up to him, panting and covered in enough gore and muck that he was more crimson than white with his dagger between his blood-stained teeth.
“Are you alright?” Jaskier asked first before noticing just how dirty the wolf had become. “Did you roll in the bodies, what happened?” He would have given the wolf a hug but he preferred his clothes to be unsoiled, so he settled for taking his dagger back, and wiping it on a spare leaf from the ground. “You’re disgusting. Better hope the innkeeper is amicable, otherwise we’ll have to bathe you in a river or something.”
Geralt shook his head, flinging drops of blood as he did.
“Well, I’m certainly not allowing you to go too long looking like that,” Jaskier gestured wildly to him, and resumed his trek to the nearest town. “Revolting, is what you are.”
Geralt walked alongside him, giving him a glare.
“Thank you,” Jaskier said, voice much softer.
Geralt made a noise that Jaskier had learned meant you don’t have to thank me.
“And yet I will. Thank you.”
Together, the two of them walked on, ready to face whatever might be in store for them. A bard and his wolf against the world.