Work Text:
Geralt and Jaskier were tied together with their hands behind their backs, a few hours after they met and Jaskier had felt adventure coursing through his veins, with a healthy dose of adrenaline and fear. Geralt had shouted for the elves to leave him alone, and he felt, for a moment that Geralt cared about him, and then that feeling felt fake.
He wrote a song about that moment, Geralt the hero who had made him, for a second, feel he was important, to hopefully capture the feeling in a way that felt real. He sang that song, people cheered and tossed their coins to him, and to Geralt. He made a difference, in a small way, and every time he sang it, it felt fake. A lie that people loved, that started him becoming a well-known bard, and it felt fake.
--
He traveled with that Witcher for a decade, he saw him laugh, saw him shout, saw him slay beasts and come back to camp with veins blacker than night trailing out of his eyes in a mockery of tears the witcher would never know. He's seen Geralt relax, trust in his quiet, laid-back form across the fire, and that smile, as he threw on more wood just to keep Jaskier warm, felt fake, but it also felt a little bit like love. Jaskier knew love only in the giving, but if he had to guess he'd say this is what it was meant to feel like; falling asleep next to someone and only hoping that you wake up next to them as well, praying that Geralt won't up and leave in the night so he can wake up warm, in his arms or at his side, he's not picky. If Geralt only looked at him with that smile more or woke up next to him more often than he woke up alone, then just maybe that love won't feel so fake. But either way, feeling loved in any capacity is more than he ever thought would come from the man he loved so dearly, so fake or not, he's not going to waste the feeling.
---
Geralt shouts and tears flesh from bone with his words, he drains Jaskier's blood, stops his lungs from inhaling anything worth breathing in, and leaves him feeling hollow, like he himself is fake, like the past twenty years, the best years of his life where he'd thought he felt free, felt happy, felt loved, were fake.
"I'll see you around Geralt," He said, rumbling in his chest like lightning that wanted to crack upon his ribs and burn him from the inside out stopping his words from sounding real.
---
Jaskier is in a cell, sore and throbbing from his head to the tips of his raw, burnt fingers. He'd been floating through life, for a while, and seemingly woke up from the daze and routine when he saw a difference he could make. The Sandpiper, who he had become, was real where Jaskier was not. He meant something, people saw him, thanked him, and loved him, and it was real. But Jaskier was not, he had been shut off, resting in the back recesses of the sandpiper's mind and worn as a disguise to keep his identity safe.
Then Geralt came along, and he'd said "I need you," and it felt fake.
But so what? If it all felt fake to Jaskier, if he felt like everyone who was kind was lying or waiting to reveal their truth, if he felt Geralt was counting the seconds until he could be rid of him again? So what if it all feels fake? It would be a shame for all of his life since the tender age of 18 to have gone to waste. There were good times when he felt happy. Times he can't bear to lose in favour of a real, true story of a life spent in grayscale and aching loneliness that hasn't let up even in the presence of his dearest friend and most desperate love. Maybe it's fine that it was fake so long as he can still feel it.
---
Kaer Morhen stares at him, and he feels nothing.
Once he's sure he'd have made the sun envious for how bright he'd shine standing at the gates of Kaer Morhen, Geralt beside him and leading him into his home where they would spend the winter together pressed close against the cold at night and enjoying the time they had where no worries could make it past the stone walls and defenses of the keep.
Now he feels nothing and sees nothing staring back at him when he stands in front of Geralt's family. He feels nothing when he lays shivering in his bed at night, feels nothing as everything goes to shit and the keep is riddled with grief, fear, and distrust.
He feels even less when Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri disappear to get closer, and Geralt's love is real for them, and he is forgotten in a crumbling keep that doesn't know his name and doesn't want him here. He feels just how fake the "I need you" was.