Work Text:
Every century or so, Geralt would head to the coast. He hadn’t gone when he should have, had instead pushed ahead stubbornly and ended up chasing off his bard, his friend, taking out his frustrations on the man like a brute. He went to the coast after the mountain, but Jaskier wasn’t there. He tried again after he’d found Ciri, and again, Jaskier wasn’t there.
Jaskier was never there, ever again.
Geralt couldn’t find any sign of Jaskier after that damned mountain, and only raising and training Ciri kept him going through the guilt that wanted to drown him when hope finally gave way to grief. Jaskier must have died on that mountain, or nearby, and it was Geralt’s fault for chasing him away. He hadn’t been there to defend him.
So, he went to the coast.
The cities changed, ports expanded and failed. With time even the coastlines shifted, pushed out by enterprising humans or lost to storms. He visited different coasts each year, the Path taking him too far from the first one to make the trek back in time. It was the thought that counted, more than the location. But every hundred years or so, he made it back to where he had started, and he mourned more deeply than anywhere else. He could even swear, sometimes, that he caught Jaskier’s scent on the wind. Madness, he knew, but the comforting sort.
He’d lost count of the times he’d made it back, but it must have been a depressingly large number considering how different the beach was to how he remembered it being the first time. Dirty with dead plants and bits of human trash, the water murky. It had been worse the last time he’d gotten there, though - at least the water was blue again this century, not brown - but it still made him angry.
“You’d hate what they’ve done to the coasts, Jaskier,” he muttered, heart clenching with that familiar pain that had never quite faded like other losses had.
It stopped altogether when a tiny, heartbreakingly familiar voice piped up from somewhere near his left boot.
“You’re damn right I do!”
Geralt whipped around, scanning the space beside him. He heard a muffled curse, again in that painfully familiar voice, but could see nothing but a splashing fish tail as some poor creature dived under the water at his sudden movement. Fear chased the heartbreak, setting his heart to pounding. Had he finally lost his mind? Too many years avoiding his family, wandering alone, too much grief - had he snapped? An insane witcher was a danger, something to be put down like a rabid pest before it started to hurt people.
“First you scream at me on a mountain, then the next time I see you, you kick sand in my face?!”
The voice was irate, now, and Geralt’s head spun as he turned in a circle, desperate to find a source. He heard a choked off laugh from the water’s edge and finished spinning to scan the water, again seeing a fish tail. But instead of being attached to a fish, it was attached to -
“Jaskier.”
Jaskier’s tail slapped the water in agitation, right fist on his hip as the other hand propped his upper body up from the sand. His tiny hand, tiny fist, tiny hip. It was Jaskier, but in miniature - the whole length of him from his hips where the scales started to the wet mop of his sea-soaked hair was maybe as long as the length of Geralt’s hand from wrist to the tip of his longest finger. And he was blue.
Geralt pressed his palms to his eyes, pushing until he saw bursts of light as he breathed in shakily. This was it. He’d gone mad, at some point, and hadn’t noticed. A brief moment of lucidity, perhaps? If he couldn’t find it in himself to end his own life, perhaps Eskel could be convinced to do it before he became a danger.
“Yes, Jaskier, exactly! Oh stop covering your face like a child -” Geralt was helpless to ignore the command from that long-missed voice and dropped his hands to stare. Jaskier cut himself off, seemingly shocked by Geralt obeying his order. He took his hand off his hip, flapping it vaguely through the air. “Well. Suppose the years have opened your ears a bit. While you’re in a listening mood, if you could kindly get down here, it’s putting a crick in my neck staring up at you.”
Geralt blinked, then gave in to the shock making his limbs tremble and dropped to his knees in an ungraceful slump. His hair swung forward as he fell onto his hands, the sand giving way under his weight and letting him slide forward until he was mere inches from Jaskier. Living, breathing, tiny Jaskier. Maybe being insane wouldn’t be so bad, really. Not if all he hallucinated was a tiny mer-bard barking orders at him.
Jaskier stared up at him, mouth opening and closing in a fish-like fashion that reminded Geralt of how he’d gaped after that insult to his singing. But how could Geralt have already caused offense? He hadn’t said a thing yet - but then, did he have to say anything else? He had caused plenty of offense before.
“I’m sorry.” The words burst from him without conscious thought. Jaskier reared back so hard he flopped back into the water and Geralt lurched forward to grab him, terrified the hallucination would end if he lost sight of Jaskier. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbled again, gently propping Jaskier up with his fingers.
Jaskier wheezed. Then spluttered. Then he fell silent, frighteningly tiny hands wrapping around Geralt’s thumb. Geralt’s head was spinning. This was so real. Was this actually all in his head? Was he dreaming? Had someone slipped him something in his shots at the bar last night?
“...Geralt,” Jaskier started, brow furrowing.
Geralt nodded. He had decided. He would play along with this until whatever poison left his system, or he woke up, or his delusions changed tracks. Anything for more time with his friend, even if it was false. “Yes, Jaskier?”
“How exactly long has it been? Since we last spoke? It’s just, well, time’s been a bit funny lately.” He flapped a hand around in the air, as if to wave away the last several centuries like dust off a shelf. “The days blur, you know, especially underwater.”
Geralt did know - time was funny when you didn’t age, when you couldn’t feel the clock ticking behind your heart. He stuck to the north because the seasons helped remind him, and he knew to head to the water every few seasons. But Jaskier, a mortal, shouldn’t feel that way… though if he had lived this long, then maybe he wasn’t so mortal.
“I’ve lost count. A few centuries,” he muttered, more focused on how Jaskier’s face hadn’t changed, not so much as an extra wrinkle. Just as he remembered him. But then a hallucination would be, he supposed. Geralt hmm’d. “Might have gone crazy, so take that with a grain of salt.”
Jaskier’s lashes fairly fluttered with how quickly he was blinking. “Excuse me, crazy? Why would you be crazy?”
Geralt watched him levely, resisting the urge to cup both hands around Jaskier and clutch him to his chest like a child’s comfort toy. “Because I’m seeing my friend who died centuries ago as a tiny fish-man in a dirty inlet. And I didn’t drink enough last night to still be drunk.”
Jaskier made a pained little noise, wrapping his arms around Geralt’s thumb and hugging it to his chest. Geralt let him. “Oh dear. Well I can tell you this is real, but I’m not sure you’d believe me.”
“How the fuck could this be real, Jaskier?” He could hear the begging in his own voice, the desperation to believe.
His thumb was hugged even harder. “Ah, there was the mountain, you see, and you’d upset me quite a bit so I went and found the first bar that would serve me and charmed my way into the skirts of a lovely young woman.” Geralt nodded along - he’d found out that much, at least, when he’d come down. But he hadn’t been able to find the woman or Jaskier. Jaskier winced as he continued. “Except she wasn’t young, really, any more than Yennefer is young. A rather powerful sorceress, who took offense to my choice of drunken bedroom talk.”
Geralt’s eyes slid shut, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to laugh or cry. “Did you say something about fish -“
“Yes, yes I did. And she said something about seeing how I would like to be told I tasted like fish, and then I was quite suddenly a lot smaller and being flung into the water from the cave we’d stumbled into, and then there was a lot of swimming in fear from larger fish and trying to find something I could eat and getting lost and finding my way back and you were never here and - centuries?!”
Jaskier panted after he finished with a shriek and Geralt petted his chest with his thumb in an effort to calm him. He tried to think of a way to make centuries less terrifying and failed, unwilling to lie. Instead he latched onto something else Jaskier had said.
“I was here,” he said, folding his legs under himself tailor style and gesturing at the shoreline with his free hand. “I couldn’t stay, but I came here when I could. I… I visited other coasts, sometimes. It was the last thing you’d asked me to do, so when I couldn’t find you, not even a body, it seemed… fitting.” Geralt swallowed hard. “To mourn you.”
“Oh,” Jaskier gasped. Then Jaskier’s tail was slapping wildly at the water, agitation filling him with excess energy. “Oh, you daft, wonderful bastard. Fuck. I never saw you - I can’t see very far down the coast! I’m tiny!” He slapped the water again, hard enough in his frustration that droplets splashed up onto Geralt’s face, rolling down his cheeks like the tears he wished he could still shed.
“This can’t be real,” Geralt gasped. Jaskier tried to protest and Geralt shook his head, cutting him off. “It can’t be real. If it’s real then you have to hate me. I didn’t look hard enough, I didn’t find you -“
A sharp pain pinched at the tip of his thumb, jolting his attention to Jaskier again - Jaskier, who was biting down on Geralt’s skin with sharp, little, inhuman teeth. He pulled back, fangs pinked, and slapped his tail yet again. “You did find me, you enormous lummox. It just took a while. And really, who could blame you, you were looking for a six-foot bard not a six-inch merman.” Geralt opened his mouth to dazedly tell Jaskier he was a bit larger than six inches and got another nip to the thumb for his trouble. “No, no argument. I admit it’s a shock, how long it’s been, but it’s not like I had many people to lose beyond you, and well, here you are.”
“Here we are,” Geralt whispered, the memory of that evening warm and comforting now even though he’d been irritated at the time.
Jaskier grinned at him, bright and giddy, and Geralt really hoped Jaskier was right and he wasn’t actually hallucinating this because this was one of the happiest moments in his life, stuck in his heart next to Ciri calling him her father for the first time. If he was crazy, maybe he could at least enjoy it a little longer.
Jaskier patted his thumb before the quiet moment stretched too long. “Alright, so first step, find something to carry me in. Then we’ll find someone to confirm I’m real for you, and then hopefully a way to fix me. Then once I’m fixed, we’re talking about that centuries business and why you apparently spent all that time grieving me instead of forgetting me.” He looked Geralt over, one brow quirked up. “And we’ll talk about what you’re wearing, too. What is that?”
Geralt tugged at his t-shirt, ignoring the painful implication that Jaskier thought Geralt could ever forget him. “Stretch cotton?” Jaskier stared at him blankly and Geralt sighed. “A lot of things have changed. Especially clothes.” He caught sight of a flowerpot a ways down the beach and grunted. “Brace yourself.”
He got to his feet easily, finally giving in to the urge to cradle Jaskier to his chest. The bard - merbard? - yelled at the sudden rise and slapped at his face and chest with his tail, but Geralt couldn’t find it in himself to complain. The flowerpot had holes in the bottom but there was some plastic not far from it. Once he’d filled it with water it held it well enough and fit Jaskier comfortably.
Jaskier wiggled his tail a little, leaning back on the rim of the pot. He hummed a few bars of something Geralt didn’t recognize as Geralt started the march up from the beach, and Geralt nearly tripped as he shot him a fond look, water sloshing from the pot.
“Watch it! Really, you would think a witcher would have better balance.” Jaskier flicked his tail a bit, putting some words to his tune and failing to find something to rhyme with “clumsy giant”. About halfway up the cliff path Jaskier gasped, startling Geralt so badly he nearly dropped him. “My lute!”
“What about the damn lute?” Geralt snarled, fear making him tetchy. He immediately regretted it when Jaskier shrank down into the pot, only his sad eyes above the water. Geralt swallowed harshly, the old pain choking him again. “I’m sorry.” Jaskier’s head lifted fully out of the water, his expression surprised and delighted. Geralt hurried on before he could comment. “What about the lute?” he asked, calmer.
Jaskier swished his hands in the water. “Well, I had taken it with me. To the cave, I mean. And I didn’t see the sorceress take it when she portalled away. Do you think we could see if it’s still there, somehow?”
Geralt cleared his throat, then shook his head. “It’s not there.”
“What? You’re not even going to check?! It’s elven make, Geralt, it could still be -“
“It’s not there, Jaskier,” he growled. If he could blush his cheeks would be flaming. “I found it. Before. It’s why I thought you were dead… you wouldn’t have left it, even if you avoided me. The innkeeper had it behind the bar, said you’d left it for safekeeping when you went off with some woman.”
Jaskier was staring at him. He could feel it like a flame on his cheek. Geralt refused to look, keeping his attention on his footing. “Well that sneak,” Jaskier finally said, voice weak. “Must have followed us and taken it. You bought it off him? Kept it all this time?”
Geralt shrugged, sloshing the water a bit. “I didn’t buy it. Could tell he was lying, when he said you left it, but he wouldn’t tell me the truth. Got frustrated, knocked him out, took the damn thing. It’s elven make, like you said, so I thought I couldn’t mess it up too badly. At first I’d thought he’d stolen it from you, and I could give it back when I found you. Buy enough time for you to listen to my apology. But then…” He shrugged again, still not looking at Jaskier.
“You couldn’t find me, so you kept it.” Geralt nodded at Jaskier’s soft statement. “Oh. Oh, we are absolutely finding someone to fix me. As soon as possible.”
Geralt chuckled, clutching the pot a little tighter. “You could maybe play it as you are. Like one of those big harps.”
“Not to play the damn lute, Geralt.” Geralt blinked and looked at him, brows raised. Jaskier was leaning up on the side of the pot closest to him now, braced up on his arms. “So I can ride your dick, because that is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.”
Geralt’s heart pounded in joy at the same time his hands dropped the bucket in numbing shock.