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The contract is not very specific about the sort of monster they want Geralt taking care of: it’s a terse thing, just In need of a monster slayer for the abandoned church up north. Paying 150 orens, bring proof of kill to Ineas Fyorid. The parchment is cheap, the edges welled up and ink smudged; the best indication that whatever it is, it has been going on for a while.
“Hm.” Geralt squints at it and searches the notice board again. It is just as devoid of other contracts as it had been the last three times he had done the same thing. Bummer.
The last couple of weeks have been hard; a combination of bad luck, a dry summer, and a little political unrest in this corner of Temeria has made people stingy with pay and prices high for a Witcher passing through. He cannot be picky, truly; 150 orens go a long way towards replenishing sorely needed supplies.
“Anything good?” Jaskier asks, still with a spring to his step after haggling for room and board in the local inn. It is, presumably, a good sign.
“Hm,” Geralt says and yanks the notice from the board.
“I take it there is at least something?”
Geralt grunts again and turns towards the inn to ask where he can find one Ineas Fyorid.
“Well,” Jaskier says, quickly catching up with Geralt, “maybe I will get a decent new song out of it. I don’t think the world is quite ready for another extraordinary epic about endregas, or a daring ditty about drowners.”
Geralt ignores him, but that has never bothered Jaskier in the slightest. This holds now, too, and the bard keeps chuckling at his own play on words all the way back to the tavern.
“You will stay at the inn,” Geralt declares after he has ushered Jaskier out of the contract poster’s house.
Jaskier looks at him incredulously for a moment, but the Witcher has his arms crossed and a mulish expression on his face.
“Psh,” he says when it becomes clear his friend is not jesting and crosses his own arms right back, “and miss out on an exciting adventure? This, my dear, could be my next smash hit! The shoe-in for first place at all of next year’s bardic competitions!”
Geralt frowns. “You can’t know that.”
“Be that as may; if I don’t come along, I will have to rely on your testimony, and with –“ he lowers his voice in a very decent impression of Geralt’s growl, if he says so himself “– It attacked. I fought back. I killed it, I definitely won’t be able to craft a masterpiece. I might get laughed off the stage! And we can’t have that – who will pay for my next doublet if I don’t place? Look at this, Geralt, it’s already fraying!”
Geralt’s nostrils flare, but his voice is carefully even when he says, “Maybe if you stayed back more, your clothes wouldn’t be worn through after a handful of seasons.”
Jaskier gasps as dramatically as this suggestion deserves. “And be caught in last year’s fashion? My dear, not even you would be so cruel as to make me suffer that!”
Geralt sighs, the deep and heavy kind that announces his defeat. “On your head it be,” he mutters, but he keeps his stride to a length that Jaskier can keep up with easily as he heads out of town.
The church is a good half hour’s walk away from the town; maybe a little less at Geralt’s usual pace, but with the bard intent on following him, the least he can do is make sure he is not eaten by peckish monsters on the way. With his chattering, it is only a matter of time until he attracts unwanted attention, but most predators know better than to trifle with a Witcher.
“Such a picturesque vista,” the bard sighs as the trees grow denser the further into the woods they get. It is very green by now, only the path a smudge of brown. Even the bark of the trees is a washed-out green-ish grey in all the places it is not covered moss. “By Freya, I could sit here and let the atmosphere just … do my composing for me!”
Geralt shushes him, straining his ears. It has gotten almost unnaturally silent, but of course only Geralt notices. This is partially due to his superior perception, but mostly because Geralt is not so in love with his own voice that he is constantly talking.
To be fair, Jaskier has a nice voice and Geralt likes it well-enough most of the time; right now, though, his desire to remain alive outweighs the reassurance Jaskier’s chattering provides.
Jaskier does obediently fall silent, only his fingers tapping an almost inaudible rhythm into his hip. He also does the first sensible thing of his own volition all day by staying far enough back from Geralt to be out of reach of his sword should the need for violence arise.
One hand on his medallion, Geralt carefully opens his senses. It truly is silent; far more so than is normal for such a dense forest. There should be small rodents pattering around, scavengers attracted by the smell of carrion and decay that emanates from further ahead. There is nothing, though, only Geralt and Jaskier’s heartbeat, and a growing unease permeating the air around the latter.
“Clear… for now,” Geralt allows gruffly, and makes sure he keeps his bard in his periphery at all times.
The church is the sort of building that Jaskier could spend days exploring every nook and cranny of, that could fuel his muse over weeks of composing. It has fallen in disrepair, now, but that does not detract from the raw beauty of it.
It seems to be grown out of the very forest floor – or maybe reclaimed by the forest is a more apt description; ivy and clematis and roses and other flowering vines he does not have names for cover the crumbling grey stone, a colourful antithesis to the purely green surroundings. Even the forest itself seems to recognise this, the treeline a respectable distance away.
Once upon a time, it must have been magnificent with arching windows of stained glass and decorations of gold, vaulting ceilings and a tall bell tower. Now, it resembles nothing so much as a carcass of a religion long forgotten fading back into nature, the tower a broken-off tooth and the windows gaping, only fragments of their beautiful artwork remaining attached.
Jaskier could weep with the dilapidated splendour of it.
“Stay behind me,” Geralt warns, because he has absolutely no appreciation for the fine arts. His face is severe in its frown, chiselled from marble, and he would not be out of place as a statue of a triumphant king out front of the building.
The beginnings of a song settle in Jaskier’s mind, and even if the mysterious monster they are hunting turns out to be nothing but a pack of lonesome, lost wolves, this trip already was well worth it.
Geralt draws his sword as he carefully walks up to the hole in the wall that must have once been the entrance. Only the hinges remain now, barely recognisable under all the rust, the wood long since rotted away. The interior, cavernous and lit by stray sunbeams, seems about as dilapidated as the outsides suggested, though a lot less green.
He considers making his bard stay behind, but even if that was a fight he would win quickly – which he doubts – it is uncertain whether the outside with its unnatural stillness would be any safer. So, fighting distracted it is.
At least Jaskier is quiet for once, a faraway look in his eyes that suggests he is getting started with his composing already. It is no surprise that he would look at a building on the edge of structural soundness and see something worth memorialising; he has been doing the same to Geralt, after all.
With a sigh, Geralt ventures into the building, his free hand wrapped around his medallion as he peers around. Fyorid had been utterly unhelpful, unable to provide more information than that already on the notice. Usually, the most likely explanation for the disappearances of a dozen or so young adults is wraiths, though they don’t tend to haunt church buildings. Graveyards? Yes. But there are no burial grounds anywhere in a two mile radius, Geralt was assured, so there should be no dead to give rise to wraiths at all.
The smell of decay inside the church begs to differ, of course, even before Geralt’s medallion starts vibrating and the telltale swoosh of forming wraiths fills the air.
Geralt sighs again, jerks his head to make Jaskier stay back, and gives himself over to the fight.
Geralt in a fight is distilled magnificence.
Of course, Geralt is almost always magnificent – moon-white hair and marble-pale skin, a tantalising glimpse at a life full of stories in the form of scars littering his body, lips and tongue and body that are scorchingly hot to the touch for all that he looks unapproachable and cold.
Jaskier could write whole odes to his person. Has done so, matter of fact, but that does not diminish the urge to compose more.
But Geralt in a fight, whirling impossibly fast, his silver blade nothing more than a blur? That is breathtakingly stunning, and not something Jaskier gets to see often enough. So he stands there, pressed back against the wall, transfixed and more than a little horny as he watches the man he loves dance through his opponents like it’s a ball.
It is that which makes him miss the girl at first, standing off to the side deeper in the church. She is almost as pale as Geralt and seems to glow, though Jaskier knows it is only the sunbeam catching in the pale strands of her hair and her beautiful, delicate white dress. He has seen it happen to Geralt often enough, that hint at a halo that Geralt would scoff at.
She looks… not as scared as Jaskier expects, a soft smile on her face as she cocks her head and regards him. He sees her mouth move, but whatever she says is lost to the distance between them, the swish of Geralt’s silver sword in the air.
Her mouth moves again, and Jaskier burns with the curiosity. ‘Stay behind me,’ Geralt had said, but Geralt is busy and there is a young woman in here with them. It is not even a question, truly.
Jaskier edges his way around the fight carefully, and the girl’s smile widens in… relief? It must be relief; it looks a little like satisfaction, but that does not make any sense, so it must be relief.
She is standing at the edge of a staircase, Jaskier realises as he comes closer, invisible from the entryway but spiralling down in dizzying curls, and Jaskier suddenly needs to know where it leads to.
The girl’s mouth moves again, and this time, he is close enough to make out the words.
“Come with me,” she says in a gentle voice, hand reaching for him, beckoning him closer.
And why not? The spiral staircase is beautiful, stained glass stretching all the way to the bottom, colourful flecks of light dancing over the stairs. It is a glimpse at what the church must have been like, years or maybe decades ago, and Jaskier wants more.
There is a niggling voice at the back of his head that tries to dissuade him, but it is weak, and there is really no reason not to follow the girl, so he disregards it without another thought.
“Come with me,” she repeats, a promise, a plea – salvation.
And Jaskier comes with her.
Geralt has slain four of the wraiths and is fighting the remaining two when he becomes aware of movement in his periphery. Jaskier. Jaskier, who has someone managed to get up to one of the balconies lining the side of the church and is now walking towards the ledge where the banister has rotted away, steps unhurried and unconcerned. But the worst thing – as if this whole scene was not a nightmare in its own right – is his eyes: though trained straight ahead of him, they are clearly unfocused, empty. Bewitched?
The balcony is not that far up, barely even fifteen feet. Nothing, for a Witcher. But Jaskier is not a Witcher – Jaskier is human, and Geralt has no idea what a fifteen foot drop would do to him. Humans are fragile; a drop from that height might well kill him.
Fear seizes Geralt’s entire body, sudden and vicious, as his mind’s eye completes the scene playing out in front of him: Jaskier taking that last step over the ledge, body slack as he falls, hitting the ground in a crumpled heap and not getting up again.
The inattention costs Geralt, and he pays for it with armour piercing cuts to his arm, his torso. He is unsure if he bleeds; he might, but Jaskier is still walking, up there, and it overrides anything his own body is trying to tell him.
He fights like a man possessed, even though there is no way he will make it. Another few seconds, at most, and Jaskier will be falling. There simply is no time for Geralt to finish this fight and get up there, to yank Jaskier back.
The only thing Geralt can hope for is to be there to catch him, and for that, the wraiths need to die – for good, this time.
He feints left, stabs one wraith through the heart and slashes the other across its ghostly glowing chest. It howls, makes one desperate lunge at Geralt, but Geralt sidesteps easily, turns, and beheads it.
The wraith’s form dissipates and does not reform.
On the other side of the church, Jaskier tips forward.
Jaskier comes to to feeling like he is flying.
He has a split second of carefree giddiness at soaring through the air, a weightless rush of wind, before Geralt’s anguished voice tears through him.
“Jaskier!”
Reality slams back into him like being thrown into a field of nettles – following that pale young woman up the stairs, convinced he was going down the most mesmerising spiral staircase in existence, believing he was walking down a corridor dancing with light when he was really walking off a ledge.
What was he thinking?
He does not have time for terror to seize him. He is falling face down, lost precious moments he might have used to turn his fall for his legs to absorb his momentum to coming out of this daze the girl put him in. The ground is rushing up, and he knows – knows – that he is about to die.
He is sorry it ends like this, he truly is. He cannot even remember if he told Geralt he loved him, this morning. It seemed like they would have all the time in the world for Jaskier to tell him, except – well, it turns out they do not.
“I’m sorry, Geralt. I love you,” Jaskier tries to say, but he is out of time, and then the impact comes and everything goes black.
Jaskier does not fall in slow motion. Jaskier falls like a sack of grain – slowly at first and picking up speed as he rushes towards the floor.
“Jaskier!” The scream tears out of Geralt’s throat, almost painful except not, because true pain is watching Jaskier fall and knowing Geralt will not get there in time.
A high, tinkling laugh bounces along the walls, mocking and cruel, and it gives Geralt a bit of extra speed that is not enough but better.
He thought they would have time.
Time.
He gathers what little Chaos he has, all the desperation and anguish and bone-shaking terror inside him, and fuels it into the strongest Heliotrope he has ever cast. Jaskier’s rapid descent slows, enough that Geralt can take in his wide eyes, the desperate flail of his limbs. It might still not be enough, but that is not something Geralt can allow himself to consider, not now, and so instead he hurls himself forward, a last-ditch effort to make his nightmares stay inside his dreams, to not watch another person he loves die.
Did he even tell Jaskier he loved him, recently?
The impact hurts.
He manages to secure Jaskier’s upper body and head against his own chest, praying fervently that the crunch of bones is not something vital. That it was not his neck, after all, or his spine. It drives the air from both of their lungs, and for long moments there is nothing but the sound of Geralt sliding over the chapel door, through dust and pebbled stones and splinters of woods.
And then, just as he is about to give up hope, comes a heaving gasp.
Jaskier is alive.
The second time Jaskier comes to, he has a moment of surprise without knowing why.
He remembers at about the same time as the pain sets in: a deep ache in his ribs that makes every breath agony, a sharp, throbbing pain in his arm that promises nothing good, and a headache pounding a steady drum to the beat of his heart.
But he is breathing, and his heart is beating, and that is certainly more than he expected after his unwilling nose-dive into stone.
Geralt is still fighting, from the sound of it, – or fighting again – and it is with great effort that Jaskier turns his head into the direction and pries his eyes open.
The first thing he notices is the expression on Geralt’s face: a snarl, more ferocious than Jaskier has ever seen, bordering on feral. Geralt’s movements are choppy, too; economical and vicious.
It looks nothing like a dance, this time. This is Geralt out for blood, Geralt who has run out of forgiveness and compassion, Geralt on the verge of madness. It looks nothing like a dance, but it is still magnificent.
His opponent – Jaskier knows it must be the creature that lured him to his almost-death mainly from how Geralt is attacking it. It looks nothing like the girl in his memory, resembles a girl only vaguely if he squints. Its body is emaciated, ribs cracked open to reveal a rotten black heart, spindly arms wreathed in a blue glow that promises nothing good as it dances on legs that appear to be missing a few bones.
It is clearly strong, but even half-mad with his rage, it is no match for Geralt. Its scream, when Geralt plunges his silver sword through its heart, is a horrendous noise threatening to shatter glass. It is the sweetest noise Jaskier has heard in a while.
Not as sweet as Geralt, stumbling over to Jaskier with relief written into every line of his body, sinking to his knees beside Jaskier and whispering, “Jaskier,” a far cry from the anguished scream only a few minutes earlier.
There are tears gathering at the Witcher’s eyes, and Jaskier tries to lift his arm to brush them away but has to give up with a hiss. Yes, that one is definitely broken. Fuck.
“I’m alive,” he replies, voice wheezing – his ribs fucking hurt, okay? – “You saved me.”
Jaskier does not remember that – is glad for it, from the way his whole body hurts – but he knows it to be true. If not for Geralt, he would be dead.
“I thought I lost you,” Geralt says, voice hoarse. “You were falling – Jaskier, I thought you were dead.”
The tears drip down onto Jaskier’s neck, rolling off wetly, almost tickling. He lets them. They are a reminder that he is, in fact, not dead.
“I’m not,” he tells Geralt. “You didn’t lose me.”
“Jaskier,” Geralt says again, a prayer in that single word. “Jaskier.”
Jaskier wishes he could reach out to pull Geralt down to him, to kiss the name from his lips until the Witcher stops looking ready to fray apart at the seams. Since he cannot, he has to make do with pursing his lips, smacking them when Geralt does not immediately comply.
That does the trick, and the kiss Geralt bestows upon him is so soft and gentle that even through his aches, Jaskier’s heart threatens to melt out of his chest.
It is, objectively speaking, not a good kiss. The angle is terrible and the corpse of Jaskier’s would-be-murderer stinks behind him and the air is full of stirred-up dust, but he is kissing Jaskier, and Jaskier is not dead.
Jaskier is not dead.
He came close, but he is alive, and maybe, any moment now, Geralt will be able to believe it and forget those horrendous moments of thinking he had lost him, forget the taste of fear and adrenaline and disbelieving terror at the back of his throat.
Jaskier shifts underneath him, gasping into Geralt’s mouth in a decidedly not-fun way almost immediately. Geralt jerks himself away, eyes frantically travelling over Jaskier’s form. Has he hurt him further?
Jaskier’s smile has a pained edge. “Just – jostled my arm. Pretty sure that’s broken.”
“I’m sorry,” Geralt manages to say through the guilt threatening to choke him. If he had been more careful –
“Don’t be silly,” Jaskier says, and Geralt can feel the phantom slap that would ordinarily accompany that. “If not for you, I’d have been bard-paste, without a doubt, so please don’t apologise for saving my life. A broken arm is nothing.” His face falls. “Though that does mean I won’t be able to play for weeks.”
“We’ll find a healer,” Geralt promises, “and you’re good enough to perform with only your voice, as soon as your ribs are healed. Wearing that arm in a sling might even work in your favour.”
“Darling,” Jaskier says with a ridiculous grin that doesn’t quite cover his winces of pain as he laboriously sits up, “was that a genuine compliment?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Geralt says gruffly, but he is smiling, too, as he goes to collect proof of kill.
Jaskier is alive, and this contract will pay them well, and things will be alright. Geralt will make sure, to the best of ability, that things will be alright.