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They fall into their usual routine rather easily, despite the time spent apart from each other. It’s almost as if nothing has changed at all, except everything has. Meandering along the countryside, they fall into step bickering back and forth while Jaskier plucks mindlessly at his lute, playing a pattern of chords that Geralt recognises as one he plays when he just wants something to do with his hands.
However, as much as Geralt feels like things have remained the same, things have also changed. As they enter into a small village, Jaskier is quickly swept up amongst the crowd, leaving Geralt behind. Normally, this wouldn’t bother him, but the sheer anger in the villagers’ gaze as they look upon him takes him by surprise. The last time he was greeted by glares like that, well, he tries his best not to think about it. It was in the wake of the worst day of his life.
Oh well, while Jaskier entertains the villagers, he’ll take a look at the noticeboard, see if there are any monsters he can deal with. They can get paid, and then leave this town.
The job is simple enough, dispatch a swarm of drowners from the village’s lakeshore, and Geralt manages to get it done rather quickly. No injuries except for a scratch on his chin. He could do with a bath, but that's nothing out of the ordinary either.
Lugging the drowner heads to the alderman is tedious, but soon enough he arrives at the man’s door. He raps his knuckles against the wood, the sound loud enough that he’s sure the neighbours would be able to hear. It takes the alderman several minutes to come to the door, which doesn’t come as a surprise. Geralt is often left to wait for long stretches of time for people who think they’re important as some sort of power play he does not give a shit about.
Geralt offers the satchel which contains the drowner heads, and with a sneer, the alderman looks inside.
“Yer pay,” he says, extending his arm and dropping a handful of orens into Geralt’s open palm.
Geralt frowns, he doesn’t have to count to know the amount in his palm is much less than it should be. “This isn’t what the contract said I’d be paid.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” the alderman scoffs. “I didn’t want the Butcher of Blaviken to show up to take the contract, but that’s who showed up. You should be grateful you even got paid.”
Ice flows through his veins, and Geralt can feel the blood draining from his face at the words. He doesn’t know why that moniker has come back, and he thought it had finally been erased from the humans’ minds. What a fool he is to have believed that so naïvely. He quickly pockets the money and makes his way into the forest to discard the drowner remains. He empties the satchel, and with a quick blast of igni the job is done.
The evening light flickers through the lush leaves on the treetops, but Geralt can’t find it in himself to appreciate its beauty. Closing his eyes, he takes several deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth, counting to five with each inhale and exhale. Once he’s done, his mind has calmed and he decides he should head back. He doesn’t want Jaskier to worry if he’s been gone for too long.
Geralt sits in the back of the tavern, in his usual corner seat within perfect sight of the door while the wall is to his back. It's been a while since he's been able to sit in on one of Jaskier's performances, the last time was before… before the mountain. Pangs of regret still shoot through him whenever the memories of those few days surface.
He finishes off his ale, aware he has no idea what's to come. Jaskier has written new music for his repertoire, he hasn't outright said it to him but he's heard him playing well practised melodies on his lute that he's not familiar with. Geralt even finds himself looking forward to the new pieces. No matter how much he tends to gripe about it, he does enjoy Jaskier's music. The man is immensely talented after all.
It surprises Geralt at first when Jaskier doesn't open with Toss A Coin. It makes sense, he supposes, after Geralt tossed Jaskier carelessly aside there really was no reason for the bard to even play that song.
He finds his eyes starting to slip closed as he focuses on the new songs, paying attention to every change in key, and every string on the lute that manages to ring too sharp or too flat. The slight change in pitch is unnoticeable to the human ear.
The crowd is lulled into a silence as Jaskier introduces the next song, but as soon as he hears the title of the piece it's like a cold shock runs through his body. His fist clenches dangerously around the tankard of ale, hard enough he starts to hear it crack, and his breath hitches.
Geralt knows he doesn't have the right to feel like this, but he does.
Betrayed.
Before he even realises what he's doing, he stands up and makes his way out of the tavern as quickly as possible amongst the crowd. The patrons let him pass, moving aside with baleful glares that feel like knives on his skin.
He can still hear Jaskier continue to play.
Immediately, he finds himself starting to head toward the stables but it doesn't take him long to remember. And that loss still being so fresh, on top of the faint chords of the song still ringing through the night air, is too much.
Moving without much conscious thought, he finds himself moving toward an alley between two larger buildings. His back hits the wall and he slides down, hands reaching up to tug at his hair. He curls in on himself, forehead touching his knees and his breath escapes in quick puffs. He tries to focus on the coolness of the ground below him, the stone against his back, the pain in his scalp from his tugging, but nothing he does grounds him.
His eyes burn and all he wants to do is cry but he can’t . He can’t because that luxury was taken from him.
Renfri’s voice echoes through his thoughts, the image of her bloody and broken body imprinted behind his eyelids. Sometimes, he can still feel the pain of the stones hitting his body. The amount of times he was stoned out of villages after that. The amount of vitriol that met him wherever he went. The fear that followed his every step.
He almost didn’t make it to Kaer Morhen that winter.
If it hadn’t been for Coën running into him by pure chance when snow had just begun to fall, he wouldn’t have. He had been held back by a contract, and was rushing to get back to the keep for the winter, and had spotted Geralt curled up next to Roach in the woods for warmth.
Geralt doesn’t want to think about what might have happened if Coën hadn’t found him.
Time drifts by, and eventually he feels his breath even out. The cold pierces through his clothes and the sound of patrons leaving the tavern fills the streets.
Now that he’s finally back to himself, he slowly extracts his hands from his hair, and straightens out his legs. Every joint aches and his muscles are sore.
He takes his time to return to the inn room both he and Jaskier rented for the night. But, he’s not sure if he wants to go. He could find a free space in the stable instead, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s done it.
No, he won’t do that. He won’t run away this time. Geralt knows he has a tendency to push people away, but this time he refuses to. Even for all the hurt that song title brings him, Jaskier is still his friend. And all he can hope for is that it’s the same for Jaskier, even if that hope feels unfounded.
It doesn’t take long to arrive at his destination, the inn conveniently located near the tavern as the owners are clearly in business with each other. He left the key with Jaskier and hopes the bard is in their room instead of spending his night somewhere else. Steadying his shoulders, Geralt takes a deep breath and checks the door.
Fortunately, it opens with little issue and barely any sound.
Unfortunately for Geralt, Jaskier is sitting up against one of the headboards of the bed, wide awake with his lute in his hands.
“There you are. I was wondering where you’d run off to.” The bard swings his legs over the side of his bed, placing the lute back into its case. “But you’re back so I can finally go to sleep, thank the gods.”
Geralt stays silent, yellow eyes tracking Jaskier’s movements as he flits about the room to perform his nightly routine. “I heard the song.”
“The song?” Jaskier says distractedly. Geralt can hear small glass bottles clinking against each other as the bard searches through his pack for the right one. The familiarity of it makes his chest ache.
“You know the one. Burn, Butcher, Burn. ” Geralt can feel his face contort into something pained and he drops onto his bed, like the strings holding him up have been cut. Out of the corner of his eye, Jaskier stiffens.
“Oh. That one, well,” Jaskier says, turning around. “I was hurt, and I needed an outlet for what I was feeling. It’s part of my profession. And you had just up and disappeared, left me for dead. What else was I to do?”
Geralt’s eyes sting again, and he feels the familiar pressure building. A pressure that will never get released because he can’t fucking cry . He clenches his fists on his knees. “I understand that, Jaskier, trust me. But why did you have to use ‘Butcher’ .” His voice cracks on the last word.
Beside him, the bed dips. Jaskier’s presence is both welcome and painful. Geralt doesn’t know if he wants to turn toward him or leave, so he remains frozen.
“I was emotional. That’s not a reason, I know, it’s an excuse. But the hurt was so fresh and so deep, and I wanted to hurt you like you had hurt me. And in my hurt, I played that song a couple times, but that was enough for people to catch on and want me to play it more and more no matter where I went. There was no sign of you anywhere, you just disappeared off the face of the Continent, and that’s how I justified it to myself,” Jaskier explains.
“Did you know,” Geralt starts, but the rest of the sentence gets caught in his throat. Jaskier reaches up and squeezes his shoulder, reassurance that he’s listening and a prompt for Geralt to continue. “Did you know the alderman called me ‘Butcher’ when I went to pick up my reward? I was swindled too. Wasn’t even paid the amount advertised.” He reaches into his pocket, and pulls out the coin he made earlier in the day. He hadn’t quite found the time to move them into his coin purse. It seems so long ago now. “That’s it. All I’ve made.”
Jaskier’s gaze rests on the orens in Geralt’s palm. He doesn’t speak for a long moment, and when Geralt finally gains the courage to look at him, he’s pale.
“Oh.”
“Words have power, Jaskier. Even if they don’t have Chaos behind them.”
“I - I should know that more than most, shouldn’t I?” Jaskier finally says. He reaches out to take Geralt’s hand, lacing his fingers through the witcher’s own. “I made ‘White Wolf’ popular after all. Toss A Coin was good for your reputation, wasn’t it?”
Geralt nods. “Not just mine. The other witchers too.”
They sit in silence for several minutes, hand in hand. Geralt still feels betrayed, and he doesn’t know what Jaskier is feeling. From what he can tell, the song is massively popular, and asking the bard to stop playing it doesn’t seem fair. But he can’t have people calling him ‘Butcher’ again. He doesn’t know if he’s strong enough, not after getting a taste of humans starting to accept him and his kind.
“Jaskier,” Geralt says, startling Jaskier out of whatever reverie he has fallen into. “I’m not saying you should stop playing the song. Just… use a different word than ‘butcher’. I don’t care which, just not that one.”
Jaskier nods. “I understand, I crossed a line I shouldn’t have. In hindsight, I could have used a more neutral word, but you know how pain is.”
Geralt hums, reflecting on that fateful day on the mountain. Where his pain was strong enough he shouted those hurtful words at Jaskier because he felt trapped by it and it needed an outlet. Jaskier had just happened to be the unlucky fool who spoke to him first and that’s where Geralt redirected his hurt.
“I do know,” Geralt finally says.
“Well, now that that’s out of the way, how about a nightcap? You look like you could use it.” Jaskier slaps his knees, pushing himself up to his feet.
Geralt chuckles. “Yeah, you could say that.”
He watches as Jaskier grabs a flask from his pouch, and he can’t help but feel hope, and fuck does it feel like such a strong weight has finally been lifted from his shoulders. They’ve both hurt each other, yes, but they’ve also made up at the end of the day, and that’s all they can really ask of each other. To hear the other person out and hopefully adapt, as well as accepting their flaws.
Jaskier hands him a cup of something that smells like pure alcohol.
“Well, cheers to you actually talking about your feelings,” Jaskier jokes, holding up his flask.
Geralt returns the gesture and smiles sardonically. “Here, here.”