Chapter Text
Witchers don't feel. That's what everybody says, and Geralt never corrects them, there’s just no need.
That way people expect less of him. That way he can simply do his job and move on.
That’s how it always has been.
But.
They waltz into his life almost at the same time. A loud bard who never leaves him, and snarky sorceress who always does.
They both look at him like no one has before.
All his life he lives on bits, scraps, and broken parts. Then they come and he is suddenly given something so big and perfect, it fills all of his being. He doesn’t know what to do with it. It feels strange. Dangerous, even.
(It feels scary).
There is one thing he learned very well.
Things like that, good things that he hasn’t really earned always end in a disaster. So he never accepts them, even chases them away if he has to. They cannot hurt him if he doesn’t let them.
They still do. He loses them both in one day.
It is the way Yennefer looks at him after he almost dies. It is the way Jaskier says, “We could head to the coast” and Geralt's mind goes blank. They depend on him too much. Expect too much. Run – little voice in his head tells him – run, this is not safe.
And he does — words come out of his mouth on their own, rage mixed with fear – blunt instrument and always effective.
He knows Yennefer won’t forgive him, but he half-expects Jaskier to let it slide, like he usually does. And Geralt expects maybe even hopes to still find him at the camp, smirking stupidly. He can almost hear it in a perfect so-Jaskier mocking voice: “Are you done sulking?” and cannot decide what he’d do. But there’s no need — camp is empty, no sign of his bard around.
This is good, he tells himself, but his heart suddenly feels very heavy.
***
Now when it’s quiet and boring as it was before all of that, he notices how dull every day is, with nothing to show, nothing to wait for, nothing - no one to share it with.
He’s a bit surprised how little he misses Yennefer. He’s slightly more surprised how much he misses Jaskier.
First week after the mountain he keeps glancing sideways and when he doesn't see anyone, his first urge is to stop and wait for the bard to catch up. Then he remembers. One time – it’s just one time, he notices something on the horizon and mindlessly starts saying “Look, Jaskier-”. He really hopes Roach isn’t as smart as he makes her to be – and she doesn’t quietly laugh at him that moment.
These habits fade away, but something starts eating him out from the inside, slowly but surely. The only monster he cannot kill – the one sitting in his chest. He expects it to go away too eventually, but it only grows more hungry as the weeks and then months pass.
There’s something tugging at his core, not pain, but emptiness. It's an unpleasant feeling, hollow, and a little bit nauseating. He was trained to withstand hurt and cold and hunger, but not this. There’s a strange restlessness buried deep in his bones, a quiet one but desperate.
It was ages since someone talked to him for something other than the contract. Since someone touched him, not trying to kill.
Sometimes he lies awake at night and his skin hums, aching with want.
Even if he guesses what it is, he never names it in his thoughts. Witchers don’t get lonely.
Yet sometimes he lets his mind wander off. Sometimes he tells himself that he’d be braver, that he’d try better – if only life gave him one more chance. He doesn’t actually believe it, destiny has never been quite kind to him, yet he thinks. He thinks what he’d say, what things he would risk losing, if it meant having some of it back. A quiet company. A presence of someone else than his horse.
It keeps his mind busy – imagining what they would say to him. He runs conversations in his head. The ones that happened. The ones that never will. Sometimes he wakes up to the sound of the familiar voice, but it falls away the moment he opens his eyes.
It feels like he has more ghosts to add to his nice little collection.
***
It doesn’t feel real, when it happens – he imagined it way too often.
He’s at the only tavern in a shitty shitty town with no jobs, when something - someone catches his eye. There he is, like out of the dream – brown hair, colourful jacket (less bright than he would expect though), sitting at the table just at his arm length.
It doesn't feel real.
(Destiny has never been kind to him).
Yet he's there. Looking almost exactly like Geralt remembers him. Almost.
He doesn't get to stare for too long – just a moment later Jaskier looks up and meets his gaze. Such endless blue.
Geralt imagined this so much it feels like it is happening for the millionth time.
Jaskier – all he manages to say before his voice fails him.
That name feels like a prayer on his tongue.