Chapter Text
Despite the hangover, Jaskier’s unconscious tendency to keep an ear out for bigoted villagers means that he notices when the men approach the strange witcher in the corner.
It’s a finely honed skill, one he wishes he could turn off now that Geralt had fucked off, never to be seen again. But twenty years of listening for whispers of butcher and witcher’s whore and monster, twenty years of learning when it’s time to skip town - it’s a hard habit to shake.
The witcher in the corner is dark haired, shorter than Geralt, and scowling. The barroom of the inn is half full of folks coming in for a midday meal, or for breakfast if, like Jaskier, they’d stayed up drinking late into the night and were only now dragging themselves out of bed. There’s a decent amount of people gathered, their voices overlapping and clanging around his skull like a mallet, so it’s only habit that makes him pick out the man’s voice that asks:
“What’s your business here, mutant?”
Mutant is another word that Jaskier’s ear is always primed for. It never preceded anything good, in his experience.
“Eating,” the witcher grunts.
Jaskier glances over at him, watching the three men crowding around the witcher’s lone table, doing their best to loom over him. No one else in the room seems interested, though, not yet.
“This is a reputable establishment. No one’s looking for trouble, and we certainly don’t need a witcher here stirring it up,” the man spits.
The witcher huffs at him.
Jaskier huffs too - no one’s looking for trouble. Sure.
“Would you fuck off?” the witcher says.
This unfortunately catches the attention of some of the other patrons who start to whisper amongst themselves - Jaskier hears the word dangerous and beastly amongst the conversations.
Well, fuck.
Look, Jaskier is really mad at Geralt. Like, wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire levels of pissed off. But that’s not this witcher’s fault. It doesn’t mean that the way people talk about witchers doesn’t still get under his skin.
“Gentlemen, is there a problem?” Jaskier says. He tries to inject the usual cheer he would into the words, but he is extremely hungover and it comes out tired and pissed off. Whoops.
He walks up the table, swinging his lute case over his back to free his hands, in case punches start swinging.
“This is none of your concern, bard,” one of the men says, barely sparing him a glance.
“You’re causing an awful lot of ruckus and my head is pounding, good sir, so it is my concern. Let’s all go our separate ways and ignore each other in peace, hm?”
“Is this your bitch, witcher?” one of the men asks. “Get him to fight all your battles for you?”
“Monster fucker,” sneers the other under his breath.
The words don’t really bother Jaskier after all these years. They rankle but Jaskier can keep a hold of his temper - if he let it get to him every time he got called those kinds of things, he’d never do anything but be upset.
“Does he leave you broken and bleeding -”
He’s not expecting the witcher to get up and punch the man who said it. There’s an audible crunch as the man’s nose breaks, and he staggers back.
“You want trouble, asshole? Let’s go,” the witcher snarls.
And then, well, it’s not like Jaskier isn’t already pissed off - might as well blow off some steam.
*
They stagger out of the inn side by side, Jaskier with bruised knuckles, and clutching a bloody nose. He doesn’t think it’s broken, at least there is that. The witcher doesn’t have a scratch on him.
“- goat fucking sons of a two copper whore -”
Right, the witcher’s angry.
“ - shit for brains but that doesn’t stop them -”
“Sir witcher,” Jaskier interjects. “I’m going to climb up the side of the building and break into my room to go get my bags, do you mind giving me a hand?”
The witcher stops in his tirade and looks at him. “What?” he barks.
“My bags. In the second story room, in the back,” Jaskier says. Ugh, the nausea of his hangover is back in full force. Probably that punch in the stomach he’d gotten. “Give me a boost so I can get my stuff.”
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“Well, I have it on good authority that people are less likely to start throwing stones if there’s a human being standing next to you. So, it’s a win-win. You don’t get stoned, I’m not left destitute in the middle of nowhere.”
“Ugh, fuck it. Fine. Be fucking quick about it, though. I’m not waiting all day.”
Jaskier is quick, letting the witcher give him a boost up until he can grab onto the window ledge and haul himself into the room. He’s really getting too old for this kind of thing. He grabs his bags and makes it back down without breaking his neck or rolling his ankle, so that’s a victory right there.
They grab the witcher’s horse from the stable, and then they're back on the road, and Jaskier thinks this is somehow Geralt’s fault. He’s not sure how, but by god he’s going to blame him for it.
“Who the fuck are you, anyways?” the witcher asks.
“Jaskier the bard, at your service,” he says with an exaggerated bow that he immediately regrets because it made his head pound.
“Oh, fuck me.”
Jaskier looks at the witcher, really looks, and for the first time takes note of the wolf’s head medallion sitting on his chest.
“Oh fuck off,” Jaskier says, but it was more of a whine than anything. “Of course you’re Geralt’s brother, because destiny hates me or something. So which one are you? Lambert?”
“You’re Geralt’s bard,” Lambert, it’s definitely Lambert says. “You’re the reason he was all mopey and insufferable last winter.”
“I’m the reason? He made his own damn self mopey, and he doesn’t need help being insufferable,” Jaskier says. “He’s the one who said he wanted me gone, so here I am, gone! He doesn’t get to complain about it now.”
Lambert huffs and Jaskier keeps walking besides him because there’s only one road out of this town, and they’re on it together.
“What’s your horse’s name?” Jaskier bites out, trying to extend an olive branch.
Lambert glances at him. “Horse.”
“You named your horse Horse?”
“Yup.”
“That’s horrendous.”
This, for some reason, makes Lambert crack a smile. It’s not a bad look on him and - Jaskier is pulling his head out of the gutter immediately, because he is not hitting on Geralt’s brother. Absolutely not. He needs to have some self-respect, even if it's just a shred.
They make camp earlier than Jaskier would expect.
“You should soak that hand in cold water,” Lambert says as he starts their fire. “It’s gonna be a bitch to play with.”
“Nothing’s broken this time, at least,” says Jaskier, flexing his hand. Still, he goes down to the creek nearby to fill their waterskins, and sits his hand in the water until it's gone numb.
Jaskier will not admit that it's nice to share a camp again, and it's very nice to be able to sleep soundly, knowing there’s a witcher nearby who will be up and swinging a sword at the mere sound of trouble.
It makes him miss Geralt, and he resents it just a little bit.
*
Lambert is sharing a camp with Geralt’s bard.
Geralt’s bard.
He should have known from the moment the guy had gotten involved in the fight - no one else was stupid enough to take a witcher’s side in a bar fight.
He can’t stop turning over the words in his head “He’s the one who wanted me gone.” They’d all assumed that Jaskier had dumped Geralt or died. Because Geralt would never be the one to break things off with someone who clearly made him happy, right?
Honestly, that’s on him for forgetting that Geralt’s an idiot.
The bard is quieter than he would have expected. From Geralt’s stories, he would have expected to be bombarded with questions, but other than softly humming under his breath, he didn’t say much.
It is…really fucking strange to share a camp again. Since Aiden’s been gone, he hasn’t split a hunt with anyone. No shared camps, no meetups during the year, not so much as a brothel visit. The winters are the only reprieve he has from the isolation, and even that’s not really a reprieve. It just grates on him in a different way. His relationship with Geralt has always been strained by jealousy, his relationship with Vesemir is combative at best…thank fuck for Eskel and Coen, or else he’d go completely mad.
It’s strange to have another heartbeat nearby as he drifts off to sleep, stranger still to have it be a human’s.
*
Neither of them are in a stellar mood when they finally reach town. They split ways at the noticeboard, Lambert grabbing a notice for a foglet, the bard disappearing in search of a tavern to perform in. He fully expects to never see the bard again.
He’s stabling Horse, the terrain being too unpredictable to risk bringing him along on the hunt, when the scent of the bard’s perfume hits him, and suddenly the bard is there, leaning into the stall.
“What do you want?” Lambert grunts.
“I’ll bet you a crown that it’s a bruxa in the woods,” Jaskier says.
Lambert eyes him, trying to gauge his angle. “The fuck does a bard know about bruxa anyways?”
Jaskier shrugs. “Villagers telling stories of something singing horrifying songs that sink dread into your bones and drive you mad. The body of one of the farmers was found drained of blood. What does that sound like?”
“Sounds like a contract I’m gonna get stiffed on, that’s what,” Lambert says. “Fine, I'll bring some black blood with me. Happy?”
“It's all the same to me, witcher,” Jaskier says, already slipping away.
*
There is a good crowd at the tavern that night, and Jaskier plays a set before he settles down to eat supper, coin purse already satisfyingly full.
He’s mid-bite when a coin smacks him in the forehead and falls into his soup with a plop.
“You were right.”
Lambert drops down in the seat across from him. He doesn’t look injured, so that’s nice.
“You threw a dirty coin into my soup,” Jaskier says.
“Not only were you right,” says Lambert, flagging down a barmaid, ignoring Jaskier. “There were four of the fuckers.”
“Hard hunt?” Jaskier asks. He fishes out the coin from his soup with his spoon. It’s a crown, as wagered, and Jaskier wipes it off with a handkerchief and pockets it.
“Not as hard as it would’ve been if I’d gone in blind. Who the fuck mistakes bruxa for foglets anyways? Morons.”
“They saw unusually heavy fog and jumped to conclusions. Did they pay you what you were owed, at least?”
Lambert snorts. “Paid me half, and that’s only after I threatened him a bit. The alderman said the contract was void ‘cause it wasn’t what I was hired to kill. I asked him if he’d rather I left the bruxa alive while I came back to town to renegotiate.”
“Half? I should stab him,” says Jaskier without much thought.
“Not worth it.”
It’s clear that Lambert is just as tired as Jaskier is. Not physically, but somewhere deeper, they’re both just fucking tired, and Jaskier finds that kind of kinship comforting.
Which is why, when he returns to his spot in the corner of the tavern, lute in hand, he hesitates.
He hasn’t played any of the White Wolf’s songs since the mountain incident. Every one of them was born out of his infatuation and love for Geralt, and playing them felt like trying to swallow glass. He didn’t want to sing the man’s praises anymore. He wanted to forget about him entirely.
But.
Lambert got paid half.
He got paid half as much for twice the work, and if Jaskier hadn’t been flirting with a barmaid next door and happened to overhear gossip, he’d have been going in completely unprepared for the threat he faced. They sent him into a dangerous hunt without warning and couldn’t even be bothered to pay him properly afterwards. It’s the kind of shittiness that chips away at a person, day after day, year after year, and Jaskier can see how much it’s wearing on Lambert. The Path chews up witchers and spits them back out, and it’s not fair.
Toss a Coin to your Witcher hadn’t been born out of the lovesick feelings that many of the other White Wolf songs were. It had been born out of an eighteen year old’s conviction that he could force the world to be fair, and he’d damn well make sure his friend got paid for his work.
Now, he is a bit past forty and he knows he can’t force the world to be anything but what it is, and yet fame is still powerful. He can’t stamp out all the bigotry in the world, nor force it to treat witchers fairly, but he can make sure that Lambert gets paid just a little bit better tonight.
With only the slightest unease, Jaskier slips into the role of the witcher’s bard again.
It’s easy to lose himself in the performance, to play up the crowd. He's been the witcher's bard for longer than he's ever been anything else, after all. It is like slipping on an old, worn, beloved coat. In the shower of applause and cheers, watching as folks toss coins to a baffled and frozen Lambert, Jaskier feels alive in a way that he hasn't in the months since Caingorn. He lets himself ride the high, grinning as he watches Lambert stalk out of the room in embarrassment.
He finishes his set and finds himself sitting on the back steps of the inn, watching the sky grow dark and the first stars appear overhead. Lambert eventually appears beside him, silent as anything.
“Didn’t think you’d still be singing his praises, after everything,” Lambert says.
“It wasn’t for him,” Jaskier says, mildly irritated.
Lambert goes quiet for a long moment, then: “It’s not the best song you’ve written, but it is the one that gets stuck in my damn head every time I hear it.”
Jaskier snorts. “What’s the best I’ve written, then, in your opinion?” .
“Fishing for compliments?”
“Oh, never mind,” Jaskier says. He’s not in the mood to have his songs or his singing insulted tonight anyways.
“The White Wolf and the Striga,” says Lambert. “It’s good, I like it. Aiden used to like -” he falters. “The Maiden of Maribor. But that one’s a little too sappy for my taste.”
Jaskier catches the pause and the use of the past tense, and doesn’t ask. It seems like a sore spot, and sitting here alone together in the moonlight, there’s something fragile in the air.
“Anyways,” Lambert says quietly, pushing himself off of the wall. “I got a bit of coin out of it. Appreciate it.”
He slips back inside, as soundless as when he arrived, and Jaskier thinks it’s odd that Lambert, who he met two days ago, is the first person to thank him for Toss a Coin.
He stays out a while longer before he turns in.
*
The next morning, Jaskier wakes in a startle to the sound of someone pounding on his door. With a curse, he drags himself out of bed to wrench the door open.
“What could you possibly want at this hour?”
Lambert was in full gear, pack slung over his shoulder. “I’m going west, towards Redania. You headin’ my way?”
Jaskier can’t make sense of why Lambert would be asking. “Uh - possibly. I didn’t have any real plans yet.”
“Well, figure it out, ‘cause I’m leaving in twenty minutes.”
What was that supposed to mean? “...are you asking me to come with you?” Jaskier asks, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes and failing.
“What the fuck else would I be asking?” Lambert asks.
Jaskier is too tired for this. “Fuck it. Sure.”