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Ciri never particularly intends to like Jaskier.
He’s different from the witchers and mages she’s been spending her time with recently— he’s non-magical, for one, and that fact seems to bleed into every facet of his being, constantly startling and impossible to ignore. She’s grown far too used to casual magic in these past handful of months and finds herself mildly unnerved every time she sees him struggling with the basic tasks the others would have simply waved away in his situation.
It’s nice, in a sense, considering how she herself also finds herself struggling with those basic tasks, but strange. She’d forgotten what it was like to be around people who can’t hear her from across the keep or conjure roses from rocks.
Quite honestly, she’d nearly forgotten what it was like to be around humans entirely.
And even beyond that, he’s also loud where the others are quiet, stumbling where they’re graceful, sarcastic and mouthy and talkative when she had just gotten the hang of translating hmms and actually understanding the individual meanings of each particular inflection. It’s not uncommon for him to talk to her before she can start a conversation with him, and it’s just so deeply odd to hear actual words out there in the open without first having to bully them out of someone.
His animated, colorful presence is unsettling after months spent in darkness, and even more so considering the darkness has still yet to pass. The others aren’t pleased with it. Yennefer is reluctantly fond of Jaskier and he’s slowly growing on Vesemir, but the rest of the current inhabitants of Kaer Morhen find him annoying at best and simply foolish at worst, and they’re not subtle about it.
The one exception is Geralt.
He barely interacts with Jaskier at all.
She’s picked up enough from overheard conversations and muttered jokes to know that Geralt and Jaskier used to be close friends. Very close friends, according to some of what she’s heard from Lambert and Coen, and for quite a long time. But now, it’s obvious even to her that their previous record of casual intimacy has since faded.
They still know each other incredibly well, that much is clear. But it’s also clear that they no longer work together in the way they used to.
They skirt around each other delicately on their occasional encounters, as if unsure how close they’re allowed to get to one another, like they no longer know where boundaries lie. Their sense of familiarity is stilted, awkward, still technically present but worn away, leaving their tentative interactions to collide with only a thin layer of distant past experience as a buffer. Jokes fall flat and even gentle ribbing feels harsh. Jaskier laughs a bit less easily when Geralt’s around.
Ciri’s gathered enough to know that Geralt was the one to fuck up their friendship, and it’s clear now that he’s apologetic and looking for reconciliation.
It’s also clear that Jaskier’s still coming around to the idea of fully accepting this apology and still has a considerable ways to go before he reaches full forgiveness.
She thinks this is why he and Ciri begin to spend time together.
This is also when she accidentally begins enjoying being around him, she’s fairly certain.
In the beginning, it’s a relationship of convenience. Jaskier is often left alone and Ciri often wishes to be alone, so eventually, they begin being alone together, just to make the quiet feel a bit less deafening. She’ll find him in the library and then find herself settling down to read beside him; she’ll be writing in the kitchen and then look up an hour later to see Jaskier bustling around the pantry, fixing her a snack; they both routinely run into each other on the nights when neither of them can sleep. Simple things, really.
But then, slowly, Jaskier begins talking.
He’s good at talking, Ciri finds. He’s a trained storyteller and a natural conversationalist, and she doesn’t mind it when he begins filling in the silence with more than just his mere presence. He’ll tell her stories of his time as a student and then a professor at Oxenfurt, full of academic rivals, stern administrators, and acts of teenage rebellion gone wrong, or describe to her some of the fantastic and fascinating people he’s met as a bard, whether they be kings or dukes or mages or peasants, each character he introduces always more fabulous and at least half fictitious than the last. Frequently, he mentions Geralt. Ciri doesn’t mind this either, even if Jaskier’s voice always seems to grow a bit quieter when talking about him.
One of the best things about these conversations between them is that they’re majorly one-sided— he never demands responses from her. In fact, she’s fairly certain that he never really expects her to respond at all. He talks quietly and animatedly and always to her directly, but it never feels like one half of a deal she’s meant to fulfill— rather, it just feels like company.
She struggles to find words sometimes. She always responds when the others ask her questions or check up on her, always does her best to seem as fine as she claims, but guilt has become a familiar weight on her shoulders to join the grief and trauma and fear, and recently, it’s begun to weigh down her words as well. Quiet is easier.
And every once in a while, the ability to simply listen to stories and opinions and discussions —something to distract from the constant dissonance of her mind— without feeling the need to reciprocate is about the most comforting thing she can think of.
Somehow, Jaskier seems to know.
Gradually, however, she begins to find it in herself to respond. Jaskier is safe, someone she doesn’t have to watch herself around, and she quickly comes to realize that he’s just about the only person in this keep who is actually interested in the stories she has to share of kingdoms and courts and royalty. He’s also the only person who actually understands the content of such conversations, considering his past experience with such environments as a bard, and it’s refreshing to talk to someone who comes from at least a distantly similar background.
He reminds her of home more often than not. It’s a bittersweet thing to realize.
As the weeks pass, however, it becomes increasingly clear that their time at Kaer Morhen is limited— Ciri can’t stay here for much longer without risking someone else finding out about her location, and Geralt is itching to continue moving. It’s soon decided that Yennefer will begin scouting out potential new safehouses while Geralt, Jaskier, and Ciri get back on the road, searching out contracts for Geralt and taverns for Jaskier and whoever else they might be able to find to help add some clarity to Ciri’s situation. None of them can risk being recognized anymore, and these parallel paths of constant motion are about as close to an illusion of safety as they can get.
Geralt and Jaskier are polite with each other if not a bit distant when they first depart, which Ciri was expecting. They sleep on opposite sides of the camp, keep their conversations light and superficial, and don’t genuinely interact more than what’s necessary, and for a bit, Ciri wonders if they’re ever going to get back what they reportedly once had.
But then Geralt gets abducted by a psycho bitch mage and that’s when things begin to shift.
***
Seven hours after Geralt gets snatched, they find him chained to the wall of a small, damp cell in the basement of the castle they’d tracked the mage to, his hair loose and dirty, sitting slumped in the corner with his eyes trained on the door.
“Ah, Geralt, finally,” Jaskier says brightly, dropping his sword to the floor with a clatter. The guard’s blood is staining the cuffs of the sleeves of his doublet and he doesn’t even seem to care— the relief in his voice is a bit too strong for that, Ciri figures.
Looking at Geralt, bruised and bloodied but whole, she can relate.
Her own dagger hits the floor beside Jaskier’s and it’s a relief to know that it’s not needed anymore, at least for right now.
“They really had you locked up deep in the guts of this place, you know,” Jaskier continues, easily moving closer, “I guess you’re valued quite highly in the means of illegal people-weapon trading, it took—“
Jaskier doesn’t get farther than a few steps into the cell before Geralt growls.
It’s not like his usual grunts and mutters— this is longer, deeper, holding a strong, unrelenting warning instead of simply the typical exasperation. Jaskier pauses, stopping delicately a respectful distance away, and Geralt stiffens in turn, huddled and tense against the wall with hackles raised.
“Oh,” Jaskier says, and then sighs wearily, like the long-suffering mother of a particularly reckless child. “Oh, not again.”
“Again?” Ciri repeats.
“Fucking again! Unbelievable.”
Geralt growls louder at their voices, the sound so rough it borders on animalistic. He looks like a cornered predator, ready to snap, guarding his left side so closely that Ciri doesn’t even see the slash wound across his ribs until the flickering torchlight catches the shine of blood.
Dread, heavy and cold, begins to pool in Ciri’s gut.
Whatever relief she’d felt before has long gone dead.
Jaskier is halfway through rolling up his sleeves, muttering to himself about overused ideas and criminally failing imagination rates, but she’s watching Geralt so closely that she barely hears him. The witcher glares at them warily, his eyes reflecting the limited light in the cell, his growl quiet and unfaltering. He doesn’t even look like himself.
She takes a hesitant step forward and Geralt snarls.
Ciri freezes where she is.
She’s never seen him like this before. It’s terribly frightening, really, and the dread is suddenly rising quickly now, surging up to flood to her chest and her heart is just beginning to hammer a sizable hole through her ribcage when Jaskier groans, exasperated and incredulous and alarmingly loud considering the circumstances.
“Dear gods, mages are unoriginal these days,” he complains. “What is this, the third time in the last decade? It’s disappointing, really. They could do so much better for themselves if they only put in a little more effort.” He aims a shapeless hand gesture in Ciri’s general direction as he starts forward, gently dismissive but reassuring all the same. “Stay there, princess, everything’s fine.”
He strides across the cell, ignoring the way Geralt snaps and recoils, and kneels in front of him while still remaining wisely out of biting range. “Well, what animal psyche do you think they implanted in you this time, hmm?” he asks, forever the easy conversationalist even as he pulls the knife from his boot. “Judging off the growls, my coin is on the wolf brain again. Poor saps can never resist the irony, can they?”
Geralt snarls again as Jaskier brandishes the blade, but Jaskier steadfastly ignores him, sawing at the leather cuffs around Geralt’s wrists and moving with him when Geralt jerks back. “Yes, yes, grr, I know,” he says. “Very scary, but quite pointless. We’ve been over this before, Geralt, fear tactics don’t work on me. Not when it’s you.”
Distantly, despite the nausea and confusion still sitting heavy in her stomach, Ciri realizes that this is probably the closest she’s ever seen them get to one another, and the most words she’s heard exchanged between them— even if it’s just Jaskier talking, it still tops everything she’s witnessed from them in the past.
This type of connection almost seems to exist on an entirely different plane than the simple dinner conversation they usually stumble through.
It appears easier for them, somehow.
After a few moments of Jaskier working at the leather, Geralt is free from his chains. For a single, paralyzing instant, Ciri thinks Geralt is going to maul Jaskier right here and now, but then he just slinks away, crossing over to the farthest corner of the cell to hunker down and watch them warily from a safe distance. Jaskier stands, returning the knife to his boot and dusting off his hands.
“He’ll be over there for a while,” he tells Ciri, straightening his doublet. “These beast spells always fuck with him for a bit before they take full effect —that’s why he couldn’t break through the leather himself, he’s about weak as a kitten right now— but give him a few hours and he’ll be chasing down deer like he hasn’t eaten in a month. I would call it impressive if it wasn’t freaky as all seven hells.”
Faintly, Ciri feels as though she’s missed something rather important.
“Now, are you alright?” Jaskier asks, turning to face her. She stares back at him, having not quite decided yet exactly how alright she is, and his expression turns serious immediately. “Oh, no,” he says, realizing. His hands go to her shoulders, steady and grounding as he ducks his head a little to catch her gaze, intent and concerned. “No, you’re not. Oh, I’m sorry, love, I didn’t think about how scary this is to someone who hasn’t seen it before. Are you too terribly unnerved?”
She looks over at Geralt, who is currently in the process of curling up into a ball and glaring at them with all the vigor of a wounded pup. “Just a bit,” she manages. “Maybe.”
“Right, okay, that’s understandable,” Jaskier says, and gently ushers her over to sit down on one of the drier parts of the cell floor, away from Geralt. He settles himself beside her. “This is your first run in with feral Geralt, yes?”
She nods.
“Right,” he says. “Okay. I know it’s strange, but it’s all okay, really. This tends to happen somewhat often with him, considering mages as a profession are apparently suffering from a chronic lack of originality, but he’s going to be fine. I promise he is. The bitch who grabbed him just magicked the instincts of some predatory animal into his head, so he’ll be weird for a bit, but now we’ll summon up Yennefer, and she’ll fix him up, and the worst that’ll happen is he’ll have an appetite for raw meat for a week or two. Saves time with the cooking.”
Despite the deep sense of fragile, shaky unease she still can’t shake, Ciri finds herself nodding along, at least somewhat comforted by Jaskier’s explanation and experience.
She had forgotten what it was like to be able to rely on someone else when the world grew frightening and unfamiliar. It’s quite nice, she decides distantly. She could get used to this— leaning on someone else when the load gets a bit too heavy, so she doesn’t have to bear all of the weight alone.
Jaskier squeezes her knee gently and it feels like she can exhale again.
“So you’ve done this a few times before with him,” she says.
Jaskier cracks a smile. “Darling, at this point, there’s not much left that I haven’t done at least a few times before with him,” he says. “Now, I’m going to get him some of that cured meat from Roach’s pack— he’ll never admit it, but it’s his favorite when he’s all wolfy like this. Care to come with?”
In the corner, Geralt yawns, blinking blearily as he finally begins to settle.
A bit more of Ciri’s tension releases in turn.
And despite still feeling more than a tad lost, she takes the hand that Jaskier offers her, and follows behind.
She very purposefully does not think about what else Jaskier was referring to. Some things are better left unknown.
***
That night, after Yennefer has fixed Geralt and they’re back on the road and everything is more or less back to normal, Jaskier and Geralt set out their bed rolls just a little closer to one another than before. They trade food during dinner. Conversation seems to be coming just a bit easier between the two of them.
It’s not much, but it’s something. Ciri takes note.
***
“Save your strength.”
“Did you fucking see that,” Jaskier wheezes, not for the first time. “Shit, wow. I’ve never been so close to a drowner before.”
Before today, neither had Ciri. She rather thinks she would never like to be so close to one ever again, especially looking at Jaskier now.
“Those things really are interesting little fuckers,” Jaskier gasps, still thoroughly exhilarated by the events of the day even as he suffers the bloody consequences. He’s currently supported between Geralt and Ciri, his arms wound about their shoulders while Geralt steadies him around the waist and Ciri does her best to hold pressure on the deep gash torn across his side, the three of them stumbling over the uneven brush as they drag him back to their camp.
Jaskier is deathly pale and borderline rambling but nonetheless thrilled.
Geralt looks like he’s about to kill somebody, and right now, that somebody looks like it’s going to be Jaskier if the bard doesn’t have the good sense to shut up in the very near future.
Ciri just presses her cloth up against Jaskier’s wound as hard as she can, and then presses harder.
“God, that was fucking incredible,” Jaskier gasps out, beginning to lose his breath a bit now even if he’s yet to lose any of his enthusiasm. “Those teeth, and the fucking— the fucking claws—”
“Those fucking claws nearly killed you,” Geralt growls.
“And I got fantastic life experience out of it,” Jaskier returns, far too cheerfully for the amount of blood still gushing out of him and the fact that he’s borderline wheezing. “I learned my lesson to stay out of the way of the witcher and the witcher in training, I’ve got some truly wonderful material for new songs, and I didn’t even die in the process, which I consider quite the significant win. Be happy for me.”
Geralt grimaces. “You’re still bleeding.”
“Ah, but it —ow, fuck— it only adds to the dramatic ambiance.”
“Shut up, Jaskier.”
Jaskier does shut up, but Ciri’s not sure if it’s because he’s obliging Geralt or just because he’s quite literally run out of air to continue talking. She can hear the click in his throat as he swallows hard, doing his best to stay upright despite how his legs shake and falter beneath him as they urge him along.
The cloth in her hand is suddenly feeling wet, and with a jolt of horror, she realizes that blood is already beginning to soak all the way through the thick material. He’s losing too much blood far too fast, the evidence of which growing hot and sticky against her palm, and it’s showing no sign of slowing.
Abruptly, she realizes that he’s not nearly as okay as he’s been trying to make it seem.
Judging off the tight, tense expression on Geralt’s face, he figured that out far before she did.
His arm is so tight around Jaskier’s waist and she suddenly knows it’s damn near the only thing keeping the bard from collapsing.
“This is far enough,” Geralt says abruptly, bringing them to a halt in the middle of a relatively clear patch of woods. They’re still several minutes walk away from their camp, especially at the pace they’re going, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that Jaskier is not going to make it that far while remaining conscious and Ciri can understand why Geralt wants to break here.
“Oh, is it?” Jaskier says breathlessly, blinking hard as Geralt unwinds his arm from about his shoulders, shifting his weight off of Ciri entirely and towards himself in a move that seems far too practiced and far too familiar for comfort. Jaskier pales sharply at the shift in position, but keeps steady. “I thought— I thought we were going all the way to camp.”
“No need. We’ve got enough supplies in the packs to treat you here.”
Doubtful, but times are desperate. If Geralt says they have enough, then they have enough.
Geralt half carries, half drags Jaskier to a more level part of the clearing, and quietly, despite the urgency of the circumstances, Ciri still has to acknowledge that Geralt would never let himself get so close to Jaskier if the bard wasn’t hurt.
Once again, blood seems to have dissolved whatever stiff boundaries they still have established.
As Geralt gets Jaskier situated against the log of a fallen tree, Ciri takes that as her cue to dig their admittedly limited medical equipment from their bags and see what they have to work with. Their traveling supplies mainly consist of just the basic essentials —gauze, cleaning tinctures, a needle and thread— but they should have what they need, at least for now.
To herself, Ciri laments the lack of any real pain medication. Their strongest potions are still back at camp, and although they’re not a strict necessity, they would mean that Jaskier could go through the experience of cleaning and treatment quite a bit more peacefully.
As is, Ciri knows that this is not going to be an enjoyable afternoon for any of them.
She misses the castle’s apothecary more than ever in moments like these.
By the time Ciri’s finished sorting, Geralt has Jaskier half pinned against the fallen trunk with his shirts efficiently cut out of the way, exposing the ugly gash to the light while Geralt probes around the injury, testing depth and severity. “Gods, Geralt, ow,” Jaskier complains quietly, but he’s unresisting, limp in Geralt’s hold. Ciri’s not sure if it’s because he’s trying to be compliant or if he just doesn’t have the strength left in him to protest in earnest. “Fuck, your hands are cold. I worry about your circulation sometimes, I really do.”
“You’ve lost a lot of blood. If anything, you’re cold.”
“Well, yes, granted, but that doesn’t have anything to do with your circulation. Don’t think you’re escaping that conversation.” The words are soft, breathless— weak, if Ciri’s being honest with herself, but even. “At least this is still better than that time with the griffin.”
“Anything is better than that time with the griffin.”
Geralt’s free hand shifts to the back of Jaskier’s neck as he goes back to applying pressure to the wound, holding him steady, and Ciri doesn’t miss how Jaskier leans into the touch despite his grimace, even if just barely, nor the fact that Geralt doesn’t pull away at the subtle display of implicit trust.
Quietly, she takes note of that too. For later, when Jaskier’s blood is back where it’s supposed to be.
“What can I help with?” she asks, carrying the supplies over from the packs. She lays them out in the space beside Jaskier, neat and organized, the tools already properly sanitized and ready to be used.
“Find a clean cloth,” Geralt says. “We’ll need something for him to bite down on while we wash the wound out.”
Jaskier’s barely strong enough to hold his head up. Somehow, he still finds it in him to heave a groan so dramatic it’s like they just told him he’s going to lose a leg, but he doesn’t fight it when Geralt eases the rag between his teeth and reaches for the cleaning tinctures.
Geralt isn’t quite gentle, but he’s careful, never any rougher than he has to be.
Jaskier stays still and bears it like he’s got practice at it.
Ciri’s beginning to realize that he does. Have practice at it, that is. Injuries seem to have made up a considerable chunk of his and Geralt’s bonding experiences in the past.
She wonders if that’s why blood and bruises seem to be the last intact thread of connection they have left.
***
Later, after they make it back to the camp, after Jaskier is fixed and bandaged and thoroughly, heavily drugged and acting a bit drunk as a result but finally free from pain, after her heart stops feeling like it’s about to pound out of her chest, everything seems to quiet a bit.
Jaskier is now entirely intoxicated thanks to a bit of valerian root and a particularly strong vial from Geralt’s collection of pain-relief tinctures, and Ciri has never seen him more relaxed. He’s half in Geralt’s lap even now, clearly exhausted after the events of the afternoon despite the drunken smile he’s still somehow maintaining, and Geralt has yet to push him off in the way Ciri has come to expect. They seem to fit into each other like the pieces of a puzzle, like the world has worn them away in complimentary places, as if each of their individual corners finds a matching curve in the other.
Geralt looks content. Somehow, out of all of it, that’s what stands out to Ciri the most.
They’re just so different together when one of them is like this.
Once again, Ciri gets the idea that these moments of vulnerability and the snapshots of intimacy she witnesses within them used to make up the substance of their old normal, before their friendship collapsed in on itself. It takes gore and blood and pain for their old familiarity to settle back in, and it takes one of them being in a world of hurt for either of them to take even the slightest step towards rebuilding their relationship.
Strange men, the two of them. She’s fairly intrigued even if they confuse her a fair bit.
She takes note, and by the next time something unfortunate happens —which seems to be a ridiculously common occurrence with the three of them, as she’s beginning to realize— she’s ready to add to her theory.
It’s a bit like a hobby now.
If nothing else, it keeps her busy.
***
From the instant Geralt rides back into camp after finishing a contract, Ciri knows something’s wrong. Jaskier’s already running by the time she manages to scramble to her feet.
Geralt is slumped in Roach’s saddle like he can’t quite manage to hold himself up, heavy and listing, so pale his skin is nearly translucent— paler than Ciri has ever seen him before, even with the help of his potions. His breathing is labored and harsh, as if he can’t catch his breath. Roach slows to a stop at the edge of their camp and for a single, horrible instant, Ciri thinks he’s going to slump right out of the saddle entirely and spill onto the ground like a puppet with its strings slashed, unconscious or stunned or dead.
Jaskier’s there before her fears can become reality.
“Geralt,” he says, firm, loud, not quite frantic even as he edges on a functional sort of panic, snatching Roach’s reins from Geralt’s slack hands and bringing her to a jerky stop. His free hand is already clamped on Geralt’s leg, steadying and intent and cautious all at once. “Geralt, what the fuck happened? Tell me what happened.”
Roach snorts and huffs, eyes wild, agitated by the dead weight in her saddle and the tension in the air. Geralt lists to the side and Ciri’s heart leaps up into her throat, but Jaskier catches him before he can fall, grunting as he drags Geralt off of Roach, looping his arm over his own shoulders, an arm fastening tight around his waist. Ciri ducks beneath Geralt’s free arm to take some of his weight and tries not to think about how fiercely he’s shaking against her.
He’s terribly cold. She tries not to think about that either.
Geralt groans as his feet hit the ground, attempting and mostly failing to stumble along as they drag him further into the camp, close to the fire. “Geralt,” Jaskier says again, sharp and demanding even as his voice strains. “Fill us in.”
“Poisoned,” Geralt gets out, the word slurred but audible, and Jaskier curses under his breath.
“Okay, princess, let’s get him sitting down,” he instructs as soon as they’re far enough into the clearing to be considered safe. It’s a cumbersome dance they perform, juggling Geralt’s dead weight between them as they attempt to lower him without dropping him outright, and Geralt isn’t much help— he’s weak and trembling beneath their hands, more willing to collapse than try to hold himself up.
Awkwardly, they finally get him settled on the forest floor, mostly upright even as Ciri keeps herself tucked close to his side in an attempt to keep him from listing too terribly. Jaskier steps back as soon as Geralt’s more or less stable. “Hold on,” he says, and hurries to grab something from Roach’s saddle bags.
He returns with Geralt’s personal pack in his hands, the one that contains his potions and holds all his essential supplies and apparently only escapes close guard when its owner is entirely incapacitated. Jaskier holds it like he knows what to do with it, which is comforting considering the fact that Ciri has never been allowed to touch the damn thing and doesn’t plan on fucking around with it for the first time today.
Jaskier, though, luckily, seems to have fucked around with it enough times in the past to know what he’s doing. He can even unfasten the lock with one hand.
He sits down in front of them with the pack in his lap and immediately starts sorting through its contents, deft fingers quick and sure as he searches for what he’s looking for. He pulls a vial without looking at the label, handing it off to Ciri before he pulls another two vials free and throws the pack aside.
Ciri’s own scarce knowledge of potions is limited, and she doesn’t recognize the vials on sight.
Jaskier doesn’t seem to have that problem.
Ciri wonders how long ago he learned the ins and outs of a witcher’s traveling kit, and how many times he’s had to put that knowledge to use in the months, years, decades that have passed since.
“Okay, right. Right, this should be everything,” he says, half to himself as he glances over what he’s collected, like he’s talking himself through the process, and then the vial in Ciri’s hand gains a partner and he’s uncorking the last vial with his teeth, his free hand already buried in Geralt’s hair. He has his fingers thoroughly tangled in the dirty white strands, like he’s not planning on removing them anytime soon nor without a considerable fight from both involved parties, and for an instant, Ciri doesn’t understand why.
But then Geralt registers the contact and damn near bucks in a drunken, stilted attempt to escape it, a stallion trapped in a briar, and Jaskier’s hold suddenly makes intense, intimately relevant sense. Ciri gets it.
A moment later Ciri just barely dodges a blow to the head in the midst of the commotion and then she really gets it.
Geralt can be dangerous as fuck when he’s not lucid. Jaskier, as always, seems to expect it, and prepares for it in turn.
Gods, Ciri’s so fucking thankful for him in moments like this.
“Easy,” Jaskier says, voice strained with the effort of keeping the witcher still, his mouth a thin, hard line, concerned but braced. He gets a good grip on Geralt’s head before he presses the vial to Geralt’s lips and tips the contents into his mouth, refusing to relent even as Geralt chokes and sputters, fighting against Jaskier’s hands. “Hey, hey, easy, you’re fine,” he says, remaining unyielding even as he forces him to settle. “It’s just me. I’m not that intimidating and we both know it, so you can calm the theatrics. Now fucking swallow.”
As soon as Geralt finally gives in and swallows, Jaskier has the first vial thrown aside and the second one in his hand before Ciri can blink.
He repeats the process with the same level of grace and sheer elbow grease, and by the time he’s ready for the last potion, Ciri’s already uncorked it herself, catching on to the routine. “Thanks, love,” he says as he takes it, sparing her a quick, hurried smile, and then he’s focused on Geralt once again.
Geralt already looks better, some of the color returning to his face even if he’s still shaking a bit as Jaskier eases the contents of the last vial past his lips. He finally stopped struggling somewhere between the second and the third potion, which was blessing enough, but actually seeing his improved condition is what releases some of the tension currently bunched around Ciri’s lungs.
She doesn’t think she’s gotten a full breath in since the instant she first saw him. Having air again is nice.
“That was the last one,” Jaskier promises, tossing the last empty vial side as Geralt coughs. He doesn’t remove his hand from the back of his head, although the touch has already gone from restraining to steadying. “Sorry, but you know I had to. I’ve spent far too much time teaching you manners just to have you die on us now. That would simply be rude of you.”
From where Ciri’s still pressed up against Geralt’s side, she can feel his breathing begin to even out, the stuttering expansion and collapse of his ribs slowly transitioning to an easier rhythm to maintain. He’s spent, she can tell —the way he’s yet to shove either of them off of him is enough of an indication of that— but he’s coming back to himself.
“Thanks,” he says, hoarse through a thick throat.
His head tips back into Jaskier’s waiting palm as he works to catch his breath.
Jaskier doesn’t seem surprised, as if he’d been expecting this part, too. He just shifts to brace his arm better against the added weight and steadies Geralt like he’s done it a thousand times before.
He probably has, knowing these two.
***
Later that evening, after Geralt is fully recovered, Jaskier bullies him into letting him wash his hair.
It’s a sort of required duty, Ciri supposes, both an apology for messing it up earlier and a pointed message about Geralt’s apparently lacking hygiene after finishing the contract. They do it after supper, using river water and Jaskier’s soaps, and the entire camp stinks of lavender for far too long to be considered strictly reasonable.
And yet, Ciri doesn’t mind the smell. Considering how Jaskier always reeks of it and the fact that Geralt commonly borrows Jaskier’s products when his own simple, militaristic supplies aren’t enough for what he needs, lavender is a common scent around the three of them.
To her, it’s beginning to smell what home feels like. It doesn’t erase the familiarity of Cintra, an addition rather than a replacement, but it’s still a comfort.
Once again, Geralt and Jaskier’s sense of intimacy has increased with this most recent brush with death. Geralt sits half reclined on the dry silt of the river bed, his head tipped back and throat exposed as Jaskier washes and rinses and keeps up an easy, chattering dialogue about nothing of importance, and Geralt is about as close to relaxed as she’s even seen him.
Their bed rolls have been growing closer and closer to each other as the weather grows colder. She can sometimes hear them talking quietly late at night, when they think she’s already asleep— their voices are always held far too low for her to make out what they’re saying, but she just finds comfort in the fact that they’re growing comfortable with each other again.
She’d never seen their friendship in its prime, but she thinks what they have now is becoming similar to what they had then.
Jaskier has started singing when it’s just the three of them now, writing new songs or practicing old ones or just filling in the quiet. He hadn’t done that much before.
That alone feels like a significant sign of improvement.
***
Jaskier falls sick a few weeks later.
It’s bad. His fever rages for days, his skin blooming with a constant, furious heat that refuses to abate. They lose him to bouts of delirium and regain him in shattered, scattered moments of clarity that only exist to prove how badly he’s hurting and how fiercely he’s attempting to hide it. He trembles constantly and Ciri can never tell if it’s from the chills or the pain. Fever dreams steal him away on the rare occasions he manages to find rest.
The fever lasts for four terribly long days before it finally, finally breaks.
Geralt doesn’t sleep once.
Ciri helps where she can, catches rest when Geralt forces her to, spends hours gathering supplies for tinctures and boiling water and washing sick-dirtied sheets, but Geralt doesn’t leave Jaskier’s bedside.
He guards constantly, as if this cursed illness won’t have the nerve to creep in any further as long as he’s there to fend it off on Jaskier’s behalf. He coaxes Jaskier into drinking water and broth —even in the worst parts, where Ciri herself can barely get through to him— with the sort of practiced expertise that suggests he’s done this far too many times before. When Jaskier falls to nightmares or confusion or sheer fevered misery, he’s the one who can get him to settle.
Ciri has never seen him more tense.
When Jaskier’s fever breaks, both of them sleep for thirteen hours straight, exhausted and slumped together in their rented bed with limbs thrown over one another and all sense of awkwardness entirely forgotten.
Ciri gets them breakfast in the morning and conveniently forgets to call them out on the night before. Some things are better left unsaid.
***
Ciri gets kidnapped in the following month and, in the scattered moments of lucidity her captors allow her, she can’t help but muse that this whole experience feels a bit like a mildly demented growth milestone. Jaskier and Geralt have both gotten snatched so many times in the past, her turn was bound to come around eventually. In a terrible yet slightly amusing sense, she feels a bit more grown-up now. Who needs a first kiss when you have abduction? Not her.
Fuck, they’ve got her drugged up good.
She wonders if the ceiling is spinning this much to anyone else.
She’s fairly sure her captors have heard about at least a few of her abilities, because they don’t take any chances in allowing her to escape— they keep her steadily dosed with strong, syrupy tinctures she doesn’t really want to think about, and in the meantime, they leave her gagged. The day she spends in their control passes in a stuttering series of brief lapses of consciousness followed by long gaps in her memory, and she barely lucid enough to register the fact that she’s been kidnapped before Jaskier and Geralt show up to rescue her.
(They’re so kind for that, really. Gods, she loves them.)
They crash in like angels of death, slashing and stabbing and essentially kicking the collective ass of her captors, and she’s entirely too far gone to really appreciate the grace of their fighting but she watches anyway because she’s still stuck and drugged and a bit too out of it to really do anything else other than sit there and witness the world spin, and that’s when she finally, finally, finally realizes.
She sits there in the chair she’s been tied to for the past nineteen hours, her hands bound behind her back and a cloth gag weighing heavily on her tongue, and for the first time, she registers how they work together. Geralt covers Jaskier’s back in the same way Jaskier covers Geralt’s. Their fighting styles are wildly different but complementary. They swing and duck in synchrony, like they’re both part of some terribly long and incredibly detailed choreographed dance, moving in loose tandem like they’ve been doing it all their lives.
That, and they watch each other.
It’s a constant, subconscious thing. Geralt always has a portion of his focus held on Jaskier, assuring he’s safe and alive and whole, and Jaskier’s attention flickers from Geralt to the fight to the fighting to Geralt again, consistently, consciously, always checking on him, always making sure he’s okay. The two of them are always intimately aware of each other’s position, of their wellbeing, of their presence.
Each of them moves like the other is the center of their universe. Constant orbits rotating in parallel loops, gravity drawing them back in within the same instant in which they grow too far apart, intensely connected on a level that can only be considered astronomical, starbound, divine.
It’s so clearly, obnoxiously natural that Ciri would call it instinct if she didn’t know better.
Because people don’t just fit together like that, not on their own. Even the best friendships have sharp, conflicting corners, and despite the rough patches in Jaskier and Geralt’s relationship, they match in a way that transcends such trivial matters. People don’t care about one another in such an intimate, practiced, fucking familiar way without a violent, tragic reason.
They have a reason.
She chokes on a desperate, slightly hysterical laugh around the gag, stunned and incredulous and only a little furious with herself for not putting it together sooner. Now that she sees it, she sees it fucking everywhere— in every interaction she’s witnessed between them, in every instant of awkwardness, in every moment of remembered fondness that took so long to settle back in. She has no idea how she missed it until now.
Oh dear gods, they’re fucking in love with each other, she thinks, and then one of her captors is flung across the room and his arm catches the edge of her chair just enough to take her down with him and she’s out the instant her head cracks against the floor.
***
After she wakes up in a safehouse, after the drugs have worn off, after Yennefer has healed her (mostly, anyway), after Jaskier gets his fill of revolving between apologizing to her and chastising her and fussing over her, after Geralt gradually seems to untense, after she finally manages to convince both of them to go and get some rest themselves, she at last gets Yennefer alone.
They sit in the room she’s spent the past few days recovering in, Ciri propped up in bed and Yennefer in the chair beside it, cups of tea in their hands. Just faintly, Ciri can hear Jaskier and Geralt down the hall, speaking quietly. Jaskier’s soft laugh follows the low murmur of Geralt’s voice.
And damn, she’s still so close to certain but she has to know for sure.
“I have a question,” she says.
Yennefer looks up expectantly.
Ciri holds her cup of tea close to her, hands wrapped tight around the warm ceramic, hesitating a bit, gathering strength from the heat. She still feels quite weak after everything she’s gone through —apparently non-consensual abduction and drugging really takes it out of someone, what a surprise— but this question has been burning at the forefront of her mind for days, and she still hasn’t quite gathered the courage to ask Jaskier and Geralt themselves about it. That’s a conversation for another time.
“Do they have a history?” Ciri finally asks. “The two of them?”
Yennefer just sighs, weary, long-suffering, but not surprised.
“Oh, child,” she says, and takes a long sip of her tea. “They’re dumbasses who have been in love for two decades and still neither of them have yet to catch on. History is far too simple a word.”
She takes another sip, and then invites Ciri to join the betting pool she’s had going with the other witchers for years. Vesemir thinks the two of them will figure it out sometime next decade, Coën’s hoping for the next five years, Lambert’s sure one of them will die first, and Yennefer says she just know for a fact that they’re fucking oblivious and always will be.
The winner gets a week’s worth of ale from all other participants.
Ciri says yes, and for the second time in this hellish week, feels as though she’s just hit a bit of a growth milestone.
It’s nice to be included. It feels a bit like being a part of a club, or a secret society, or a family, if she's being just a little generous with herself.
Yennefer blows the steam from her tea and it smells like lavender.
***
In the end, Ciri puts her bet in for the next six months. She sees them together, sees how they’re settling back into one another’s presence— she’s certain it’s just a matter of time.
(She wins.)
(Geralt and Jaskier don’t let her drink all of the ale, but she doesn’t mind, not really.)
(The two of them are more content now than she’s ever seen them.)
(That feels like reward enough.)