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Jaskier stares at the carcass in disbelief. “I didn’t realize that you could kill those. I always heard that they just split into two like some-” he waves his hands for a moment “-I don’t know, something that splits into two.”
“Anything can be killed, Jaskier. You just have to know how to do it,” Geralt growls.
And yeah, that makes sense when he thinks about it for a minute. Geralt wouldn’t just go looking for something to fight if he knew he couldn’t beat it. He eventually nods dumbly, still staring at the corpse.
“If you’re done mourning its passing, do you mind helping me?” Geralt grumbles.
Jaskier blinks, still a bit stunned at the sheer size of the creature, and turns towards Geralt. “Um, yeah, what, what do you need?”
Upon inspection, Jaskier realizes the stupidity of his question, though he’s not sure that he has any idea how to help. “That’s a large — fang is it? — that’s sticking out of your leg,” he observes helpfully.
“So do you mind?” Geralt growls, his increasing irritation quite clear now.
“Coming, coming,” Jaskier chirps, hurrying over. “How do I…”
“Push it through,” Geralt instructs.
Jaskier looks at the pincer. It’s about as big around as his wrist and it’s buried in the back of Geralt’s thigh. How he’s up and walking about is mystifying.
“Can I not just pull it out?” he asks hesitantly.
“No, there are barbs. If you pull it out, it’ll rip out half the flesh on the back of my leg. Pushing it through will do less damage.”
Jaskier nods. “Oh, yeah, makes sense. Okay, um…” He trails off as he tries to figure out how he wants to grab the thing without shredding his hand in the process but also so that he has enough leverage to do this.
“Here,” Geralt grumbles, the word rumbling in his chest. He holds out his leather riding gloves and Jaskier takes them. They’re a little large but then Geralt is a little larger than most men so it’s not unexpected.
He grabs the pincer and experimentally moves his hand on it to check that he’s not going to slice a finger off in the process. Geralt growls low and menacing, and Jaskier realizes stupidly that of course that’s going to hurt, probably quite a bit.
“Sorry, sorry. I think I’m ready,” he says.
Geralt is leaning against a large tree and Jaskier braces himself, digging the heels of his fancy shoes into the forest floor for leverage. Then, with both hands, he shoves.
Geralt screams, a long agonizing animal noise and Jaskier stops. He’s heard Geralt in pain many times before, but this is different.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, only after realizing the absolute stupidity of the question.
“It’s still releasing an acid venom. Every time you move it is injects more,” Geralt explains between panted breaths. “Just get it over with.”
Jaskier takes a deep breath to steel himself and tries again. Every shove moves the pincer deeper and deeper into Geralt’s leg. Through the hard keratinous pincers, Jaskier can feel the way his muscles are ripped with each push. Blood squelches wetly as Jaskier works the pincer deeper and deeper, and Jaskier feels like he might throw up. Finally, there’s a give and Jaskier hears Geralt’s pants rip as the pincer tears through.
After all his hard work, though he knows Geralt has it much worse, Jaskier takes a moment to be sick on the forest floor. “Sorry, I think it’s through now, though.”
Geralt is sweating, pale, and gripping the tree as though he might fall down at any moment. “Not far enough. Have to be able to grab it,” he grits out.
“Right,” Jaskier says, his brow furrowed in determination. He grabs the damn thing once more and shoves as hard as he can. There’s much less resistance this time and it moves rather substantially, definitely more than enough to get a grip on the opposite side. Before he can work himself up about it, Jaskier readjusts and grabs the other side, pulling it clean through Geralt’s leg with one swift pull. Geralt promptly falls to the forest floor and vomits something that looks like black ichor.
After a moment, Jaskier realizes with horror that he’s still standing there holding the pincer and he drops it instantly, the end of it still spurting venom. Geralt takes no notice as he lays still retching on the forest floor.
“Geralt, how can I help?” Jaskier asks.
Geralt mumbles something but Jaskier can’t make it out in the short time between the bouts of convulsive vomiting.
“Alright, then. I guess we need to bind up your leg with something,” Jaskier says aloud. He strips off the gloves which are starting to smoke a little as the acid from the pincer begins to eat through them. He goes to Roach and rifles through one of the saddlebags for a spare undershirt that he can cut into strips. He hurries back over to Geralt and stares at the oozing mess that is Geralt’s leg while trying to come up with a plan of action.
“Rinse it,” Geralt rasps.
There’s a water skin hanging from Roach’s saddle and Jaskier retrieves it. He starts to pour water over the exit wound, but is startled when Geralt tells him to “stop.”
“Am I doing it wrong? I haven’t exactly washed a lot of venomous centipede bites,” Jaskier admits.
Geralt breathes mechanically, struggling to suppress the seemingly endless vomiting. “Put the mouthpiece-” he pauses to breathe and swallow, “-put it in the hole.”
“The hole in your leg?” Jaskier asks in horror. It sounds excruciating, which is admittedly not much different than the rest of this situation, but taking something out of someone’s leg is much different than putting something into someone’s leg.
Geralt nods. “Flush out the venom.”
Right, that makes sense. Jaskier’s hands shake and he grips the waterskin a little tighter, pressing the brass spout into Geralt’s leg. Geralt instantly retches again, though nothing more comes up. Jaskier squeezes the waterskin and for a moment nothing happens, until suddenly the pressure forces dark red water out the other side of Geralt’s leg.
Jaskier can smell the burnt flesh and blood and it’s enough that he dry heaves. He can only imagine that pain that Geralt must be in, the venom burning his leg up from the inside out. That thought motivates him to focus more fully on the task at hand despite the utter revulsion that he feels.
Soon, though, the water skin is empty and there’s no immediate source of clean water with which to refill it. He sets the skin aside and uses some of the sacrificed shirt to wipe the wound as clean as he can get it before wrapping and securing the rest of the makeshift bandage.
Jaskier knows that Geralt’s mutations will heal him soon enough, regardless of what a poor job he’s done. In the meantime, Jaskier secures Roach and lays out a bedroll for Geralt. Geralt helps Jaskier situate him and then falls into an uneasy sleep as his body processes out the venom and heals his leg. Jaskier on the other hand, sits and strums listlessly on his lute.
Mere months ago, Jaskier was a noble, albeit a noble slumming around the continent and playing in taverns, but nonetheless he was high society, an educated man, a scholar even. Now he finds himself cooking wood rats on spits in the forest, chasing dangerous creatures that he was very happy not knowing about, and performing field surgery on a particularly ill-tempered witcher. Most would say that he’s down in society, just a bit. Jaskier’s not sure if they’re right, wrong, or a bit of both. What he can say is that life is much bigger and scarier than he ever realized. There’s certainly more to it than fucking every willing person he comes across, although that one is still pretty important, he thinks.
At any rate, tonight’s rations are going to be a lovely dish of disappointment with a side of sadness unless he magically develops the ability to hunt within the next few hours. He knows that he’ll be fine, lord knows he’s learned enough about hunger on the road with Geralt. And Geralt will be fine too. Trivial things like “what a person needs to survive” seem not to mean as much when you’re a witcher.
When the sun finally goes down, Jaskier packs away his lute. There’s no fire to warm him , much less to play by, so instead he covers himself with a spare blanket from Roach and beds down. This morning Jaskier felt a bit like a kid — galavanting about the countryside on various misadventures but with no real consequences unless he should bed the wrong person’s wife (or husband) — but tonight there’s blood under his nails that he can’t seem to pick out and the smell of blood and ichor is strong. Tonight, he feels the weight of the world, the easy way that life comes and goes despite the constant insistent clamoring for survival. Jaskier feels vulnerable, weak, and very, very mortal. And while he’ll tell anyone that it’s the chill of the night, Jaskier shivers at the thought that next time he could be the one with a venomous pincer sticking out of his leg.
Jaskier rolls over to face Geralt. His breathing has finally evened out and his unconscious cries of pain have quieted. He’s going to be fine, not that there was ever any question. Jaskier takes a deep breath and admonishes himself that he’s just being dramatic about all of this. As Geralt has told him time and again, this is the lot of witchers. But Jaskier wonders now what his lot will be. Will he suffer as Geralt does? Will he balk at such utter hardship and return to a life of leisure as a scholar in residence at Oxenfurt? Is there something else? Jaskier does not know the future, no one does, but he wishes at least that he could face his future with the same surety and confidence as Geralt does. If he learns nothing else from this mishap, it’s that he’s been letting life guide him, sending him around the ocean of existence without mooring or sails. Maybe, like Geralt, Jaskier needs to take better command of his life if he wants something out of it besides poison and pain.