Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Jaskier dies three hundred miles south-west to Kaer Morher; it happens down in Oxenfurt where the Lixela river has long merged with the Pontiac river, right where the sun breaches the horizon, on the cusp of the coast where Jaskier slashed a finger-nail deep laceration into his thigh that Geralt had to sew shut.

Jaskier laughed the entire way through, even while biting curses into the jut of his knuckles and Geralt had to hold him down by the hip so he’d stop flinching. Jaskier would just laugh and prattle around those knuckles, going on about the furious lover that chased him through the shattered window and Really, Geralt, I didn't know she had a lover — I asked! Like you said!

And Geralt hummed with For a gossip, you don't listen much and then Jaskier’s laugh turned into a hiss when the needle dug through bruised skin. Snik. The worst was the laceration, with some shallow cuts from the glass and bruising where capillaries burst when Jaskier hit the ground, but it stayed mostly unblemished. Just some faint freckles and light body hair.

The leg muscles flexed and seized under Geralt’s fingers, strong from years of building stamina, stained sticky when a bead of Jaskier’s blood ran down the curve of the limb. He had dug his thumb in, a little, out of curiosity.

Jaskier bit his knuckles until a rim of teeth indented them. All that Geralt remembers, after cutting the end string of the stitch, is Jaskier setting his hand down, spit-wet and red, to stretch a gleaming smile at Geralt and thank him. It made the bottom of his spine tighten, then.

Geralt finds out Jaskier died over one hundred miles away from Oxenfurt, two weeks after the fact and in a run down, sparsely populated town. They had tossed a handful of coins at him to kill a pack of drowners near the local town that had almost killed two local teens and a later fisherman. Easy contract, over in a few minutes with the arc of his sword, and then Geralt hung their heads from Roach’s saddle for proof. The elder man had gone a sickly colour of green, but nodded and gave him the second half of payment before shooing him off. It’s how Geralt prefers most of his interactions; quick and easy.

Geralt finding out wasn’t a big or dramatic moment, not even theatrical or anything worth noting down. No, it happens like this: a young villager girl with frizzy hair tucked behind ears not quite grown into, made up of soft bones and not quite knowing of what he really is, passes by him at the edge of town as he’s readying to leave and says, “M’sorry your bard died, Mr Witcher.”

Geralt goes very, very still, fingers freezing in securing his saddle. He tilts his head down to her. “Sorry?”

She must’ve misunderstood him, then, nodding as if she hadn't uttered the worst words to ever take form. “I heard of it a bit ago. M’sorry, Mr Witcher, I know he was your friend. I want to give my con—condol—“

”Condolences.” Geralt finishes for her hollowly. A slow, shrill sound begins to build inside his skull.

The girl nods and then wanders off with a final goodbye, utterly naive about what she had just said, leaving Geralt behind in the crater of it.

Geralt’s head knocks against Roach’s neck, dizzy, and it all ceases when his mind starts to split apart in numb panic.

Once, a few infantile months into Jaskier having bludgeoned his way into Geralt’s life, he had leaned over to Geralt — as if they were children passing a precious secret — and whispered Y’know, Geralt, I think that whole Witcher’s not having emotions thing is a bunch of horse shit.

There was a campfire, Geralt remembers, that cast a light into Jaskier’s eyes; crystalline, is what he’d describe it as years later. Jaskier looked like he knew something that Geralt didn't, pupils dancing across Geralt’s face as he waited, tracking the slow raising brow.

That was how Geralt spoke back then, when he wasn't used to people and thought himself colder, but Jaskier had quickly learned whatever language that was and adapted. Jaskier crossed his legs, knobby elbow on his thigh and tilting his head into his palm, amused. “You’re a big fat softie,” He elaborates and Geralt furrows. “And don't try to say anything else, because you’d be lying. To me, of all people. Scoff, as if you’d get away with it, but to my point. That whole Witchers are emotionless butchers is nonsense. Fucking drivel. You’re—“ He flaps his free hand towards Geralt. “—Geralt; a normal man, just a little different. Emotionally inept, certainly, but you’ve just as much thought and feeling as I do.”

There was no rhyme or reason to why Jaskier had brought it up, nor did he continue his point to Geralt, who simply stared for a long moment before looking away, saying Not a man, which subsequently had Jaskier groan mournfully and spit that Geralt you are incapable of thinking of yourself fondly —

But, in a small corner of Geralt’s brain, that memory had stuck. Rattled around.

Three days are lost to travel that Geralt does not remember. If he tries to pick apart all the memories he acquired during that time, he will find only two fractured things: urging Roach to sprint from dawn until dusk, even when she bites and kicks at him, and the feverish, soul-desperate thought of Jaskier isn’t dead.

Geralt is, most of the time, collected. He doesn't lose his temper at the tiniest of slights against him, nor does he lose focus or act on his most irrational impulses. If he did, he’d have been dead ten times over decades ago and run out of half the continent’s towns if their sneers had him bare more than just teeth. Geralt keeps his thoughts clear, assesses, and cages his panic tightly because panic is what will get him killed or work him into a passion he doesn't know how to deal with.

The first hour after Geralt hears about Jaskier’s death, he’s able to keep his emotions in check and think that one little girl saying it doesn't mean anything. Incidents get exaggerated, people lie and information gets diluted when passed from stranger to stranger, town to town. Jaskier is smart; he’s taken to keeping himself out of trouble where he can, can fight his way out of it after Geralt had forced him to learn, and sickness is a stranger to him. Whatever caused such a rumour to start is something that Geralt briefly considers an impossibility.

One person saying something doesn't mean anything; a rumour that Jaskier was dead had to come from somewhere, though, and the possibility of how sinks such an unfamiliar terror into Geralt’s bones that his composure shatters under it. It all blurs after that.

Oxenfurt Academy is where Jaskier chose to spend the winter, stating that The Academy called upon my wonderful services as a lecturer once again, Geralt, how could I not accept when I miss my students so dearly? I admit, some were rough, but they had potential and — oh! If only they used metre, dear Lanyon would be wonderful with it and Geralt had nodded, then bit into some bland rabbit he snared some hours before.

Jaskier wrinkled his nose at him, cheeks pink from the cold night air, the side of his face painted in a low glow of orange from their campfire. They parted four days after that, and Geralt looked back once to make sure that Jaskier was — something. He doesn't know.

It takes an hour for Geralt to find a stable that will house Roach and to make it to the Academy through the bustle of Oxenfurt. It’s one of the highest populated areas on the coast, so he has to shove through crowds and brace himself for the glares that comes with them — nasty ones that he ignores, neutral and then concerned glances that makes his skin prickle — shoving it down, down, down because he just needs to get to Jaskier.

Priscilla is waiting for him at the gates of Oxenfurt Academy. The green rim of her iris has dulled, features sharpened by deep shadows and a weight to her shoulders that makes her look so much smaller. When she sees him, a sad resignation fills her expression and it’s then that a small part of Geralt’s heart dies.

Sound ceases, filled only by the hollow swallow of Geralt’s throat that clicks! in his ears, loud as a canon. The slow, growing cold numbness in his nerves stills him in front of her. “Priscilla.”

”Geralt,” She returns, voice quiet. “You heard.”

You heard. Strainingly, wretchingly, Geralt gives a nod that takes all the effort he has ever known.

Priscilla leads him through the halls of the Academy, deliberately avoiding the areas with students, twisting into others that Jaskier has led Geralt through multiple times — It’s an utter maze, Jaskier asserted some decade and a half ago after he was able to badger Geralt into a tour. His fingers were curled around Geralt’s forearm to lead him around because Geralt, by that point, would let him. I can never understand how anyone can ever figure out this place, it’s as if it was built to confuse me.

Where shadows spill into the halls, Priscilla tells him that Jaskier had passed from scarlet fever two weeks ago. It was quick, she assures — one day he was coughing lightly but lively, the next in bed bleary-eyed and incoherent, then his voice shredded from the infection and vomiting up acid. He was gone by the fifth day. It was a bad case, one that no doctor was fast enough to cure. No medicine would’ve worked quick enough to save him.

It’s so utterly simplistic that Geralt feels hysteria bubbling up from even thinking that Jaskier died of scarlet fever. Jaskier’s survived three-story drops, being slashed by Nekkers, poisons that would kill a man, broken bones, infections and attempted assassinations and he — it was scarlet fever that did him in. Geralt did everything to keep Jaskier away from the dangers of the Path; he learned new roads, banned others, guarded Jaskier, locked him in rooms to keep him safe from contracts, learned medicine and how to be gentle when stitching him up and it was all for —

Jaskier would be furious that he died from something so insignificant. Maybe he was. The thought is an ill comfort.

The all-too-familiar door of Jaskier’s room barely blocks the scent of him. It’s so pungent that Geralt’s sinuses nearly singe with it — earthy, now, after years on the road, chamomile and the lavender that he always bullied Geralt into wearing when he could. It’s a familiarity that his body recognises before he does.

It all sours when Geralt realises that the scent is stale and sickly. His heart dies a little more.

”We were—“ Priscilla’s mouth stutters. She keeps her eyes on the door. “He wrote a will, a long time ago, I don’t know if he ever told you. He said that — that if he ever died, and you were still alive, then all his worldly possessions would be split between you and his sister,” Then, she looks to him, mouth trembling. Geralt’s world begins to tilt. “We were waiting for you. Penelope refused to have his possessions delivered to her by anyone but you. She said you were the most important thing in the world to Jaskier, so she wanted his most important things delivered to her by the person who…who he loved so much.”

There’s that ringing sound in Geralt’s ear again, howling and wailing and his eyes flicker and — his teeth grit until he can feel a tooth snap, ribs creaking under a sudden pressure that crushes his heart and he wants to vomit — he wants to scream, he wants to shove his fingers through his eyes into his brain until he doesn't have to think. Jaskier is dead, and he — he —

Jaskier loved him, for some inconceivable reason. Loved Geralt in the same way he falls a little in love with everything. I was taught that to be a romantic, I must be a lover first, Jaskier told Geralt a month after they first met. To be romantic about anything, you must love everything, even the deepest of suffering and woes; the highest of highs. Ecstacy. That is where you begin to truly understand what it means to feel.

And because Jaskier’s love was life itself, and Geralt was part of it, Jaskier loved him.

Geralt loved him more than he did most things. That, he always knew.

Jaskier can no longer love him.

Geralt’s knees nearly give out under him. Somehow, some way, he stays rooted upright and forces a numb hand out to accept the key that Priscilla drops into his palm. A cautious brush of fingers against his arm, concerned and then she’s gone and all that Geralt is left with is that damn key and the entirety of Jaskier’s life behind that door.

The door creaks when Geralt pushes it open, closing with a muted click! behind him, leaving him to be swallowed into the room that holds the very last pieces of Jaskier in it. It’s quiet, rotting in its own silence and Geralt takes in an uneasy breath, swaying.

The room is achingly familiar. Jaskier made a habit of roping Geralt into helping him pack up his things before they set off for the Path if he took up academia that winter. Once or twice, Jaskier was able to force him to stay the night in the room; Geralt’s fingers twitch at the memory of them sharing the bed.

There’s that mused bed in the corner that he remembers, the rug on the floor, curtains draped in front of the only window, drawn closed with a sliver of light peaking through. Jaskier’s shitty bedside table, stacked with books that Geralt doesn’t recognise, then the desk on the other side of the room. Jaskier’s stray notes and papers are strewn across it, accompanied by an opened and fully dried out ink-pot, pen angled inside it. A litany of notebooks sit piled in the corner, mirror nailed onto the wall above. The chair at the desk has a doublet thrown over the spine, red, the one Geralt recalls Jaskier parting from him in; boots are slotted beneath it, a letter-bag with them. The closet sits next to the desk, closed.

The decadent deadness of it all makes everything feel so hollow. It gnaws at Geralt.

Everything still smells like Jaskier — of lavender and chamomile, the oils Geralt helped pick out after one too many headaches caused by the stronger ones. Of Jaskier’s natural scent, which Geralt silently noted shifting to earthy after years with him on the Path. It’s all withering away now, drenched in the smell of sick and rot and Geralt thinks that this must be a trick. That this is simply a test of will — a hallucination, an eternal nightmare that Yennefer used to threaten, a fae’s trick or some big joke that Destiny is playing on him and when it’s over, Jaskier will be returned to him.

No such thing happens. It all sinks around Geralt and he steps towards the desk, reaching for a lone paper atop the others.

As virtuous men pass mildly away, and whisper to their souls to go, it reads, Jaskier’s handwriting bold and Melitele, it’s a poem, the last one Jaskier must’ve ever written. Geralt holds it even gentler, if he could. More precious than porcelain. Whilst some of their sad friends do say The breath goes now, and some say No: So let us melt, and make no noise, no tear-floods, nor sighs-tempest moves: ‘Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love.

Jaskier goes on about love, about true love — love of the soul and the spiritual and when he writes Our two souls, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet a breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat, Geralt presses the bone of his palm into his eyesocket, burning, and sets it down.

There’s more of the poem. Geralt doesn't think he could take the rest of it.

The drawer of Jaskier’s bedside table holds nothing more than pencils, kohl, his comb, vials of products and his oils — chamomile, dabbed behind his ears and then his wrists; lavender, which he would rub into his neck and the folds of his skin so I stay smelling wonderful, Geralt! And not like a brute — which you are, my friend, which I say as no insult but sometimes you truly smell like death.

Carefully, Geralt cradles the oils in his palms, swipes his thumb across the clear surface that Jaskier has touched dozens of times; in the mornings and evenings and before he’d perform and after Geralt had washed the gore of a contract off, he would rub it into his skin because You deserve to feel anew, my dear. He’d said that one night, hands splayed on Geralt’s back. Geralt closes the drawer and pockets them with a tremor.

The books are of poetry, history, song writing and novels of varying topics. The names are unfamiliar, authors even more so, but Geralt doesn't pay mind as he starts to sweep the collected dust from each cover, evidence of disuse, before quickly flipping through them to un-stick the pages. As Jaskier always did.

In the window-sill sits a small jewelry holder, cradling a few rings and a singular necklace with a pendant of a pressed dandelion behind a glass barrier. It’s vaguely familiar, so Jaskier must've worn it a few times; it doesn't seem like part of any style that Jaskier typically wears, though, too thin and fragile, but he kept it, so there must be some significance around it. It goes into the pocket with the oils.

All air is squeezed out of Geralt when he picks up Jaskier’s Lettenhove crest-ring. The one he has worn everyday since he was eighteen despite having been formally disowned — I only wear it for Penelope, now — and Geralt doesn't even think before he takes off his medallion, unknotting the leather chain to thread the ring through it. His fingers shake when he tries to retie it, continuously slipping and fuck — Geralt grinds his teeth until he succeeds, tucking it beneath his tunic and against his breast.

The ring is horribly cold. The rest of Jaskier’s jewelry goes into the pocket with the dandelion necklace.

All of Jaskier’s stray papers are folded into a perfect pile, neat and held with a delicate grip — Geralt can't rip them, not destroy what’s left of Jaskier and Jaskier’s — so he makes sure the edges fit perfectly together, uniform, and slides them into one of Jaskier’s notebooks from the desk. Then, he stacks all the notebooks together, swiping dust from the covers with Jaskier the Bard etched into them.

Geralt fingers at the doublet on the chair, red silk with dark floral embroidery, lifting it and — beyond his reason, beyond himself because Geralt just can't think anymore, not when it comes to Jaskier— pressing his face into it. He breathes in all the familiar things that cling to Jaskier, and Geralt startles at the wretched sound that rips from his throat.

It’s so utterly alien that for a moment, a split second, Geralt’s memory forgets itself and he thinks that Jaskier would laugh at him if he saw it. Will if Geralt tells him.

It then all crashes back, world crumbling and an even more vile sound is wrenched from him, nerves tearing apart and Geralt’s knees give in — slamming against the ground and he keens over, forehead pressing against the wooden grain, disgusting and cold and for the first time since he was an infant and could wail, Geralt’s breath hitches in a near sob.

Jaskier is fucking dead, and now Geralt has to figure out what to do without him.

In the end, Geralt only takes a few things for himself (Jaskier softened him, made him sentimental), because nothing will survive the Path for long: Jaskier’s dandelion necklace, his Lettonhove crest-ring, his scented oils, the passion-red doublet, the last one Geralt saw him in, and his sky-blue one that Jaskier always said was his favourite because it Brings out my eyes, Geralt; his elven lute that was shoved far back into the closet, which made Geralt’s throbbing eyes burn, and the notebook where Jaskier wrote some of his first ever songs for Geralt.

The rest of Jaskier’s things — the clothes, the stray notes and poems packed into almost twelve other notebooks, books, jewelry, nicknacks that Geralt found across the room, letters that were in a box inside the closet, stationary and everything else — is folded into spare packs that Geralt will deliver to Jaskier’s sister sixty miles away over the border of Kerack.

Jaskier made it easy for Geralt to deliver. He always packed light, so he never owned much.

Priscilla finds him some hours later after the sun has begun to drop west, Geralt halfway out of Jaskier’s door with the last of his things shrugged over a rigid shoulder and legs that barely function from being keeled over on the ground (Pathetic, the word vaguely comes to him). The other packs are settled at the foot of the door and he gives her a muted glance as he deposits the last one next to them, painfully gentle.

Priscialla’s eyes follow the movements, flicking back up to him. Geralt doesn't know her well, only spoke to her a few times before when Jaskier acted as a buffer between them and now that he’s gone, Geralt can't find the energy in himself to speak to her, even when the faint thought of him being an asshole for it forms.

Despite the coldness, her exterior melts into something softer and she extends a pouch from her pocket towards him. It’s small, and Geralt stares tiredly at it for a moment. Priscilla’s mouth twitches slightly after a few seconds, so Geralt opens a palm for her to drop it into.

It’s light, feather light, but Geralt doesn't pay much mind to that in favour of untying the knot that binds it closed, thumbing into it to open and — Geralt stills, body going cold, cold, cold.

Inside is a ponytail of Jaskier’s hair — not much, longer than Geralt remembers Jaskier keeping it, but his and almost a decade ago, Jaskier had pulled a muscle in his shoulder bolting from a wraith on some bottom-end contract and he begged Geralt to wash his hair because My damned shoulder feel like it’s going to snap, Geralt, and my hair is oily enough to fry some eggs in it and — Geralt, stop laughing!

Geralt did end up washing Jaskier’s hair in a cold river. The phantom feeling of threading his soap-slicked fingers through that hair slams so violently into him that he’s sickened and suddenly, it all so fucking real, reality tearing open and fuck —

”It’s for you,” Priscilla elaborates, knotting her fingers together nervously. “For mourning jewelry, or whatever you decide to do with it. I just thought you should have it. Jaskier decided that he wanted to grow some of his hair out near the start of winter, so it’s longer than I’m sure you remember, but it makes it…easier, if you want to make something with it.”

Logically, Geralt knows that there was always a chance that Jaskier’s hair would end up as some form of mourning jewelry after he passed. He spoke of it frequently, wrote of it — That subtle wreath of hair which crowns my arm — and it’s a common enough mourning custom that Geralt knew of it. Couldn’t not from how frequent death appears in his contracts, but he’d — he thought that the hair would be given to Penelope — or whoever his lover was at the moment, even Priscilla but not Geralt — not something this intimate.

But, Geralt is a deeply selfish creature, so all he can bring himself to say, knotting the pouch closed again and gently pocketing it, is, “Where’s the nearest jewellery maker?”

A ghost of a smile grows on Priscilla’s face. “Adriana’s shop is across the Blackfriars theatre. She’s both an experienced wigmaker and jewellery maker, and specialises in mourning jewellery, so she shall make you something lovely. Of that, I am sure.”

Geralt, ripped open, exhausted and still not fully wanting to believe that Jaskier is dead, nods. “Thank you,” He gets out.

Priscilla returns the nod, eased. She departs with a final goodbye and the wish for Geralt to have a good life; she doesn't expect to see him around without Jaskier. She’s not wrong to.

Adriana is a woman well set into her age, dark hair cascading down her shoulders and a sharpness in her eyes that softens when she sees him at her door. It’s a wretched reminder of just how well known Geralt is around Oxenfurt because of Jaskier — You’re my muse, silly Witcher, of course anyone who even steps foot into the City of the Arts will have heard of you — to the extent that he was called Jaskier’s Witcher. Not the Butcher of Blaviken, not the White Wolf, not even his given name of Geralt. Simply Jaskier’s Witcher, and Geralt —

He liked it, beyond all good reason. Made him filthily happy.

It’s now a moniker that will fade in time when there’s no Jaskier to be attached to. Geralt has to breathe through the stab of heartache twisting between his ribs.

Because everyone must now know what happened to Jaskier, Adriana doesn’t offer much surprise as Geralt moves through her shop; which means Geralt doesn't have to do much besides pull the pouch out, set it down on the counter between them — fingers tightening, not letting go, he doesn't — and ask, “What can you make with his hair?”

Adriana’s expression is carefully controlled, slowly reaching for the pouch and taking it from stiff fingers to extract the hair out of it, examining. It’s of decent length, longer than Geralt’s pointer, and shines when the light from the setting sun catches onto it; a horribly familiar image from thousands of days spent together. What’s left of Geralt’s chest caves further inwards.

A few seconds pass before she places the hair back into the pouch, knots it and sets it to the side so she can lean onto her forearms. “Well,” She starts. “What do you want with it?”

Geralt’s jaw tightens. His head hurts. “Mourning Jewellery.”

Adriana nods, unsurprised at the idea that a Witcher would wear something so vulnerable and Geralt just doesn't know what to do with that. “Okay,” She says, voice gentle. “You have a few options here, then. I could encase his hair into some glass as a pendant, but I wouldn't be able to use all of his hair, since pendants are usually small. I could also put it into a ring with a glass barrier, but the same issue would come up, as would for earrings and any more dainty jewellery. If you want me to use all of his hair, I could make a bracelet out of it, which you would then have a few designs to pick from.”

The idea of not having whatever is left of Jaskier’s body is so unthinkable that Geralt blurts, “Bracelet.”

Adriana goes to dig through a box beneath the table, grabbing a handful of bracelets that Geralt instantly recognises as mourning jewellery and spaces them out across the desk. They’re all made of hair, some intricately woven, others with charms and pendants attached, all decorated with images of death — bones, skeletons, the phrase Memento Mori: Remember to die.

Adriana points to a specific bracelet spaced in the middle; it’s composed of a sheet of braided hair, similar to textile weaving, separated in the middle by gold clasps and a pendant. It’s a felted skeleton, trapped behind a glass barrier, the gold rim etched with Memento Mori. The ends of the hair strands are closed together by another set of gold-clasps, connected by an adjustable chain. “I would say this one would work best for the length of hair I have available. I could give you a series of pendants to choose from for the middle, or we could go through some alternatives if you don't wish for a pendant at all.”

Geralt’s body has long since numbed, nerves hollowed out, but he manages to dig out the dandelion necklace from his pocket, place it on the desk and against all of his sense, slide it towards her. One of the last pieces of Jaskier. “Use this.”

Adriana’s eyes trail over it. She picks it up, pinched between her fingers and the irrational thought of her wiping away Jaskier’s fingerprints is — Geralt’s eyes blur for a moment, clenching his hands white at his sides and he breathes out, focusing back in when Adriana speaks.

”How do you wish to modify this?” She asks, sizing up the length of the gold border around the pendant. “I could etch Memento Mori into the edges here,” She points to the border, then to the gold clasps on the bracelet. “And then images of death into the clasps. Or do you wish for anything specific in regards to that?”

“No,” Geralt snaps, not even thinking and Adriana blinks widely. Geralt has to force his next words out. “No images of death. Just. Use the pendant and hair.”

Adriana, for a very long moment, looks utterly bewildered and Geralt knows that his request is ludicrous — mourning jewellery is categorised through its references to death and decay — removing that makes its status as a mourning custom null, but Geralt just — he doesn't know.

In the next beat, Adriana schools her features into something softer, setting the necklace down to the side. “The pendant will work perfectly, then. I’ll just have to get a measurement of your wrists so I can make sure it fits properly. Do you have anything you want to add to it or adjustments to be made?”

Geralt is quiet when he replies. “No.”

Adriana nods, brows rising a with a striking sympathy and Geralt hates it — hates that she knows, that everyone does and that Jaskier is fucking gone and all he has left of his body is his hair. “Okay. I’ll have it finished by mid-afternoon tomorrow,” Geralt stares. She elaborates kindly, “It’s not an overly long and arduous process, Witcher. Plus—“ Her eyes become tender, sadder. “—you’re Jaskier’s Witcher, I’m sure he’d want me to be quick for you. I never knew him well, we ran in very different circles, but he’d sometimes perform in the Blackfriar theatre, and sometimes I’d be there. He always spoke of you fondly. Wanted to write a play about Witchers in fact, though I couldn't tell you if he ever got around to it.”

A play. Jaskier wanted to write a play about Witchers.

Geralt’s brewing headache slams to the forefront and his eyes burn, throbbing and his hands twitch to press against them because he knows that something ugly is going to be wrung from them, and he is so, so tired and he fucking wants Jaskier back. Wants Jaskier to just be okay, not in some fucking grave rotting away on his own and encased in a box of wood and nailed shut where light can’t reach.

Jaskier loved the light; he’d sometimes sit Geralt down with him to watch the sunrise and sunsets and Geralt, how could you not see such beauty in the world?

Jaskier was buried alone. Without his lute, without that abstract lover that he always wrote about in his poems — If this fall in a time, or land, Where mis-devotion doth command, then he, that digs us up, will bring us to the bishop, and the king, to make us relics, Jaskier once softly read out years ago to Geralt in an inn room they shared for a contract, lulling him to sleep. Geralt in the bed and weaning off venom, Jaskier at the foot of it, hand on Geralt’s blanketed foot.

Jaskier is alone in the ground. He hates being alone.

That vile thing wants to claw through Geralt’s throat until he vomits — but he swallows it down, feels it eating at him from the inside out, and he nods. One nod, and it takes all that he has to do it, because he’s exhausted and wants the world to turn back on itself and say that Jaskier is alive and waiting for him back in his room.

Adriana looks at him. Something in it is beyond what Geralt wants to understand.

Jaskier’s will in regards to how he was buried goes like this: I, Julian Alfred Pankratz of Lettenhove, under no circumstances, am to be buried in Lettonhove. My body is to be buried in the graveyard of Oxenfurt Academy or in a plot of land near the institution. If there is nothing to be buried, then I wish for my lute to be buried in my steed. If my lute is unable to be buried, then a simple gravestone must mark a would-be grave for me.

The graveyard of Oxenfurt Academy, two miles outside the marked walls of the institution, was buried to full capacity by centuries old artists and past attendees a decade ago, so Jaskier was buried at the peak of a hill some distance off from the academy, a singular willow tree atop it and where Jaskier would take Geralt each time they found themselves in Oxenfurt. It was where Jaskier used to pass time as a student, then as a professor with his lute, a book, or napping in the coastal sun, so Penelope decreed that he would be buried there.

Stalking up that hill and seeing a graverstone in place of where Geralt used to find Jaskier when he wanted to surprise him after winter, where Jaskier would brighten with a grin and a Geralt!, shooting up — dashing, if excited enough — is one of the worst moments of his life and Geralt stumbles in place, stuttering.

He marches on, because what else is there left for him to do?

The grave is dotted with an array of flowers, candles and nicknacks; sage, lilies, roses, melted down wax, evergreen branches for protection and various scattered food items, a single flask of liqueur. Some of the flowers are older, decaying from the passage of time, while others are fresher and show signs of being placed there just some hours before. The food items are turning moldy, fruits pruning black while the bread hardens, the pastries buzzing with flies.

Geralt hadn't gone to a florist — he couldn't have taken it, the stares, what everyone would know he’s doing — so, on the death march to a sight he’d hope would only come true decades later, he picks a handful of dandelions and daisies — because Jaskier deserved something from Geralt — and knots them together with one of his hair ties. Another gift, because Jaskier liked to carry them for him, and places them onto the body of the grave, Geralt following.

The wind is light, the sun starting to hide behind the horizon, orange washing across the skyline and mixing in with faint blues and pinks. The air is warm that day, temperature heightened in the bloom of spring and green starting to thaw through again, and Jaskier’s body is sat six feet below Geralt.

”Had to go and die early, didn't you, Jaskier?” Geralt murmurs, hoarse after all that’s happened. In the span of just hours, half his world shattered and now the jagged pieces that Jaskier left behind jab at his throat, strangling him and — Geralt presses the jut of his palms into his eyes, agonising, and his breath shallows. “Just had to — spite me, didn't you? Always liked proving me wrong, getting into trouble that I had to pull you out of and — now you’ve gone and died on your own and—“ His voice breaks, shamefully. “—fuck, you’re dead.”

Jaskier doesn't answer back, because he can't and that wrenches even more foul sounds from Geralt. He has to hunch over at the weight of it all crashing down on him and Jaskier is dead — he’s dead and he’s gone and he’s rotting in the fucking ground.

”You—“ Geralt doesn't even know what to say — there’s so much, and so little, because Jaskier just always knew. “—bastard. You said you wouldn’t—“ His hands move away, and it’s all so blurry and this weight on his soul is going to crush him and he doesn’t know what to do with it. “Why did you go? You couldn't wait for me to get back first —? I was—“ A small, unplaceable part of Geralt shatters right then and there, and he’s crumbling so fast. “Fuck, you never even — I never got to —“

Geralt doesn't know, he doesn’t fucking know because it’s all breaking apart and he can’t think but he just wanted more time with Jaskier — as much as destiny would’ve given him, because he may be tied to Yennefer by a wish, Cirilla by destiny, but he was tied by choice to Jaskier and now his choice is gone. Jaskier is gone.

A wail sticks between his teeth and Geralt just heaves, sick because there's nothing else left for him to give — he did all of that in Jaskier’s room, surrounded by the smell of a Jaskier infected with the illness that killed him and encased by what he left behind — but his stomach seizes anyway, wanting to vomit, and Geralt —

He loses some of himself then, stars bursting behind his pained and strained eyelids, heart tearing itself apart and he hates grief, so much.

The night that passes after that is one Geralt doesn't remember, he doesn’t think he ever will, but he comes to himself as he slogs through saddling Roach with Jaskier’s things, fingers fastening the buckles. He blinks — burning, wincing — and then he’s there; breathing, sun beating down on him. It’s cold.

Geralt can’t feel his fingers on the buckles. He doesn’t feel much of anything, really. The only sensations he’s cognizant of is the heaviness settled over his entire self, the sting of his eyes that makes everything glass-blurred; fainter. Far away. He knows that somewhere under all that is his emotions, that they’re buried deep under shock, but he can’t bring himself to hold onto that thought. To care either.

When he’s done saddling Roach, Geralt stands there for some moments more, palm on Roach’s neck as time stretches on. Then there’s Roach butting her head lightly against his temple before it moves to nudge at his chest, right where Jaskier’s ring rests against his heart. A whine, a push and Geralt’s feet tripping under him. He shifts that palm up to her face to nudge away.

Time moves on strangely after that. Fuzzy. Geralt remembers being in the stables, but moving into the fringes of Oxenfurt he does not. The sun begins to move west at some point — afternoon, he distantly catalogues — and Geralt moves through the crowd of the city — onto paths he doesn’t remember to find himself at the foot of Adriana’s store. At the window, then the door. He doesn’t feel his hand pressing against it.

The door rings when opened — Adriana behind the desk again, lifting her head from weaving hair into a wig, face softening and — Oh, Geralt thinks, stupidly, fingers twitching in the urge to press them against his face so he can hide. I forgot.

The world sinks under that realisation, suffocation-heavy and then sharpened in a forced exhale. Geralt steps forward, because it’s all he can do.

Adriana offers a quick nod, a Give me moment motion, promptly ducking beneath the table to reach for a small and undetailed box that she sets on the table between them. Geralt’s pulse shrills in his skull at the sight of it. Adriana’s eyes pinch sympathetically, gently pushing the box towards him.

Geralt’s takes it, barely feeling it against his skin, thumbing the top open and — his heart plummets and he chokes on a breath, pulse jerking against his skin in a feverish ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum — swallowed all away with a click! in his throat; it begins to ache in that familiar way it does now. Ever so softly, with a fervent tenderness that no Witcher should ever know, Geralt picks the bracelet out of the box and cradles it in his palm.

Jaskier’s hair has been tightly woven together in the style of the bracelet Adriana showed him, the middle split in half by the dandelion pendant, untouched and just as it was before, connected to golden-clasps with floral etchings into them. The ends are glued shut by a twin pair of golden-clasps, connected by an adjustable chain.

It’s so utterly Jaskier that Geralt’s eyes blur, shattering his vision until he blinks — fuck, fuck — thumb brushing against the glass, the soft hair, and he can feel Adriana’s stare on him. He forces everything down until expression blanks, scraping together what’s left of his composure, but he still shudders at the familiarity of Jaskier’s hair under his thumb. His skin.

”Do you like it?” Adriana asks.

”Yes,” Geralt murmurs, voice unfamiliar to his own ears. “Thank you.”

And that’s the end of their entire exchange; Geralt clasps the bracelet around the bone of his left wrist, gauntlets stashed away in his pack, positioning it upright so he can shove his sleeve over it; hide it away from the world. Geralt shoves his fingers into his pouch for her payment and holds it out to her.

Adriana’s gaze holds a vague concern when she takes her payment. It makes Geralt’s stomach turn — skin crawling at her stare, at everyone who looks at him and at the feeling of Jaskier pressing against his skin — because he’s now just that. Hair against Geralt’s skin and —

Geralt leaves.

Lettonhove, as a rule, was never a place Geralt travelled to, but he still knew how to get there; it’s sixty miles down south from Oxenfurt, somewhere in the midlands of Kerrack with an unnamed river that connects into the Adalette river near the estate that Jaskier grew up in — It was a brilliant sight, Geralt! Jaskier had said, spidering his wet fingers at Geralt after they both washed summer-sweat off in a pond, I used to spend my time playing in it as a child and oh! How the rushing of water inspired me. So much of my poetry then was just of water.

That rule was never directly spoken of between them, nor did Jaskier seem to be aware of it because Geralt never brought it up, but it existed nonetheless. Jaskier was not fond of Lettenhove, so Geralt did not care for Lettenhove, and because Jaskier despised going there, Geralt avoided it, even when it would've made travel easier. Seeing how Jaskier would lock up at the border of Kerack — wound tight, strained at the corners of his eyes, shifting uncomfortably with each mile they closed in on Lettonhove — didn't make any of it worth it.

And Jaskier told him this: his parents, the Viscount and Viscountess of Lettenhove were not the warmest creatures to Jaskier, far more distant and disinterested than loving in any substantial manner. Only present when Jaskier acted up enough to need disciplining, to which his father would take the reins to box his ears in and slap him around — hard, leaving a ring-cut scar right under Jaskier’s chin, which he gracefully tilted up for Geralt to see. His mother was simply there, sometimes gentle, but more a voice to chastise him than to guide him — That was left to my governesses and teachers, Jaskier murmured. Geralt had to restrain splintering the wood of their tavern table. Jaskier had a mother and father, but he never really knew what it was like to have parents.

A very important distinction, my friend. Jaskier fingered at his drink, looking up at him to quirk a sad smile, and Geralt hated it.

It goes on, then, that his father tried to persuade Jaskier into politics and trade (Laugh). Jaskier weasled his way out by asking that he first educate himself in the Seven Liberal Arts to become more rounded in his knowledge, which both his parents agreed to and shipped him off at fifteen. And Jaskier succeeded — immensely, becoming a top graduate in his year because of course he did, winning the student’s section of Oxenfurt's annual Liberal Arts and Music festival in his last year (An endless source of pride for Jaskier when he first met Geralt) and offered by the board of Oxenfurt Academy a position to pursue a doctorate, if he so pleased. Jaskier never took them up on it, I wanted to find myself, my art, before I joined those old stuffy bastards, he said some years later. After all that, the prizes and the degree and the connections, Jaskier returned to the estate wanting to be a bard.

All Jaskier said about his parents' reaction was that they had a massive fight. His voice had quieted down, then, face pinched tight, uncomfortable. Geralt didn't ask further. It was bad enough that his father spat him out the estate until he would crawl back to the family with his Frivolous dreams, his mother not caring much, and Penelope, only eight to his eighteen, confused at why Jaskier had to bend down to her little height, and say that he won't be back for a while. He had kissed her forehead, horribly gentle, when he did.

He met Geralt two months after that, and that was that. The Viscountess died some years ago, and Jaskier refused to attend the funeral.

Penelope was able to find Jaskier over the years; first at sixteen, and most recently just a few months ago, each time even older than the last. It was painful for Jaskier to miss the most important years of her life, her childhood, Geralt could tell. Jaskier would gain this look, sometimes, when he would return from visiting her; pained, regretful. Letters made due for a long time. Some winters he spent with her in Oxenfurt when she travelled there in her adulthood and conveniently got stuck; something she told Jaskier roused suspicion in their parents, but not enough since they didn't even know where Jaskier was at all. The consequences of disownment, Jaskier had supposed once.

Jaskier would talk about Penelope constantly — her musical talents across all instruments, her brilliance in paints and charcoal, her skill in mathematics and rhetoric and her love for astrology and Oh, how she has gotten my wit, just as sharp-minded as I am. Frequently he’d read out loud her letters to Geralt. Sometimes they were about utter inane shit that Geralt didn’t care about, and sometimes about music or arts or complaints or some noble who failed in their courting of her, and Geralt would let him; Jaskier would crease with joy when he did.

Jaskier never really got over not being able to watch her grow up, though. I don’t, Jaskier tripped over his words, biting his mouth, uncharacteristically small. I wish I was there for her — I wanted to be, knowing how my parents are, she needed someone in her corner. She’s done wonderfully without me — you two would get on well, if going by your — albeit begrudging (It wasn't, but Geralt didn't interrupt him) — friendship with me, but still. I sometimes regret leaving her, even if I know it would’ve killed me to stay.

You didn’t leave her, Geralt said, resting his hand on the curve of Jaskier’s shoulder, just at the pinnacle of his neck. Jaskier staying would’ve killed him, locked him into a cage of politics that he never could’ve escaped, and Penelope knew as much — Jaskier was honest about that. She loves me too much, I think, to consider a reality where I stayed, he murmured, guilt cracking his features.

Geralt never met Penelope. Never got the chance to with how he avoided Lettenhove, how she would be long gone by the time Geralt would pick Jaskier up from Oxenfurt or wherever they met; a part of him regrets it, because now they will only meet with the death of Jaskier sitting between them.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so, Jaskier read aloud some five years ago to Geralt — who shoved at his shoulder with a snort, slick with monster blood, and Jaskier yowled at his doublet being stained. There was another, two years before that: When I died last, and, dear, I die as often from thee I go, written on the open page of one of Jaskier’s notebooks, face inches away from the dried ink and dead asleep to the world around him.

Geralt had gently picked him up from the desk, fresh from a fight with a Bruxa. Ignoring the uncomfortable clench in his stomach at the poem, he softly deposited Jaskier in their bed and curled next to him after he fixed himself up, dragging the blanket up. It was routine to share a bed now; cheaper, more warmth.

Jaskier wrote about death, sometimes. Never seriously, Jaskier didn’t really care to write about death; I love to focus on life, Geralt, and death is kind of the opposite to that. No? And if he did, Geralt didn't hear anything about it, but he knows almost the entire body of work Jaskier has ever produced — hard not to when Jaskier would recite his newest work out loud to Geralt for critique almost every night. So, he knows that Jaskier only really wrote about death like this: the beating of death, be it through sheer heroic strength or wit; then, a force that cannot even stop love (When I am dead, and doctors not know why, will have me cut up to survey each part, then they shall find your picture in my heart) or to satirize something else (When by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead).

Jaskier never took to writing eulogies or funeral elegies like some bards did, though he never was like any other bard because they wouldn't have dared to touch a Witcher as their subject. Jaskier loved to write about sex and violence, eroticism and heroism and monsters and taboo, love and fools. Loved to be sincere about some things and then be a satirical bastard about others and, above all, Jaskier once told him that he loved most writing about Geralt because —

Because something; Jaskier never said, but there must’ve been something so unfathomably interesting about Geralt to Jaskier to have wrung his affections onto dozens of pages for more than half his lifetime. Years spent doing so right across the campfire where Geralt was sharpening his swords, idly listening to the scribble of pencil, Jaskier’s eyes occasionally flicking up to him — slightly downturned at the edges, pupils shrinking in the shine of the fire, studying for a moment — and then a line scratched through, reworked, and Geralt would blur it into the noise of the fire spitting and forest rustling.

That sound is horribly absent despite Geralt having gone without it for the entire season of winter. It gnaws a hole into the air that makes his skin crawl and Geralt hunches over, forehead to the bone of his knee, and rubs his thumb over the bracelet of Jaskier’s hair.

A shutter, and Geralt’s chest shatters because he will never hear Jaskier again.

The Lettonhove estate sits on the outskirts of Lettonhove itself, miles away from the only town that populates the area. It’s positioned beside a forest that stretches straight into the town and down some miles after, ending a few acres into Verden. The river that Jaskier would spend his time near as a child runs a kilometre off from the estate, nestled right in the forest and close enough for a child to easily sneak to unsupervised.

The estate is large, just peeking over the top of the walls that surround the edges of the property, somewhat visible through the gaps of the front gate; it’s built to resemble a country house, light bricks and white rimmed windows making it feel far friendlier than it has any right to be. The walls crawl with moss, cracked with age but still holding strong, framing the intricate black gate at its heart.

It’s stationed by two guards wearing armour etched with the Lettonhove sigil. One of them — younger, face angular in a way that makes him seem more bone than flesh, almost filling out his armour — hisses something at his companion, older with saggy dark hair curling around his face. Scruffy

The man sighs, slamming his spear on the ground with an echoing sound once Geralt pulls Roach to a stop. “State your name and business, Witcher.”

”Geralt of Rivia,” Geralt replies and ducks his head in acknowledgment. “I was tasked to deliver Julian Pankratz’—“ And how he hates that name, how Jaskier hated it, biting it out. “—possessions to Penelope.”

All at once, the older man’s shoulders drop, face softening as something akin to grief flickers over it.“You’re master Julian’s Witcher.”

Jaskier’s Witcher. Geralt can’t bring himself to speak, so he nods. He clenches his jaw at the noise of the gates whirring open — guards stepping back, gesturing him in with a sweep of their arms. Roach nickers before she skips inside, the door closing steadily with a pitched slam!

The lawn of the estate flourishes with various species of flora and nature — the cobblestone path leading up to the tall-standing wooden doors is framed by beds of chrysanthemum’s, expanding out into bushes of roses and patches of lilies and orchids. High-tide patches of trees at the bounds of the walls encircle the main house. Scorpion grasses, forget-me-nots, sit at the edges of small ponds that glisten in the early morning day, hideously blue.

Geralt swings himself from Roach’s spine to the ground, knitting his fingers in her reins as he hears the patter of footsteps rushing towards him. He barely twitches when an attendant slips through a crack of the front door — paper-pale, puffing and hiking her shirt up between pinched fingers as she hurries down the stairs to meet him.

It’s oddly…amusing. Geralt eases some of the creases he knows darken his face, noting the faint spike of her heart rate when she finally stops to greet him — striking out her shoulders, lifting her chin to meet his eyes. “You’re delivering master Julian’s possessions?”

Seems it wasn't the best kept secret what Penelope’s wishes were after seeing Jaskier’s will; it makes it all the easier for him. Geralt nods, words not quite making it through his throat.

The attendant nods in return, turning face to shove two fingers between her fingers to whistle — Geralt tilting his head, eyes flicking to the pair of feet that burst through the front door. A young man, maybe twenty with floppish hair, dashes down the same stairs that the attendant had, skidding to a stop in front of them. He blinks at Geralt.

”Are you master Jaskier’s Witcher?” He asks bluntly, cursing when the woman whips her hand against his head with a hissed Henry!

Instinctively, incomprehensibly, for the first time since that despicable thought of Jaskier’s dead materialised, Geralt’s mouth ticks upward. It’s weighed down by the reminder of why he’s here. “That I am.”

The attendant casts a look to Henry, as if he uttered the stupidest question in existence, brows knitting together with displeasure tugging her mouth down. It all releases at once with a heavy sigh and she waves him towards Roach. “Henry’ll take your horse to the stables to get taken care of. Missus Penelope and the Viscount are readying themselves before they see you.”

Viscount. Geralt’s words sour on his tongue, a flicker in his blood that he distantly recognises as rage, and all too suddenly the world sharpens around him — pops! — and Geralt’s jaw clenches in a bite, something in his expression glowering because the attendant startles with widened eyes.

It forces him to rein in with seething effort at the idea of meeting Jaskier’s father, but he tries and says gruffly, “Sorry,” And then, after a pause, “I never got your name.”

The attendant gains some colour to her complexion again, faintly smelling of spiked adrenaline. She wipes her hands off on her skirt. “Um, Nelly, Mister Witcher.”

So, Geralt then awkwardly says, “Pleasure to meet you, Nelly,” and nothing more, because he doesn't know what else to say.

Nelly gives a slow nod, something in her face unreadable and inscrutable, but she gains her wits again after a moment and clasps her hands behind her back, promptly leading him through the rest of the short path to the doors — shoving through, holding it open for Geralt. Her clicking shoes echo through the tall halls as she moves through them.

The place is fairly…pleasant, if Geralt had to pick his words carefully. The interior is built from rich, dark wood, flooring identical and hidden by a deep red carpet, Nelly’s shoes softening and Geralt’s heavy steps barely making a thump on it. Landscape paintings line the walls, banners of Kerack and Lettonhove’s sigils, mirrors and more all pass in a blur. The doors are arched and open rather than actual doors, giving Geralt glimpses into various rooms that seem obscenely useless for anything but dinner parties.

The decorations are fragile. Geralt cannot really imagine how Jaskier — who is Jaskier; who moves too much and prefers the open to closed — avoided the porcelain and glass that seemed to be in every room. Jaskier was considerate, but never careful unless he needed to be. He was too big to try and make himself small.

The image of a decades younger Jaskier running around the estate without a care in the world softens something in Geralt.

Nelly leaves him in a sunroom sticky with the spring heat, tilting her head to say You’ll be joined soon. She’s gone soon after.

Geralt's gaze lingers where she left, then turns his attention to the room itself; it’s idyllic, he thinks. Sunshine climbs through the wall-wide windows to spill across the floor, across Geralt, framing another yard filled with ripening flowers and sounds of running water from a mini-river. It’s romantic, in the way Jaskier probably would’ve adored; maybe he did when he was smaller and toothier and knew nothing. Geralt’s skin feels too tight on him.

After some time, down the hall just a few feet away, Geralt can hear heels hurrying — heaving. The faint scent of roses and — and chamomile nearing — Geralt’s heart lurches against his ribs and he barely has a moment to think — to turn his head before a body barges into the room — hair whipping, head snapping in a lift and —

Geralt’s blood freezes, dropping away until it’s all so faint and the world tilts — sound ceasing for a moment in favour of that shrill sound starting up again, ringing and wailing and always fucking there ever since he heard M’sorry your bard died, Mr Witcher, and —

Penelope looks just like her brother; the same sharp jaw and angular cheekbones and straight nose, paper-pale. Her mouth drops open, same shape as Jaskier’s, brown hair wild and long and framing a face that begins to crumple. She has the downturned eyes that made Geralt sometimes wonder if Jaskier was sadder than he let on, the same lashes and creasing at the edges; the only distinctive difference is the brown iris of Penelope, and the sky-blue of Jaskier’s.

For a pathetic moment Geralt thinks he’s staring at his Jaskier; when Penelope makes a sharp, wet inhale, that illusion shatters and Geralt is forced back into a world without him.

Penelope’s fingers clench until they’re bone-white and she stalks forward — Geralt tensing, muscles locking, nerves splintering because this is Jaskier’s sister — and shoots towards him before he can do anything, curving her arms around his shoulders. She tugs him down and shoves her face into his armour to squeeze, holding on.

Geralt goes still, singed and he feels like gunpowder scorched across the ground, expelled. But he is Jaskier’s Witcher first, and Jaskier loved Penelope, so Geralt hesitantly settles his arms around Penelope to weakly return the hug. It’s barely anything, a nothing pressure, but Penelope takes it and it lasts just long enough for her wild heartbeat to settle. When it does, she draws away in slow movements until she’s left looking at him, hands falling to tangle into themselves.

Penelope gnaws at her cheek the exact same way Jaskier always did, jaw clenching. In the next moment, she visibly has to muster her composure together to speak, offering the weakest smile Geralt has ever seen. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Geralt.”

Melitele. Geralt has to resist squeezing his eyes shut, teeth gritting and shit, they have the same inflection, the same cadence. Two mirrors. “You too, Penelope,” He offers, not really knowing what to say. “Jaskier spoke of you often.”

Penelope looks so utterly sad that it twists Geralt’s gut. “And he spoke much of you. A favourite topic despite how he always had something to say about everything. You know how he was.”

”I do,” Geralt replies; oh, how he knew. “I was honoured that…that you felt that I was the one to deliver his things to you,” Hesitantly, he offers his palm-up hand to hers, and she only pauses for a moment before she places her own in his, much smaller, but well defined in age. Geralt squeezes it softly, nerves fraying further. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Penelope’s expression cracks — too-quick emotions flitting by, brows drawing up, eyes scrunching and watering. It's all so horribly grief stricken. “Geralt, I don't think you of all people need to apologise, you know best what it’s like to lose him. You spent more time with him than I ever could.”

That — Geralt forces down the tides that slam against him, a miserable little thing almost biting its way through his mouth — a foul, grieving thing. It takes what little energy he has left to nod, strained, because what can he say to that when all that Jaskier ever wanted was more time with her?

Something in her face flickers and she releases her hand from Geralt's to make a waving away motion. “Enough of that; you did not come here to hear my problems,” Penelope wipes her eyes with her knuckles, straightening her shoulders that were rounded down with a somber slump. “I am happy to finally meet you though, my friend. I was always curious about Jaskier’s muse that he was so taken with.”

”As…” Geralt doesn’t know how to fucking talk, how to do much of anything nowadays with this soul-heavy weight on him; he tries anyway. “As am I. He was very fond of you. Loved you much.”

A half-smile. “I’m glad,” Her eyes roam over Geralt, across the exhaustion settled deep into him. “I sometimes worried that he wasn't as fond of me as I was of him, since our—“ A vague gesture, mouth tightening. “—upbringing didn't let us connect much. It means a lot to hear from you, Geralt, that Jaskier loved me dearly.”

Geralt’s still for a moment, biting his teeth together. He nods. From you, Geralt thinks. What did Jaskier tell her of him? “Never heard a bad word from him about you, miss.”

A split second pause, Penelope blinking. She shifts — a small scrunch of her eyes, sad smile fixing warmer despite the clear grief still there; brighter, amused. “Oh, you are funny. Jaskier lied about that. Miss?” Geralt stares. “My dear, we are far beyond such modes of address. You’re family in all but name to me, even if my father would be vehemently displeased about that, but he knows where he can shove it.”

All Geralt can bring himself to do in the face of that, of someone who loved Jaskier just as much as he did, is give another nod, acquiescing. “Okay, Penelope.”

Her smile grows a touch. It’s just Penelope and him, then, Jaskier muddled somewhere in between.

The next two hours pass like this; the packs of Jaskier’s belongings are delivered to a different sunroom with plush couches and little plants in the corners. Penelope sits down with a breath that nearly sighs out her soul, and with careful, trembling fingers, begins to open a pack while Geralt sits opposite the table from her. He looks away when she lifts the first doublet out.

Penelope’s eyes shutter, swiping a thumb across the fabric and she has to press a palm to her face, a staccato breath. The hand drags down her face. “I’m going to need a drink for this,” She says, eyes to him. “Any preferences?”

Jaskier liked sweet tasting liqueur the best; always a snob when it came to what he drank. He and Geralt used to argue about it so much. Just stupid shit and Jaskier would huff and Geralt would bare his teeth and they were so dramatic, but it was fun and in the end, they would share whatever alcohol they got their hands on, so it never really mattered in the first place.

The memory of it makes his heart wring tight and Geralt says Sweet rum, any and maybe Penelope also knows what Jaskier liked, because she focuses on him with this look. When the next attendant walks by the room, Penelope gestures them in as a finger thumbs at the cover of one of Jaskier’s notebooks, the second one he got after he began following Geralt and filled the first. She asks for wine and some rum he doesn’t know the name of.

The first sip makes him sick when it goes down, the second scorches his throat, and the third creates a thick ache that lodges in his larynx. Geralt tips back to stare at an old sun mural carved into the marble of the ceiling and feels it turn to ash on his tongue.

Time slogs by after that, Geralt losing himself in the rustle of Penelope unpacking until he hears a tap! — Penelope setting her wine down — and he blinks, sound pouring back in and he looks across to Penelope, who gives a small wet laugh, wiping a tear away with her wrist.

”When by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead,” She reads, paper pinched between her fingers. Geralt fingers numbly clench around the cup in his hand as recognition cracks across his head — It’s a satire, Geralt! Jaskier waved his hand about, scowling, It’s supposed to make fun of men who — “And that thou think’s thee free from all solicitation from me. Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, and thee, feigned, vestal, in worse arms shall see.”

Geralt’s words work at him before his thoughts do. “Jaskier was outraged when I thought he was being serious with that,” He recounts, closing his eyes at the memory of Jaskier’s face twisted into utter bafflement. It makes him want to smile. “He spent the next twenty minutes describing all the ways in which it was a satire.”

“I’m not surprised,” Penelope says, placing the paper down on a slowly growing pile of notes she’s read through. All of Jaskier’s poetry and music, decades of it, stray papers of when he didn't have a notebook on hand and took whatever he could find to write on. The last of what’s left of his art. Geralt feels vaguely sick. “He was always so defensive over his work.”

”Started several fights over it.” Geralt murmurs, the harsh crunch of Valdo Marx’s nose under Jaskier’s knuckles echoing in Geralt’s ears; it was some stupid argument about the validity of a conceit in a poem Jaskier wrote. Valdo Marx whipped his head back to headbutt Jaskier — crack! Jaskier dazed, a bead of blood starting to drip down his face and Geralt had then promptly vaulted himself onto the stage to drag Jaskier away. Another punch to Marx’s gut swung before he could.

“Of course he did,” Penelope laughs, wet, going to pick another poem that Geralt catches the title of: Sweetest love, I do not go. “I was told he was quite the troublemaker as a child.”

Geralt’s fingers twitch at the phantom feeling of sticky blood under his fingers, Jaskier’s thigh jumping and the jut of his hipbone in Geralt’s palm, laughing and teeth white and Really, Geralt, I didn't know she had a lover — “He never changed, then,” Geralt says, chest aching. “Always had to save him from furious husbands and wives.”

Another laugh. It sounds like Jaskier’s just the slightest.

“Geralt?” Jaskier starts, half-shadowed in the black of the night and glowing in the light of the fire, splayed across the ground with his fingers intertwined over his heart. It’s slightly unsure, the way he says Geralt, uncharacteristic enough that Geralt’s spine straightens. He tilts his head towards Jaskier. “Can I ask something of you?”

Geralt raises a brow. “Gracious of you to ask first,” He begins, but doesn't say no. “Knowing that you’ll drag me into whatever this is anyway.”

Jaskier laughs as the fire spits, teeth and eyes shining in the glow. He turns his face towards Geralt, a tense line to his mouth that he tries wiping away with a grin. “My dear Witcher, I stopped asking because I knew you’d agree no matter my request,” True, but Geralt keeps quiet. “But, this is not one of them, I assure you. It’s…a little more personal.”

Geralt stares for a moment. He nods. “Alright, Jaskier. Ask away.”

Jaskier’s smile stays firmly in place when he says, “If you ever meet my father, I wish for you to punch him right across the face in my steed.”

Geralt blinks, opens his mouth, expression creasing as Jaskier waits, fingers tapping on his diaphragm. Then, he catches the sliver of white on Jaskier’s chin illuminated by the fire — the old but visible ring-scar — and his mouth kicks on. “Okay.”

Just okay, and Jaskier looks utterly delighted at the prospect of Geralt punching his father and Geralt cannot drudge up any other emotion than fondness at that, filing the request somewhere in his head. They both go back to the comfortable silence they had after that, Jaskier picking at the grass while he stares at the stars, Geralt beginning to oil the edges of his blade. Snik.

The Viscount is aged, wrinkles weighing down what could’ve been a pleasant face had it not been utterly miserable to look at. Perpetually downturned mouth, brows drawn closed and his eyes the same blue of Jaskier’s, but darker and shifting with suspicion at the sight of Geralt and Penelope together. Whisks of white in his hair, regally dressed and upturning his nose. He scowls. “Witcher.”

”Viscount.” Geralt returns, low, slowly sitting up before he moves to his feet.

Penelope, lifting her head from her hands, stares at him with drunk-glazed eyes, hair having come loose at some point during their sorting of Jaskier’s items — scattered across the table now, letters and clothes and notes and others; all Jaskier. Her eyes shift between the two, sharp at her father, tense with Geralt, strings cutting through her vision.

The Viscount sniffs, mouth souring at the state of his daughter. “It's unbefitting of your status, Penelope, to become a mid-day drunkard.”

”Was just going through Julian’s things, father,” Penelope mutters, pressing a hand to her face, tired and staving off dizziness. “Geralt delivered his things as I had requested. Just required some…strength to sort through it all.”

The mention of Jaskier makes the Viscount’s face embitter, lip curling and inflection splattered with disdain and Geralt despises this man. “Ah, that, Julian,” The Viscount turns to Geralt, eyes flicking up and down his stature. “Geralt of Rivia, then, the Witcher that my son was so…taken with.”

Geralt gives a nod while his jaw clenches in a bite that nearly splits his teeth, feeling tenseness mould over. “I am. Jaskier travelled with me for almost twenty years. He was…” Geralt’s words catch, throat painfully thick before he tries to wrestle himself into blankness. Beyond himself — beyond his reason, because it barely functions anymore — he glances down to Jaskier curled around his left wrist, peeking out from beneath his gauntlet. “A good friend of mine.”

A good friend isn't enough; could never be because what Jaskier was to him was — so much, but the Viscount takes it with a raised brow. Penelope’s gaze slides to his wrist — eyes cracking wide — a sharp inhale, pulse jumping and her head snaps away as Geralt steadfastly ignores her, nerves starting to smoulder. He shifts, uncomfortable. Shit.

“A dear friend,” The Viscount parrots emptily, something calculating in his face, shifting in a way that reminds Geralt starkly of Jaskier. “Knowing my sons…passionate exploits across the continent, I don't think I can quite bring myself to believe that, Witcher.”

One second. One second, and Geralt’s knuckles sting and the Viscount is sprawled across the floor — a shrill shout, both from the Viscount and Penelope, two heartbeats rocketing up, up, up — and then there’s blood gushing from his nose, staining everything and his fingers are cupped around it, eyes furious and oh, that’s where Jaskier got his scowl.

Geralt shakes out his fist, fingers sore and he rounds towards Penelope — hands on her shoulders. She’s staring wide and open at him — to say, "Apologies, Jaskier made me promise to punch your father whenever I meet him. Call an attendant for your father, sober up and come find me in the stables. I still wish to say goodbye before your father, likely, bans me from Lettenhove.”

She nods feveriently, glancing down to Jaskier. Geralt fills with dread, but he shoves that down, down to his soles so can pat her shoulders and step away, glaring at the Viscount. He yowls when Geralt purposely steps on a finger, because some fucking force deemed him lucky enough to outlive Jaskier, and then he’s gone.

The stables are just behind the main building, shadowed. Roach stomps her feet when she spots Geralt, shoving against her gate and Geralt placates her with a hand to the arch of her nose, scratching with a shush. “I know, girl,” He says, turning over his wrist when Roach goes to sniff at Jaskier on his wrist. “We’ll be out of here soon. Just waiting for Penelope.”

Roach makes a distinctly sad noise against Jaskier’s hair, and Geralt has to rub at his eyes when they start to throb.

It takes two hours for Penelope to come to him, long after the sun has started to move past middle-day and the heats thickened. She doesn't smell as strongly of wine anymore; the drunken glaze has disappeared, steps steady and hair combed through and braided neatly. Her face is fitted with a tenseness that runs through the rest of her, fingers white with effort to not clench around the sizable letter envelope in her hand.

“Penelope.” Geralt greets, hand falling from Roach’s pelt.

Penelope comes to a stop, eyes catching on his left wrist — the one with Jaskier’s hair, the one that hasn't parted from Jaskier ever since Geralt put it on — and she reaches for it. Geralt lets her, pulse spiking in his ears when she shoves her fingers beneath the gauntlet to push it up, staring for a long, drawn out moment. Her face crumples, then, sounding so much smaller and younger when she says, “I gave him that pendant.”

Geralt keeps very, very still. He buries the urge to snap his wrist away when she presses a thumb against the hair. Ba-dum.

A bob of the throat. “Dandelion was his first ever pseudonym, used it to publish awful fucking poetry when he was younger, but it stuck even when he changed it,” Penelope’s voice wobbles and she drops her hand. “I — I got him it a few years ago, for his birthday. Looks like he hung onto it.”

Geralt doesn't get a words edge in; couldn't if he tried, stomach turning. Penelope moves to hand him the envelope, gaze shifting from the wrist to him. It hovers, and then Geralt hesitantly reaches for it, swallowing his vile nerves.

”I read through the rest of his poems while I was sorting myself out,” Penelope says quietly as he takes it. Her finger is bound with one of Jaskier’s rings; gold with an elvish engraving. “These are all the ones I think he would’ve wanted you to have. I think…I think most of them are about you.”

Geralt goes cold and he — he gentles his hold, fragile. Penelope looks at him, grief moulded into the shadows of her face and she’s Jaskier’s sister, she has far more of a right to them than Geralt ever does. “Penelope,” He begins, tremors beginning to set in.

“Geralt,” She snaps and she looks so much like him. The same familiar anger. “Do not attempt to return them, because I will not take them. You deserve them far more than I do — you wear his fucking hair in — in—“ Penelope cuts off, hands pressing against her face, ripping them away. “Do you know how that looks?” She asks, voice cracking and expression breaking open and she’s looking at him like she already knows the answer. “Do you know?”

Geralt’s mouth thins out, pushing back the vomit that wants to dissolve him from the inside out. It’s one of the most shameful moments of his life when he opens his mouth — ba-dum, ba-dum, pulse high, high, high — and says, “Yes.”

”Then — then—“ Penelope exhales a wet breath, trying to tug herself together with a press of her knuckles to her mouth. She shudders. When she looks up again, her face is tightened and all Geralt can see is the moments in which Jaskier was trying to hide from him; the things he didn't want Geralt to see. “Geralt, do you love my brother?”

Sound ceases, that ringing getting loud and louder — then, Jaskier’s laugh; a wheezy bell, deep and high. His smile, his eyes and Geralt’s lungs are so tight he thinks he’s suffocating and that the second she saw the bracelet, she knew and that nothing Geralt comes up with would ever be believable enough to hide it; the confession is nearly punched out of him. “I do.”

Geralt loved Jaskier; he still does. Loved him the moment he began splitting his life from before and after Jaskier, when he knew how each of Jaskier’s steps fell onto the ground and when he began hating the absence of his sound when they were separate; when he memorised the beat of his heart and could pick it out between the hundreds in a city. It was easy to; Jaskier was the only one whose heart didn’t wail at the sight of him — always steady: You think yourself far more fearful than you actually are, Geralt.

Jaskier lied about a lot of things. Lied to Geralt. But Geralt thinks that Jaskier thought he was being truthful with that because he was the one person who saw Geralt for — for —

Geralt realised he loved Jaskier at the bottom of the mountain, after it all and Yennefer and his failures making him such a wretched creature that he turned to lash out — at anyone, at Jaskier — and his body seized with such dread at the expression Jaskier wore that it sucked all of his temper out — Geralt? — and he turned away. Nearly bit through his lip trying to not slam his head against anything, boiling and burning and he tried to keep himself very, very controlled on the way down.

It happened next to an open campfire with a bunch of people Geralt doesn’t remember the names of anymore and Jaskier right across from him, shifting every so often to look at him, barely hiding the worry that would make his fingers fumble around the lute in his hands. He was plucking at the strings because everyone had begged, but he wasn’t focused on that. All of him was pinpointed towards Geralt, tilted in his direction even when he wasn’t looking.

Oh, Geralt had thought, nerves beginning to simmer in that way when Jaskier would stare at him. Oh.

He loved Jaskier.

It was such a loud thought, that recontextualisation of everything. Geralt clenched his fingers on his trousers, stood to his feet — shot Jaskier a look to stay when Jasker made to follow him. (Hurt. He looked hurt. Geralt’s liver ached) — and left to just — get away. Take a walk. Think.

It didn’t take long for Geralt to resolve to take it all to the grave. Even less to conclude that there was no place for him with Jaskier, because Jaskier didn’t love him.

Loving Jaskier was the easy thing (So, so easy). Knowing that Jaskier wouldn't love him back was — it was the harder part to accept, but Geralt made due, and then that was that. Jaskier didn't love Geralt the same way Geralt loved him, his feverish passion to pursue anyone who slightly caught his eye overtaking any conceptualisations Geralt could’ve had. The latest in his long string of lovers was just some weeks before they parted for winter; a widow named Betty and someone who Geralt couldn't begrudge Jaskier for wanting, because she was so utterly kind to Geralt and made Jaskier light up with a scrunching grin.

Geralt accepted that Jaskier wouldn’t know, and he was alright with that, took what mindboggling love Jaskier did have for him, because Jaskier was always a marble short in the head. He was satisfied because what he wanted wasn't what Jaskier needed; Jaskier deserved a partner who knew how to feel just as he did, who would settle down with him in old age. Someone who wouldn't drag him onto a path painted with the certainty of death.

Even then. Even with the resolute absolutism that it was best for Jaskier to never know, Geralt is nearly crushed by the thought of I never got to tell him. A foul thing from such a wanting part of him that it’s sickening.

Penelope’s eyes pin him down, watery, so fucking familiar and not at all. She nods, voice dampened. “I thought you did,” She looks to his wrist again, to Jaskier wrapped around his battering pulse. “I…he would’ve been happy, I think, to have the last physical part of himself with you.”

There’s so much packed into that one little sentence that it stabs at Geralt — turning, piercing the soft tissue of his lungs; he swallows it all down. He wants to press his palms against his face — dig his fingers in, pick at his brain and not think.

Penelope is quiet a while longer, blinking tears — wiped away with the jut of her palm, neck flexing. In one moment, she stretches and tugs Geralt down into a hug — and in the next Geralt is returning it, trembling; they’re both trembling, Geralt scalped raw but Melitele, she’s all that he has left of Jaskier. He squeezes a bit tighter, and her fingers knot into what fabric she can find.

It lasts long, longer than Geralt can even remember now, but she eventually tugs away and slips her hands onto his shoulder. She looks far younger than her actual age, far older than she has any right to feel. She pats at his cheek lightly. “Remember to visit me if you’re able to. And do spare a letter or two, I’d still like to know the man who loved my brother.”

Geralt’s eyes squeeze shut, aching and stinging and he opens them to colours bursting across his eyesight. “Of course.”

Penelope stares for a second, then nods and shoves at him lightly — a tight smile, the same tilt of her older brothers and weighed down by the fact that she’s now the oldest forever. “Go, then, before my father hunts you down himself. I was able to ward off the guardsmen just enough by the fact of them preferring me,” There’s that Jaskier in her. The same ego. “But they will eventually have to answer to my father.”

Geralt goes.

Two weeks after Geralt finds out about Jaskier’s death, a week after Penelope, he stumbles through the door of his inn room — boots slipping with slick blood. He slams it shut behind him — echoing in the heightened of everything until it’s shrill and the slashed muscles of his back pull in agony, blood pouring and pouring until fabric sticks to the laceration. A dizzying breath, Geralt squeezing his eyes shut when it all begins to tilt — fuck, fuck, fuck — and he collapses to his knees, then to his haunches.

It takes a moment for him to be able to think, mouth pooling with drugged saliva and blood and right, right, armour needs to come off, so he can focus on his back. He can do that. Stupid fucking kikimore. Stupid fucking contracts.

Geralt unclasps the sword straps — dropping with a sharp clang! that makes him wince. The arm guards follow — Jaskier untouched — the shoulder pads, everything that takes so much longer to do with trembling, bloodied fingers. When he stretches to dislodge his chest plate, his entire back yanks and —

It all goes white for a moment, agony bursting across his nerves and the wound burns — muscles tearing and — Fuck. Geralt blinks blearily when he comes back to himself, gritting his teeth when nausea coats his teeth and his stomach lurches. Shit, okay, slowly.

Geralt forces his fingers under the chest plate and slowly shimmies out of it, stopping when his head swims. Blood loss, he thinks — and so much of it leaks down his back that his entire tunic is soaked, sticking to the weeping wound, digging into the crevices of it. Shaking fingers curl at the hem of his tunic. Geralt breathes in, grits his teeth, and yanks.

He loses minutes, back screaming and yowling and he’s alight — and then his vision comes back in spots, mouth dry, blinking. Blood trails down his forearms in thick veins, drip, and a faint ringing sound pitters out. Geralt shudders and he swallows back acid on his teeth, nerves icy and he’s even paler somehow and he’s so fucking cold. There’s blood everywhere and he can’t reach the fucking wound without blacking out and —

Jaskier used to help me, Geralt thinks blankly, suddenly.

Jaskier used to take care of the injuries that Geralt couldn’t reach. Jaskier used to lower him into baths when Geralt was too weak to. Jaskier used his music-natured hands to learn how to sew Geralt back up and how to tend to wounds to make sure they didn't scar — You have far too many, Geralt, it makes my heart ache sometimes, Jaskier said. Staunced his wounds with Kiss, cleaned them gently and in the end, wrapped them so they could fight infection. He’d pause his fingers on the wrappings; he looked pained when he did, strained in worry and like he wished Geralt could have better.

Geralt heaves and his head tilts — vertigo, that shrill sound again and a small pathetic sound escapes between his teeth — guttural and vile and —

Geralt thinks he’s forgotten how to care for his own wounds.

The laceration scars, diagonal in direction, stretching from the top of Geralt’s right shoulder and down to the left eleventh rip, two centimetres in diameter and thick with scar tissue. It takes a week to heal, oozed with puss at some point, and after a botched job of stitches that Geralt attempted, has pricked scars around it.

It’s a reminder more than anything else.

Time slogs on, spring starts to settle in, the air growing warmer and little lambs popping up in fields Geralt barely registers passing. He moves where coin takes him, doesn't speak more than he needs to and avoids society like he used to, despite how Jaskier spent years trying to socialise him. When Geralt begins to hear rumours of a witch residing in the high courts of Temeria, he goes against what his dulled good sense would tell him and follows.

Yennefer, he knows, is that witch; they haven’t seen each other since the blow up that broke them apart all those months ago, nearly distant if Geralt convinces himself that the guilt doesn’t eat him alive. Not at their separation, though; they were barrelling towards that end point with how they were together — volatile, needing what the other couldn’t give, the too little and too much all at once inevitably exploding right in their faces to end in screaming that scarred deep. Jaskier always told him that it was going to happen, that their foundations were too fragile to sustain what could’ve been, that it wasn’t sustainable. Even knowing that, knowing that it was inevitable in so many ways because of who they were, the way it ended and the cruelty that Geralt spit through his teeth makes him turn in guilt at night.

But, sometimes, they were good for each other when they weren’t just wanton things and Geralt — he misses her. Wants who they were as friends back and —

Jaskier weighs heavy on his wrist. Finally, his resolve cracks just enough for Geralt to admit that he isn't used to being alone again. That he doesn't want to be alone anymore.

Yennefer’s cottage sits in the maw of a forest some miles off from the physical courts of Temeria and closer to the bustle of a local village; it’s quant, two stories high and made from a light wood. There’s a patio with a swing and greenery bursting around the foundations of the cottage; orchids, lilacs, patches of berries and lilies, dandelions and other flora. It makes the entire thing feel homely. Warm. Far more alive than the reanimated nerves that Geralt sports.

It feels like Yennefer. For all that she was, Geralt could tell that she wished everything would just slow down and she could rest; she finally got it, it seems.

When Geralt knocks on the door, Roach’s reins tied to the fence of the patio, his hand barely leaves the wood before it swings open — Yennefer, and she hasn’t changed a single bit. Her face flashes with a sudden hurt — A child is no way to boost your fragile ego — and then it’s wiped away, Yennefer hardening. Her fingers dig into the doorframe. “Geralt.”

Geralt stares. A small part of him unfurls despite her coldness. “Yen.”

The familiar address doesn't endear Geralt to her. Her fingers whiten on the door, mouth curling down in irritation — Disregard for others freedom has become quite your trademark. “I’d tell you it’s lovely to see you, but that’d be a sore lie, so I'd rather ask this; what are you doing here?”

All Geralt can do in the face of her, of missing her, Jaskier noosed tight around his wrist, is drop his shoulders and say, “Jaskier’s dead, Yen.”.

Yennefer freezes, face spasming in a quiet shock and sometimes Geralt forgets that the two were intimately aware of the others existence. Jaskier and Yennefer didn't like each other — were hostile towards each other more often than not, threw violent threats as small talk and would embitter at the sight of the other, but the familiarity they built was enough to broker a…strange form of respect, mostly out of what both of them meant to Geralt.

It’s enough to have a muted grief briefly pass across her features, disdain draining into something slightly understanding. Still, she’s tense, and Geralt can’t bring himself to begrudge her for it. “And you’re here to — what? Get a rebound? A good fucking to forget? Because I’m not doing that shit again—“

”No,” Geralt snaps, teeth clashing. “No, not that, we don't — we couldn't work like that. It’s not something I’m here to start again. I just —“ Yennefer’s brows furrow, and his mouth fails him — gritting. “Fuck. I missed you, Yen and I can’t —“ Frustration boils. All his thoughts are a jumbled fucking mess. “Lose you, again. I can't lose anyone again.”

Yennefer blinks, then again, so rapid that Geralt barely realises that her eyes have fogged over and she swears under her breath. “You stupid fucking — just—“ She fists the armour of his shoulders to pull him down to her height and she shove her head into his chest, shaking ever so slightly. Geralt curls around her. “I don't know what to feel, just give me some time but — shit, Jaskier,” Real grief slips through her voice, as if the realisation just struck her. “Jaskier.” She repeats quietly.

”He’s gone, Yen,” Geralt says into her hair, trying to keep his hands steady on her and shit, his resolve is crumbling. “He’s gone. I’m sorry, I don’t—“

”Geralt,” She says, trying to comfort and be soft, and neither of them know how to be that. “I know, I’m sorry.”

”He’s alone,” Geralt says. His vision begins to shatter into stinging shards and he presses his face into her crown, hiding away. Yennefer grabs at him, as if to keep him together. “He doesn't do well alone. What do I — what do I do, Yen?”

Yennefer sounds so helpless when she says I don't know.

Yennefer makes them tea after, setting it down on the table in front of her couch before she settles an inch away from him, the black void of everything still between them. They don't touch, but she knocks the bone of her knee against his and keeps it there, a steady pressure. Not yet a comfort, but…good.

”I am truly sorry, Geralt,” Yennefer says, hands knotting on her lap. She sounds so sincere that it makes Geralt’s skin prickle uncomfortably. “I know Jaskier and I didn't…get on—“

”You threatened to kill him multiple times,” Geralt corrects lightly. Yennefer responds with a thin purse of her mouth, slightly tilted. The threats they flung were never truly serious in nature, Geralt knew that neither of them would act on it if it came down to it; it was just the form their frustrations took. “Though, I guess that was just the reaction he invoked.”

“In a way,” Yennefer says, eyes wandering to the far wall across the room. “I wouldn't have killed him, maybe just have turned him into a frog for a small while to teach him a lesson. But that’s an aside,” Her tone sombers, body tensing; she got like this whenever they had to talk about the hard things. Geralt’s fingers itch. “Jaskier was a dear friend of yours — the dearest, if he stuck around so long and I — I admit that I don’t quite understand what he means to you, but I know it was much and losing that would be…it would be crushing, I suppose.”

Geralt’s words lodge in his throat, aching and he stays very, very quiet for a few moments. A beat of his slow heart.. “He was…” So much, too much, indescribable in some ways and so simple in others; a lover, a bard, a friend and to Geralt — “Everything, Yen.”

Silence swallows the space around them, oppressive and Geralt waits with his nerves slowly gnawing wide. Waits until Yennefer shifts in place, an exhale and then a, “Ah,” full of so many things unnamed that Geralt’s stomach constricts. Childishly, he wants to flee. “I suppose that answers some of my…previous thoughts.”

Geralt goes rigid, palms tensing on his thighs. ”I wasn't using you,” Geralt says, working at the words in his throat before he looks to her — finding her already looking back, brows rising. “I did—“ It wasn't love, not quite, but it was them. “Want you. I didn't — I didn't know I—“

Yennefer raises a hand. Geralt shuts his mouth with a click! of his teeth and she studies him for a few heartbeats, inscrutable. Finally, she drops her hand back into her lap. “I know what you meant, Geralt. I’m not particularly in the mood to hold that against you, Melitele knows I’d be a far greater hypocrite than you if I did considering what I’ve done throughout my life. I’m tired of being petty,” She taps her finger on the fence of her knuckles, something impassable in her expression that briefly rounds to melancholy. “I…I enjoyed our time together, and I know you did, but we…we’re simply not meant to be like that, even outside of whatever feelings you harbour for Jaskier. And I — I did miss our friendship, Geralt. The little that we had.”

”So did I,” Geralt murmurs. Yennefer tries for a smile, relaxing an inch and it’s enough for Geralt’s guilt to come crushing down on him again, chest creaking with it. “…I’m sorry, Yennefer, for everything. The mountain. You didn’t deserve my ire — to have your want for a child thrown back in your face.”

A sudden stiffness, Yennefer’s shoulders boxing straight. A few seconds pass in a hollow silence, but eventually Yennefer’s expression shifts into a sort of uncomfortable softness. “I — I suppose a returning apology is in turn then,“ She bites on her cheek, chewing, looking away. “…I was angry for a long fucking time, I won’t lie to you, stupid idea to do so, but my anger gave out so long ago that holding onto it exhausts me. I forgive you Geralt, and I…I’m sorry, for bringing up your child surprise.”

That — a hairline crack through Geralt’s heart. “I forgave you a long time ago, Yen.” He admits, and Yennefer’s mask slips just enough for her mouth to waver.

He forgave Yennefer two days after that bastard mountain when he’d had enough time to sit down — to think — sweeping his hands through his hair, breathing out and all his anger going with it; disdain distilling to regret. Eskel always said he was far more forgiving than he gave himself credit for. Jaskier just said he was a big softy.

”Ah,” Yennefer says. “I see,” A few beats pass, eyes tensing in thought as Geralt’s hands clench, unclench. Finally, she says, “You’re a man of few words, Geralt, but a useful few.”

Geralt’s stomach is no longer his own, hollow. “Don’t have much reason to use them anymore.”

Yennefer’s expression spasms and her heartrate jumps — ba-dum — mouth thinning out, as if she’s being reminded of his death all over again. Slowly, she breathes out, shaking with it, voice strange in his ears. “How’d it happen?”

”Scarlet fever,” Geralt answers, skin tightening and claustrophobic and he can fucking still smell that rotting room. He resists the urge to tear at his sinuses. “He went in a few days, apparently.”

"Not the most painful death, at least,” Yennefer says, the barest of comforts but fuck, what Geralt would give to for Jaskier in lieu of words and gifts at his grave. Then, her eyes flicker to him, tempering down to an almost gentleness. “How long ago?”

It takes a few seconds for Geralt to piece how much time he’s lost since that little girl gave shape to words he never wished would. When he does, his gut sinks and it all goes gray at the edges — foggy. His swallow is a bomb in his ears, voice nearly failing him and he can’t even hear himself say, “Just over a month ago.”

A month. It all begins to fizzle out.

Jaskier has been gone a month and Geralt is still fucking there — he’s been rotting a month under the ground where Geralt can’t fucking go, now just sludge organs and decayed sinews and his skin has probably slogged off his muscle. Gone. Maggot food for the rest of time.

A little part of him breaks just then and he feels his mouth crumple — seizing, trying to press it closed and pushing the jut of his palm into his eye when it throbs — and Yennefer stares, unsure because they never did this — they didn't know what to do when the other got like this. Geralt tries to breathe through the grief that slams into him and he’s so fucking tired.

”Stay the night,” Yennefer suddenly, desperately, says and Geralt’s vision tunnels — pressing his face into his hands, fingers dipping and nails almost clipping his skin. A hand on his shoulder, a hard pressure and Yennefer is closer, closer, voice near and tightly strung. “Geralt, please.”

Yennefer doesn’t beg. It’s enough for Geralt to completely sag, nodding as his composure frays even more and — he thinks he loses his mind then — A month, only a month — and Yennefer lets him.

At some point, when everything becomes sharper again and Geralt’s nerves knit themselves back into that usual numbness, he finds himself sitting on one of Yennefer’s plush patio chairs, her humming next to him.

The suns sunken just above the edge of the horizon, sky a blur of honey-orange blending into pink hues, some blues and then the airy white of clouds painted in them. They cast shadows across the meadows around Yennefer’s cottage, stretching into the city and the high courts where Yennefer is employed. It’s warm, as it always is now, the wind faintly sweet, sweeping and lightly brushing Geralt’s hair and — he blinks.

Jaskier would’ve liked this view, he thinks, fingers flexing to get feeling back into them; he doesn’t get much, but he’s used to that by now. The air breezes into his sleeves. It helps, a little, to bring him down into reality.

Yennefer’s reading a book next to him, a novel, and perks up when she catches him moving out of the corner of his eye — settling it down, face carefully blank in the way she sometimes does. “Geralt.”

”Yen,” Geralt says, clearing his throat when he finds it hoarse. “Hello.”

Her mouth quirks up just slightly, bemused. “Hello, Witcher. Dinner will be finished soon, I put it on while you were…brooding.”

Brooding is a way to put it, but Geralt doesn’t comment on that and instead turns his head towards the world around him. To Roach, who has taken to sleeping on the soft grass, then to the soft chimes of the wind. If Geralt focuses just enough, convinces himself enough, then he can hear the high bells of Jaskier laughing — and that thought is crushing, body splintering beneath it and Geralt misses him so fucking much.

Yennefer, observing Yennefer, who could read him like those pages she thumbs, keeps her voice light when she speaks. “Missing him?”

More than anything; Geralt’s voice is quiet. “Yes.”

Yennefer nods slowly, understanding somehow. Her gaze flicks down to where the edges of Jaskier’s bracelet peeks out of his sleeve, pressed tight against his pulse and there’s no surprise in her expression, so she must’ve seen it at some point, and Geralt is so, so tired. She looks up to the horizon, painting her in the warmest of colours. “Forgive me for asking, Geralt,” She murmurs as Geralt joins her gaze, looking away because that's what they always did best. “But that’s mourning jewelry for Jaskier, isn't it? His hair.”

Mourning jewellry it would look like, had Geralt been a better man; but he is Geralt of Rivia, Jaskier’s Witcher, and he wants to curse whatever deemed it acceptable that Jaskier would die young, so he made it anything but. The shame of it makes him swallow acid, sinking with it. “Yes.”

A bout of silence. Yennefer doesn’t say anything for a moment, heart not stuttering, not smelling of pity or jealousy or anger or anything as foul as passion. She’s silently considering, neck muscles tensing for a moment, and Geralt does with them. When she speaks again, her tone is alien, trying to be gentle because she struggles to be soft. Like him. “He was the love of your life.”

A statement, a conclusion. Not a question, because it’s not something to be called into question. Jaskier may have been called Geralt’s bard, but Geralt was always his — My Witcher, Jaskier would say so, so fondly. A moniker that made Geralt such a wretched little thing for Jaskier that he — that he would’ve done anything for him. He would still. Would give anything to have him back — just to see him for a second.

Geralt hasn't loved anything as fiercely as he had Jaskier. He doesn't know if he ever will again; nothing will compare to the love that Jaskier had for him. Love that’s now lost to the dunes of death. The thought lodges a soul-deep ache in his bones, throat thick, and he’s barely able to respond. “He was.”

Yennefer’s voice takes a moment to work, examining it over in that calculative way that always makes her so quick witted. It ends with her exhaling, leaning back in the chair with a creak, features pinched at the edges and Melitele, there's still so much left between them. “I’m sorry Geralt.”

”Nothing to be sorry about,” Geralt says. Absent-mindedly, he goes to thumb at the glass cage of the dandelion, pressing down; a new habit. There’s a hole inside him, Geralt thinks, that will never be fixed again. “It was always going to happen.”

Logically, Geralt always knew that he was going to outlive Jaskier — for many lifetimes, but he never paid mind to it because he did all he could to make sure Jaskier lived now. That he was as happy as he could’ve been trailing someone as stunted as Geralt and now — now he’s dead, so much earlier than the old and decrepit age Geralt wanted Jaskier to live to. An age he did everything to ensure Jaskier made it to, and it was all for nothing because he died when Geralt was gone and now Geralt has to figure out how to live without him.

”Still,” Yennefer says, and they’re still not looking at each other. “You should’ve had more time with him.”

Geralt doesn't say anything to that and, eventually when the sun sinks deeper past the earth, some internal clock of hers works at her to move, and she sweeps inside for dinner.

That night, Geralt laying on his spine and staring at the cut of wood ceiling, Yennefer slips into the guestroom she loaned him — climbing into the bed with him. Geralt lets her, eyes staring above, slowly sliding to where she settles a few inches away from him, hair spidering across the pillow that Geralt did without.

She’s not facing him, back to him and back bowed inward in a curl. There’s the brief thought of Yennefer resembling a child, wiry arms tucked close to her chest and knees shifting closer to her chest, and it makes a Geralt’s nerves ill with guilt as he listens to her heartbeat begin to settle in the cage of her ribs, the layer beneath her wrists and neck. They’re both lonely. So, so lonely.

They don't do anything, they don't touch or press close, but it’s comfortable.

Geralt sleeps better than he has in weeks.

Geralt leaves the next morning when the air is still cold and dewy, light barely peeking behind the horizon, sky ashy. The air smells of rain when he sniffs it, mist still on the blades of grass. There’s a wet breeze, dampening the surface of Geralt’s skin and eliciting a minor shiver.

Before he does, Yennefer stops him with a hand to his shoulder. Geralt does so, giving a blank blink, and she says, “I have something for you.”

That she does. With an unfamiliar amount of anxiousness that bobs her throat, hesitation never suiting her well, she grabs his right hand and brings it to her. Geralt unfurls it automatically for her as she digs something from a pocket in her dress — opening her hand to drop a little floral pendant in his palm: silver, a purple gem in the middle — Geralt stills, eyes flicking up to her.

Yennefer curls his fingers around it as she looks at him — into him. “It’s a pendant that I cast a tracking spell into,” She starts and Geralt’s fingers pop with a clench when she goes to tap a finger against the choker around her throat. A matching pendant with a white plumeria gem. “It’s a two-way spell, Geralt, so stop looking as if I’m doing so to mother you,” Geralt stares at her face for a moment, then nods. “It’s so we can keep in contact and find one another easily if the need arises. I—“ Yennefer’s head twists away, slightly uncomfortable. “…I do not wish for the silence that we had before, again. It was…” She trails off, but Geralt knows what she means; it’s the same feeling that ate at him for months.

In one smooth motion Geralt slips his necklace off, unties the knot that connects it and threads the leather through a hole in the pendant. It slides down until it clinks! with Jaskier’s ring, a soft jingle that makes that hole in him just a little bigger. He reties the chain, slips it back around his neck and beneath his armour, pendant and ring and medallion all against his diaphragm, nearly his heart. The last of Yennefer’s tension drains with it disappearing under the armour.

The pendant warms against his skin, heated in the way magic naturally is. Geralt tries to offer a strained smile — a first in so long that it’s painful. “Thank you, Yen.”

Yennefer’s own small smile tilts, dimples in her cheeks and Geralt automatically reaches back when she stretches towards him — enveloped in his arms, solid and breathing against him. Fingers twist in the fabric beneath his armour, strong and sure and Yennefer whispers into his chest, “If you want to know where I am, simply hold it and you will know,” She squeezes and Geralt returns it, hiding in the crown of her hair. “Keep yourself out of trouble, Geralt.”

”Don’t turn people into frogs,” Geralt says awkwardly and Yennefer muffles an abrupt laugh into his chest plate. That flickering ball of warmth sweeps through him and makes him feel alive for just a moment — longer than he has in a while. “Keep safe.”

Salutations Dear Penelope,

I’m in Cleves now, on a contract about a bruxa terrorising the town. The town’s nice. Quant. A little girl gifted me a flower as a thanks for taking it out. Roach likes the sugar cubes that the stable boy keeps sneaking her; he doesn't know that I know. Jaskier would I think you’d like the fields, they’re blooming with flowers. Jaskier would too, probably.

I don't know what to write. Apologies. I don't write letters. I’ll be in Zavada in three weeks if you want to post a letter there.

Sincerely,

Geralt of Rivia