Chapter Text
Jaskier was, in the current moment, sure of three things.
One, he was currently bleeding out, very slowly and painfully, from a gash of almost ridiculous proportions that a barghest had somehow managed to leave in his abdomen.
Two, Geralt was clutching him gently to his chest with his arm that also held Roach’s reins, pressing down on the furiously bleeding wound as hard as he could with his other hand, as he hurried his horse along at a pace more urgent than any he’d taken before, whispering reassurances to the bard as he held him, careful not to jostle him too much lest the movement exacerbate Jaskier’s injuries.
Three, Geralt was being nicer to him now than possibly ever before.
Really, he should have just told him that all it took was for him to get mortally wounded, and then Geralt would manage to start being caring and nice and soft. He’d have done it a long time ago, if that was the case.
Perhaps the trade-off was a bit... unfavourable, given that it would end up with him quite literally risking his life for Geralt’s affection, and he wouldn’t even be lucid enough to appreciate it, but the fact of the matter was that Jaskier had yet to find another method that even worked. He would, of course, have preferred a less risky way to coax the stoic witcher into being outwardly fond toward him, but all of his attempts had yielded annoyingly few results.
It was damn frustrating, was what it was. Fifteen years of friendship and it took Jaskier getting his stomach sliced open for Geralt to be openly and unashamedly nice to him.
Jaskier would have commented on this, had he not been so preoccupied with coughing up blood.
“It’s okay, Jask,” Geralt mumbled to him, and Jaskier’s heart melted. He was so sweet when the bard was dying.
He wanted to tell him that, say that he appreciated Geralt’s care and was very grateful for it, but the words got lost on the way, and he ended up hacking a truly astonishing amount of blood into the Witcher’s face for his trouble.
Jaskier wished that he could see the expression that had overtaken the White Wolf’s features in that moment, because he did not doubt that it would be absolutely hilarious. As it was, he let his head loll back against Geralt’s arm. Who knew that such a grievous injury would handicap him so much? Jaskier was a witcher, after all - he’d expected himself to be sturdier, he’d been heavily injured before and still managed to stitch himself right back up again.
Then again, this was - dare he say it - perhaps a bit more serious than any of his previous injuries.
Hm. Maybe he should invest in a sword, again. Daggers were useful against men, but did precious little against monsters, much to his annoyance. Perhaps an armed bard would be a tad suspicious, but there were ways around that. If he got swords short enough, he could stow them in his lute case - hang on.
His lute.
He tried to sit up - tried being the operative word - and ended up flopping around in Geralt’s grasp like he was having some kind of mild seizure.
“Jaskier!”
“L’te,” Jaskier managed to slur. “Wh’rs m’ l’te?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jaskier saw Geralt’s face contort like he’d sucked on a lemon.
“Are you asking me where your lute is?”
“Y’. L’te.”
“Only you, Jaskier,” Geralt muttered. “It’s on my back, I didn’t leave it there.”
Oh. That was good.
That left him with significantly fewer things to ponder. Namely, how he was going to get the gaping hole in his stomach to be a little less gaping and also not as much of a hole in the first place, and also where Geralt was riding Roach with such ferocious determination.
The stoic witcher had tried to temper the bleeding as much as he could with tourniquets and other makeshift supplies, but not doing enough to stop the blood from trickling steadily out of Jaskier’s abdomen. The barghest hadn’t stopped at one wound, it had torn multiple chunks from Jaskier’s person, and rendered his ailments most inconveniently untreatable by the kind of generic, roadside first aid that witchers were so well versed in.
Although, in hindsight, he really should have guessed where they’d end up. Maybe he would have, had he been at all able to make out their route and also not slightly delirious from the blood loss, but by the time Kaer Morhen’s looming shape was front and centre before him, he was sliding in and out of consciousness, so he’d have to be forgiven if he wasn’t exactly showcasing the pinnacle of his cognitive capabilities.
He hadn’t exactly been to Kaer Morhen many times - certainly not any time after the attack, gods, he was old - but he didn’t quite see why it was that Geralt had brought him here. It was by no measure a functioning witcher school, and he doubted that there would be supplies to patch him up - especially at this time in late-autumn; he knew that the remaining members of the Wolf School wintered there, but that wouldn’t be yet, given the fact that even the snows that dusted the mountains were still remnants of the light, autumn flurries rather than the proper winter storms.
Not bothering to stable Roach, Geralt hollered at the keep the moment they arrived, and, as a testament to his fading lucidity, Jaskier found that he couldn’t quite make out what, exactly, he said.
Brilliant.
He must have fallen unconscious, then, and been well and truly out of it, because when he came to, he saw a vaguely familiar face standing over him.
It was Vesemir, looking far older, and a lot more weary and weathered than Jaskier had ever expected to see him, the expression on his face suggesting he’d just seen a ghost.
“Hi,” he managed, his tongue feeling like it was made of lead.
“You’re conscious?” Vesemir muttered. “Of course you are. Geralt, if could go and stable your horse? I won’t have her running amok in the keep.”
“Roach is well behaved.” Geralt’s retort was almost petulant. “And Jaskier-”
“I will continue to tend to him as you asked of me, Geralt. Go and tend to your horse.”
A moment of silence stretched between the two as Geralt stomped off, footsteps ringing loudly through the empty keep.
“Now that he’s gone,” the old witcher groused, turning back to Jaskier and yanking something off of his wrist - something that had to be the glamour, “I’d like to know how the fuck you ended up here, you bastard.”
“Geralt. Horse.”
“You know that’s not what I mean, Julian.”
Jaskier cracked a smile. “You’re old.”
Vesemir frowned.
Where the old witcher bore the weight of his years clearly, Jaskier... Jaskier, by some fluke or other, did not. He supposed it was the differing cocktail of mutagens that his school used, or the increased use of magic, or something... Either way, despite being comparable in age - yep, that settled it, Jaskier was fucking old, he was an old man, where had his life gone? - he barely looked to be in his thirties.
He was going to rub this in Vesemir’s face the moment he regained the ability to string together complex sentences.
“Yes, Julian, I am aware that you have been afflicted with both eternal youth and apparently, an intellect to match. Now, tell me, how did you end up as Geralt’s bard?”
Jaskier shrugged. “I was in Posada. Lonely.”
“You were lonely in Posada?”
“Geralt was,” the bard amended. “You let me... Let me get my tongue back. Before you stage an interrogation. Glamour.”
“Don’t presume to order me around in my own keep, Julian,” Vesemir scoffed, though there was an undertone of warmth in his voice as he slipped the glamour back onto Jaskier’s wrist - an inconvenient place, but then, Jaskier was an inconvenient man. “I’ll presume you had good reason to hoodwink Geralt into thinking you were his hapless bard companion for two decades?”
“I am his bard,” Jaskier shrugged. “A bard. The his bard thing wasn’t my idea. Besides, I didn’t lie to him. I just didn’t mention that I wasn’t only a bard.”
“I presume you’ve heard of lying by omission?”
“Mm. Can’t chide me for that, though, seeing as you’re now complicit in it. Or did you not send Geralt from the room before you pulled my glamour off, old man?”
Vesemir huffed. “I’d tell you to act your age, Julian, but you probably still think you’re eighteen.”
Jaskier feigned surprise. “You mean I’m not?”
“Your ridiculous inability to get older does not excuse your idiocy.”
“But you still love me.”
“My question stands. Why would you hide your identity from Geralt?”
Jaskier waved a hand. “You think he’d ever look at me as an equal - or inferior, rather, given that he so clearly thinks I’m patently useless - again if I let him know that I used to cavort around and fraternise with his Papa Vesemir?”
The old witcher’s face twisted. “Please never call me that again, Julian.”
Jaskier shrugged as best he could without immediately ripping all his stitches. He was a very enthusiastic shrugger, and this was known to have unpleasant side-effects on newly-dressed wounds. A fact that he knew from experience.
“It’s Jaskier.”
“Buttercup.”
“Mm. I was considering Dandelion, but then I realised that you couldn’t really nickname that. I mean, what would you do with it? Dandy? Lion? Dan? I mean, do I look like a fucking Dan to you, Vesemir?”
“You look like a Julian, is what you do.”
Jaskier scowled. “Not to Geralt. To him, I look like an idiot.”
“That, too.”
“Where’s your sense of humour gone, old man?”
Vesemir did not deign to grace him with an answer, and soon enough, Geralt’s returning footsteps signified the end of the conversation regardless.
Jaskier closed his eyes and let his head loll back, body splayed across the pallet he’d been dumped on before Vesemir had so kindly stitched him up, the witcher in question immediately wising up to what he was doing. Much to the bard’s disappointment, he was also very much not amused.
Almost immediately after the bard had settled into position, Geralt stomped into the room and immediately fell for the bait, judging by the sounds of Vesemir physically restraining the man.
“Calm yourself, Geralt,” Vesemir said, his pointed gaze undoubtedly directed towards Jaskier. “Your friend here is fine, he simply has a terrible sense of humour. Stop playing dead, Jaskier, or I will have you run the wall.”
“Will not.”
Geralt breathed a sigh of relief.
Vesemir groaned. “Don’t let that slide, wolf, you’re enabling him.”
“I deserve to be enabled,” Jaskier cut in, cracking an eye open. “I’m very interesting and witty.”
“Would it be too much to ask that, for once in your life, you act your age?”
“Quite.”
“Very well, then. You can run the wall, then, tomorrow, if you’re so desperate to act like a child.”
“He’s injured. And human,” Geralt snapped, evidently missing the joking undertone in his mentor’s tone, but Jaskier simply hummed, noncommittal.
“Someone’s cranky. And by that, I mean Vesemir. Vesemir’s cranky. Old age finally caught up to you?”
“You evidently still have the maturity of a three-year-old,” Vesemir huffed, and Jaskier couldn’t possibly tell whether the slip was intentional or not, but Geralt picked up on it immediately.
Oh, Melitele’s tits.
Now he decided to be observant? For fuck’s sake. The man was denser than a bag of bricks sometimes, except, evidently, when it would have been convenient for him to be.
“You know him?”
The question was directed as Vesemir, but it was Jaskier who answered. “We’ve met. When I was young.”
Geralt hummed, accepting the half-truth.
Vesemir shot the bard a look.
Evenly, Jaskier met his old friend’s gaze, the tiniest of smirks on his lips. It was, after all, the truth - a misconstrued truth, to be sure, but the truth nonetheless.
And what a youth it had been.
The Path was by no means enjoyable, to be sure - Jaskier knew the hardships all too well, having walked it himself for a fair amount of time, enough that he could grow weary enough of it to decide to leave it altogether and pursue his own interests - but he had spent enough time in his younger years travelling with Vesemir on it that they had managed to enjoy some of their time together, eke out a kind of camaraderie despite their illicit companionship that they’d both been told to abandon by their respective schools once word of their travels got out.
Witchers were lone hunters, they’d said, and Jaskier and Vesemir had, at the time being young and impressionable enough to take their mentors’ words as law, ceased meeting up to travel the path together, but not until after having gotten to know each other well enough for it to remain a lasting memory, a relationship not lost to time like so many would have been.
Jaskier would still call the man a friend, despite the - gods, the literal centuries that had passed since they’d walked the Path together, two naïve and reckless twenty-year-olds desperate to twist their thankless job into something fun, enjoyable - Jaskier perhaps more than Vesemir.
The man had changed a lot.
It was strange, but then again, most people would likely conclude that it was less odd for Vesemir to become wiser and more reserved over the truly ridiculous length of time they’d lived than it was for Jaskier’s brash and headstrong personality to remain more or less static - but then again, he’d always prided himself on being an outlier.
It was his most prized skill, besides his lute-playing, which he was still incredibly proud of having cultivated to such a degree. He was practically infamous as a bard now, so all his condescending brothers-in-arms who had laughed in the face of the idea of a musical witcher could go get fucked.
Speaking of the lute...
Jaskier broke the uncomfortable silence that had settled over the room, gently hoisting himself up in a manner generally considered unwise for a man as extensively injured as he was. “Anyhow, thank you for the wonderful medical care, I’m feeling much better already. Geralt, do you know where my lute is?”
Vesemir rolled his eyes, but Geralt merely grunted a reply that could have - given the sheer incoherence of it - meant anything, but promptly left again, presumably to fetch the lute.
That, or his Jaskier allergy was acting up again.
“On the bright side, Julian,” Vesemir said, fixing his gaze firmly on the bard lying uncomfortably before him, newly-sutured stitches still on full display, “the fact that you’re here now means you have all winter to let the proverbial cat out of the bag.”
Oh.
The mountain. Kaer Morhen. The waning autumn. It was too late for Geralt to be leaving when he wanted to spend the winter, and Jaskier sure as hell wasn’t going to make it down on foot before the snows fell, not in his injured state, if he decided to leave on his own anyways.
That was... inconvenient.
Fuck.