Chapter Text
The letter feels like a stone in his bag, pulling at him. Realistically, it’s a tiny scrap of a thing, a one-letter page from his youngest sister, asking him to come back and meet his first niece. In a family like his, with one son and four daughters, the reverse appears to have happened in the next generation, with seven boys before a girl finally came along. It’s a big event, the first girl of the new generation. It’s an event that their family is gathering to celebrate.
It’s an event that Jaskier is absolutely terrified of.
“Alright?” Geralt’s voice jolts him out of his own head, and he gives the witcher an automatic smile in response. It’s the third time the witcher has asked a variation of the same question since they set out this morning, and Jaskier would be touched if he could feel anything other than the sensation that he’s drowning. He knows he’s worrying his witcher, but the damned letter has his head all in a tizzy, and he can’t quite manage to maintain his usual bubbly charm.
They break for lunch, and Jaskier steps off into the treeline to strip out of his clothes, Shifting into a wolfhound and dragging the bundle back with him. Geralt gives him a look at the doggy drool on his clothing, knowing that Jaskier will complain about stains later, but his witcher obligingly folds them up for him and stuffs them in a pack.
“Two barks if you need to stop,” Geralt reminds Jaskier before he mounts once more, one of the many communication methods they’ve come up with to accommodate when Jaskier needs to not be a human for a while.
It’s not his favorite form, a wolfhound, but it’s close enough. Wolves tend to cause things like angry mobs and head hunts, so it’s better to go more domesticated with his form when they might meet other people on the road. It’s easier to think in a different form, simplifying the number of things he can think about at once. It’s a blessing that Geralt understands and doesn't require an explanation for why Jaskier needs to be a dog for a while.
He loves him so, so much.
*
“We can go, if you want,” Geralt says around an hour after they’ve laid down for the night. Jaskier had finally gathered the nerve to tell him about the letter while they ate supper, and the witcher had been quiet on the subject after that.
“Mm?” Jaskier says from his place against the witcher’s chest, head tucked into his shoulder. He has a good idea of what Geralt is referencing, but he needs a moment to think about how he feels about it before he responds.
“To Lettenhove,” Geralt clarifies. Jaskier feels a sudden mist of tears in his eyes that Geralt doesn’t call it his home, that the witcher understands enough to simply use its name.
Jaskier is quiet a long moment in thought, shifting to press even tighter. Geralt hears the unspoken request and wraps his arms more securely around, squeezing lightly. Jaskier had mentioned once in passing that he finds weight reassuring, a way to ground him when his thoughts are spinning too quickly. Geralt has been a gem since then, evidently always happy to fulfill the requirements of “heavy” and “there.” The witcher shifts them slightly until Jaskier is on his back, Geralt half-on and half-off of him, a careful balance meant to give him more weight without squishing him entirely.
“I don’t know if I can,” Jaskier confesses after a while of soaking up the security of being pressed beneath Geralt. It makes him feel small and pathetic, saying such a thing. He’s a grown man now, not a child. It’s absurd to still feel-
“We can head that direction. If we get there, and you don’t want to, then we leave.” Geralt’s voice makes it sound so easy, but Jaskier blinks rapidly against the way his eyes are welling at how simple and obvious Geralt makes it sound, as if it isn’t completely absurd to travel halfway across the continent without even knowing if Jaskier is going to make it the last stretch.
“It might be a waste of time,” he hedges, needing to get it out there, to give voice to what he’s afraid Geralt might think.
The witcher, however, just shrugs.
“We’ll find contracts on the way. It’s no different than heading any other direction.”
The statement is patently false given how directly west it will be taking them when Jaskier knows from long years of habit that Geralt likes to start making his way north around this time.
“I love you,” Jaskier says, shifting slightly until he has access to Geralt’s face, pressing fierce kisses wherever he can reach. “Fuck, I love you.”
Geralt pulls back, just a little, smiling a little crooked smile that makes Jaskier feel like he could melt down through the very earth. The witcher holds his chin in place between thumb and forefinger and leans in, pressing their lips together in a chaste, sweet kiss.
“I love you, too.”
*
“What are their names?” Geralt asks the next morning. “Your siblings,” he clarifies.
“Jadzia’s the eldest, then it’s Jozefa, Julanta, and Justina, she’s the one who just had the baby.” He reads the look Geralt gives him. “My mother liked to have things orderly, so all J’s we were.”
“No other boys?”
“Nope.” Jaskier pops the p on the word. “Just sisters for me.”
Geralt is quiet for a while, and Jaskier lets him remain so. The witcher is clearly deep in thought, and as much as he wants to poke at him for something to do, Jaskier knows enough to let him talk in his own time.
“Are you close to them? Or were you?” Geralt’s voice is cautious, as if he knows he’s stepping onto unsteady territory.
It’s a complicated question, and Jaskier doesn’t really know how to answer it. Afraid of having another child with an “affliction” like his, his parents had taken six years before they’d gotten bold enough to try for another. He’d been excited to be a big brother, to have companions and playmates after a lifetime of being kept cautiously apart for fear that he would Shift in front of other noble children.
He’d thought Jadzia was like a little doll after she’d been born, tiny and perfect. He’d had to sneak in to see her, their mother afraid to have him nearby as if he’d contaminate the baby by proximity, but a maid had taken pity on him and let him take a peek into the little bassinet in the nursery. He’d been entranced by his sister then, had traced a careful finger down her arm to her impossibly tiny fingers, stunned by how miniscule her fingernails were. He’d loved her immediately, had wanted to carry her around like a stuffed toy.
His visits after that had been equally surreptitious, sneaking in to play silly games to make her laugh and eventually holding his hands out to help her learn to stand. Jozefa had come a year later, and Jaskier had loved her just as much, had been thrilled to have a new little baby to coo over. Julanta had been borne two years after that, and Justina had been a surprise a year and a half later, after which gossip went around that the lord of the manor had been banned in no uncertain terms from the lady’s bedchamber.
It had been good, those early years with his sisters. He’d learned to tie bows and braid hair and fluff out skirts. He’d had to do it all secretly, aided occasionally by a maid or nanny that didn’t know why he was supposed to be kept away, but it had been nice.
And then Jadzia had gotten old enough to start understanding the dynamics of their household.
It had started in little ways, Jadzia threatening to tell their parents that he was visiting in order to get her way, knowing by then that he wasn’t supposed to be there. It had hurt, to have his sister threaten him like that, but he had folded. He’d been so lonely before that he didn’t want to go back, and he still loved his sisters. Jozefa and Julanta had taken their cue from Jadzia, had adapted quickly to making the same threats until Jaskier had started to stop going to the nursery so much for fear of being pushed into bigger trouble.
It had only gotten worse when they’d started to interact more with their parents, once they’d been judged old enough for short forays from the nursery. Taking their cues from the adults, they’d begun icing Jaskier out from the fold, learning quickly that the quickest way to get higher in their parents’ favor was to knock Jaskier down.
Eventually, Jaskier had started to avoid his sisters. He’d snuck in occasionally to see Justina when he was sure the others would be gone, but he’d been cautious, both of her turning cruel and of any association with him making the others cruel to her. His life had seemed even lonelier after that, knowing exactly what he’d lost, what he could have had if he hadn’t been born a Shifter.
“Jask?” Geralt’s voice startles him with its proximity, the witcher having dismounted and come closer after Jaskier apparently stopped walking. It’s only when Geralt reaches a hand up to brush at his cheek that Jaskier realizes he’s crying, tears slipping down his face without his knowledge. He’s embarrassed once he realizes, pulling back and scrubbing his hands over his face.
“Fuck, sorry. I’m such a damn basket case,” Jaskier tries to laugh it off, but his breath won’t come quite right and the rock in his throat tells him he has more tears yet to come out. It’s the matter of a moment before strong arms come around him, pulling him in against a firm chest. He stiffens for a moment, embarrassed, but the embrace is too much to resist, and he unfolds to return it, gripping what handholds he can find on Geralt’s armor. “Sorry, I’ll get myself together soon, promise.”
Geralt hums a response.
“Just,” Jaskier stops to pull in a breath, “just give me a few minutes. I’ll stop being such a baby, swear.”
“It’s fine,” Geralt says, voice even and patient as ever. “I wouldn’t still be traveling with you if I wasn’t used to getting cried on.”
Jaskier pinches him in retribution for that, but he smiles a bit anyway. One large hand comes up to his head, and Geralt turns to press a kiss to his temple, lingering there.
Jaskier manages to get himself under control after a bit more sniffling, and he gestures to Geralt to lead them onwards. Instead of remounting, however, the witcher falls into step beside him, leading Roach with one hand and capturing Jaskier’s in the other. He squeezes with careful pressure, and Jaskier returns it, leaning in and having to stand on his tiptoes briefly to land a kiss to Geralt’s cheek when he’s so heavily armored.
They walk that way until nightfall, hand in hand.
*
He tells Geralt about his sisters that night, the good and the bad and the hurt and the love.
He cries again, soft-hearted fool that he is.
Geralt just holds him closer.
*
They make it to Lettenhove two and a half weeks later. It feels a bit like slipping on a pair of too-small boots, the knowledge that it could be comfortable, but the experience still rubbing and pinching. With an audience, Geralt doesn’t hold his hand, too afraid as ever of hatred for him being turned to Jaskier, but he does stay close, Jaskier letting him bull their way ahead through the crowd.
“Alright?” He asks, voice so low Jaskier almost doesn’t hear it.
“Maybe,” he responds, and Geralt dares to reach back to squeeze his arm briefly in support.
“If you want to leave, we leave,” Geralt reminds him, and Jaskier desperately wishes he could kiss his witcher.
His nerve lasts up until they make it to the gate of his family’s mansion, and he remembers the way his gut used to twist with fear and loneliness and anxiety every single time he had to come back at break. He freezes in his tracks and hears a man behind them curse and move around, his arms full of a basket of cheeses, obviously on his way to sell his wares for the upcoming celebration. Geralt gives him a cool, challenging stare until he continues on his way with nothing else said, those yellow eyes moving back to Jaskier only once he’s sure the man knows better than to make a scene.
The bard doesn’t appear to have registered the exchange, his eyes fixed on the crest welded onto the top of the gate. Jaskier reeks of fear, his heart rabbiting like a prey animal’s before a hound. Geralt is torn between turning them around immediately and letting the bard make his own decision about which way he wants to go.
It makes Geralt want to take action on his behalf, to take care of whatever has made him so scared, and it’s annoying that there is no clear way to do so. The only thing he can do is be here.
“Jask?” He prompts, but the bard takes a long moment before he looks over at the sound of his name. “Forward, or should we go back?”
Geralt’s guess is on the latter given how tense Jaskier’s body is, how ready he looks to balk completely and flee. It’s understandable, given what he knows of Jaskier’s past, and part of Geralt wants to leave, if only to remove his own temptation at what he wants to do to the people who taught Jaskier so much pain and fear.
The bard is brave to the point of foolhardiness, however, and he just squares his shoulders before he marches on. Geralt doesn’t comment, just following behind, still ready to turn around completely at a moment’s notice. His attention is partially drawn by Roach, who has picked up on the energy of the situation, her ears swiveling around like she’s listening for attack before they focus back on Geralt and Jaskier. She stamps her feet every few steps like she’s looking for a fight until he tugs her head down and gives her a command to calm. She does so, clearly unhappy with him but too well-trained to refuse, but she does make him pick up the pace so she can walk closer to Jaskier, clearly picking up on who’s the more vulnerable member of their group and trying to offer some extra protection.
Geralt understands the urge.
*
It’s the strangest sense of deja vu, standing in the foyer while a visibly surprised footman bustles off to tell his parents he’s arrived. He keeps his focus on breathing, steady and even, moving without thought into the perfect posture he’d been drilled in from toddlerhood, his body recognizing the need for it even while Jaskier’s mind is occupied elsewhere. Geralt is beside him still, looking as unassailably secure in his own presence as he ever does. Jaskier’s long admired Geralt’s solid physicality, his ability to look rock solid and steady no matter their surroundings. For all that he knows the signs of the witcher’s discomfort, they’re all subtle enough that no one who hasn’t spent time learning them would ever pick them up.
“Julian.” His mother’s voice snaps his attention back to the doorway.
Entirely on reflex, he gives her a head nod of a bow. Despite the unhappy tension he sees around her eyes, she glides forward easily enough, a consummate courtier, aware of her appearance and courtesies even within the comfort of her own home. She extends her hand with the slightest amount of hesitation, so quick he knows no one else would have caught it, and he takes it in his own, bringing it to his lips in a pantomime of a kiss that doesn’t actually connect.
He’d kissed her cheek once as a child.
The beating he’d gotten afterwards meant he had never tried again.
“Mother,” he says, glad that his voice comes out as cool and formal as he could wish. He stands straight once more and drops her hand, turning slightly to indicate the witcher at his side. “May I present the White Wolf, Geralt of Rivia.”
His mother extends her hand again, and Geralt’s eyes flick to it briefly before he resumes looking at her with cool disinterest. It makes her falter, slightly, before she changes the motion as if she’d only meant to brush at a bit of imaginary lint on the skirt of her gown. She turns back to Jaskier.
“What a surprise to have you arrive here,” she states with false cheer. Jaskier notes that she doesn’t qualify what sort of a surprise it is.
“Justina wanted me here,” he says, hating that the slightest edge of defensiveness comes through. He shouldn’t have to justify his place here. It shouldn’t hurt so much that he has to.
His mother’s lips press together in displeasure. For all that she’s clearly unhappy to have him here, though, she looks to Geralt for a brief moment before she looks away again, clearly reconsidering what she’d been about to say.
It hurts in a new way, consideration given out of fear of someone else instead of affection for him. He swallows in a way he hopes is subtle, trying to clear his throat from the way it’s swelling with emotion. He thinks, suddenly, of the holidays he’d spent visiting his friends in university, the kisses and hugs and teasing from their families. He thinks of the years he still separated from Geralt for winter, how even when the witcher was playing cool aloofness, he still let Jaskier press close in bed against him and “happened to have” little treats Jaskier enjoyed, especially after they met again in spring. It aches to know what a loving reunion looks and feels like and to be greeted with this cool standoff.
“Well,” his mother says briskly, “I’m afraid we weren’t prepared for more guests. I’m sure space could be found in the vill-”
“Julek!”
The cry of the petname is all the warning he gets before he’s nearly tackled in a hug by his youngest sister, staggering back two steps before Geralt reaches out to steady him with a hand on his back. He wraps his arms around Justina on reflex, surprised by the greeting. He’d always been closest to her, the sister that had never turned mean, but he’d stopped communicating with any of his family the day he left. The letter from her had been enough of a surprise, and this enthusiastic embrace is entirely beyond the pale for the reception he expected. She releases him after a moment, shaking her hair–black, like their father’s–back from her face where it’s escaped an updo of dubious craftsmanship. Her face is rounder than he remembers it being, likely from her pregnancy given how recently she’d given birth and the slight thickening of her middle, but she looks so strikingly like the little girl he’d last seen that it makes him want to cry for a brief moment.
He gets himself under control and even dares to kiss her cheek, which she returns before she turns to Geralt, extending a bold hand for a handshake. Geralt looks to him briefly before he takes it, and she shakes the witcher’s hand briskly.
“I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance. I’ve heard so many of my brother’s songs,” this is a surprise, but Jaskier doesn’t comment on it, “and I’ve been absolutely dying to meet you.” It seems to dawn on her that she hasn’t actually introduced herself, and she laughs. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I swear, the baby sucked all of the sense right from my head. I’m Justina, Julian’s sister.”
“A pleasure,” Geralt says, and Jaskier can’t help but smile a little. It’s the extent of Geralt’s engagement in small talk, that line, and he knows it means the witcher likely won’t be speaking again in this conversation. Luckily, Justina doesn’t seem to care, and she turns back to Jaskier, looping their arms together.
“Come on,” she says, tugging with a surprising amount of force from someone a good head and a half shorter than him, “I’ve already had the maids make up some chambers for you.” She gives him a mischievous look. “I’d assumed you two would be sharing from the gossip I’ve heard, but I could always have a second ma-”
“Justina.” Their mother’s voice snaps like a whip, and Jaskier flinches slightly entirely on reflex. “We were not expecting more guests to stay, and I cannot believe you would entirely circumvent me on this matter.”
“Julian isn’t just a guest,” Justina says, her voice cool, “and besides, we’re here to celebrate my daughter. I want him here.”
“Regardless, it’s entirely unseemly to appear with no warning,” this is directed to Jaskier, “and expect to be accomodated.”
“Luckily then, I had warning,” Justina says lightly, tugging Jaskier into motion again. “I wanted him here, and now he’s here, mother. If you’re so concerned with it, I’d suggest you call a healer and get something for your nerves. It would be a shame if you were too overcome to participate in any of the festivities just because your eldest child visited home. What would people say.”
Their mother doesn’t come up with an answer for that by the time Justina has managed to tow Jaskier through the door into the next set of rooms, Geralt trailing behind like a shadow. Jaskier is aghast, slightly, at the boldness of his sister, and he’s too stunned by secondhand fear of reprisals to have anything to say for himself. Luckily Justina seems unconcerned, and she chatters on happily while she guides Jaskier along, turning occasionally to direct some of her words to Geralt.
“I just have to introduce you to her. I laid her down for a nap a bit ago, but she should be waking up soon. I swear, I’ve never met a child who requires so little sleep. She’s nearly run me ragged.”
“You don’t have any nursemaids for her?” Jaskier asks, his brain providing smalltalk even without his full engagement. The question prompts a little flicker of something he can’t read across her face, there and gone in an instant.
“No, we haven’t found the proper person just yet,” she says, a thread of tension in her voice. “Perhaps with you here, you might help me look through some candidates. My husband–Teobald, do you remember him? His family used to summer with us at times–has been an absolute darling with her, but we really could use another person.”
“I can’t believe Mother hasn’t already exiled her to the nursery for you,” Jaskier observes, genuinely surprised. It had always been the way of childrearing in their family, little ones bustled off to be other peoples’ problems until they were old enough to be fit for company.
Justina’s face sours for a moment.
“Well,” she says, “lucky, then, that she’s my baby and not Mother’s.”
*
Geralt has somehow found himself holding an infant, and he’s still not entirely sure how it happened.
Jaskier’s niece, named Kasia, is only a couple of months old, a scarce few curls peeking out from beneath her embroidered bonnet. She’s an exceptionally easy-tempered baby from the way she hadn’t complained at all at being handed off to a large stranger and held against an armored chest, and now she’s blinking at the ceiling with a baby’s general vague look of concern. Geralt had tensed at first when Justina had handed her over after a quick, “You’ve held babies, yes?” so she could dig through some baby clothes with Jaskier, but the child seems content to simply be held, curling her hands into loose fists before uncurling them once more. Seemingly out of nowhere she lets out a little baby squeal, and Geralt jumps slightly, looking immediately to her mother, who is currently crouched over a mountain of baby garments with a still slightly dazed Jaskier, sorting through the tiny articles evidently in search of something specific. Justina looks up at the sound of her baby, but she gives Geralt an easy smile.
“Don’t worry, she’s just chatty like her mother.” She nudges Jaskier. “And like her uncle.”
Jaskier gives her a little smile in return and looks quickly to Geralt with a questioning tilt of his head to gauge his comfort holding a noisy baby. Geralt just gives him a small nod and looks back to Kasia, who is looking at him now. When their eyes meet, she lets out another shrill little noise and kicks her feet in what seems to be excitement.
“Hello,” he says, voice low, and she shrills again, giving him a gummy smile. Her eyes are still the blue-grey of most infants, but there does seem to be a slight hint of the same color as Jaskier’s, and the little curls beneath her cap seem to be more chestnut than black like her mother’s. It’s hard to tell with her features still so soft and rounded, but it looks like she may have inherited the same cheekbones as her mother and Jaskier, but her nose is different to either of theirs, perhaps like her father’s. It’s strange, to see traits of Jaskier in a tiny face, and he finds himself shifting her weight to reach out a hand and trace a finger along her cheek. He moves lower to brush over her hand and miniscule fingernails, and she takes the opportunity to grab his finger, wrapping her fist around it with surprising force for such a little thing.
She babbles a little noise at him, shaking the hand holding his finger slightly, and he allows the movement, Kasia kicking again in happiness when he does so. He smiles slightly in response to the one she gives him, and he looks up at the scent of affection, finding Jaskier watching him with a soft look, a lacy baby gown in hand. His bard sees him looking and gives him a wink before going back to his work.
It’s Justina that finally finds what she was looking for, a tiny pink gown edged in embroidered ducks. Jaskier digs out a pair of lace booties, and together they retrieve Kasia to change her into the new outfit. Kasia makes grumpy noises at being forced into fussy clothes. Geralt, remembering his own times being dressed up for company by Jaskier, is sympathetic.
“Mother doesn’t like the baby at dinner,” Justina says, retying a new bonnet on Kasia, “but we can still take her for a bit of a walk in the garden before then.”
Geralt trails along after her and Jaskier, Kasia watching him over her mother’s shoulder and laughing when she loses track of him and sees him again. It makes him smile slightly, and if he purposefully walks out of sight to the other side of Justina a few times just to reappear in Kasia’s sightline, well, the siblings are too busy catching up to notice.
Jaskier still smells nervous, a tinge of anxiety beneath his scent. Geralt has the sense that it isn’t likely to fade while they’re here, but there’s the slightest tinge of happiness coming through as well, increasing with each moment he talks to his sister easily.
*
Their walk is rather short indeed, and they’re soon informed by a footman that they should dress soon for dinner. Justina guides them back to his and Geralt’s room and leaves them with a promise to collect them to go down together. Jaskier keeps up his smile until he shuts the door, and then he leans against the wood, relieved to have a moment to stop watching himself so closely.
“Your sister seems nice,” Geralt says, digging through their bags.
“Very.” He pushes off of the door and drops to his own bag, giving Geralt a smile. “And my niece is apparently quite taken with you.”
“She’s an easy baby,” Geralt dismisses, but Jaskier sees the slightest hint of a smile around his eyes.
He dresses in his most subdued outfit, a dark navy with subtle gold embroidery. He doesn’t feel quite like himself as he looks in the mirror, but he figures it’s best not to be too aggressively ostentatious on the first night. Geralt comes up behind him while he’s still at the glass, setting his hands on Jaskier’s hips and pulling him back until he rests against the witcher’s chest. Geralt is dressed in a dark silver tunic and black trousers, and Jaskier can’t help but smile a bit at how handsome he is, even as he’s clearly not entirely pleased at being dressed up.
“You’re beautiful,” he tells Geralt’s reflection, and the witcher turns his head inwards to nuzzle at his neck.
“You’re more beautiful,” he says quietly, pressing a kiss to the hinge of Jaskier’s jaw.
Justina knocks at their door then, and Jaskier reluctantly pulls away to lead Geralt from the room.
“Jadzia and Julanta are here, too,” Justina tells him, shifting Kasia from one arm to another, and Jaskier feels his anxiety increase by several degrees. It had been bad enough when he’d thought it was only going to be his parents to worry about.
Geralt, daringly, moves up to hold his hand, apparently reacting to his fear. Jaskier gives him a grateful look and leans into him briefly.
It feels like all too soon before they’re at the dining room, the table already laid and promising smells drifting from the direction of the kitchen. Jaskier’s parents are already there, and his father steps forward with all of an aristocrat’s poise when he sees them, Jaskier’s mother following him a step behind.
“Lord Alfred Pankratz, viscount de-”
“I know who you are.” Geralt cuts Jaskier’s father off with his usual brusque manner, and Jaskier has the unique sensation of taking joy in secondhand pettiness while also feeling a thrill of fear at something that would have had him beaten as a child. He realizes he’s gone tense with fear and expectation of retribution only when Geralt shifts slightly, and the movement of his arm makes Jaskier’s entire body move with it. Geralt squeezes his hand gently, and Jaskier forces himself to relax as he squeezes back. He thinks his pressure might be edging over into painful, but his witcher, as ever, gives no sign. It’s to Geralt’s credit that he manages to carry off so much menace with so few words and so little inflection. It’s a clear challenge to Jaskier’s father, the acknowledgement of who he is with the implication of “I know what you did.”
It makes Jaskier want to cry and kiss Geralt at the same time, this little show of protection and claim, especially when he knows how much Geralt hates having to menace people, to play into the stereotypes people hold of witchers as menacing beasts.
Dinner after that is an awkward affair. Jadzia and Julanta have already arrived with their husbands, but their greetings with him are curt and impersonal, following the lead of their parents as ever. Their husbands are distant as well, evidently taking their cue from their wives. Justina’s husband stops by briefly to gather Kasia, greeting Jaskier with a handshake and warm smile. The last time Jaskier saw him, he was a spotty boy just going into puberty, but time has been good to him, leaving him a relatively tall man with kind eyes. He leans over to kiss Justina before he returns to their rooms to tend their child away from adult company, and Jaskier is pleased that his youngest sister managed to find what seems to be a good husband. Once he’s gone, cool silence descends over the table, and Jaskier takes bites of lavish food that might as well be ash for all that he enjoys it.
Justina does her best to keep up bright conversation with Jaskier involved, but she can only do so much against seven other adults uninterested in smalltalk, six out of malice and one out of being Geralt. The conversation is impersonal and reserved, and Jaskier thinks by the end of it that he’s never going to want to talk about the weather of anywhere ever again.
His parents are reserved, clearly mistrustful, but they also don’t dare to be openly cruel to him now that he’s a witcher’s lover. Their cool voices are as distant and disapproving as ever, but they keep their distance, and they mind what they actually say, giving Geralt watchful looks from the corners of their eyes.
Jaskier regrets the formal seating that keeps him so far from Geralt when he so desperately wants to press against his witcher for moral support. He also regrets that he dragged him here at all, forcing him into an awkward situation and tossing him right in the middle of Jaskier’s family’s drama.
Still, when he stretches out his foot and finds Geralt’s already extended to rest against his, he can only feel grateful to have him here.
*
Jaskier wakes late that night from a dream of being locked in a closet, gasping himself awake and immediately clamping a hand over his mouth to prevent any other noises from escaping. He’d had more than a few glasses of wine at dinner to compensate for the horrible of it all, and Geralt had matched him for each drink. Even with the witcher’s metabolism, Jaskier is relieved that at least he’s still out deeply enough to not have awoken at Jaskier stirring. With all of the things Jaskier is asking of him now, Geralt at least deserves to get some rest on the admittedly very comfortable featherbed in their room.
He stares at the canopy above the bed trying to will himself back to sleep, but the fear is still too fresh to let him feel anywhere near relaxed enough to achieve it. After a moment he hears the sound of a baby in the hallway and the muffled voice of Justina, evidently trying to soothe her daughter back down for the night with a walk. Jaskier carefully extricates himself from beneath Geralt’s arm, shoving a pillow underneath to replace his body and pausing a moment to let Geralt settle once more.
He climbs carefully out of bed and makes his way quietly to the door, poking his head out and making Justina jump when she turns around to begin pacing back the other way. When she sees it’s just him, she smiles, and he walks down the hall to her.
“What are you doing up?” She asks in a whisper.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, greeting Kasia with a stroke over her little arm before he falls into step with his sister. “Kept up by the consequences of your decision to create new life?”
Justina snorts.
“If I’d known creating a new legacy would require so much insomnia, I would never have done it. I should have just donated money to the university and had a wing named after me.”
“Would probably require fewer diapers.”
“And let me attend more banquets.”
Kasia takes that moment to put her two cents in, squealing and waving her arms to illustrate whatever point she’s trying to make.
“Really, I don’t know what’s gotten into her. She always gets a little restless around this time, but usually a feeding will put her right back down. Tonight, though, she’s-”
Jaskier doesn’t get to find out what Kasia is tonight.
Because with no warning, Kasia transforms into a kitten, and everything else becomes a lesser concern.
Jaskier backs up entirely on impulse, his brain connecting his surroundings and Shifting to make him feel terrified by proxy, and he turns wide eyes to Justina, who looks at him with a defiant tilt of her chin, even as her eyes plead for understanding. She cradles her daughter, who mewls at her in this form, closer.
“It’s one of the reasons I wanted you to come,” she says, voice low, rocking Kasia until her noises quiet, and she Shifts back into a human baby. Justina struggles to get the diaper back on her as Kasia kicks her legs, apparently pleased at her freedom in being completely naked and reluctant to forfeit it once more.
Jaskier watches the struggle for a moment until Justina’s eyes fill with frustrated tears that spill down the dark circles beneath. She’s a grown woman, his sister, but she’s still the little child who once cuddled up to him because the tree outside her window made scary scratching noises. He steps forward and takes the diaper from her, working it back over Kasia’s legs and repinning it securely. When he looks up to meet his sister’s gaze, he gives her a smile.
“Well, I’m here now,” he tells her, and she pulls him into a hug, Kasia babbling between them.
“Jask?” Geralt’s voice comes from down the hall, and Jaskier releases his sister. The witcher comes closer with long strides, and once in the range of her vision, Kasia squeals with delight at the sight of him. Geralt’s eyes move to her briefly with the slightest shadow of a smile curving his lips before he refocuses on Jaskier, gaze intent and searching. Jaskier reaches out and squeezes his arm, looking back to Justina.
“Come on,” he says, wrapping an arm around his sister, “let’s talk.”
Kasia keeps up shrill nonsense smalltalk until she’s handed over to Geralt, and Jaskier grins at the mix of confusion and pleasure on the witcher’s face as he finds himself in possession of the baby again as they walk back to their room, his niece looking comically tiny in Geralt’s massive arms, even with the witcher dressed down in a soft linen shirt instead of his usual armor. Justina looks relieved to hand Kasia over, and Jaskier links arms with her, Kasia babbling at a quieter level now but apparently very eager to fill Geralt in on everything he’s missed. Jaskier lets himself have one look over his shoulder at Geralt’s attentive face as the baby talks at him so he can commit it to memory for later. Justina’s voice startles him back to focus, his sister quiet in deference for the fact that they’re not yet in a safe place for this sort of conversation.
“Sorry about that,” she says. “I can usually tell if she’s going to change before she does it. It’s been a blessing that Mother has such a distaste for babies, or I don’t know how I would have managed it.”
“I imagine you were startled,” Jaskier ventures, not entirely trusting how calmly Justina seems to be taking things, her infant Shifting into animals in her arms. Justina shrugs, moving Jaskier’s arm with the movement where they’re still linked.
“Eh,” she says, “I might’ve been if I didn’t already have a Shifter for a big brother.”
Jaskier freezes in his tracks, yanking Justina with the sudden lack of movement.
“What are you talking about?” He asks, trying for placid confusion and achieving mildly strangled panic. “That’s quite the accusation.”
There’s no way Justina could know. None of his sisters know. He’d never told them, and he knows for a fact his parents would never have done such a thing. He registers Geralt stepping closer, ready to offer support or defense even with a still-babbling Kasia in his arms.
“Julek,” Justina says, face bemused, “I’ve always known what you are. You Shifted in front of me when I was little, do you remember? I was scared by a thunderstorm, and you turned into a butterfly and then a monkey to make me laugh.”
“You couldn't have been more than three!” He cries, and she shushes him.
“Keep your voice down!” She hisses. “Unless you’re looking to set Kasia off again.”
The baby looks rather unlikely to do anything other than continue talking to Geralt no matter the volume of the adults around her, but Jaskier lowers his voice anyway as Justina tugs him into motion.
“But you can’t remember,” Jaskier hisses in a stage whisper that’s about as quiet as he ever gets, “you were too young.” His sister rolls her eyes affectionately as they reach his and Geralt’s room.
“Give me some credit. Your brother turning into animals right in front of you isn’t exactly something you forget.”
Well, Jaskier can’t exactly argue with that.