Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a Witcher on the beach, and Jaskier knows it’s his fault the man is here.

It’s not Geralt, which might seem a small blessing for Jaskier’s heart but is a curse to all of their lives. For why else is a Witcher at a beach known for its Selkies if not for coin?

Deep down, he’d known his nightly visits to sit and sing on the shore might lead to trouble. But after spending a great deal of the past twenty-one years in his human form, he now longs for the land the same way he used to long for the sea.

The worst of it will pass, he knows.

Longing is something he is deeply intimate with after all, but at least he has longed for Geralt’s affections long enough to know it will become bearable.

Eventually.

As will the heartbreak he was so gracelessly handed upon his parting with Geralt, or so his mother has said.

But now, with a Witcher standing on what feels like the doorstep to his home the passing of longing and heartbreak seems a very distant dream, as far out of reach as the stars in the midnight sky.

With resignation in his gut and dread in his heart, he surfaces. His Selkie coat around his waist is hidden by foamy waves that lap at the rocks he’s leaning his upper-body on.

Cat-like eyes catch sight of him quickly and easily, set in a slender face with a single scar running down its right side. The Witcher’s got short, reddish-brown hair and a slimmer, shorter frame than Geralt.

A Wolf medallion rests against his chest, proud and mocking.

Just his luck, Jaskier thinks with a grimace.

“They pay you for our heads or our coats, Witcher?”

The Witcher—either Eskel or Lambert, if Geralt’s sparing information is to be believed—smirks. “They pay me to make whatever keeps the whole fucking town awake every night with its wailing stop.”

Well, Geralt’s called Lambert a prick often enough for Jaskier to know that this is who he must be faced with. Because the other, in his humble opinion, is just plain rude.

“Excuse you!” he cries, both relieved and annoyed it’s his singing that the Witcher is here for. Granted, all that he sings nowadays are laments, but they are still soft and heartfelt no matter the sadness they carry. “It’s not wailing.”

“Heard it last night,” Lambert says and grins, sharp and just teeth in a way that’s both teasing and menacing. “Dreadfully annoying, is what it is. And I’ve been asked to make you stop.”

“What if I don’t?” Jaskier challenges.

His singing is one of the only comforts he currently has, he is not going to give that up. Not willingly, at least.

Lambert’s eyes narrow and his hand reaches for the silver sword on his back in warning. “Won’t be much of that wailing of yours without a head.”

Jaskier raises an eyebrow and airily asks: “itching for a kill?”

But his heart is a nervous stutter in his chest, his hands digging into the rocks and he’s not afraid, necessarily. Wary, certainly because brother or not, there is no way of knowing if all Witchers have the same white-knight complex Geralt has.

The Witcher barks a laugh. “Itching for coin.

“If I give you coin, will you leave?”

Lambert’s eyes narrow at the offer. “Agreeing to a contract and then running,” he tsks, “that’s bad form.”

“You don’t strike me as the kind of man that gives a shit about that,” Jaskier shrugs, hoping the comment won’t result in his head being cut clean off of his neck. But he’s never been able to stay his words and so far Lambert looks to be all bark and no bite.

“You saying I lack honor?” Lambert growls, offence clear in his voice and anger brewing in his eyes but his silver sword is still on his back.

But Jaskier knows the unexpected jumps a cornered animal can make, and with his hackles raised and fists clenched Lambert looks a lot like an animal about to jump the prey that’s been taunting it.

So he raises his hands. “Just saying that you weren’t asked to provide my head, you were asked to provide my silence. How will you prove this? Will they take your Witcher word?” he asks with a pointed look and shakes his head with a huff. “I know people, how they treat your kind. They will say they don’t believe you and all you will have is my promise for silence and no coin.”

Silver glitters in the early November sun and the sword now pointed at Jaskier is as sharp as Lambert’s tone as he threatens: “Like I said, not much singing without a head.”

Jaskier draws back just a smidge, despite Lambert still being a few steps away from him. The time for games is over, it seems. “How much did the alderman offer for my silence?”

“Too fucking little with how chatty you are,” Lambert snarks in reply, stance wide and ready to attack, sword still raised but there is a flash of interest in his eyes.

Jaskier resists the urge to snort, because if anyone is being chatty it’s Lambert. Jaskier is just trying to save his hide, but Lambert seems to be very comfortable using actual words. In fact, Jaskier’s certain the Witcher has spoken more words to him in the past few minutes than Geralt would have in an entire month.

Which is just fucking pitiful, isn’t it?

Shoving that particular sense of sadness to the far end of his mind, he turns his attention back to bribing Lambert out of killing him. “How will I be able to up the alderman’s offer if I don’t know it?”

Something, either victory or satisfaction, flashes in Lambert’s eyes at the opportunity he’s being handed. He smirks. “Eighty.”

“What?” Jaskier splutters, because that is a ridiculous amount. “That’s a lie!”

“Is it now?” Lambert asks, smirk growing wider and Jaskier’s certain he couldn’t possibly look more smug. “Eighty-five and you get to keep that pretty head of yours. Not a bad deal, eh?”

“Fine,” Jaskier sighs because there’s not much else he can do, now is there? He waves a hand towards boulder by which the chest with his belongs is buried. “There’s a chest beneath there with my coin purse inside.”

Lambert rolls his eyes and makes a comment about manual labor, but gets to work regardless. It doesn’t take him long to dig up the familiar chest and have it opened next to him on the beach.

The first thing the Witcher takes out is Jaskier’s lute, laid out on top for easy reach during his nightly sessions. “Nice lute.”

“Elven make,” Jaskier quips proudly.

Lambert raises a suspicious eyebrow at that bit of information but doesn’t stop rummaging through the chest. Next, he picks up a leather sheath and dagger, unsheathing it and giving it an appreciating look. “Nice dagger, too.”

“The dagger is mine,” Jaskier says through gritted teeth. For looking at the dagger now, his heart aches. Geralt gifted it to him on their third year traveling together. Although of course, Geralt had denied it being an actual gift. Had, instead, said it was a means for the bard to “save me the trouble and save yourself for once”. But Jaskier isn’t stupid, knows Geralt wouldn’t have had either coin or time to purchase the items which only left the possibility he’d crafted them himself during a Winter spent up in the mountains at Kaer Morhen.

Looking at it now, with Geralt’s words fresh in mind, Jaskier wonders if he’d assumed too much when he’d told himself that it had been a gift.

How many other things has he lied to himself about?

“Looks familiar.”

Lambert’s mumble draws Jaskier from his thoughts and his stomach drops, his body feeling as cold as the sea water surrounding him.

Because if Geralt made the sheath and dagger at Kaer Morhen, that means—

“What the fuck,” Lambert curses and his eyes snap up to Jaskier.

“Take your coin and leave,” Jaskier grits, hoping the lure of payment is enough for Lambert to drop whatever he is thinking.

Naturally, it isn’t.

“Well,” Lambert whistles and a sly smile spreads over his lips, “suppose Geralt forgot to mention this little bit of information. Or...” he drawls at the panic on Jaskier’s face, “does he not know his bard is a Selkie?”

Jaskier bristles, focusing on the indignation coursing through him rather than the hurt at believing he’d ever thought himself to truly be Geralt’s. “I am my own bard.”

Lambert, still holding the dagger, twirls the weapon between his fingers. His eyes, smug and pleased as punch at what he’s just finding out, never leave Jaskier. “A bard that’s also a fucking Selkie.”

Jaskier shrugs. “I have a human form, I use it.”

“And Geralt is clueless.”

“He’s rather thick for a Witcher,” Jaskier huffs.

Lambert guffaws at the statement. “Well, you ain’t wrong,” he says and sheaths the dagger again, putting it back into the chest and fishing out the coin purse. He’s about to open it and fetch his coins when he raises his eyes to Jaskier, curiously regarding the Selkie. “Why didn’t you tell him?”

And there goes Jaskier’s attempt to tell himself that it’s the sheer thickness of Geralt’s mind that’s kept him from finding out. Because “he never asked” sounds a lot like he never cared, doesn’t it?

—

The town gets what they are after.

Lambert takes his coins—ninety Jaskier later finds out, the bastard—and leaves whistling happily to himself with easy money made and the upper-hand on Geralt acquired just as swiftly.

And Jaskier, well, he stops singing on the beach.

He flees to the depths of the ocean, where the salty sea water hides his tears and where Witchers on beaches can’t see him.

Not that he needs to hide anyway.

No other Witcher comes to the beach.

A kindness, he tells himself.

---

It’s a surprisingly mellow Spring that follows what feels like the coldest Winter of Jaskier’s life.

But after a Winter hiding on the bottom of the ocean, he’s finally in his human form again, basking in the afternoon sun on the beach. He lets out a content sigh and hums a soft tune to himself, wiggling his toes because he’s missed this.

That’s when he hears the soft crunch of sand under heavy boots, right beside his head and fuck, he needs to—

The sharp tip of a sword—silver, he thinks he caught a glimpse of silver—is pressed against his neck, right below his chin and it is as cold as the voice that demands of him: “What did you do, Selkie?”

Widened blue eyes meet a pair of narrowed yellow ones and despite the shock and fear coursing through his veins, Jaskier quips: “Jaskier will do just fine.”

It’s not that he doesn’t have any self-perseverance—as he knows Geralt’s always assumed. He just knows when he physically can’t win a fight and while his words might seem careless and randomly chosen, there is actually an art to de-escalation.

But he’s been in the presence of a Witcher long enough to know that gentle coaxing isn’t going to work so he goes for defiance instead. Surprise your opponent enough to catch them off-guard.

Witchers might be good at fighting monsters, but they’re terrible at fighting words.

Above him, Lambert growls but some of the anger he held before seems to deflate. “What did you do, Jaskier.”

The thing with de-escalating, though, is that it doesn’t really work when you don’t know what the fuck you are de-escalating. “I don’t know what kind of answer you’re looking for.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Lambert snaps. “I’m looking to hear why the fuck my brother spent a whole Winter miserable and silent as if he’s lost everything. It’s like fucking Blaviken all over again. So I’m asking one more time, what did you do?”

Jaskier can’t help it. He laughs. Sharp and hollow and there is not an ounce of humor in the sound because what did he do? “I didn’t do shit. Geralt’s very capable of hurting himself,” he sneers and his hands clench into fists in the sand, “I’m merely collateral damage.”

Understanding flashes in Lambert’s eyes and he pulls his sword away from Jaskier’s neck as quickly as he’d put it there. “Fuck,” he curses and then he’s crouching on the ground, next to Jaskier and looking at the other with a frown. “What did he do?”

Jaskier sits up, but refuses to look at Lambert. Instead, he fusses with his Selkie coat, draping it over his lap like a blanket in an attempt at some decency.

Or so, he tells himself.

Certainly, it’s not because his coat is more valuable to him than his own life—is, in a way, his life—and he’d been so close to offering it to Geralt.

Let’s head to the coast.

It hurts to think about the fact that Lambert has seen him in both his forms, has seen his coat, before his brother has.

And he tells Lambert so.

Tells him about their meeting, their years spent together, their parting and every tiny little bit in-between.

It’s cathartic, even if this is probably way more information than what Lambert asked for—certainly more than is wise for him to share. But once the words come, he can’t make them stop and the other doesn’t ask him to and so he spills it all until there is nothing left for him to say.

Silence rests between them for a while after that, the only sound the waves coming and going as Jaskier tries not to cry and Lambert seems to take it all in.

“What an asshole.”

Jaskier lets out a surprised laugh, a simple curse feels both completely anticlimactic and utterly accurate. And well, Lambert would know an asshole when he sees one, wouldn’t he? Because: “suppose it runs in the family.”

Lambert shoves him face-first into the sand.

Chapter Text

“He’s sorry.”

Jaskier breaks the surface, his big, black seal eyes watching Lambert.

The Witcher sits on a rock, pants rolled up to his knees and his feet kicking up and down in the water on this lovely late Summers day.

Part of him wants to duck back under the cover of the sea, ignore Lambert and the conversation the other is trying to lure him into. For it might have been one and a half year since his parting with Geralt, some days it feels as if his wounds have hardly healed and his feelings haven't even started to fade. So he really doesn’t want to tear wounds that haven’t even properly scabbed wide open again. But there is something that keeps him from it. Something pleased, something vindictive and, above all, something hopeful.

He easily slides his Selkie coat down to his waist and pulls himself up the rock, until he can rest his upper-body and arms on top so it is easier to look at Lambert. “He said that?” He frowns, hopeful and curious, yes, but also a tad suspicious.

Lambert shrugs. “He looks it.”

Jaskier sighs, because of course his curiosity, getting his hopes up—Geralt—only leads to disappointment.

Nothing new there, but still he never learns does he?

“Hey, it’s not me who he’s gotta say it to.” Lambert leans back onto his hands and gives Jaskier a pointed look. “Besides, Selkie, with you hiding in the sea... how do you expect a man to apologize when for all he knows you’ve disappeared?”

It’s… Jaskier has to begrudgingly admit that Lambert does have a point. It leaves room for him to wonder, though. Would Geralt really look for him to apologize if he were still a traveling bard?

“He doesn’t think you’ve disappeared, by the way,” Lambert continues conversationally.

Jaskier huffs. “Of course he doesn’t, that means he’d care and we can’t have Geralt of Rivia catching feelings.” Something is stuck in his throat, something bitter and miserable and he’ll ignore how petty and pathetic he feels.

Lambert, kindly, does so too. Instead, he says: “he thinks you’ve died.”

The words, spoken casually, almost off-handedly, bring Jaskier to an abrupt halt.

Suddenly, his mind, his heart, the world around him, everything freezes and it’s a particular sense of dread that fills his senses. Lambert’s accusing eyes are a guilty weight on his shoulders as his mind tries to make sense of the thought that Geralt thinks he’s dead.

There are so many implications in that one sentence and Jaskier isn’t sure if his heart could take processing them all at the same time.

Fuck

Then, however, he realizes that Lambert knows Geralt thinks him dead. Lambert, who very well knows that this isn’t the case.

“You didn’t tell him?” he asks Lambert, and now it’s his voice that’s filled with accusation. “You know I’m alive, after all.”

Lambert makes a face. “Your lover’s spat is none of my business.”

Jaskier laughs, sharp and mocking. “If this is what none of your business looks like, I’d hate to see what does deserve that title.”

Lambert surprisingly ignores the jab. Stares over the sea to the horizon and says: “You know, Geralt is an ass. But he doesn’t deserve this kind of heartbreak.”

“He brought it upon himself,” Jaskier mutters, but there’s hardly any heat to it. For he’s torn. The knowledge of Geralt thinking him dead is a heavy weight in his chest, the knowledge at war with the satisfaction of not being the only one hurting in this whole situation.

“It’s not a particular good look on you either, Selkie.”

Jaskier raises an eyebrow. “None of your business, right?”

---

Lambert spends the night camping on the beach, and Jaskier takes pleasure in having a different audience to perform to for once.

Lambert, meanwhile, takes pleasure of having company at all and breaks out the White Gull.

Jaskier ends up getting completely and utterly drunk.

“Remember when we met?” he asks with a slur to his voice when the bottle is all but finished and the stars are blurry in the sky when he looks up at them.

Lambert chuckles. “Getting sentimental?”

Jaskier glares at the Witcher. “You robbed me.”

“I saved your life,” Lambert points out and takes a big swig of the bottle of White Gull.

“You robbed me,” Jaskier insists with a pout and reaches for the bottle.

Lambert pulls the bottle away, commenting that Jaskier’s had quite enough to drink and, at Jaskier’s whine, smirks. “You offered your bribe willingly.”

“And you took more than agreed!” Jaskier lets himself fall onto the sand dramatically. “Robber.”

“Oh come on.”

“Thief.”

“Fine, fine.” Lambert throws his hands in the air as if in surrender. “I’ll fucking put it back, you absolute cretin.”

“Cretin,” Jaskier giggles to himself. “I’m a cretin.”

Lambert sits for a moment, watching Jaskier with amusement in his eyes and a smirk on his lips. “Melitele’s tits, you’re a disaster.”

“No!” Jaskier cries, “I’m a cretin.”

Lambert shakes his head with a laugh. “You and Geralt deserve each other.”

Jaskier is too drunk to complain.

---

Jaskier wakes up with sand in his mouth, a headache that’ll last him until the next week and to an empty beach.

None of those things are a surprise, although he could sincerely do without the headache and nausea.

“Good morning,” a familiar sing-song voice calls.

“Hardly,” Jaskier grumbles and turns to look at the small collection of rocks just a few meters away from the shore.

On top, he expectedly finds his oldest sister Beryl taking in the sun and with great amusement in her eyes, Jaskier. “Your own fault pup,” Beryl laughs and, when Jaskier glares at her for the nickname, laughs even harder.

He’s the youngest out of eight siblings, said to have been such a menace as a pup that his parents had promptly decided to not try again. Of course his mother doesn’t tell him that, says that while he was indeed a hand-full she’d already decided well before only one more would do. But being the youngest in such an extensive family of siblings, family-in-law and nieces and nephews—some older than Jaskier himself—he’s both doted upon and teased endlessly despite his many years.

“Are you just here to tease me?”

Beryl smirks. “Well, you did get spectacularly drunk.”

Jaskier frowns. “You were watching?”

The amusement falls off of Beryl’s face and her chin-length, brown curls bob as she nods. “Someone had to make sure that Witcher didn’t make off with your coat.”

“He… Lambert wouldn’t.” Jaskier shakes his head and takes the few steps forward that allow him to stick his feet in the cold, salty sea-water.

It doesn’t make him feel any better, hung-over as he is, but there is no comfort quite like the sea.

Beryl scowls, eyebrows drawing together and there is venom in her voice as she spats: “the last Witcher you trusted broke your heart.”

Fiercely protective she is, Beryl, and will always wait with open arms should anyone need comfort. For if anyone in their family knows heartbreak and betrayal, it’s her.

Jaskier turns his gaze away, lets it sweep over the calm ocean they are having today and how the waves seem to beckon gently rising up and falling down in an endless melancholic movement.

Ah, he thinks, so that’s how he feels.

Melancholic.

“Apparently he’s sorry.”

“Well,” Beryl snorts, “then sorry better get his ass over here so he can apologize properly.”

“He won’t,” Jaskier says and his voice is soft, as if it lessens the weight of the words he speaks next. “He thinks I’m dead.”

“Huh,” Beryl mumbles, her reaction more mellow than Jaskier expected and the apologetic smile she gives him a surprise. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

“Beryl!”

Beryl merely shrugs at Jaskier’s outburst. “If he treated you like that, does he deserve a second chance?”

A second chance?

Jaskier has to admit that that is not something on his mind. Certainly, there is a part of him—the part that loves Geralt still, flaws and all—that desperately wants to give it to Geralt the moment “I apologize” passes the Witcher’s lips. But the more rational part of him knows he needs to tread carefully, that a mere two word apology isn’t enough.

But even if a second chance depends heavily on Geralt’s apology, his remorse and his guilt, “he doesn’t deserve to believe I’m dead.”

Besides, Lambert was right, wasn’t he?

How can a man apologize if he doesn’t know where to find the person to apologize to.

He supposes he will find the truth in Spring, when he will pick up his lute and become a traveling bard again.

---

There is a Witcher on the beach, and Jaskier is going to murder the bastard.

“I’m going to kill you, you son of a whore!” he strides from the waves, dropping his coat unceremoniously on the beach, seething with anger that’s been building all Winter.

Lambert has the decency to look surprised as Jaskier slams into him and topples them both to the ground. “You took my fucking dagger,” he hisses at the Witcher.

Lambert smirk up at him “Robbed you again,” he taunts.

Jaskier scowls. “Why the dagger?”

“Well,” Lambert drawls and waves a hand above his head, towards the direction of the forest. “Had to show him proof you were alive.”

“What?” Jaskier frowns, his anger falling away in an instant and raises his head to see what Lambert meant.

Horses, another Witcher with deep scars running down his face that must be Eskel, the lion cub of fucking Cintra and Jaskier would wonder what the fuck he's missed if it wasn't for “Geralt.”

The other’s name is a breathless murmur from his lips, his heart constricting and the world falling away at the onslaught of emotions his body is trying to process to all of a sudden.

Lambert pushes Jaskier off of him and Jaskier goes easily, his eyes remaining on Geralt even when his body flops down onto the sand. He can’t believe that Geralt’s here, starting at him like he’s never seen him before and Jaskier doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to say, can’t breathe and—

His coat being draped over his head drags him from his panic.

“Put it on,” Beryl says, steady at his side and her voice soft and kind and comforting. “Let’s attempt some decorum at the very least.”

He scrambles up and wraps his coat around his waist. “Beryl,” he whispers, unsure because this wasn’t part of the plan. He didn’t want Geralt to see, not straight away, and now he’s here on their beach and Jaskier feels so hopeful and hurt and lost all at once.

“I know, pup.” Beryl pulls him against her side and lays a kiss against the side of his head. “We’re here.”

Behind them in the ocean, a collection of black eyes is watching the beach.

An ominous sight.

They’re not dangerous, Selkies. Not if you leave them well alone to live their lives as they please. They’re not the kind of creatures one contracts a Witcher for, aren’t monsters to be hunted for their lives—normally, for Jaskier is, as his family says, an outlier and should not be counted.

But hunted they still are. For their coats, as many a noble would pay pretty money for a Selkie coat to hide away and a beautiful, obedient wife to marry.

It usually doesn’t end well. A seal is still a predator, after all.

And this close to the sea, with the soles of her feet still connected to the ocean and her coat draped around her waist like a skirt, Beryl’s eyes are black as coal and her teeth sharp as she looks directly at Geralt and demands with a growl: “why are you here?”

But Geralt isn’t looking at Beryl. Instead, his eyes rest on Jaskier with so much relief in them it’s almost painful.

Part of Jaskier sarcastically wonders if Geralt will turn around and leave now that he’s verified for himself that Jaskier is, in fact, alive.

Geralt doesn’t.

Steps forward instead, the dagger in his hands and regret in his eyes. “To apologize,” he offers Jaskier softly, his voice barely carrying over the waves crashing on the shore, “if I may.”

---

There's a loose thread on his favorite doublet.

The purple one with the gold-threaded paisley pattern embroidered into it.

He'll have to fix that, lest it gets worse. He's got his little sewing kit in his chest, perhaps he can —

“Jaskier,” Geralt’s voice is a soft, insecure whisper.

Right, can’t fix his doublet now. He’s got stuff to take care of. A Witcher to listen to. Apologies to hear, and—

“Should I leave?”

“What?” Jaskier blinks out of his nervous haze. For nervous he is, almost terrified for what he might hear, for what words Geralt will offer him. Will he be blamed for never telling the other he is a Selkie? Will he be reprimanded for hiding? Or will he be offered the apology he’s owed? The acknowledgement of their friendship, at the very least. An acknowledgement of his own feelings for Geralt and how much the other’s hurt them?

He holds his breath but, for once, Geralt doesn’t disappoint.

“I have wronged you enough to not force my presence on you if you don’t want it.”

The words take Jaskier by surprise. They loosen something in his chest, make it just a little easier to breathe. He turns, faces Geralt for the first time since they’re alone and takes a moment to truly look at him.

He looks horrible. Regret and relief battle in his eyes while exhaustion is written in every line of his face. “Is this because you thought I’d died?” Jaskier wonders.

“Not just,” Geralt admits wryly and then he turns his eyes away, to the ocean as he repeats familiar words he has spoken once before: “I’m a Witcher. I need no one.”

“Bullshit,” Jaskier scoffs.

Geralt nods with a self-deprecating smile. “Yes. I’ve been told. Repeatedly.”

“Good.”

“Didn’t know how to recognize a good thing while I had it.” Geralt turns his eyes back to Jaskier. “And then I was a fucking idiot and threw it all away.”

Jaskier can’t help but huff. “Lambert say that?”

Geralt nods. “Said I’d hurt the only friend I ever had.”

Jaskier crosses his arms in front of his chest and defiantly looks Geralt in the eye. “You know you did.”

A flinch is the only recognition his words get, but somehow it’s enough.

For Geralt knows.

Is regretful and using his words to express that and somehow it feels like an out of body experience because this isn’t at all what Jaskier had imagined Geralt’s apology to be like.

Geralt sighs. “I didn’t believe him. I… Fuck, I searched for you. After. To apologize for words I never meant. I asked around, thought it’d be easy to find you. You’re hardly inconspicuous,” Geralt ends with the smallest of smiles thrown at Jaskier.

Jaskier, who can’t help but grin in return. “I am a bard, thank you very much. I take that as a compliment.”

“You would,” Geralt huffs, shakes his head and in an instant the humorous moment disappears. “I didn’t find you,” he continues softly, “no sightings, no word, nothing.”

Jaskier’s heart aches. “You thought I died.”

Geralt nods, his eyes haunted as they fall on Jaskier. “I went back. Searched for a body that wasn’t there.”

“Oh Geralt,” Jaskier gasps, at a loss for words.

Geralt went back to search for his corpse on a mountainside. A bard he might be, but even he doesn’t have the words he needs to describe how that makes him feel. How Geralt must have felt.

“I thought… felt,” Geralt’s hands and words shake, “I’d be the Butcher of Blakiven a hundred times over if it meant having you alive.”

“You don’t have to be,” Jaskier says and reaches out for one of Geralt’s hands, taking it in his because Geralt looks like he needs comfort and Jaskier will offer it. Will offer it because his friend—his love—is suffering and he can’t stand it, can’t see it any longer. “I hid, Geralt I’m… I was gonna travel, this Spring. Lambert, he said you were looking for me. That you were heartbroken,” he ends on a whisper, the words escaping him unbidden.

For surely now Geralt will turn away and scoff. Pull back his hand and tell Jaskier that while yes, he felt guilty, heartbroken was a completely different case and certainly an embellishment on Lambert’s part.

“It was my own fault,” Geralt mutters, squeezing Jaskier’s hand. “But I will fix it,” he says, soft and heartfelt and he raises his eyes to Jaskier’s and they’re full of promise and determination.

Jaskier isn’t sure if it’s a good idea.

Beryl will scold him for sure, tell him to protect his heart better.

But how can he, when his heart isn’t his anyway?

Besides, standing on the beach with the sound of the waves crashing on the shore a familiar lullaby, their heir fingers intertwined, Geralt’s determination gives Jaskier hope.

His heart, he thinks, will be just fine.