Work Text:
Once upon a time there was a bard.
No, that’s not right.
Once upon a time there was...
A Witcher. A princess. A boy, too stupid to know any better. A boy who grew old following someone who never wanted him.
No. No, that part doesn’t matter.
Once upon a time there was a princess who died when Cintra fell. Once upon a time there was a princess who fled into the woods and got eaten by wolves. A princess who climbed a tree and starved to death for fear of coming down. A princess who burned the world to ashes. A princess who was nowhere, and no one ever found so much as a strand of her moonsilver hair.
Once upon a time there was a Witcher who never needed anyone or anything. He got eaten by a selkiemore. He died as a child during the Trial of the Grasses. He was bitten by an alghoul. He fell through a doorway into faerie, and when he stepped back out an hour later, a thousand years had passed and anyone who might once have sought him was long dead.
Once upon a time there was a sorceress. She died in a pigpen. She got turned into an eel. She burned an army, and burned with it. She grew weary of mortals and ascended into the sky and became an especially prissy and judgmental star. She went to Redania. She went to Skellige. She took the princess with her. She left the princess behind. She buried the princess and wept over her grave.
Once upon a time, a princess and a Witcher and a sorceress were made of dust and birdsong. They burst into a swarm of luna moths in the moonlight. They were never real except in stories.
The mage leans his chin on the table, his eyes glazed with exhausted frustration. “I have just spent hours,” he spits, “inside a children’s book written by an imbecile. The princess turned into a toad! She got eaten by fucking faeries!”
His compatriot pats his arm awkwardly, and with more than a little caution. “You’ll get to the truth,” she says.
The mage glares at her through the fingers of the hand he has pressed over his face. “And when I do,” he snarls, “how will I even know it’s the gods-damned truth?! I don’t think he knows anymore!”
When Yennefer leans over Jaskier and cups his face in her trembling hands, he opens his eyes and smiles with blood in his teeth.
Voice shattered and victorious, he whispers, “And they all fucking lived.”