#every fucking witcher on the continent actually
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Why Vilgefortz threw himself off a cliff (ft. Girlboss Yennefer)
TWN based spoiler heavy Vilgefortz ramble about subterfuge, Aretuza's destruction and his ultimate frenemy Yennefer.
If you ask yourself ‘Why did Vilgefortz do that?’ or ‘How could Yennefer do this?’ This one’s for you.
Vilgefortz throwing himself off a cliff in season one to the pearl-clutching horror of Witcher fans was actually kind of genius. The greatest sorcerer on the Continent loses a sword fight to Cahir of all people and as a result Vilgefortz is written off as a thoughtless, useless and ineffectual villain.
It’s too far of a stretch to consider the central antagonist of the saga may have an ulterior motive and that the fight’s victor was total misdirection.
Cahir was always going to walk away unscathed for two reasons:
Cahir doesn’t know it yet but they’re coworkers and it’ll reflect badly on Vilgefortz if he fillets him.
Cahir is the only person that knows the true identity of Ciri and this is invaluable information to both Emhyr and Vilgefortz for their respective elder blood schemes.
The fight was subterfuge and the outcome never mattered, what did matter was that Yennefer was there to witness it.
Vilgefortz’s behaviour is overtly theatrical during this scene - he dramatically flies in, he’s throwing swords about the place, he’s doing flips, Christ he even has a gimmick involving an endless supply of swords. He could have severed the mind connection with Yennefer at any point but it was imperative she witnessed this performance. Why?
In S2 Vilgefortz has essentially fucked his way to the top. He’s not exactly subtle and there are clues to his true motives throughout all of his scenes. For example:
He tells a Nilfgaardian soldier he can’t save him today because he’s Team Aretuza right now (a cute throwback to him bashing that Northern Kingdom soldier’s head in at the end of S1).
He is openly conversing with Emhyr within Aretuza, most likely about elven baby slaughter.
And finally he is so obviously manipulating Tissaia that it’s almost criminal he didn’t look down the camera and wink. But I digress.
Vilgefortz’s theatrics return during Cahir’s fake execution (because yet again Cahir was never at risk). Our attention is firmly on Yennefer and Cahir’s Bonnie-and-Clyde style escape and not on how every northern royal or high ranking member of Aretuza saw Vilgefortz hand that axe to Yennefer before she went full renegade. This may not seem significant but Cahir has now miraculously survived two near-death experiences and both times Yennefer and Vilgefortz have been at the helm.
For Vilgefortz to put Cahir’s neck on the line he would need to know exactly what Yennefer intended but so far they’ve interacted for maybe five minutes at most. So how much does he know about Yen?
During his introduction in S1 he knew exactly how to locate her, her romantic past with Istredd and the strength of her bond with Tissaia. Using the latter he expertly manipulates her back to Aretuza and onto the battlefield with a few clever words.
They strategised together at Sodden to coordinate the counterattack and in the process he let her take the lead, so he knows exactly how she operates in combat situations.
By the end of season two he knows Yennefer is with Ciri and Geralt since he has been tracking Ciri from the moment she fled Cintra through Rience. He knows all about her family unit and what that means to her to have that connection.
Vilgefortz has clearly been studying Yennefer since before he appeared on screen, but if that isn’t a convincing enough argument, he’s also a mind reader. He’s so adept at it in the books that he’s frequently shown as bored waiting for characters like Geralt and Ciri to catch their thoughts up with his conversation.
Whilst not yet confirmed in the show, an audition transcript posted back in May 2022 on RI alludes to Vilgefortz being far worse than just a mindreader:
Voice 1: I can tell you that whoever did this has grand plans. It’s a mind-control enchantment. Anyone’s head would be a tangled mess.
Voice 2: Mind control? To what end?
Voice 1: I don’t know. But it’s damned powerful. It has elements of sorcery, druidic magic and there’s even some ancient elven in this spell. That’s the other thing. The subject must be part elven. Maybe a couple of generations removed, but still.
Voice 1: Who would have the power to do something like this?
Voice 2: I don’t know anyone with the knowledge to do something like this. It would take lifetimes to acquire these all these skills, but whoever he is, he has a variety of interests.
This scene is now confirmed to take place during episode 3 of Season 3 with one of these voices being Geralt.
Vilgefortz knows in S3 through his own studies of elder blood that Yennefer will need help tempering the chaos within Ciri and he knows exactly where she will turn. Straight back to Aretuza and her own maternal figure Tissaia with whom he has conveniently allied himself with both politically and romantically.
We've seen in the trailer that Geralt is less than enthused by this but Yennefer is adamant it's the best thing for Ciri.
Vilgefortz will actively defend and encourage Yennefer’s return to Aretuza despite her reputation across the Continent as a traitor, because Ciri will fall right in his lap. And whilst it seems strange for Vilgefortz to defend Yen he’s actually done it before in this deleted scene with Stregobor.
Stregobor: There’s something unnatural in her
Vilgefortz: And there’s something unnatural in how entrenched your protege is with Nilfgaard
Vilgefortz could have commented on any of Stregobor’s antics but he deliberately chose to rebuke Istredd. Stregobor’s student and one time spy. It’s reminiscent of teachers arguing about their student’s behaviour. It’s small but Vilgefortz has planted that seed of connection between him and Yennefer and he has been doing so continuously.
Stregobor is truly the boy who cried wolf after the Renfri debacle and as such the audience (and Aretuza) is totally unsympathetic to his protestations of a traitor being amongst them. He’s so adamant in his prejudice towards Yen that he blindly appeals to the real traitor, again emphasising how the lines between Yennefer and Vilgefortz are starting to blur.
Stregobor is the first to identify the connection but TWN has not been shy in making parallels between Yennefer and Vilgefortz:
In S1:
Yennefer is strapped into a chair and forcibly sterilised. This never happens in the books and it is voyuersticly grisly in the show. Vilgefortz straps women into chairs and forcibly removes their wombs as part of his elder blood experiments in the books.
Yennefer stands at the top of Sodden Hill and scorches the Earth below. In the books Vilgefortz’s last stand at Stygga invokes a similar image.
In S2:
Yennefer is the hero of Sodden. In the books, Vilgefortz is the hero of Sodden. Though in the show they can't seem to make up their minds.
And the piece de resistance is that Yennefer hunts Ciri across the Continent to sacrifice her for magical powers. In the books, (you already know where this is going)it’s Vilgefortz.
Yennefer and Vilgefortz themselves even acknowledge their shared calculating natures during a terse discussion of the political fallout after Sodden.
Possibly their most contentious connection is Tissaia.
Vilgefortz was justifiably criticised for being romantically involved with Tissaia but there’s zero consideration as to his motive entering that relationship. Putting aside Tissaia and Vilgefortz’s shared political aspirations and their similar ideology on what to do with girls who no longer serve their purpose (eelgate), we’re left with Yennefer.
We know Vilgefortz has been manipulating both women and that he’s been watching them closely. He repeats Tissaia’s own words to Yennefer back to her like a mantra:
But to what end? Vilgefortz has nothing but contempt towards Tissaia and Yennefer’s relationship, and later Yennefer and Ciri’s bond. This is all a projection of his horrific mommy issues (more on that later) but here's an example of his feelings towards motherhood taken from Lady of the Lake:
“I would have given you a reason for your crippled excuse of a maternal instinct. Although you’re dry and sterile as a stone, you’d not only have a daughter, but a granddaughter too. Or at least an excuse for a granddaughter."
Aretuza is the perfect hunting ground for Vilgefortz to find victims for his elder blood experiments. Students that don’t ascend are callously discarded, and coupled with the fact the girls have only been sent there as they have zero place in society and their families want them gone, they now fit the profile of ‘perfect victim’. Nobody’s that won’t be missed. If S3 follows the books then when Vilgefortz and Tissaia take control over Aretuza Tissaia will be promoted to Arch-Mistress meaning her protection of the girls slips as her her attention shifts elsewhere. Now Vilgefortz can play.
However there was a moment in S1 that makes me think he’s been set up an opposing force to Tissaia’s maternal nature since the beginning:
Vilgefortz has been snatching these girls from just beyond Tissaia’s reach. He is making a mockery of her role as rectoress and the motherly role she has adopted towards her girls. This has now been confirmed as true via RI.
What becomes of Vilgefortz’ victims is something Geralt will discover in S3 when he goes on the hunt for Rience’s master and discovers a grotesque monster consisting of girl body parts fused together by fire. Fun.
Tissaia and Vilgefortz’s relationship was never simple - consider these motives and exactly why he is so intimately placed within Tissaia and Yen’s relationship. Vilgefortz has dug his claws deeps and intends to weaponise Tissaia’s demise against Yennefer to break her.
Now onto the coup, in a bid for redemption a politically motivated Yennefer will be directly responsible for organising the conclave of mages in S3. Whether she is directed to do so by Tissaia or Vilgefortz or through her own volition remains to be seen. We know there are ulterior motives regardless of who hosts.
What’s particularly striking about this is that as Thanedd burns it completes Yennefer’s self fulfilling prophecy, as warned about over the seasons by Stregobor.
Stregobor is adamant Yennefer will lead Thanedd to ruin and compares her alleged actions to that of Falka during her rebellion in S2. Anything to reclaim power. He insists history will repeat itself and likely foreshadows his own death at Thanedd:
The question is will Stregobor uncover the true identity of Aretuza’s traitor or will he die clinging to the belief that Yennefer will betray them all?
Moving onto the aftermath of the Thanedd coup the tiny blink and you miss it interactions between Vilgefortz and Yen take form - the fight that never was, the power exchange in front of Kings, her return to Aretuza, and all the jarring similarities between them. Yen was never working with Nilfgaard, she was working with him. At least this is what Vilgefortz wants the Continent to believe and he’s been planting that seed since S1. Stregobor noticed it. The Northern Kings saw it. Geralt will see it.
Now Yennefer is all alone and her relationships have been systematically destroyed.
Aretuza is gone and Tissaia is dead. Geralt has only just forgiven Yen for trying to sacrifice Ciri in S2, what will his natural conclusion be when Yennefer takes them to Aretuza and lands them in front of Vilgefortz? The Lodge knows Yennefer is innocent but that doesn’t fit their narrative so her friends run with her being a traitor and are happy to let her die as one.
Yennefer is now on the run and the only path she has is directly back to Vilgefortz.
TWN may not delve as far into her isolation as the books did; there are hints that Geralt and Yennefer will face Vilgefortz together and honestly I would prefer that. Geralt’s acceptance that Yennefer betrayed him in the books never sat well with me so I would welcome that change in the show.
So why has Vilgefortz done this to Yen? We begin to understand when Vilgefortz tries to recruit Geralt during Time of Contempt; he beguiles him with philosophy, immortality and concerning ideologies regarding women but Geralt simply doesn’t bite, until Vilgefortz hits too close to home.
"And there at the end of the world, I met a woman. A sorceress".
"Be careful", whispered the Witcher, and his eyes narrowed. "Be careful that the similarities you are so desperately searching for don’t lead you too far".
Geralt rejects all of Vilgefortz’s attempts to find common ground with him and alluding to Yennefer is a step too far. Vilgefortz denies this connection and goes onto discuss how his preternatural rage stems from his mother’s rejection, the callousness of the Brotherhood and then back to the sorceress once more.
“I left her. Because she was promiscuous, arrogant, spiteful, unfeeling and cold. Because it was impossible to dominate her, and her domination of me was humiliating…I left her, because she was like my mother. I suddenly understood what I felt for her was not love at all…a perverse need for suffering and atonement. What I felt for that woman was hate.”
Vilgefortz’s reason for becoming a mage was hatred - he has nothing but contempt for women and the magical Chapter. Yennefer is the embodiment of that hatred, from her own cold and spiteful demeanour and later her selfless maternal quest to save Ciri, she is the perfect target for his rage. He wants her to suffer and be humiliated as he was.
Neither Vilgefortz or Yennefer were ever going to be satisfied sitting courtside at the beck and call of a King, in that respect and in many other ways they are similar. But their major difference is where that quest for power leads them and for Yennefer in TWN that leads her to attempting to sacrifice Ciri to regain what she lost.
Yennefer gains far more when she meets Ciri - she finds connection, she finds a daughter, she finds everything she has been searching for. Her desire for power pales in significance to the point she would sacrifice her own life to save Ciri’s. She becomes utterly selfless and in doing so distinguishes herself from the Lodge and the antagonist she has been paralleled against from the second he appeared on screen. This is the Yennefer that will be tortured by Vilgefortz for months, but she accepts this as long as she can keep Ciri safe.
I don’t necessarily agree with Yen’s actions in S2 but they’re not unfounded. The issue is the fandom at large has been drawn to caricatures of these characters that are the very antithesis of who they are. For a fandom that loudly professes their commitment to complicated women Yennefer was relegated to a love interest in S2 remarkably quickly. Fuck her complexity, she’s holding hands with a man now, therefore who cares what she did to Ciri. Let her be a little evil.
It’s just such a dull reductionist take on Yen.
Vilgefortz falls victim to this too - there’s zero exploration or even expectation of a motive which is tragic as the antagonist of the saga. It’s unusual how little traction Mahesh Jadu gets as a villain considering tumblr’s obsession with them but I imagine once Vilgefortz interacts with Geralt perception will change as it did with Yennefer after interacting with Jaskier, Istredd after meeting Geralt and I can only imagine the reception Phillipa will receive after interacting with Jaskier too. Is it an unfortunate pattern or is it just a coincidence that these characters only get traction after being blessed with meeting the golden white men of the franchise? I digress.
Vilgefortz and Yennefer are complicated characters who make zero attempt to coddle the audience but what they do do is contextualise each other. They are what the other hates most, and yet they’re mirror images. They deserve more than being reduced to lazy tropes and love interests and hopefully in S3 more people give both Anya and Mahesh the opportunity to show the depth and intrigue their characters can bring to the Witcher.
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♡ Challenge for Netflix: stop treating Jaskier as comedic relief ♡
(I made this post piggyback riding off of my last one, like a part two if you will.)
Ok, so you know how Jaskier always seems to get into trouble? And either Geralt and as of season 2, now Yennefer as well, always seem be rescuing him? Even Jaskier himself made a joke about it to our beloved witch.
- "You don't get to play damsel in distress. That's my job."
Sadly, it paints a little bit of an unflattering picture of him to the audience, making many of us wonder (well, not on this side of Tumblr, we know he is a badass motherfucker) about how he survives whenever he is not by a strong witcher's/sorceress's side.
Have you considered though....
That the entire series is written and shot from the POV of ridiculously powerful individuals and Geralt in particular, being the main character of both the books, games & the series, has an extreme savior complex, more so bordering on a martyr complex.
In the Netflix Witcher series and unlike the books: Geralt's friendship with Jaskier started off rocky until he begrudgingly accepted that he can not get rid of the bard, eventually becoming a little fond of him, appreciating Jaskier's loyalty above every other quality Jaskier has, which makes Jaskier easy to trust. (However it is still apparent that their friendship is a little, if not a lot, one-sided)
Obviously Geralt doesn't want Jaskier's death or severe injury on his conscience, which is why he jumps in every time he senses danger, to save him before anything bad happens.
We as the audience only see Netflix's or rather Lauren's version of the story about a scorned hero who has a fragile, trouble magnet, human friend he feels responsible for. When in reality, the only few instances Jaskier wouldn't have survived without outside help were a) the Djinn, b) Rience, c) the opening scenes of Blood Origin.
Other than that, Jaskier is actually a VERY competent person! Alas, not much of that competence was shown on screen, we got mere crumbs of it to be honest. Like how despite being a flowery pacifist, he is braver than most + apparently he is a beefcake too. At 18/19 years old, he wasn't scared of approaching a witcher who at the time, was rumored to be a murderer. He always finds a way to stay lighthearted during the most dire of situations, always getting right back up with a smile or a snide comment after every traumatic experience, as if it never happened. (Is he like immune to PTSD or something? Nothing brings him down.) He even managed to start an elf smuggling operation for fuck's sake!
During the finale episode of season 2, many seasoned witchers died in battle at the hands of Voleth Mier, his chances of surviving were beyond slim. Any other normal human being would have dropped that damn jasper and ran for their life, but not Jaskier! No sir! He crawled his way towards Geralt under a wooden table, as monsters and witchers alike dropped to their deaths around him, all to help his friend!
In the books, Dandelion is presented to us as a smooth talker, able to get himself in and out of almost any kind of trouble with words + charisma alone. He is an Oxenfurt professor, has worked for the Redanian intelligence, he has connections all over the continent.
And I really hope that we will get to see all of that in future seasons, I hope that Geralt's attitude towards him changes, I hope that Jaskier gets the respect he deserves! Because after season 2, I am going to keep watching the series only for Jaskier alone. Also Yennefer. I do not much like Geralt and Ciri in the live adaptation at the moment.
#jaskier#julian alfred pankratz#netflix witcher#witcher netflix#dandelion#jaskier dandelion#geralt of rivia#witcher geralt#witcher ciri#cirilla of cintra#cirilla fiona elen riannon#yennefer of vengerberg#yenneferthewitcher#competent jaskier#bamf jaskier#geraskier#lambskier#yennskier#part elf jaskier#rant post#vent post#challenge for Netflix#netflix#lauren hissrich#joey batey#henry cavill
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okay so i’ve had this weird Geraskier trucker AU stuck in my head for a while and i just don’t know if i’ll ever get around to writing it properly, so instead i have compiled my headcanons!
(this got super fucking long somehow, so most of it is under the cut)
so Geralt is a long-haul trucker for a small, family owned company called Witchers Express Transportation (WET for short. haha)
of course it’s his family that owns it. Vesemir started it years ago back in their small town of Kaer Moren as something he could pass onto his boys, and to be honest, they all kind of enjoy the travel and a little solitude, although none as much as Geralt
Geralt truck is black with a wolf emblem on the side, because of course it is. Lambert’s is red with flames on it because he loves to fuck around and also i make the rules. Eskel’s truck is forest green because i just think that’s nice. Coën’s is grey (with flames because Lambert insisted he needed to “spice it up.”) Vesemir mostly stays at HQ and handles orders now, but his old truck was also black. none of that matters but it’s important to me that you know this
Geralt also has a black cat that travels with him in the cab of his truck like those adorable dudes on tiktok. i’ll give you one guess at her name ((it’s Roach. duh))
anyway. Geralt is out on some cross-continent haul, and pulls into a truck stop in Posada one evening, cause y’know. a man’s gotta eat. and drink. and sleep (if he’s lucky)
insert bard. i imagine their first meeting is essentially the same as it is in the show, except Jaskier is playing the ukulele instead of the lute because it’s modern times, and a guitar wouldn’t be playable in the truck. i am big brained
eventually Geralt goes to head back on the road once he and Roach are fed and rested, and finds he has a loud, obnoxiously-dressed shadow following him through the parking lot
“hey, so wait. okay wait. what if i, uh, y’know, came with you? like, in your truck?” Jaskier is running away from his stuffy pompous home life, and this big sexy trucker looks like his very climbable ticket
“you don’t even know where i’m going” Geralt is so not having it.
“well, no. i mean. you could tell me? but i don’t really care, as long as it’s not here!”
“i could kill you” Geralt is putting on his scariest face. it is decidedly not working
“nah, don’t buy it. i feel like murderous truckers don’t have kitten companions,” the idiot kid actually winks at him. “so, where are we going?” Jaskier is already climbing into the truck and Geralt, sweet, awkward Geralt, doesn’t want to have to rip him out of it so he just kind of. goes with it, begrudgingly. the kid probably won’t last long cooped up in the tiny cab, anyway
Geralt is very, very wrong.
Jaskier is happy to sit in the truck and look out the windows, commenting on every weird or mildly interesting thing they drive by. he’s also maybe a little too happy to flirt with Geralt at every given opportunity. Geralt definitely, totally, feels no ways about this, why would you even ask that?
Geralt keeps waiting for him to fuck off at one of the truck stops they pull into, but the kid just keeps coming back
if Geralt waits for the bard to finish his set, or his conquests before he drives off, that is definitely not because he likes the company. nope. he just feels bad for the kid, okay? it’s dangerous for a naive little fancy lad out here
oh, also. Geralt’s radio doesn’t work and Jask thinks that’s the most insane thing about this guy. i mean, travelling for weeks on end with nothing but silence and the occasional meow to listen to? absolutely psychopath behaviour. can’t have that.
so Jaskier spends a lot of his time in the passenger seat, composing songs about the various people he’s met on their travels, or about Geralt, and even once about Roach. Geralt pretends to be annoyed when Jaskier plays them in the cab, but secretly he’s realizing maybe he doesn’t miss the silence as much as he thought
Jaskier still gets himself in trouble sleeping with the wrong people at the inns they frequent, and Geralt of course has to be his Big Beefy Backup™️ when the occasional angry husband or wife tries to skin him in the middle of the motel lobby
Geralt is absolutely not jealous of the people Jask sleeps with. he’s not. nope. no, sir. he’s just annoyed at having to rescue him, is all
and if they share a bed half the time, it’s only because motels are expensive and getting two rooms seems like a waste of money. they’re just being smart!
so, they travel together like this for a couple of years; Geralt making deliveries (and excuses for the weird, overly friendly man constantly in his passenger seat) and Jaskier using all this experience to further his meager singer-songwriter career
they do part ways sometimes so Geralt can go back to Kaer Moren, or so Jaskier can try and record one of his now numerous ballads, but they’ve exchanged phone numbers (for safety!) and they somehow always end up coming back together
Jaskier absolutely did not turn on Geralt’s location sharing so he could “happen to turn up” at the same truck stop as his favourite trucker
so, yeah. they do this little dance around each other for almost 10 years before Geralt’s guilt finally gets the better of him on a bad day. he’s kept Jaskier cooped up in his tiny truck for far too long. it’s selfish. Jask deserves to see the world, and not from behind a windshield. he says as much, one day when they’re stopped in some shitty diner parking lot
Jaskier suggests they take some time off the road then, maybe see the coast together?
Geralt insists he can’t just leave his job, and that Jaskier should go on to live his actual life without an old grumpy man weighing him down
Jaskier does not take that well. “i’m the one that asked you if i could travel with you, you big brute! you don’t get to be all self-sacrificing about this!”
Geralt does not take Jaskier not taking it well very well. cue yelling. cue Geralt saying things he doesn’t mean about Jaskier holding up his deliveries with his dilly-dallying at stops. about Jaskier never shutting up and being annoying. about how he wishes he’d never met that stupid kid at the truck stop in Posada.
big “go on! just get outta here you stupid dumb animal!” vibes
cue Mountain Breakup moment. they banter, sure, but Geralt has never actually yelled at him like this. Jask gets out of the truck with a dejected “see you around, Geralt.”
they travel separately for a good few months, almost a year before Geralt starts to think he might go insane in the silence. he even considers fixing his radio, but something about that feels wrong. also he’s a little scared he’ll hear one of Jaskier’s songs play and lose his shit entirely
so eventually Geralt is home at Kaer Moren, moping more than usual, when Eskel somehow notices that Geralt and Jaskier are still sharing locations. Geralt didn’t even know that was a thing you could do??? How long has that been on????
Eskel just gives him this Look and Geralt realizes what he has to do
he sets out to find Jaskier, pinging his phone at some bar just outside Posada
well, thank god he did because he find a tipsy and very scared Jaskier in the back alley, about to get his shit rocked by a group of angry locals whose spouses he probably fucked
Mr. Big Beefy Backup™️ scares the 3 or 4 people off easy enough, but then comes the hard part. time to apologize for being a supreme dickhead, Geralt. go on.
Jaskier is still just standing there in shock because what??? just happened??? why is Geralt here? how is Geralt here? he knows for a fact Geralt would never figure out Jaskier’s location sharing trick on his own; this man can barely figure out how to answer a text.
he’s about to ask when Geralt finally starts speaking
and it’s an apology? from his Geralt?? okay, maybe he’s drunker than he thought
but no, Geralt really is apologizing, and he looks sincere. in fact, he looks downright miserable as he tells Jaskier he never meant any of it, and he’s so sorry he let his guilt get the better of him. says Jaskier didn’t deserve that hurt, and Geralt would never do it again. he’s really trying to be better. he will be better, just please. he just needs his bard back, if he’ll have him
the silence is deafening as Jaskier just stands there, gaping like a fish
he was going to shut Geralt down, at least for a minute. he was. he’s thought about this moment a zillion times, and he really was going to tell Geralt it wasn’t enough, that he’s worth more than that
but Geralt looks genuinely heartbroken and vulnerable in a way Jaskier’s never seen, and he can’t do it. he doesn’t want to.
so Jaskier steels himself and kisses him instead, because for once, he’s at a loss for words. because he’s a little drunk and he’s wanted this for the better part of a decade. because he’s afraid this is the only chance he’ll get
and when Geralt feverishly returns the kiss, Jaskier knows he’ll happily climb right back into that cramped old truck with him. knows there’s nowhere else he’d rather be than with this big, stupid man that he loves. he says as much
and Geralt smiles, actually grins as he says “i love you too, Jaskier”
Jaskier does set some new boundaries and ground rules between them though, because we stan Growth and Knowing Your Worth. luckily, Geralt is more than happy to oblige
and then they drive off into the sunset together to see the coast :)
also, Jaskier has never been more grateful for Geralt’s broken radio. there’s, uhh, no need for Geralt to hear his latest single, Burn Trucker Burn
wow. okay, well at this point i may as well have written the actual fic but Y’KNOW. maybe i will some day. who knows. let me know if uhhh if anyone would want to read it?? validation is my lifeblood and i’m real nervous about posting this for no reason
also, if anyone else for some reason wants to give this stupid AU a go, please for the love of god, tag me! i’d love to read what you come up with :)
#geraskier#geralt of rivia#jaskier#geraskier fanfiction#geralt x jaskier#gerlion#the witcher fanfiction#gracie writes#geraskier headcanon#what else do i tag#i really did not mean to write this much but apprently im passionate about the randomest AU i could think of#it literally came to me while i was laying in bed one night and wouldnt let go#also i forgot to add in ciri but idk how that would work with the whole#‘truck only has two seats and is also a horrible place to raise a child’ thing#sorry ciri... maybe you'll make it into the actual fic someday#anyway i'm obsessed with stupid idiots falling in love in every universe
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(Aiden/Lambert; the morning after; kissing and fondling; the Witcher Game canon)
If there was one thing Vesemir had drummed into their heads the moment they could understand spoken language, it was manners. Not etiquette. There was no need to know which fork you used to eat salad with and which was for picking your nose. But manners. Elbows off the tables, back straight when you're talking to someone, return kit you've borrowed in good nick. The list was endless.
It had been a bit hit and miss with Lambert. He weaponised his manners when they served him most, often when it made someone else's life a touch more difficult. Every other time, they were just another courtesy no one deserved. As a result, he elbowed his way through life being as blunt and unbearable as possible.
So, imagine his fucking surprise when he had woken up that morning, his body aching and his limbs tangled around the most handsome bastard on the Continent, and the first thing he had thought of was how fucking impolite it would be to not make breakfast. Because that was a normal and well-adjusted thing to do after having your backside blown out so well you'd called to the gods, despite being a faithless cretin your entire life.
It was better than standing in the shower and staring at the tiles in post-fuck bewilderment, Lambert reasoned as he flipped the bacon over in the frying pan. Imagine waking up to find your hook up standing in your shower looking like something out the fucking Shining 'cause you made him scream-cum.
Hook up. That didn't really track anymore, did it?
Hook ups didn't go on endless dates or spend time actually watching Netflix on cosy winter evenings. They didn't help you paint your shitty one bed apartment or give you their old couch so you didn't have to eat your takeout on the floor, and they certainly didn't get invited to the niece's birthday barbecue which was due to start in five hours. "Bollocks," Lambert murmured as he shimmied the bacon out and replaced it with an egg.
It had taken Lambert this long to sleep with Aiden because the truth was he had never been a hook up. Lambert didn't do that. He wasn't Eskel, who went cruising and came back with a new pretty face every other week. He had said those stupid fucking words last night to try and reduce the gravity of it all, to make it less... intimidating, and Aiden had the good grace to laugh it off before kissing Lambert so thoroughly he forgot who the king of Redania was.
"Mm, smells good."
Lambert startled, so lost in his thoughts that he had missed Aiden walking up behind him. His body was still bed-warm, his firm chest covered in soft hair pressed to Lambert's back. "Me or the bacon?" Lambert asked, a little breathless as Aiden kissed the soft skin beneath his ear.
"Both," Aiden replied, bumping his hips to the top of Lambert's arse. He was about seven inches taller, which made the sudden and vivid daydream that popped into Lambert's head of Aiden bending him over the counter a little unrealistic. He thought about it anyway. As if he could taste the flush in Lambert's skin, Aiden's hand wandered beneath the apron Lambert had thrown on, fondling Lambert's hardening cock through the soft cotton of his boxers. "Still eager after last night, baby. What a treat for me."
"I'm... There's--ahh, there's bacon."
Aiden rested his chin on Lambert's shoulder to peer down at the pan, his hand still stroking slowly. "I can see," he said, and then after a brief pause, "are you stress cooking?"
"No. I'm being a courteous fucking houseguest. I think I owe your brothers a gift basket after the noise I made last night."
Aiden chuckled. "Yeah, you were so loud."
Lambert tensed, his cheeks warming.
"Hey." Aiden flicked the gas off and tilted Lambert's chin up. "You ashamed of what we did? You didn't feel, uh... pressured, did you? I thought..."
Oh, shit. How had he managed to ruin it already? Lambert swallowed and threw the spatula down. The partially cooked yolk smeared through the base of the pan, fat sizzling, and he kissed Aiden right on his worried frown. It would have given him enough time to gather his thoughts, but they all scattered the moment Aiden moaned softly in pleasure.
They stood kissing for some time, one of Aiden's hands slipping into Lambert's ruffled hair to knead and tug gently. His other hand remained on Lambert's cock, which throbbed needily with every passing stroke. Lambert's knees wobbled, and Aiden's arm lifted to his waist to steady him. "Easy, baby. Going a little weak at the knees there." The fact clearly delighted him.
"Don't regret it, wanted it, want... want you." Lambert managed a few broken sentences through the croak in his throat as he looked at the mutilated fucking egg in the pan. "Not... sure how to process it."
"Should've figured that big brain of yours would overthink itself into a rut." Aiden nuzzled into Lambert's dark nest of hair as if he could kiss said brain through Lambert's skull. "Did you have fun last night?"
"You know I had fun last night, arsehole."
"Mm, but I wanna hear you say it," Aiden purred. "You had a lot to say at the time."
"I didn't talk..."
"Ahh--ahh, Aiden, fuck, fuck, ahh, shit, mmm, that--oh my fucking gods, what--"
Lambert elbowed Aiden in the stomach and whirled around to face him. He didn't get to lay in with his rebuttal, because Aiden scooped him up and kissed him again through a chuckle.
When he pulled away, Lambert felt thoroughly gentled and Aiden licked his neck. "Just teasing. No regrets, Bertie. I want you. Have wanted you so bad for so long. But if you need to slow down, need some more time, you're worth waiting for."
And that. That was enough.
The weird tension Lambert had been carrying since he'd woken faded. He wasn't a one and done to Aiden. Not now to be discarded for a new and less complicated conquest. Not another hook up--why had he said such a stupid fucking idiot thing? He'd done this to himself, he was such a dickhead--but someone Aiden would wait for, even without the sex...
No, no, Lambert definitely wanted the sex.
"Bacon reheats, right?" Lambert murmured into Aiden's shoulder.
"Yeah, egg's fucked though."
"Fuck the egg--wait, no, fuck me. Fuck me instead."
Aiden chuckled as he scooped Lambert up by the thighs, guiding muscular legs around his waist. "My pleasure."
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There IS actually a group that has the right to hate Witchers on the continent. It is cabbage vendors. Imagine you’re just trying to sell your cabbages in town to feed yourself and 12 children, and every 5 minutes some fucking baby Witcher is landing in your produce.
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Witchers + stressed singlemom!reader
Summary: The reader is a very stressed and anxious single mom, and the witchers comfort her after a long day
Beginning Notes: Decided to do small drabbles for each of the witchers and added Geralt just because. First work in this fandom, so feedback is much appreciated. The reader, kids and witchers are in Kaer Morhen for the winter because Nilfgaard is making most of the continent too unsafe for all the witcher SOs to leave their lovers alone in this oneshot.
Tagged: @shit-i-say-shit-i-think, @deans-ch-ch-cherrypie (idk if you wanted to be tagged for every fandom or just vikings, but i saw you reblog a few eskel fanfics so i thought i'd tag you anyway)
Masterlist | based on this request | requests are OPEN!
Geralt
The only reason why he had gone back into the freezing hall so late at night was because he had forgotten his medallion there after a long evening of drinking games with Lambert. So he didn’t exactly expect to see you there, head buried in your hands with a drink next to you.
You hadn’t been there for dinner or drinking afterwards, Geralt realized now. Had you even eaten? Why hadn’t you been there with the rest of them? Were you sick?
“What are you doing here?” he asked instead, and immediately wanted to hit himself. Of all things he could have said, he chose the words that sounded the most accusatory.
You looked up at him, slightly startled. “Oh. Hello Geralt. I just needed some peace.”
“Hmm.” He replied. “Did you eat yet?”
You shook your head. Fuck. You’d finally put the kids to bed, but you’d totally forgotten about your own dinner.
Geralt sighed, and left the hall, leaving you to sip some more wine and brood. You probably didn’t look half as good as any of the witchers doing it.
You didn’t expect Geralt to come back at all, but he set down a bowl of stew in front of you, before taking a seat next to you.
“I warmed it up with Igni so it might be a little hot.” He told you.
“Thank you.” You replied. The first bite was so good it made you realize just how hungry you actually were.
Geralt didn’t talk to you while you ate, something you were very grateful for in the moment. When you were done with your stew, he set it aside.
“Why weren’t you at dinner? Ciri missed you.” He said.
“Sorry. I was busy with the kids.” You replied. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”
There was a pause while you mulled over your words, hoping that Geralt wouldn’t be as disappointed as Ciri. You could feel tears prick your eyes in exhaustion. The kids had been fussy enough today, and now you’d let Ciri down too.
“Hey.” Geralt said, but you almost didn’t hear him. “Hey, are you okay?” he repeated.
Quickly, you wiped the tears threatening to fall, hoping that he wouldn’t notice. “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Geralt shrugged. “It’s hard enough to manage one teenager, and Ciri’s only been with me for a bit. Can’t imagine having to put several kids to bed each night.”
“Sorry if it’s been a bother. We could still move down to the village-“
“You’re not a bother. Who told you that?” Geralt demanded.
“Well,” you began, searching for words. “Their father expected me to take care of them and…”
Geralt seemed genuinely confused at that. “So he didn’t help you?”
You shook your head. “It was my job. And it looks like I keep messing it up.”
He shook his head, before he moved even closer, pulling you into a hug. You sank into it, letting Geralt hold you. Neither of you said anything, and you were glad that he was so quiet. He let you cry onto his shirt with no comment, and when you were done, he carefully wiped the tears from your face.
“You’re an amazing mother. Tomorrow, ask me for help. I love you.” He demanded, and you gave him a slight smile.
“Thank you, Geralt. I love you too.”
Eskel
Fuck. You should have known that Eskel would be in the library. He loved to read, and you hadn’t seen him in the hall or in the courtyard with the others. You prayed that he was engrossed enough in his book that he wouldn’t notice you sneaking past.
Highly unlikely, considering that he’s a trained witcher. You told yourself.
Still, you took a route that hid you behind bookshelves, searching for the section that would hopefully have the right book for you. Eskel looked up once, when you brushed a book that was sticking out into the cramped space between shelves.
Finally, you found the section you had searched for, with books that held advice regarding illnesses. Your youngest had come down with some sort of flu and fever, but for now, it wasn’t too bad. You wanted to take care of them for as long as you could before bothering the others.
There was a book titled ‘Children’s illnesses’ in the shelf, and you almost cried tears of relief then and there. Had Vesemir or some other witcher bought it to take care of the boys before they underwent the Trial of Grasses?
The only problem was that your perfect book was on a top shelf. Not a problem for a hulking witcher, but for a regular human being like you? As quietly as you could, you reached up, and when that didn’t work, you stepped onto the first shelf.
It gave a creak of protest, but it wasn’t too loud, so you stayed where you were. Peering through the shelves, you threw a look at Eskel, who was still reading.
Then, you reached up, grabbing the book firmly and pulling it out. Another book fell out beside it, tumbling to the floor. Just your luck.
“Fuck.” You cursed under your breath. Quickly you picked it up and made to leave the library. You almost didn’t notice Eskel, who stood across from you, sword raised.
“I thought you were something else.” Eskel sighed. “Why are you sneaking around in the library?”
“Just looking for a good book.” You lied. “Didn’t want to disturb you.”
Eskel glanced down at the spine of your book.
“Children’s illnesses. What a riveting read.” He commented dryly.
“Sorry.” You sighed. “I didn’t want to annoy anyone.”
“You’re not annoying anyone. You’re one of the nicest people here. And I love you.”
“Thank you. Love you too. Well, I have the book, so I’ll just go and search for the right stuff.” You said, making to leave.
Eskel caught your arm, stopping you as you tried to brush past.
“Are you alright love?” he asked.
You gave what you hoped was a convincing laugh. “Yeah of course. Just a bit tired. But I’m great, really!”
“We’re all willing to help you.” Eskel reminded. “Especially me. Your kids are the closest I’ll ever be to being a father. I want to help you.”
You didn’t say anything, giving Eskel an awkward smile.
“You should be annoyed at me for spending so little time with you lately. You don’t have to take care of my kids too.”
“Who told you that?” Eskel asked. “Was it that dirtbag that tried to keep you in your own house?”
Apparently, your silence was enough of an answer because Eskel hugged you tightly. “You’re an amazing woman and a better mother than anyone I can think of. Yennefer wishes she was you.”
“Thank you. Even though I doubt an extremely powerful and immortal sorceress is jealous of me.” You sniffled.
“She is.” Eskel promised. “Now, let’s go find Vesemir and ask him for advice. I swear, he knows every single grass to ever grow on the Continent.”
Lambert
No one would notice if you left the dinnertable now, right? You needed to check up on the baby. Call it motherly intuition, but you knew they were awake and up to create chaos right in this moment.
Quickly, you looked over to where Lambert was sitting. You had to stop yourself from laughing. He was telling the story from that one job again, the one he had told your oldest three times already. They still wanted to hear it over and over.
Speaking of oldest, they were talking to Ciri, who was showing off her newest bruises. You were right, no one was paying attention to you. Time to make a quiet exit.
You began sneaking away, walking through the long and dark hallways of Kaer Morhen. There was a feeling of anxiousness and inevitability on your chest, similar to when you had still been with your children’s father.
Lambert had gotten you out of that situation, but you couldn’t run to him for everything.
Almost angrily, you stalked up a flight of stairs and rounded another corner. Suddenly, a rat scurried across your path, and you shrieked, stepping backwards, only to bump into a wall that hadn’t been there before.
Turning around, you shrieked again as you stared up at Lambert.
“Fuck Lambert!” you exclaimed. “You almost scared me to death.”
He gave a quick laugh. Annoyed, you turned around, continuing down the hallway, and Lambert jogged up behind you.
“Hey, why’d you just sneak off during dinner? Meeting your secret lover?” he asked.
“And who would that be?” you asked. “I’m checking on the baby.”
“The baby’s fine.” Lambert insisted. “You’re worrying too much.”
“They’re creating chaos.” You replied. “I know it.”
“And what chaos could a one-year-old create?” Lambert asked.
“I don’t know!” you replied, throwing up your hands. “Probably painting the walls with their own poop. Who the hell knows?”
“You need to calm down.” Lambert told you gently, the humor leaving his voice. Carefully, he put his hands on your shoulders, turning you around to face him.
“The baby’s sleeping, the toddler is safe as my betting chip for Gwent and your oldest is annoying Ciri.”
“Oh god, they’re annoying Ciri.” You almost shouted. “What am I going to do?”
“Take a breath, for starters.” Lambert said.
“Stop joking!” you hissed, jabbing a finger into his chest. Then, you realized that this was Lambert you were talking to, who was trying to take care of you.
“Sorry.” You apologized. “I’ll check on the baby and then I’ll be right back with you. Promise.”
“Y/N. I am not your ex-husband. I want to help you, and you don’t have to manage everything at the same time. You’re doing amazing. And I love your kids, even when they throw up on my shirt.” Lambert reminded. “Now let’s go check on the baby.”
“Your shirt. Right, I’ve washed that, it’s drying over the fire.” You brabbled on as Lambert guided you to your shared room.
Quietly, he opened the door and threw a look inside. “See, they’re sleeping.” Lambert assured.
You stared into the dark, barely seeing anything. You knew Lambert could probably spot a spider in the corner of the room with his enhanced senses, but still, the baby was not smearing poop on the walls and that was a start.
Sighing in relief, you closed the door.
“Come here.” Lambert said, pulling you into a hug. “Let’s go back down. The others probably already miss you.”
You nodded, taking Lambert’s hand as you walked towards the hall. Then, you froze in your spot.
“Wait, did you say that you used my child as a betting chip for Gwent?” you exclaimed. Lambert shrugged.
“Had to get your attention somehow.”
Coen
Coen was out training Ciri, together with Lambert and Geralt, and for once, you were relieved that he wasn’t there. That way, no one was there to see you run around between kitchen, sleeping chambers and the dining hall, trying to appease the devil that was your child in this moment.
All the other witchers were out too, Vesemir making repairs and Eskel in the stable, while Jaskier was too engrossed in composing to notice you running in and out of the hall.
You just needed to find the blanket your kid wanted so desperately and then they’d stop their tantrum, right?
It was embarrassing, your child screaming their head off in their room, and you being unable to do anything to make it stop.
But the blanket was gone, and for the love of Melitele, you could not find it. Tiredly, you went back into your personal hell and picked your child up, trying to rock them to sleep.
Nothing worked. No amount of rocking, not a single lullaby, not letting them scream themselves to exhaustion. They were a never-ending source of noise.
“Please just go to sleep.” You tried again. “Come on, just for half an hour. I still have to take care of your brother. He fell this morning.”
They didn’t listen. Exhausted, you lied them down, which only made them scream even louder. So you picked them up again, desperately trying to make it stop.
“Do you need any help?” Jaskier asked suddenly. Startled, you whipped around.
“Jaskier? What are you doing here?” you asked.
“You were gone from the hall.” He shrugged. “And that baby has a truly incredible lung capacity.”
You sighed. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. Do you need any help?”
You shook your head, feeling a migraine build behind your eyes.
“You need help, I’m getting Coen.” Jaskier decided.
“No, please don’t.” you began, but with an extravagant twirl, Jaskier was gone.
“Fuck. Fucking bard.” You muttered, rocking your baby, ignoring how heavy your arms were. A few minutes later, Coen stormed into the room.
“You need help.” He said.
“No, I don’t.” you replied. “I don’t know what Jaskier was going on about.”
“Look into the mirror.” Coen suggested. You turned around, only to be met with a sight that reminded you of someone delusional. Your braid was dissolving into chaos, your eyebags were as dark as ever and-
“I’m fine.” You insisted.
Coen crossed his arms, until your resolve softened (which wasn’t hard, considering that you were about to fall asleep on the spot).
“Alright. Can you hold them for a second? My arms are a bit heavy.” You asked. Coen looked a bit reluctant.
“I don’t know how to hold a baby.” He replied. Carefully, you arranged his arms and laid your child down. Coen smiled at them, beginning to rock them back and forth softly. It was an almost comical sight. The giant witcher going soft at a tiny, screaming bundle of anger.
You wanted to search for the blanket in the room, but you noticed how quiet the baby had become almost immediately. Turning around, you saw them sleeping while Coen softly hummed to them.
“How did you do that?” you whispered.
“I don’t know.” Coen whispered back.
“That’s not fair. I thought they wanted their blanket.”
Coen put them into the bassinet, before he dared to shrug.
“You’re a natural.” You smiled. “You’d make a great father.”
Coen’s smile got even wider. “And you already make an even better mother.” He replied, hugging you tightly.
#the witcher#witcher coen#lambert#eskel#geralt#geralt x reader#eskel x reader#lambert x reader#coen x reader#geralt x you#eskel x you#lambert x you#coen x you#witcher imagine#geralt x y/n#eskel x y/n#coen x y/n#lambert x y/n
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pale shadows of forgotten names
so people seem to be enjoying my writing lately, and i realized i never properly posted my first witcher fic on here when i first wrote it- i posted a link to the ao3, but i wasn’t super active in the fandom yet and i didn’t make it readable on tumblr. so i thought i would share it here now, in case anyone is interested, and because it’s nice to have all my writing together in my tag on here
pls note i knew even less about the non-netflix canon then than i do now, so everything about spying is just made up lmao
ao3
geraskier, post-s2, getting together
rating: t
wc: 13k
“Might be best if I stay out of Redania for a while, actually.”
“If you get arrested, I’ll just break you out again. There’s a book there I need, the copy in Kaer Morhen’s library was destroyed. Vesemir said he knew someone in Oxenfurt who might be able to get his hands on one.” Geralt’s tone, as usual, leaves very little room for argument. Luckily, Jaskier has never needed much room when it comes to arguing. Certainly not with Geralt.
“It’s not just that, I really shouldn’t get close to Tretogor anytime soon, either. Especially with Ciri being hunted by half the Continent.” He’s hoping desperately that they won’t ask why, but who is he kidding. His luck is never that good.
“And why, exactly, is Tretogor a problem? Not that we would want to parade around a capital city regardless, but I’m curious. Oxenfurt I get, they’ll be looking for the Sandpiper, I’m sure, or at least the twit that broke out of their jail, but what’s in Tretogor?”
Damn the fucking witch, always too perceptive for her own good. And to think he was almost starting to like her. Well, at least the familiarity of wanting to claw her eyes out is comforting.
Jaskier sighs. He should probably be honest with them if they’re going to travel together, though who knows how long that state of affairs will last this time. Still, he’s not going to risk Ciri. He’d have kept his silence if it were just Geralt and the witch- he already has, in fact, and it worked for nearly 20 years, after all- but Ciri is precious cargo. The rules have changed.
Plus, Yen could probably just read his mind now that she has her magic back. Fucking sorceresses.
Speaking of, “Alright, but not here,” he sighs. “Wait until we make camp and Yen can set up wards or silencing spells or something.” He hasn’t noticed any white owls following them, but she’s always been good at avoiding being seen. That’s sort of the point, he supposes.
“Who do we need wards from, Jaskier? Are you being followed? Should I have left you behind? Did I put Ciri in danger by trusting you?” Geralt’s voice is hard, and Jaskier feels hurt pool in his belly for a moment before cold anger takes its place again.
“Considering I just traipsed halfway across the continent and back, no questions asked, and nearly died trying to help stop a fucking demon from killing her, what the fuck do you think, Geralt? I’ll remind you that only one of us has known and loved her since she was small. Do you really believe I would do that to her? To you?” And maybe that last bit wasn’t really meant to come out, certainly not in that small, sad little voice, but Jaskier is nothing if not a master of pushing through slip ups and missed lines. He’s a goddamn professional. He doesn’t let his expression change where he’s glaring up at Geralt’s stupid, angry, handsome face. Fucker.
He’s traveled with Geralt a long time. Almost a quarter century, on and off (including this last year, which was most decidedly off), more than half of that physically by his side. He knows the Witcher’s face better than he knows his own, and he can predict Geralt’s reaction in almost any scenario you care to name. A perceived threat met with scorn will make him double down on his anger, almost guaranteed. Jaskier knew this going in, but he didn’t spend half a year belting his rage and betrayal to every student and passing traveler in a hundred miles (not to even mention the whole ‘living through a massacre’ thing) to be cowed by Geralt’s glower now, no matter how distressingly sexy it may or may not still be. Or how it maybe still makes his stomach twist with something sick and anxious at the idea of having disappointed him. Again. Fuck that. Geralt has no right to be disappointed in him, not this time.
So naturally he’s a little shocked when, after a few more seconds of unreasonably attractive scowling, Geralt, improbably, backs down.
He heaves a sigh where’s he’s perched on (new) Roach, a sleeping Ciri safely ensconced in his arms on the saddle in front of him. His eyes fall shut for a moment, and when they open, the cold fury is gone, replaced with something that looks a lot like…regret? Sadness? It’s hard to tell in the dark, but regardless, the air of melancholy around him right now is out of character for this particular situation, and extremely disconcerting. Jaskier is definitely disconcerted.
“You’re right. I’m sorry, Jaskier. I do trust you. There’s a cave not far from here, it shouldn’t be too hard to secure. We can make camp soon.”
Was that…an apology? An actual, genuine expression of remorse, unprompted and freely given? He pokes Geralt’s upsettingly firm calf, staring incredulously.
“Are you really Geralt? Do I need to check you with silver or something? Yen, read his mind. Is he some kind of Doppler? Is this actually our Witcher?”
Geralt’s face is flatly unamused, and he kicks out to swat Jaskier’s hand away. Luckily, Jaskier has decades of practice avoiding Witcher speed for annoyance purposes, and pulls his hand back before Geralt can accidentally break his fingers or something. At least, he thinks it would be accidental. Probably.
Atop her borrowed mare, curtesy of Kaer Morhen’s surprisingly impressive herd, Yen raises a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at Geralt’s obvious irritation. “It’s a fair question, Geralt. Immediate, unsolicited apologies for bad behavior are not exactly your brand.” Jaskier is grudgingly impressed that she manages to keep the arch look on her face despite his current frigid distance from her. Apparently they’re not back to mutual teasing levels of familiarity yet, though he’s sure it will only be a matter of time before they’re back to forgetting he’s there mid-sentence to go fuck like stupidly attractive, scary, powerful rabbits. Won’t that be fun to live through again.
Geralt glares harder. Jaskier can’t actually see his face well enough to be sure, but he can always feel when Geralt is glaring, and the angry face quotient in the air definitely goes up a few degrees.
“Cave’s just up here. Jaskier, start setting up camp. Yen, wards. I’ll get Ciri and the horses settled and find something for supper.” He nudges Roach’s flanks and pulls ahead, aiming for a little gap in the trees near a rocky outcropping Jaskier can just barely make out in the scant moonlight. Conversation over then, at least for now.
Yen looks vaguely affronted. “Is it always like this? Traveling with him?”
“What, the glowering? Or the barked orders and being left behind?” If perhaps those words are a touch more bitter than they would have been a year and a half ago, well. That’s no one’s business but his own.
“Both, I suppose? The time I’ve spent with him has rarely been on the road, but he’s never been quite so…demanding. We didn’t exactly do much talking on the way to Kaer Morhen. I’m quite sure he would happily have killed me, or at least have been actively trying to shake me and leave me in the dust, if he hadn’t been so focused on getting to Ciri as quickly as possible.” There’s something brittle and harsh in her tone that feels uncomfortably familiar. It’s far too much like the heavy weight in his ribcage these days, sharp-edged and desperate and miserable.
“If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands!” The hurt and dread freezing his blood in his veins, ice cold and inexorable. The awful silence, waiting for him to take it back, to laugh, to say it was all a horrible joke, or even a dream. The yawning pit of heartbreak and despair that started to rend his chest open, as the reality set in that this was actually it, actually the end, after everything-
Nope. No. Absolutely not. He is done with that, thank you. He is quite finished reliving that moment again and again (and again), he has put it behind him, he is a different man now. A stronger man. A man who won’t betray the loyalty he promised so long ago, but who refuses to let his heart back into the mix this time. He wrote a song about it and everything.
Funny how he almost believes it.
“Oh, I’m sure he was always far more…solicitous with you, darling. This is pretty much standard. The apology is new, and I’m a little surprised he’s letting me set up camp unsupervised,” (this is said with an impressively deep eye-roll, of course), “but besides that, yeah.”
He should be offended that he’s surprised to be given that responsibility, probably. He’s actually a remarkably competent traveler, both with company and without, but even towards the end it rarely occurred to Geralt that Jaskier managed to survive by himself for months or years at a time, or that the camp ended up much the same as it started even when he felt the need to redo all of Jaskier’s work, or that he wasn’t the one cooking the food he hunted or patching his own wounds when Jaskier was around. Not even the handful of times their camp was targeted by bandits, and several of them were already dead by the time Geralt got to them, seemed to register. Or all the times he came back addled and injured from a hunt, and Jaskier knew exactly which potions he needed to recover, and where to find them. Jaskier isn’t sure the great White Wolf ever even noticed a difference. He’s once again a little amazed that it took him so long to see it, that those furious words on the mountaintop actually managed to catch him by surprise. Love really is blind, he supposes.
The cave isn’t huge, but there’s enough room for four bedrolls and a small fire pit without having to snuggle up too close to each other, and it’s dry and lacking in horrid smells or angry monsters, so Jaskier has definitely seen worse.
Roach is tied near the cave entrance, under a small overhang jutting out from the rock to provide her some shelter from the elements. He wants to ask what happened to the old Roach, his- well. Not his Roach anymore, he supposes, not for a while, but he was still fond of her. It had taken years to win her over, but they were good friends by the end, he thought. Certainly she was freer with her affection than her rider. (Which, he realizes now, probably had more to do with his dearth of affection actually available than with his crushing emotional incompetence.) It isn’t really his place to ask, not anymore, but he wishes he could. New Roach is fine, she’s admittedly beautiful and probably a lovely animal, but he misses his friend.
Jaskier has the camp fully set up and a small fire going, near enough to the entrance not to fill the cave with smoke, but far enough inside so as not to be easily seen, and Yen has left her mount next to Roach, filled their waterskins, and is finishing up with the last of the wards shielding them from being found or overheard, when Geralt returns bearing…an entire deer. Fucking overachieving cockhead. He’s cleaning that shit himself, Jaskier isn’t interested. It definitely isn’t sexy seeing Geralt stride in, slightly blood-spattered, biceps bulging, thighs flexing, evidence of his prowess slung easily over his shoulders like a king’s mantle…nope. Not sexy at all. Jaskier isn’t even looking. He certainly isn’t biting back an embarrassing whimper.
He turns around hastily to begin rummaging through his pack for his spices and cooking supplies, filched from Kaer Morhen, of course, since all he had on him when Geralt found him in Oxenfurt was his charm and good looks. He wishes he had his lute, but it’s probably in pieces, rotting in a rubbish heap in Redania. He’ll mourn her at some point. Besides, he’s not sure he would be able to stop himself playing Burn, Butcher, Burn just on reflex, so it’s probably for the best.
They eat a decent supper of venison stew, Ciri waking just long enough to scarf down a bowl and collapse back onto her bedroll. Demon possession and Sphere-jumping really seem to take it out of a person.
Yen tosses another silencing charm around Ciri’s bedroll (they’ll fill her in tomorrow- they don’t intend to keep secrets from her but she deserves her sleep) and Geralt gets to work packing the leftover venison in salt for the road, before they both look up at him expectantly with eerily similar, piercing gazes. Violet and gold, a royal combination if ever there was one. Oh, that’s nice actually, there’s a song in there somewhere. Not one he wants to sing, really, but he’ll probably end up writing it at some point anyway.
“Alright, sharing time, I guess. Always figured this was coming eventually. Not that I imagined anything like this, what with the demons and the horrible rock monsters and the dimension hopping and- yes, yes, alright, I’m getting to it. Calm down.” He heaves a sigh. Hopefully they don’t toss him out on his arse after this, or just kill him. He doesn’t think they’d kill him. Would they? No, they wouldn’t. Probably.
“So you know I’m technically Redanian.” Yennefer nods expectantly while Geralt just. Blinks at him. Fucking gods, honestly. “Wow, ok, you really never paid attention at all when I talked, huh? That makes sense, actually. I guess I should have figured that.” He’s staring into the fire to shield the hurt in his eyes, so he misses the matching look on Geralt’s face before he presses on.
“Anyway, yeah, I’m Redanian, from Kerack, Lettenhove to be specific. Seriously? I’ve introduced myself to a dozen people in front of you with my full name, you really never- ok, yeah, right, never mind. Moving on. Julian Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove. That’s me. Or, it was. Technically it still is, but I never wanted the title. I never wanted that life. I left for Oxenfurt as soon as I was old enough, and when I graduated I went on the road, and then. Well. Then I met you, and, well, you know. You were there. For the rest. Some of it, anyway. Right. Well, Vizimir, or more likely someone on his council, since Vizimir is about as savvy and creative as a garden slug, and almost as charming, and I’m not sure if Dijkstra was advising him at that point-“ He catches Yennefer’s sharp look at Dijkstra’s name, but barrels on, “-anyway, someone noticed that a minor Redanian noble was doing a lot of very visible traveling all over the Continent and associating with a lot of people the Crown wouldn’t normally have an in with, and figured that would be useful. I think at this point, we’d been traveling together…2? 3 years? Something like that. Long enough that I’d started building a name for myself, definitely. Or, for us, I suppose. That’s why they noticed me in the first place.”
He knows he’s babbling, but there are nerves roiling in his gut like a cauldron, and that feeling has always translated into more words, for him. Like a pressure valve. He pauses and risks a glance at the person whose reaction he’s genuinely worried about.
Yen will understand, she’s been in and out of courts and noble circles and political tangles for decades, she knows how this works. She probably won’t trust him, but he’s fairly sure she doesn’t trust him now, so that’s no great loss. He doesn’t trust her either.
Geralt has a more…rigid concept of morality. In Geralt’s world, there are Right Things and Wrong Things. Sometimes you have to do Wrong Things to prevent Wronger Things, but that doesn’t make them not Wrong. And anything to do with kings and courts is usually Wrong. There’s a good chance Geralt might never forgive him for this, or if he does, he won’t be able to look past Jaskier keeping it from him so long.
Geralt’s eyes are fixed on his face, sharp and intent, and utterly unreadable. Jaskier thought he had gotten pretty good over the years at reading the subtle shifts in Geralt’s expressions- the tiny crinkles around his eyes when he wanted to laugh, the minute furrow between his brows when he was confused, the slight tick in his jaw when he was frustrated- but his face is as blank as new parchment right now, nothing but the glint in his golden eyes that says he’s listening to every word out of Jaskier’s mouth.
What a time for him to start doing that, he thinks bitterly. Decades of tuning him out when he thought they were friends, and now that Jaskier might be driving him away for good (again, a tiny voice whispers viciously), he’s hanging on every syllable.
“I was approached by a member of the royal intelligence service, and told that the king had ordered that I be recruited as a spy. Technically I am still nobility, and as such I’m obligated to obey the crown. And while I would gladly give up all the trappings of my title and never be anyone but Jaskier the bard ever again, at the time there would have been serious consequences for refusing, and not the kind that would fall on me. I’m technically a Lord, and I do have people I’m responsible for. I left people in charge that I trust to take care of them in my stead, but it’s my name they’re working under. And if I refused a direct order from Vizimir, I wouldn’t be the one to suffer for it. It wasn’t an option.”
He doesn’t look up from the fire. He doesn’t want to see the expressions on their faces, so he presses on, heart thumping wildly in his chest.
“I did my best to keep my reports…not vague, exactly, but mostly useless, I guess? Obviously I have no interest in being a part of whatever bullshit Vizimir or any other king feels like stirring up, but I had to send them something. Little stuff, mostly, frivolous gossip from the taverns I played in, details of drama and rivalries I picked up in various courts or nobles’ beds. Sometimes accounts of monster populations or incidents if there was anything especially notable, since they knew that’s a lot of what I was doing with my time. Nothing actionable, but useful enough that I couldn’t be accused of shirking my duties.” He’s suddenly struck with an awful fear, and he looks up desperately into slitted golden eyes. “I never said a word about Ciri, Geralt, you have to believe me. I told them about that night, and I had to mention that Pavetta had magic because there’s no way that wouldn’t get out some other way, but I never said a word about a Witcher claiming a Child Surprise. I would never risk her like that, or you, you have to believe me. Please say you believe me Geralt, whatever you think of me, that I would never betray you like that. Please.”
He knows he sounds frantic, that he must look insane, that he can’t stop his begging mouth like a runaway cart, but the thought of Geralt thinking even for a second that Jaskier would ever put orders from a king he cared nothing for over Geralt’s own life, over the life of a child, is a knife in his gut, twisting and pulling until Jaskier thinks he might vomit if Geralt doesn’t say something.
The blank expression is gone, and Geralt looks somewhat taken aback. His brow furrows a little in what looks like confusion, before settling into resignation, or maybe chagrin. Jaskier thinks for a moment that he sees a brief flash of what almost looks like…grief? That can’t be right…in his eyes, but it’s gone as soon as it appeared, and Jaskier thinks he must have imagined it.
Geralt takes a swig from his waterskin and draws in a deep breath before speaking.
“I wasn’t worried that you betrayed Ciri, Jaskier. I know you would cut off your own arm before you did something like that. I don’t love where it sounds like this story is going, but I promise, I’ll never be concerned about that.”
That’s…well, those are more words than he was expecting, surely. And different words than he was expecting, too. He would assume that Geralt is placating him, to calm him down and get him to finish talking, but he can hear the sincerity in his voice. Geralt’s eyes are almost imploring, as if he’s as anxious for Jaskier to believe him as Jaskier had been to be believed. He…isn’t sure what to do with that, actually.
He knows Geralt came back for him, knows he was at least not lying when he said he missed him (though how much is anyone’s guess), knows he trusts him to travel with his…his little family, to help keep them safe or at least not make things worse, but he never assumed it went beyond that.
Geralt was clear, on that mountain. Even if he’s sorry now, even if he missed having him around, he meant those words at the time, and Jaskier has no illusions that he won’t get to that point again. Geralt may have spat those words in helpless anger, may have turned his ire on someone who had nothing to do with the state he was in at that moment, but Geralt doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. He says plenty of things he regrets, but he always means them at the time. He did, at one point, believe Jaskier to be a curse and a burden, and Jaskier is fully aware that he will come to that belief again, eventually.
He knows what that particular heartbreak feels like, now. He knows he can survive it, even if he wishes he wouldn’t, sometimes. Mostly, he knows that it will always, always be worth it. Geralt will always be worth it.
Gods but he’s a lovesick fool.
But now, instead of cold distain, or fiery wrath, or, worst of all, blank indifference, Geralt is looking at him like…like he’s sorry. Like he’s desperate for Jaskier’s forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? Jaskier is the one who hid the fact that he was a spy for most of their relatio- friendship. Acquaintanceship. Association. Whichever one wouldn’t piss Geralt off. Geralt hasn’t fucked up here, this time at least.
But he could never resist when Geralt asked him like this for anything, with genuine emotion instead grunted contempt, with even the vaguest hint of affection, like maybe Geralt enjoyed spending time with Jaskier, too. Like maybe Jaskier mattered to Geralt, at least a fraction of how much Geralt mattered to Jaskier. Gods above, he’s so weak for this man.
“Ok. Alright, good. That’s good. I’m glad. Thank you. I know I- anyway. Thank you. Right, where was I? Yes, ok, reports. So I kept myself mostly useless for pretty much the whole time we were together. I mean- not. Not together, obviously, but traveling together. As friends. Or not friends. Whatever. What was I saying?” He’s spiraling, fuck, he’s spiraling, he needs to get out of this, how does he get out of this?
Geralt is looking even more confused than before, but Yennefer is definitely laughing at him in her head. Witch. Like she isn’t just as much of a mess for him. She should be on his side! They bonded over this already and everything!
At least the indignation is enough for him to pull out of the whirlpool of awkward babble and self-sabotage he was trapped in, and he manages to right himself.
“Anyway! Ok! So! Right, well, things changed not quite a year ago, now, after the raid on Bleobheris.” He sobers at the memories, the scent of blood and the sound of screams suddenly heavy in the dry air of the cave. “It was…brutal. I’ve never seen anything like that, not in all my years Witchering with you. I wanted to help. I needed to do something, to…fix something. Anything, no matter how small. That’s when I was contacted by an anonymous benefactor, who offered to fund an effort to smuggle refugees to Xin’Trea. Word had spread about Nilfgaard’s alliance with the elves, that they could be safe there.”
“So the Sandpiper was born,” Yennefer says.
“Right. But I don’t like not knowing where my help is coming from and why. I may not have been a very useful spy in Redania’s eyes for the last 20 years, but it actually takes quite a bit of effort to be ineffective without being useless enough to fire or kill, and as it turns out, I’m actually quite good at it. Call it the performer’s heart in me, or something. So I was able to ferret out that the man behind the money was Sigismund Dijkstra, who had managed to get himself appointed spymaster to Vizimir, which, interestingly, made him my employer, as well as my benefactor.”
Yen looks up sharply again at Dijkstra’s name. Jaskier turns to her, curious.
“You’re familiar, I assume?”
“He’s been causing rifts at Aretuza, riling up the Brotherhood,” she says, brow furrowed. “Pretending to bring counsel and information but really just sowing discord. I’m not clear on the details, but I know elves were mentioned. There are those on the council who take issue with my heritage, so I try to keep on top of the rumors. I wasn’t at Aretuza for long, though, and I…didn’t exactly leave on good terms. I haven’t got many friends left there.” Geralt glances at her sympathetically.
Jaskier nods. “That sounds like him. I wouldn’t trust that man to clean my privy, much less provide thousands of crowns, probably from Vizimir’s coffers, for a worthy cause with no expectations of repayment.” He shakes his head. “I kept my suspicions to myself, though, the network needed the coin and regardless of his motivations, we really were helping people. I wasn’t going to let that go to waste.
“I guess, with me finally settling in one place for so long, and probably Dijkstra feeling like I owed him for the funding, even though I wasn’t meant to know it was him, they started expecting more from me, in terms of intelligence. I didn’t really have a choice, since now they always knew where to find me if they wanted to cause me problems, and besides, Dijkstra was already privy to the network’s efforts anyway as the main benefactor, so I figured it was mostly alright that I’ve had to give more…comprehensive reports to Vizimir the last several months.
“Since Cintra fell, most people know about Ciri, or at least that she’s on the game-board somehow. There are rumors of Nilfgaard searching for a Witcher, so I’m sure some people have put together that you’re involved somehow, but I don’t think too many of the courts, at least, have details. Just that Nilfgaard wants her and maybe there’s a Witcher involved. I made sure not to include too much information that they didn’t already have, but I can’t say for sure what every Northern king knows, or what the Brotherhood knows.” He glances at Yen, who shakes her head and shrugs.
“Anyway, so that’s the meat of it. The concern is that since I became an actual useful asset for them, they’ve been keeping a much closer eye on me. That’s why I was worried about the wards.”
“Alright, I can understand all of that,” Geralt cuts in. “I don’t like that you kept it from me, but I can’t fault your choices. You’re right that we can’t have them sniffing around you, not with Ciri in your orbit.” He frowns. “Would it be possible for you just…fall off the map? Disappear? Redania can’t demand anything from a missing viscount.”
Jaskier winces a little. “I would love to do that, the problem being that Dijkstra works closely with Tretogor’s court mage, who has the charming little talent of transforming into a bird whenever she wants.”
Yen’s eyebrows both go up this time. “Phillipa? She’s quite impressive. A little too entrenched in political intrigue for my taste, but I can’t deny she’s talented. Tissaia speaks very highly of her, certainly.”
She looks thoughtful as she gazes at him over the fire. “You’re worried she’s following you, then? For information on Geralt, since everyone knows Jaskier the Bard is the man to talk to if you want to know about Witchers.”
Her tone is…teasing? Is she teasing him? First hugging, and now teasing? Yeah, he’s not dealing with that right now. He sticks out his tongue at her (he does still have a bantering streak to uphold, after all) before nodding.
“I don’t know for sure if she was in Oxenfurt when Geralt broke me out. I don’t think so, but I certainly wasn’t combing every tree for owls, and there’s no chance of me noticing her out here in the woods. I’m just hoping that if she were around now, you’d sense her, Yen, and that she wasn’t able to bring back anything about Ciri or Geralt or Kaer Morhen to Dijkstra. Or you, either, since the Brotherhood are so unhappy with you.”
Yen looks surprised and very slightly pleased to be included in Jaskier’s concern. Or at least Jaskier thinks that’s the expression he can parse under her normal very scary murder face, which he finds is almost a relief to see. The soft regret and concern of recent weeks has been…unsettling. The sun rises, the rain falls, Yennefer of Vengerberg is gorgeous, aloof, and terrifying. This is the natural order.
Geralt is wearing a pensive expression, frowning slightly at where Ciri lies, sleeping peacefully. Dear girl, Jaskier hopes she isn’t having any nightmares. She’s been through hell lately, and she’s always had trouble sleeping anyway. Jaskier wonders if he can find the name of that tea Mousesack used to give her to help her sleep. Jaskier even tried it once or twice, when winter nights in Cintra without his Witcher’s soft, even breaths became too much; the stuff worked wonders.
“Alright,” he says eventually, nodding. “I’ll see if I can go to Redania myself, and leave you two with Ciri until I can get back. We’ll keep our campsites warded if we can, Yen, I don’t want you to wear yourself out, but some protection would probably be best. Are you able to see if you can sense anyone from here, or do you need to go outside the wards?”
“I’ll do a lap around the area, but there’s a chance anyone who is out there will sense me as soon as I start casting about. It would be best if you all stayed here, to protect Ciri in case someone actually has come for her.”
“I don’t like any of us going out alone, Yen, especially with the express intention of seeking out danger. I should go with you.” Geralt makes to stand and grab his swords from beside his seat, but Yennefer waves him back down.
“You’d only distract me, and besides, do you want to leave the totally untrained sorceress and the normal human alone here?” Jaskier makes an affronted squawking noise.
“Hey! I’m plenty competent, thank you!” He prudently ignores the minor inaccuracy of his humanity, and instead huffs at the matching incredulous looks he receives. “Rude. Honestly, I get no respect around here. I survived just fine on my own for years, you know! Besides, I traveled with a reckless idiot Witcher for 20 years, you pick up more than you’d think.” He glares at them both until Yen smirks and Geralt looks baffled and vaguely offended, but at least they both look away, which is an improvement.
Until the two of them end up in a stare off, clearly having some sort of emphatic conversation with their eyes alone, and Jaskier has to turn away to start putting away the cooking supplies they won’t need for breakfast tomorrow. He’s warming up to Yennefer, much to his chagrin, but he’s had quite enough of watching the man he loves eyefuck someone else, for this lifetime and the next, thanks ever so.
He hears Geralt huff, a sound he recognizes as him realizing whoever he’s arguing with is just going to do as they please anyway, and he might as well make the best of it.
He made that sound at Jaskier a lot. Usually when he talked his way into coming along on hunts, but really any time Jaskier wanted something from him beyond some seared rabbit, a fire to sleep beside, and monosyllabic grunts in response to questions (if he was lucky)- a night at an inn, a stop at a local festival, an actual hot bath with herbs and flowers and scented oils. Arms to hold him on especially cold nights, when blankets weren’t enough to warm (mostly) human skin.
Jaskier used to think it was cute. A game, just for the two of them, Jaskier pushing, Geralt pulling, or the other way around, always meeting in the middle (or, more often, closer to Jaskier’s side) with what Jaskier had always assumed was mutual amusement and affection. He knows better now.
There’s the telltale swish of Yennefer’s skirts, a strange popping sensation in his ears, and then the feeling of the wards coming back up behind her.
The silencing spell around Ciri is still up, as far as he knows, and she’s dead to the world besides, so it’s just him and Geralt now.
It isn’t the first time they’ve been alone since Oxenfurt, but it is the first time since Jaskier was invited (by Ciri, it should be noted, not Geralt) to travel with them as a companion, not as backup.
That one still stings, if he’s honest. He held out hope for months that Geralt would come back for him, would seek him out with a stuttered apology (or more likely a silently offered ale and an invitation to come with him to his next hunt). Maybe at a tavern, or the Seat of Friendship, or even a ball or musical competition where Jaskier was playing. He knows how much Geralt hates getting dressed up, how much it would have meant for him to go to that effort just to see Jaskier.
He imagined seeing him sitting silently in the back of one of his lectures one day, watching the lesson with quiet affection and waiting for him to be finished so they could talk. Imagined hearing the sound of Roach’s hooves coming up behind him on some backroad to nowhere while he strummed his lute in the sunshine.
He imagined a thousand different reunions, a thousand apologies, a thousand ways for them to turn back the clock. (During some of the longer nights, when he was alone in his rooms staring out at the moon through the window, wondering if Geralt was lying on his bedroll in a forest clearing somewhere staring up at the same moon, he imagined a thousand different love confessions. But he has no intention of admitting that to anyone but his own foolish heart. He may be a bard, and a hopeless romantic, but there’s no need to bare all of his weeping wounds, especially when there’s no hope of healing them.)
For all his daydreaming, he never imagined that Geralt would seek him out only when he needed an extra set of hands and all his other options were exhausted. Never imagined he would be not just a tool to be used, but the last resort as well.
He shouldn’t be surprised, after everything, but the knowledge that he was never really anything else to Geralt still aches like a broken rib, flashes of pain shooting through his chest with every inhale.
This is the first time they’ve been alone together without an immediate crisis, without a clearly defined mission beyond the open road, just like it used to be.
Except nothing like it used to be, because how it used to be is gone. It will never be that way again. Geralt burned those memories down, with words as sharp as swords and as destructive as dragon fire.
Jaskier has no fucking idea how to deal with this.
“Jas-“ Geralt cuts off and clears his throat. Jaskier can hear him gulping from his waterskin before trying again. “Jaskier.”
“Yes?” He tries to keep his voice light, but he doesn’t turn around.
“Jaskier, can we. Can we talk? Please?”
It’s the ‘please’ that does it. Geralt so rarely says please. Jaskier may need more than his fingers to count the times he’s heard it directed at him, but he can still remember each one in perfect clarity. Besides, they had more than 20 years together, “more than 10” is still not exactly a stellar ratio.
Jaskier’s resolve breaks (did he ever really have any? Has he ever had any when it comes to this man?) and he turns, schooling his face into something meant to look bright and open. He’s not sure how well it works. “Of course, Geralt. What’s on your mind?”
“I-“ Geralt looks…lost. He looks like he has absolutely no idea how to get where he’s going, and it’s killing him. Jaskier crumbles.
“You’ve already apologized, Geralt, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ve forgiven you. You were angry, you needed a target, I was there. It’s behind us.” He looks at the fire, for lack of anything else that isn’t Geralt’s stupid awful gorgeous face, wishing desperately he had his lute. He never felt awkward with his lute. Never rubbed anxious circles around his calluses for lack of anything to do with his hands. Never sat in a silence so painful he wondered if his ears would bleed.
Geralt lets out a breath like he’s trying to remember how. “That’s not. I mean it is. But. I. Fuck.” Jaskier looks up from the fire to see him scrubbing a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristic display of emotion. The adorable fool manages to get his hand tangled in the locks when he forgets about the band holding half of it back from his face.
“Oh for Melitele’s sake- stop moving, you lug, I’ll fix it. You’re going to tear it out in chunks if you keep pulling like that, just hold still, or I’ll have to rewrite all the songs to be about The Bald Wolf instead. Ye gods, Geralt, how did you survive without me? Honestly.” He’s across the cave and kneeling behind Geralt on the other side of the fire before he consciously registers the decision to move. Fucking hells, even his own body is against him.
He has his hands in Geralt’s (soft, silky, gorgeous) hair, untangling it gently from where it’s wound itself tightly around his (scarred, strong, beautiful) fingers. He thinks he hears Geralt’s breath catch, but he’s too distracted trying to keep his own lungs working at all to focus on it.
Once Geralt’s hand is free (and does Geralt seem as reluctant to let go and put his hand back in his lap as Jaskier is to let him?) Jaskier sets to work on the much more finicky task of removing the band without pulling half of Geralt’s hair out with it, which would honestly be a crime against…well, anyone with eyes really. Jaskier may be in love with him, but he’s also seen a truly exorbitant number of beautiful people across the continent, many of them naked, so he thinks he’s fairly qualified when he says that Geralt is one of the most singularly stunning people on the face of the earth, bias or not. Especially now that he seems to be taking better care of his hair than he used to when Jaskier wasn’t around.
Jaskier is actually rather shocked at how well-kept Geralt is. His hair is smooth and soft and clean, and smells like…is that apple blossom? That’s one of Jaskier’s favorite scents. It never fails to make him feel light and warm, like spring sunshine. He uses it in his own hair more often than the other oils he carries.
Back when washing Geralt’s hair for him was an occasional but deeply treasured privilege of his, Jaskier used to use it for him, as well. That Geralt has somehow, for some reason, gotten some of his own to use during their separation…it makes something warm and fragile stir in Jaskier’s chest. Warm and fragile and dangerous. Hope is easily crushed, and when it is, it takes everything else down with it. Jaskier isn’t doing that again. Not so soon.
He finishes detaching the tie as efficiently as he can, and hands it over Geralt’s shoulder before sitting back on his heels and exhaling violently.
“There you are darling, all fixed. Now,-“
“I didn’t.” Geralt interrupts him, whisper quiet but still somehow deafening over the crackling fire.
“What?”
“Survive without you. I didn’t. Or, I guess I should say I did, but that’s all I did.”
Jaskier has, for once, absolutely no idea what to say, so he tries something new, and says nothing. He’s barely even sure he’s breathing, staring at the back of Geralt’s head and all his moonlit hair like he’s staring into the jaws of a barghest as he waits to see if he will continue.
He does, words falling out of him in a rush like a river pouring through a broken dam, desperate in a way Jaskier has never heard him before.
“I knew I’d fucked up, on the mountain. As soon as the words were out of my mouth I knew it. It’s like. It’s like I was a bottle of juice, gone off, going ranker and ranker until the cork flies right out and takes someone’s eye out. I thought I was angry at Borch, at Yen, at Calanthe, at fucking Destiny, at everything. Even you, who hadn’t done one thing wrong. But really it was just me. I was just angry at myself, and there’s. There’s not. There isn’t anywhere for that kind of anger to go. It just builds up and up and up until it explodes, and you with it, and I knew I was going to let it out at someone. And then you were there, and you were trying to help. Like always. You always help. You make everything better, like you were just trying to make me feel better. But I was so angry, and it was all my fault, it was all my stupid selfish choices, the djinn, the wish, Ciri, all of it my fault, and I didn’t deserve to feel better. I didn’t deserve it and I had to make you stop and so. I did. I did it on purpose. I did it because I knew that was the thing to say that would hurt you the most. That would make me a monster like I know I am. Monsters are easy. Easier than mistakes and bad choices. So I made another bad choice and hurt someone else and decided to be a monster.”
There might be tears streaming down Jaskier’s face, but he can’t tell because he can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t hear anything but the rushing in his ears and Geralt’s voice ripping into him with savage, gentle claws.
“Once Yen was gone- It’s hard to think with her around, sometimes. It’s the wish, I think. Everything else gets duller, quieter, a little out of focus. Like in a dream when the only thing you can see clearly is the person you know the dream is about, the person you’re supposed to talk to.” Oh this…this is actually torture. Geralt might actually be killing him because he still can’t fucking breathe and he just keeps talking.
“It’s better now. Maybe it’s Ciri, my Destiny is split between them now so it’s not so overwhelming. Or maybe Ciri is her Destiny too, and now that we’ll always have her, the both of us, the wish doesn’t need to force us to be in love for us to stay nearby. I don’t know. It’s easier now, though. And even easier when you’re here.”
Wait, what? Now Jaskier knows he’s dead, or dying, or hallucinating, or something, because there’s no way that means what he wants it to mean.
“After Yen left, my head started to clear. Things came back into focus. I realized what I’d done, but suddenly I could also see that it wasn’t just what I yelled at you. It was so much more, so much deeper. I had been so awful to you, for so long, and you just. Took it. All of it. Everything I had, all my anger and my fear and my loneliness. You just let me. You always came back. You kept choosing me, even when I was cruel. I was ashamed, but I also thought…” He breaks off with a great shuddering breath, his head hanging.
Jaskier feels a little like he’s floating. Like he can see his body, kneeling there in the dirt behind Geralt, staring at his sculpted shoulderblades with a blind, devastated look on his tear-streaked face. How odd.
Geralt, somehow, impossibly, keeps going. This is more words than Jaskier has heard him say in the last two decades. This is more words than he knew Geralt was capable of saying. Where are all these words coming from?
It’s like all this time, he had been saving these. Stockpiling them, though for what Jaskier can’t begin to guess. A rainy day? An emergency? This? And now the doors of the granary have come loose and the winter stores are flooding the yard and Jaskier thinks he might end up buried alive.
“I thought you’d come back.” Geralt’s voice is thicker, somehow, and oh, gods, is he crying? “I thought you would come back, like before, like always, and it would be ok. And I would try to be better. I would try to be the man you thought I was. And it would be ok. But you-“ He cuts off with another great shuddering breath, and seems to center himself. “You didn’t come back. And that’s when I realized I had finally gone too far.”
Jaskier has been trying to process all of these many, many, many, mostly incomprehensible words, and he’s maybe fallen a little bit behind, because he hears himself cut in with an incredulous “Wait, are you saying that every time you were rude or dismissive to me, it wasn’t just because you don’t know how to conduct yourself in a normal friendship because you’ve never had one, but actually because you knew you were being cruel and you knew you could get away with it because I would always come back?”
Geralt’s head hangs even lower, and Jaskier has to strain to hear his gravelly whispered reply.
“Yes. Maybe not consciously, or in so many words, but yes.”
Jaskier flounders for a moment, wounds he spent the last year trying to close tearing back open even wider than before.
“All this time? You thought so little of me, all this time? I was just a- a- a practice dummy? Something that won’t fight back or feel pain, so you can hit it has hard or as many times as you want?” His voice began at a whisper, to match Geralt’s, but has gotten steadily louder and more tear-filled the more he speaks.
“No, that isn’t-“
“I can’t- I’m not- I need a moment. Please, Geralt I need- Please.” He can’t keep sitting this close to him, feeling his body heat just as warm as the fire he’s blocking Jaskier from, can’t keep listening to his low rumbling voice, like thunder and gravel and home, like a silver sword through the midsection. Not when the pain and the anger and the hope are all bleeding together and he doesn’t know how to feel them properly and he still can’t fucking breathe.
Geralt’s breath hitches, a tiny little wisp of sound, and Jaskier is going to fucking lose it.
“Please, Geralt.” It comes out in a broken whisper, which is more revealing than Jaskier was hoping, but it’s not like he’s managed to hide anything anyway, so it hardly matters.
Geralt nods, back still to Jaskier in front of the fire, and stands smoothly to walk over to a corner near the entrance, where he can see all four bedrolls and the cave mouth clearly. Ready to protect. Always ready to defend. He sinks to his knees and his breathing takes on the familiar cadence of meditation.
Jaskier takes a moment to look at him. At the way his hands are clutched a little tighter on his thighs than they normally would be while he mediates, like he hasn’t managed to purge all the fear from his body the way he has his mind. At the new scars he can see on his forearms and one snaking over his collarbone, scars that Jaskier wasn’t there to bandage and fuss over. At the way his hair spills over his shoulders, still tousled from Jaskier’s fingers. At the single tear track carving a path down one marble cheek.
Jaskier sucks in a breath and turns away before he breaks down and Yen comes back to find him catatonic on the ground.
He ends up standing at the mouth of the cave, stroking New Roach’s neck and petting his hands through her glossy mane gently. Her slow breathing and the familiar warm, earthy smell of horse help ground him, bring him back from that awful frantic-floating feeling, where he was nowhere and trapped all at once.
He chatters to her quietly, just like he did to her predecessor. She, at least, warms up to him much more quickly.
A warm, black nose thumps gently into his chest. “Yes, my love, I know I need to protect my heart. I’m trying! Can’t you see how hard I’m trying?” She nickers softly, more of a puff of breath than a proper sound.
“Well aren’t we feeling smug this evening, sweet thing.” Another thump. “It’s alright darling, I don’t blame you. I think I’m ridiculous, too. I just don’t know how to fix it.” He strokes a hand down her forehead, scritching lightly.
“No, me either. You know what the problem is, don’t you?” She lips at his hair, which he takes as an invitation to continue.
His voice is even quieter now, the barest thread of a whisper, quiet enough that even Geralt might not overhear if he comes out of meditation. “The problem is that I’ve spent all this time coming up with plans and strategies and contingencies for not giving my heart away again, when the truth is I don’t think I ever got it back in the first place.”
He rests his forehead against hers in defeat, tears falling silently again. He’s going to dehydrate at this point, but what does he care when he has a beautiful lady providing him such warm, solid comfort right here?
“I have to say, songbird, this is not what I expected to find when I came back tonight.”
Jaskier does not flail. He is a professional performer, he has immaculate control over his body at all times. And he definitely doesn’t squeak, no bard would ever be caught dead making such an undignified noise unintentionally.
So no, he neither flails nor squeaks, and if New Roach gets very slightly spooked and a lot disgruntled, it was from Yennefer sneaking up out of bloody nowhere like a wraith in the night, and certainly nothing Jaskier did. If either of them say different, they’re lying.
“Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Is this your plan to kill me and make it look like an accident? I’ll tell Ciri, she’ll come after you with her dagger, see if she doesn’t. Ciri likes me. Ciri would avenge me.” He’s clutching his chest, heartbeat gradually beginning to slow.
New Roach is still giving him a dubious look. That’s rude, this is hardly his fault. It’s Yen she should be grumpy with.
“Well, I was rather hoping that by this point in the evening, you wouldn’t need a miniature Witcherling-sorceress to defend you, since you’d have your big strong Witcher back, but somehow things seem to have gotten worse in my absence. Did he not manage to tell you his real feelings? Bloody Witchers, trust him to be resistant to my recipe, it’s never bloody failed before, if he’s made this worse somehow I’m going to bloody dissect him to figure out where I went wrong-“ She continues muttering darkly while Jaskier stares at her in shock.
His mind is valiantly trying to shake off enough of the lingering fog of tears to pull some of those threads together and figure out what the fuck she’s talking about.
Recipe? Real feelings? Make what worse? Did she…did she dose him with something? Did she put a fucking spell on his Witcher? He might have to have Ciri stab her after all, since he has no illusions about his own abilities to take her in a fight.
“What the fuck are you talking about, witch? What did you give him? What the fuck did you do? I’ll kill you myself you vicious little shrew, see if I don’t!”
She waves a hand dismissively, scoffing at his threats. Admittedly he is not at his best, though in his defense it’s hard to adopt a proper fighting stance when you’ve just spent half an hour kneeling in the dirt while your still-beating heart was slowly diced into bite-sized pieces. Tough on the knees, you know.
“Please, you should be thanking me. It was fucking exhausting, these last few weeks, watching you two throw longing glances back and forth when you think no one’s looking. I’m just trying to help things along.”
“Help- what? What things? Help things along how?” He’s trying very hard to hold onto his righteous anger at her for (possibly?) drugging the man he loves, but she keeps saying things that dredge up that dangerous warm feeling from before, and he’s losing his resolve.
“Nothing sinister, songbird. I’m done with that, I’m on the side of the White Knights now, remember? Have a little faith in me, for Lilit’s sake.” She rolls her eyes, but either he’s getting better at reading her or she’s making an effort to be easier to read, because he can feel the sincerity in her words. “We both know all that nonsense about Witchers not feeling is horseshit, yes?” He nods. Obviously it is, Geralt feels more deeply than anyone he’s ever met. “But I know you also understand how much he struggles to make sense of what he’s feeling, or to make himself heard when he does.”
She’s right about that, too. Jaskier knows the emotions are there, has always known, since the moment he saw Geralt in that tavern in Posada. But he’s watched Geralt get lost in the tangle of feelings inside him so thoroughly that all the words get stuck and nothing comes out. He’s seen it happen hundreds of times. That’s part of why he’s always wanted to badly to sing about him, to tell the world what Geralt can’t, to be the words when he can’t find them.
Yen gestures to the corner where Geralt is still meditating peacefully. “I didn’t do anything to his feelings. Couldn’t if I tried, that’s not really how my magic works, anyway. But I knew there are things he’s been wanting to say, and he’s been suffering for not knowing how. And as antagonistic as we may be, I don’t actually hate you nearly so much these days, and I find myself discomfited by your very obvious pining, as well.” Well, that’s…actually quite sweet. And rather disquieting, if he’s honest.
“So I gave him something to help him articulate himself. It won’t make him say anything he doesn’t want to, won’t force him to reveal any truths against his will or create any feelings that weren’t already there. It just…smooths the way. Untangles all those knots in his head so something coherent can make it out of his mouth. But you two aren’t cuddled up by the fire making me want to vomit, which means it didn’t fucking work, and I have to figure out why!” She looks rather like she would huff and stomp her foot at this, if the great and powerful Yennefer of Vengerberg would ever stoop to something so childish.
Jaskier thinks very hard about the last hour or so of his life. He thinks about Geralt saying “please,” and he thinks about the way all those words fell out of him and just kept coming and coming and coming, like a pot boiling over, piling up in a heap at Jaskier’s feet. He thinks about Geralt crying.
“Well- uh. Hmm. You know, it occurs to me now- it’s funny really, I think you’ll laugh, definitely laugh, not look at me with that petrifying glare you’ve got on right now, no you’ll be laughing I’m quite sure- Alright, yes, ok! Yes! Right, well, um. I think, looking at recent events, fresh eyes and all that you know- I’m just saying, it would have been helpful to have some of this information going in, is all- Ow! Melitele’s tits, that hurt! Do those nails come standard at Aretuza, or were you just born lucky? Ouch! Ok, ok, stop pinching me, witch! Like I was saying, with the benefit of this new information, I think it’s possible your magical intervention whosit thingy may have worked exactly as expected?”
She narrows her eyes. “If it worked, why are you crying to a horse instead of snuggling with your man?” His man. That can’t be right. Can it? Geralt isn’t his. Except. Except for all the things he sounded like he might be gearing up to say when Jaskier cut him off. Fuck.
“I, uh. I maybe. I maybe stopped him partway through and told him I needed a break?” He winces back as her already truly impressive glare intensifies even further- yep, she’s still got it.
“I did not go to all the effort of brewing that fucking potion, tailoring it for Witcher metabolisms, and making it fucking tasteless and odorless so he would drink it, not to mention standing out here in the fucking woods in the middle of the night with nothing to fucking do, just so you could chicken out halfway through getting everything you ever fucking wanted.” Her eyes are glowing violet now, which is. Wow. Scary. She’s so scary. He remembers now why he always thought she was so so scary. She jabs her finger towards the kneeling figure by the wall. “Get the fuck back in there and finish the damn conversation, bard,” she hisses. “I will not deal with this bullshit all the way to the Redanian border.”
She turns to leave again, and Jaskier shoots out a hand to stop her. She looks at his hand on her elbow and he briefly worries he’s going to end the night as a slug of some kind, but she just looks up at him questioningly.
“I just. Fuck. I know- I know this probably wasn’t easy for you. You know I know better than most what you’re feeling right now. But you’re helping anyway, so. Thank you, Yennefer. Even if it doesn’t go like you think, like I hope, you were willing to try even though it hurts, so thank you.” He isn’t sure what his face is doing, but he hopes she can see how genuinely grateful he is.
She smiles a little sadly. “Come on, songbird, We both know he was never really mine. And besides, I’m not the settling down type. Now go, don’t make me curse you.” She shoots him what would be a very passable glare if it weren’t for the slight glimmer of tears in her eyes, then spins on her heel and stalks off into the night.
He turns back to the cave, hesitating for a single moment before there’s an irritated huff, a nip to the sleeve of his jacket, and a frankly unnecessarily forceful shove to his back. He glares back at Roach, who seems unperturbed. “I’ve got entirely too many black-haired gorgeous women trying to run my life right now, do you hear me? Too many!” Roach huffs again. “Fine. I’m going, are you happy?” He takes another step and looks over his shoulder. She looks smug. Of course she does. “I think you’re just the old Roach reincarnated. Never seen another horse look so damn satisfied with herself,” he mutters, but he’s already heading back into the cave, so he figures she’s won this round.
He feels slightly guilty about grabbing Geralt’s waterskin before going to him, but he isn’t sure how long Yen’s potion lasts, or if meditating will have burned more of it off. Maybe it’s disingenuous to give him more without telling him what’s in it, but, weirdly, he trusts Yen when she says it won’t force Geralt to do or say anything he doesn’t want to, and Jaskier isn’t sure he’ll ever get to hear the words otherwise. He’ll tell him afterwards. He won’t keep this secret forever.
He sits down quietly next to Geralt, leaning up against the wall of the cave. He takes one deep breath, then another, and another. He rests his fingers gently on Geralt’s hand where it sits on his thigh. Geralt’s breathing gradually picks up until he’s back to almost his normal, slow rhythm. His eyes open, landing on Jaskier’s hand on his and following the line of his arm back up to his face.
Jaskier hands him the waterskin, and Geralt takes it with a nod of gratitude before taking a long drink. “I’m alright now,” Jaskier says. “I’m sorry I stopped you.
Geralt searches his face, eyes searching Jaskier’s for signs of dishonesty. Apparently finding none, he nods slightly, golden eyes closing again for a moment. When they open, he’s not looking at Jaskier any longer.
Jaskier looks at his hand, fingertips still resting ever so lightly on Geralt’s palm, and considers taking it back. He thinks about what Geralt has told him so far tonight, about the conviction in Yen’s voice when she insisted Geralt had feelings for him. Fuck it, he decides, and lays his hand more firmly in Geralt’s, lacing their fingers together. Geralt draws in a sharp breath and looks up at him in shock, but he doesn’t pull away. Instead, he grips Jaskier’s hand tighter, like he’s worried Jaskier is going to try to run.
“I know you,” Jaskier says slowly. “I’ve known you for more than half my life, and I know that you aren’t cruel, or callous, or unkind. I know that there is always a reason behind the things you say, and the things you do, even if no one else can see it.” He swallows hard, closing his eyes briefly. Geralt squeezes his hand lightly, which…helps, actually. It helps a lot. “I’m sorry I accused you of hurting me on purpose, for the sake of causing me pain. I was overwhelmed and having trouble processing things, but I shouldn’t have jumped to a conclusion I know wasn’t true. If you still want to talk, I’m ready to listen now.”
“It wasn’t an illogical conclusion to draw. And it wasn’t even completely wrong.” His voice is calmer than before, measured and even. Not as frantic. The river is still flowing free, but it’s calmed, no longer the violent rush of a broken dam. He sighs, a great, world-weary thing. “It was because you’re safe.” Jaskier looks at him quizzically.
Geralt draws in another deep breath before continuing. “I can’t ever show emotion. Not to humans. Not anger, or fear, or sometimes even joy. The myths about Witchers not having feelings…they aren’t just vicious rumors made up by bigots. They’re there to protect us. From them.”
Jaskier frowns. “You mean Witchers put that rumor out yourselves? But why?” Surely demonstrating how human Witchers really are can only help matters, right?
“In a way.” Geralt tilts his head in the way Jaskier knows means he’s remembering something long past. “It’s part of how we’re trained. We’re taught to suppress emotion, to hide it from everyone, including ourselves. It’s how we’ve done things for 400 years.” His thumb sweeps little arcs across the back of Jaskier’s hand, and Jaskier’s heart trips in his chest. He knows Geralt can probably hear it, but it must not worry him and he keeps talking.
“The first Witchers were experiments. Men twisted by mages hoping to combat the monsters that plagued the world. The process has been…refined, since then. At first, they really were- well. More monster than man.” Geralt tips his head back against the rock wall. “Humans were terrified of them. One and all, right down to their bones. The first Witchers didn’t take contracts, because no humans would even speak with them. They just wandered around until they found a monster to kill, and then moved on to the next. Eventually, people started to realize that Witchers were only killing monsters, and leaving humans be, so they slowly started reaching out for help.”
“Ungrateful sods, the lot of them,” Jaskier mutters, and hears Geralt’s quiet huff of laughter in response.
“You’re. You’re so special, do you know that?” Jaskier jerks his head up in surprise to see Geralt’s eyes on his face, liquid gold lit like sunrise by the light of the fire, a tiny smile playing around his lips. “You’ve never been afraid of me. Not once. Not even when the only things you knew about me were that I scowled a lot and I had two very scary swords.” Jaskier flushes at the reminder of the babble that spilled out of his mouth the moment he laid eyes on the single most attractive person he had ever seen in his 18 years of life.
He drops his eyes, knowing there’s no hiding the blush on his cheeks but ignoring it as hard as he can anyway. “What’s there to be scared of? You’re a puppy, not a wolf.” He expects a grumble, or a glare, or for Geralt to ignore him completely. Certainly not the bark of laughter that would have woken Ciri were it not for Yen’s charm. He stares at Geralt’s face, firelight flickering over pale skin, honest joy written in the curve of his mouth, and grins back helplessly.
“You’re the only one who’s ever thought that. Except maybe Eskel.” He laughs again, more quietly this time, then sobers slightly. “Humans are afraid of us. They always have been. Less now, since you,” he squeezes Jaskier’s hand again and Jaskier flushes even darker, “but the first Witchers were barely more than feral, and that impression…stuck. Humanity never got past it. Even when new generations of Witchers were made, when we became something closer to men than to monsters, their fear never went away. Any emotion, even the faintest irritation, was enough to make most humans think a Witcher was about to go berserk, to start tearing out the throats of anyone who got too close. So, we learned to shut them down.”
His eyes are downcast now, and Jaskier thinks of a tiny Geralt, just a boy, younger than Ciri, excited about the world, curious and clever and mischievous, thinks about him learning to hide his heart away until even he couldn’t find it anymore, and he wants to scream. He wants to cry, he wants to rage, he wants to find every human who ever judged a Witcher by his eyes and not his deeds and mount their heads on spikes. He wants to tear out their hearts and make them watch as he throws them on the pyre, burning them out like so many boys were made to burn out their own.
Geralt can smell his turmoil, he knows, and he clings to the comfort offered when he holds Jaskier’s hand as tightly as he can without hurting him, still tracing circles into his skin with his thumb.
“It isn’t safe, to have feelings. Humans may spit on a mutant with a heart of stone, but they’ll hunt and kill a monster with teeth they think will harm them. It’s safer to be cold, to be hard. To let all of it roll off of us like snow off a mountain. And after a while, you forget how to be anything else. You forget that it’s a lie, that it’s something you had to learn. You start to believe it too.” There are tears dripping off of Jaskier’s nose now, but he doesn’t dare interrupt again. “I had forgotten, until you.”
He looks at Jaskier with such naked feeling in his fiery eyes that Jaskier can’t fathom how anyone could believe this man has no heart. “You made me feel. You walked into my life and just-“ He huffs another low laugh, the faraway look on his face impossibly fond. “You just didn’t listen to a fucking thing I said. Ever! Not once! And it drove me up the godsdamned wall. I was going out of my mind, I was so fucking annoyed. You never stopped talking, or singing, or playing that damn lute, you never stayed out of the way on hunts like I told you to, you ignored me whenever I said I didn’t have feelings or I didn’t need anyone or we weren’t friends. And you wouldn’t leave! You just kept coming back, no matter how much of an arse I was, even when I acted in ways that would have made other humans shit themselves, or come after me with torches and pitchforks, or both. You just kept coming back, and you kept not believing me when I told you I was a monster, and you never smelled fucking afraid, and after a while I realized that irritated wasn’t the only thing you made me feel anymore.”
He seems to withdraw into himself a little, his shoulders hunching and his head hanging slightly. He tries to withdraw his hand, but Jaskier isn’t sure he can get through this conversation without it, so he hopes Geralt will forgive him for pushing yet more boundaries and simply holds onto him tighter.
Geralt sighs again, but stops pulling away. “But there’s still so much shit in the world. There are so many humans who hate me, or fear me, or try to cheat me, or who end up being monsters worse than the ones they want me to kill, and the problem with having it smacked over my head that I do actually have feelings, is that it makes it so much harder to ignore them. And there’s so much anger in me, Jaskier, and grief, and loneliness. And I can’t ever show it to anyone, or it will confirm everything they think they know about me. It will make me a monster. It will make me the Butcher all over again.” He looks up again, his expression anguished. “You’re the only one who’s safe. You’re the only one I can be angry around, or sad, or scared, or just annoyed, without thinking the worst of me. You’re the only one who ever comes back.”
Jaskier is back to feeling like his heart is being fed through a sieve, but he thinks he understands what Geralt is trying to say this time. He feels a renewed rush of guilt for assuming the worst of him before. Is he any better than the rest, jumping to the foulest possible conclusion while Geralt wrestles with his tongue to try and make him understand? He turns his head away, closing his eyes against the tears and trying to breathe through the shame.
Fingers grip his chin gently and coax his head back until he’s looking into Geralt’s slitted eyes again. The look on his face is so soft, so open, that Jaskier feels like his ribs are being pried apart at the sight of it. “You have no idea how much of a blessing you have actually been in my life, Jaskier,” and those words just crack his chest wide open and bare his heart to the whole room, don’t they? “I took advantage of you. I wanted so badly to have someone in my life I could show all the darkest parts of myself to, without them running away, that I forgot to show you the rest. And I forgot to help carry your darkness in return. I left you with such a burden, Jaskier, and you never once complained or asked me to help. You have done nothing but give, for as long as I’ve known you, and I wish I could show you how sorry I am that I was content for so long just to take.” Jaskier is pretty sure he’s openly sobbing now, but Geralt is sliding his hand up from his chin to cup his cheek, sweeping the tears away with his thumb, so it’s probably ok.
“Let me make it up to you, Jaskier. Let me be the one to give to you for once. Let me carry your burdens for a while. Let me give you a reason to forgive me. A reason to come back.” His eyes are pools of molten gold, wide and dark and shining with- emotion. An emotion. Jaskier isn’t going to hazard a guess at which emotion, because he isn’t sure he can handle the answer.
“I’ve already forgiven you, you great lummox. For all of it. A safe place is all I ever wanted to be for you. I only ever wanted to give you a home. Like you gave me. Just- just share it with me next time, please? The anger, or the fear? Share it with me first, instead of letting it fester and burn us both. That’s all I need from you.”
Geralt’s hand on his cheek guides him forward until their faces are inches from each other, foreheads resting together. Jaskier’s eyes want to close but he can’t bear to look away, too afraid this is all an impossible dream that will disappear as soon as he opens them again. He can see the way the firelight glimmers off his silver hair, the scars through his eyebrow, the tears clinging to his eyelashes as they sweep gently over his cheeks. He’s never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever deserved you, but I would do anything for the chance to try to be someone who does. I’m yours, Jaskier. You need only say you’ll have me.”
Jaskier is a man of words. He’s a bard, words are his trade, his weapons, the blood in his veins. No matter what else is happening around him, no matter what he has or what he’s lost or what needs to be done, there are always words ready to spring forth from him like water from a spigot. He has never, in all his life, been out of words.
Until now.
Fuck it.
Geralt’s lips are softer than he imagined, given that his skincare routine seems to consist primarily of monster innards. But they’re soft and they’re warm and they move so gently against Jaskier’s that he thinks he might simply melt into a puddle, to be absorbed into the earth and never seen again. The kiss is tender, and sweet, and longing, and not at all how he imagined his first kiss with Geralt would be. It’s perfect. Jaskier breaks it with a watery laugh, keeping his forehead pressed to Geralt’s.
Somehow his free hand has found its way back into Geralt’s silky hair, and he threads his fingers deeper into the moonlit locks and hopes he’ll never have to let go.
“You’re mine?” He knows he sounds a little pleading, disbelief coloring his tone, but he can’t help it. He’s had this dream so many times, he needs to be sure it’s real this time. “Really?”
“Really, little lark.” Geralt is smiling just as wide as Jaskier is, his cheeks just as damp. “I’ve always been yours, I was just too stupid to admit it. I won’t make that mistake again. I love you. I’ll never leave you behind again, not for the rest of your life, if you’ll let me.”
And, oh, there’s a conversation they should maybe have, because after all the revelations of tonight, Jaskier is fairly sure Geralt thinks he’s completely human, and is probably in pain over his supposed mortality. At some point before they go to sleep Jaskier will mention it, because apparently Geralt hasn’t noticed that his face hasn’t changed a lick in 25 years, the stubble he wears these days notwithstanding.
Because Geralt is a ridiculous, incredible, oblivious, stupid, wonderful fool, and Jaskier loves him so much he can hardly breathe. So he tells him so. The rest can wait.
#the witcher#twn#geraskier#geralt of rivia#jaskier#dandelion#julian alfred pankratz#yennefer of vengerberg#cirilla fiona elen riannon#the witcher fanfiction#my writing#i'll do the same with sleep now eventually i think but i want to finish it first
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LOVE CONFESSION PROMPTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 💖
Pls combine "Saying I love you as a confession" with "Saying Ily angrily".
Jaskel OBVIOUSLY. 😬
GO GO GO 🔥🔥🔥💪
thank you!!! ily!! 😘😘😘😘😘😘😘
On Ao3 I love you-prompts I love you-collection
(Thank you @flawney for beta reading!)
The thing is, Eskel is good at reading people.
It is not as much 'sniffing out lies' as some humans call it— more that it's his job to see, to notice when there is more going on, when someone is believing what they say to be truthful, or if they are outright lying.
Most humans lie to Eskel. Not about everything, and not all of them. Just most.
He knows it's superstition about his employment first and his visage second. Maybe the other way around.
Maybe both at once. What he knows is this: humans don't like what they see when they look at him. Yellow eyes and big scars all over his cheek. Notches in his lip, big build, yeah he knows.
Humans seem either to try to hide how fucking scared they are, or how much they distaste the general look of him. They're bad at both.
Some show respect despite that, some are even kind and understanding. Very few are entirely truthful.
Up to this point, it had been a relief to be around the bard simply because Jaskier speaks his mind.
There are very few things that he actually keeps to himself, even when he probably should. The filter between mouth and brain that most beings on the continent were in possession of seemed to be severely lacking in Jaskier.
It could be annoying, embarrassing, or sometimes downright mean, but mostly, if he were to be completely honest, freeing.
Eskel never has to think about what Jaskier might mean, because within the next breath he will explain himself, asked or not. Or expand on the subject. Or just. Rant.
He does that. A lot.
Which is why it is so strange to see Jaskier like this. Cold. Quiet. Eskel can see the signs again, the holding back. The stolen looks and thinly pressed lips.
It is... hurtful.
It's just small things. A word held back here, a face turned away there. A touch that never really connected, a song he won't play when Eskel is around.
It's been going on for a little while, but more frequently as of late, as they have taken to traveling together for longer than they've ever done previously..
It doesn't feel good.
He should be used to it by now, but he isn't. Not when it's Jaskier.
The tension is so strong, Eskel's ready to snap like an overtaut bow string. (He suspects if he loses it, he'll end up hurting himself here too.)It built enough for Eskel to snap.
It comes to a head while Eskel is in the middle of changing into dry clothes after a cold, refreshing,attempt at meditative washing a nearby creek, Jaskier, for once, choosing to stay behind and fiddle with... something.
Hurt and worry lance through him, tainting his words cruelly, sharpening them before they leave his mouth. And Jaskier, ever filter-less Jaskier, gives as good as he gets.
"Why are you lying to me?" Eskel hurls out.
"I'm not!? Not once have I lied to you!" Jaskier throws back,spreading his arms wide as if telling their audience of trees to look at this fool of a witcher.
"Holding things back is lying too!"
"You are not privy to my every thought, Eskel!"
"Oh yeah? You talk all the time, there is no shutting you up!" He regrets it as soon as he says it, afraid the dark look of anger and hurt on the bard's face meant he'd crossed a line.
"So what is the problem, then? How can I hold things back if I can't stop talking?... Which also seems to be a problem, I guess." Jaskier asks angrily.
"I can tell there is something you are keeping from me." He insists instead, deciding not to open that can of worms.
"Do you tell me everything?"
"Don't deflect the question."
"Don't ask stupid questions!"
Eskel takes an involuntary step forward and bares his teeth, like a damn animal. Jaskier matches him, leaning forward and meeting him head on.
Just one more thing about the bard that is so very refreshing, just one more thing that he is so damn scared of losing.
The thought makes him stop for a second and blink.
"I have to, when you don't talk to me." He says, but his words have lost their heat.
"There are things I can't tell you, alright!" Jaskier seems more frustrated than angry, dragging a hand through the fringe above his eyes.
No, it's not alright.
"Why? Are you in danger?" Protective instincts are hard to push down, especially now.
"No! It's nothing." Jaskier says, taking a step back. It is all about reading people.
"Obviously it is something."
"It doesn't matter."
"Why?"
"Fucking- It would change things, and you don't want that." His eyes are earnest, begging for trust, but Eskel has such a bad history with being trusting.
"How would you know?"
"Because I know you. It's my problem to deal with."
"You said you aren't in danger." Eskel glares and crosses his arms.
"For the love of- Fucking FINE. I'll tell you. If this blows up in my face, this is on you. I fucking told you-"
"Jaskier-"
"No. I fucking love you, alright? That's my secret. I love you, and you don't love me. It's fine. I was going to keep it to myself, but here we are.
The world stops. The sun freezes in the sky. The clouds don't move, and not a single leaf dares rustle in the wind.
What?
"And look, now you are panicking, and you will leave, and I will lose you. I should just have kept my mouth shut." Jaskier sneers, turning away and kicking at one of the logs next to their little campfire.
It is not that Eskel is panicking, it is more like. Alright, maybe he is panicking a little.
Of all the things Eskel expected him to hide, it was not love. Jaskier wouldn't hide love.
"You're lying." He says faintly, still trying to get a grasp on the situation.
It makes the bard turn to look at him, the anger shifted into something else. Something sad and lonely and fragile.
"I'm not. Why would I lie about such a thing?"
"You can't hide your love." Eskel says quietly, and Jaskier steps back in front of him.
"I haven't been. Just didn't say the words."
It has Eskel thinking back. To all the little moments during their time together, and the big things. In this light, maybe Eskel didn't read too much into it.
The way they are looking at each other across the fire, how their eyes linger. The little gifts, silly trinkets or useful tools. Casual touches that has Eskel wishing for more.
"You're not…lying?" He sounds astounded to his own ears.
Jaskier's eyes soften at the admission of his own confession.
"I'm not. And now things will change, and I understand. I can be... a lot. I know that. Which is why I have been holding back. Your friendship means the world to me, and if it meant that I had to suppress this, I will."
No.
No Eskel doesn't want him to shove this down into whatever black hole Eskel made him dig for it.
Carefully he reaches out, catching Jaskier's hand in his own.
They stand silently across from each other while Eskel holds his hand. Jaskier's fingers are slender compared to his own. Long and strong, and so gentle in his grip.
"This doesn't matter? This is nothing?" Eskel echoes back the words as he slides their palms together.
"If it means I get to keep my friend, it doesn't." Jaskier says quietly, letting his thumb trace back and forth over Eskel's thumb.
"This doesn't feel like nothing."
"No?" Jaskier asks, looking up with naked hope drawn on his face.
"No. This feels important."
"Even if it changes things?"
"Because it changes things."
Their fingers lace together and they take another step forwards, the toes of their shoes inches apart.
"I'm sorry I yelled at you." Eskel murmurs, bringing up his other hand to the side of Jaskier's neck, pulse is jack rabbeting under the skin.
"I'm sorry too."
"I was... scared. People lie to me, hide things from me, but you never did."
Jaskier stands quietly and listens, pushing into Eskel's hand when it travels up to cup his cheek.0
"I couldn't stand it. If the one truly important person outside my family lied too."
Jaskier's free hand is resting on Eskel's bare chest, hot like a brand.
"I love you too." the Witcher murmurs, and Jaskier closes his eyes, brow scrunching up like he is in pain.
"I'm sorry." Jaskier whispers, and Eskel caresses the lines in the corner of his eye with the pad of his thumb.
"Don't be."
"Do you want to... change things? With me?" Jaskier whispers, and Eskel wraps his arms around him in a big hug, pressing him close.
"I want everything you can give me."
#the witcher#jaskel#jaskier x eskel#love you-prompt#angry love confession#getting together#fighting#firefly-party#dapanda writes
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The weird cursed inn
There was a portion of the ceiling from which meatballs fell. Lambert didn’t know why that was happening or how exactly it was possible, his guess was a drunken mage spelled the ceiling to expell meatballs. But whatever the cause was, there were meatballs coming from the ceiling and after some poking and prodding and testing, Lambert had tasted one and they were actually pretty good. So Lambert figured it wasn't much of a problem to have free food coming from a portion of the ceiling.
For some reason the innkeeper didn't think it was a good thing. The man had hired Lambert to come and look at the ceiling expelling food afterall to try and fix it. Only Lambert had no idea how he could stop the ceiling from expelling food. One part expelled meatballs, another part just oozed some sort of spiced red tomato sauce, another part expelled vegetables and a fourth part spat out thin long strings of some sort of cooked dough. All of it was pretty tasty on their own but when you combined the four foods it was even better.
Lambert would never admit it but he had actually waited long enough for the ceiling to expel enough food for an entire meal and then some and he had enjoyed it. The innkeeper wasn't paying him much after all to figure out this very weird curse and Lambert wouldn’t be getting his coin until after he fixed the issue. And even if he did fix the issue, the coin he'd earn would barely be enough to pay for a single night in a room, not counting meals and stabling for his horse.
Surprisingly enough the innkeeper wasn't charging him extra for the room or the food or the stabling, for being a witcher. The man wasn't even being mean or rude. He was polite and more than a little desperate and fed up with random food coming from the ceiling in a hallway leading to the kitchen.
Lambert couldn't say he blamed the guy, it wasn’t very convenient to have food coming from your ceiling. It just fell to the floor and made a mess you had to clean up. But he mused, if you put a bowl or a plate under the patches of ceiling expelling food you could probably combine the four different food types and make a few meals and sell them.
Lambert wasn’t sure why the inkeep hadn't thought of that, maybe because the food wasn't exactly something you saw on the Continent. He certainly had no clue what the strings of cooked dough were. But they tasted pretty nice when combined with the sauce and the meatballs and the vegetables.
Though he supposed it was a bit hard to catch the food when the patches of ceiling it came from fucking changed every five minutes. Lambert cursed, loudly, in three different languages as a heap of dough strings landing on his head. There didn't seem to be a pattern to the shifting patches of food falling from the ceiling, not one he could figure out at least. And he had looked for a really fucking long time to try and figure it out.
Lambert scooped the strings of dough from his head and let them fall to the floor. "Fucking mess," he grumbled angrily. "This is such a shit job," he added to himself. Nothing he had tried worked and after two days of observing the ceiling and searching the inn for any sign of a curse being anchored to it anymore, he was about ready to give up.
He twitched as the fucking patches shifted again and swiftly stepped backwards to avoid getting doused in tomato sauce. Yeah, fuck this. He was getting the xenovox Merigold had pushed into his hands last winter, just before he had left the keep, and he was going to call the sorceress and ask her to deal with this mess.
Lambert turned and left the hallway, heading up to his room. It wasn't very big, really just the attic space with a cot shoved in a corner and a bedside table next to it holding a single candle. There wasn't much of anything else in there, no wash basin or wardrobe for clothes, no chair to sit on. No if Lambert wanted a wash he had to go to the nearby river, which was cold as fuck, and wash himself and his clothes in in the freezing water.
He grumbled and bitched and complained as he fished the xenovox from one of his saddlebags. He opened it up, activated it with the password and asked "Merigold, you there?"
There was a long moment of silence afterwards. Lambert sat down on the cot with a grunt, scowling at the xenovox. Fuck. What if she was too busy to help him out? He waited a minute and then called out for the sorceress again. She responded by opening up a fucking portal right inside the tiny attic space and stepping through. He cursed at her, pushing back on the cot as the portal closed behind her.
"Lambert!" She cried, looking awfully concerned, stepping toward him with glowing hands. "The fuck, Merigold! What are you doing?"
She paused, lowering her hands with a frown as she looked him over. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?" She asked him, sounding just as worried as she looked. He blinked at her and then scowled. "Fine, just some bruises. Not why I called you. Inn's fucking cursed or some shit. Ceiling shots out food in the hallway by the kitchen. Can't figure out how to fix it."
She looked at him like he lost his head. "I'm sorry, the ceiling does what?" He closed the xenovox, set it aside and got up. "Fucking expells food, four different kinds. Keeps shifting spots from where the food appears too. It's annoying as fuck. Tastes good but still fucking irritating."
He moved past her, through the door and down the stairs. She followed him right to the hallway where a rather disgruntled looking woman was busy cleaning up food. Said women glared at him, hissing at him to fix the problem before she went off into the kitchen.
Lambert gestured to the ceiling and scowled when a patch expelled vegetables all over him. Triss muffled a laugh at the sight. "I'll take a look," she promised and she did. She raised her hands and he could feel the chaos within her rising up and reaching into the ceiling. Lambert watched her frown and mutter something under her breath, a moment later his medallion vibrated hard against his armor and the ceiling shimmered once before it rippled and settled back down. Triss lowered her arms and shot him a smile. "That should do it."
They waited and watched the ceiling for more food, when none appeared after five minutes Lambert sighed in relief. "Thanks Merigold, I'll go get the fucking payment." Triss smiled, "Want me to stick around?"
"Nah, I'll be fine. Want the coin?" He asked her, fully prepared to pay her for her work. She laughed and shook her head. "Keep it, I don't need to be paid to help you Lambert. I'll go back to Kaer Morhen then. I've been helping Vesemir grow a new plant, which should help Eskel with the pain from his scars."
"Shit, that's good. Need help testing it?" Lambert had a few scars of his own which occasionally hurt like a bitch on cold winter days. Probably not as much as Eskel’s scars hurt him, but it would be nice to not feel that shit every winter. And if testing a plant helped his brother, well he wasn't going to say that's what he wanted to do.
"Sure, it couldn't hurt to have another opinion. I'll call you when it's harvest time." With that she disappeared into a portal. Lambert huffed and went off to find the innkeeper. The man refused to pay him until he had spent ten minutes looking at the ceiling and was convinced that there really was no more food coming out of it. He ambled off to a room in the back of the inn and came back with a tiny leather purse. Lambert took it, weighing it in his hand. It really wasn't much but it did weigh just the right amount for the amount of coin promised for the job so he didn't complain.
He thanked the inkeep and headed back to his room. It was about time he got back to the Path and he really wanted to see Aiden again. He stashed the coin purse away in his saddle bags, gathered up his things and headed off to the stables. He saddled up his horse, got the bags all tied in place, fed her a slice off apple and ate the rest of the fruit himself. Then he mounted up and left the tiny village behind.
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l've had this writing blog for a while but have never actually said anything about my own writing (oops), so I guess an intro post is in order lmao and it only took 3+ years
About me:
I'm an Ashkenazi Jew
I'm 26 and would prefer not to follow or be followed by minors. If you're a minor and you do follow me, keep it to yourself lol. Please for the love of g-d don't tell online strangers how old you are
I live in the US and my first language is English, but I do unfortunately speak French and will sometimes write in it
I'm a cartographer and have been making maps since I was 11. I recently got ahold of some great art supplies and my maps have reached professional levels so if anyone would like a continent drawn from their fantasy novel, l'm your guy!
l'll be going back to school soon to become a librarian and might eventually pursue archiving and bookbinding on top of that
I've been researching the publishing industry since I was 10 and have spent more than half my life hyperfixated on it so if you'd like an extremely in-depth guide on traditional publishing I am more than happy to info-dump at you (l even wanted to become a literary agent as a child!)
About my writing:
I write adult dark fantasy and romantic horror; not smut, but very much not for kids. It's not grimdark so think less GoT or the Witcher, and more like Mexican Gothic and The Fifth Season
I mostly write full novels but have been getting back into short stories, flash fiction, and stories told in letter format (the latter of which I use to piss off the Jehovah's Witnesses who keep trying to get me to join their church). l've also partially written a novella which is a first for me!
I prefer reading adult fantasy, especially when it has a modern setting—absolutely no medieval Europe for me please—but YA covers are just too fucking pretty, man. I also really like reading adult literary fiction and contemporary, as well as adult historical fiction. (Bonus points if historical fiction has speculative elements à la The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker.)
Every single one of my works is interconnected by one very specific detail, even though they're all set in different worlds (or in the case of the novella, in many different worlds because it's about a middle-aged dimension hopping couple). They might seem entirely unrelated at first glance but there is always at least a sentence or paragraph connecting the work to all of my others like one giant web, and it all leads back to my main series
I have a fuck ton of pdf files for books on publishing, editing, etc etc so if you want them hmu. I also usually have unused 3-12 month subscription codes for all kinds of writing programs and webinars and am more than happy to give those codes away (for free obv)
Uhhhh yeah that’s basically it this has gotten super long and I’ve written this all while half-asleep so here’s a wip map of a continent from my main series, plus a mountain sketch and a volcano test yeahhh bye
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okay so we all know jaskier is kind of like a slut the biggest flirt the continent has ever seen right? most of the time he flirts he isnt even trying to sleep with the person (which tells you how much he flirts because he sleeps around a lot) he just flirts with literally every breathing being because it brings smiles to people’s faces (most of the time). and hes been doing it for so long it just comes to him naturally, he doesnt even intend to.
even if he isnt saying anything flirtatious, hes always wearing this charming smile and his eyes. god. its just a fucking default at this point and people swoon easily so. even when he starts dating geralt, the absolute love of his life, that impact that he has doesnt even go away.
and geralt notices, alright? he fucking sees it. and at first he just found it funny, people falling all over his bard like they have a chance when jaskier only has eyes for him (and like he isnt keeping jaskier thoroughly satisfied). it was amusing, entertaining. but then a couple months in it just became absolutely ridiculous
because at this point jaskier is BLATANTLY WRITING SONGS ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP AND HOW IN LOVE HE IS WHY THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE STILL FLIRTING WITH HIM?!!?!?!?!? IN GERALTS FACE?!?!??!?!! AFTER HE SINGS THOSE FUCKING SONGS TO TAVERNS FULL OF PEOPLE????????
so yes. geralt gets irritated. very much so.
which leads to him acting out, just a tad bit petty
like him and jaskier would be at a tavern sitting and talking to someone (jaskier would be talking, geralt would just be there because jaskier’s there) and maybe that someone would get that little suggestive tone in their voice and geralt would just take jaskier’s hand and start kissing each of his knuckles. and jaskier’s attention goes to him immediately, which leaves the stranger grumpily walking off with geralt feeling very smug
then theres that time where a barmaid starts casually stroking jaskier’s arm while they speak. and jaskier, bless his soul, thinks this is completely normal behavior and doesnt seem to mind a bit. well geralt minds and so he walks right over to them and pulls jaskier into his side, smiling sweetly at the barmaid as he asks so what were you guys talking about? and jaskier actually starts telling geralt what they were talking about while the barmaid glares daggers at the witcher the entire time
and geralt just keeps doing these things. because listen, he trusts jaskier, okay? and he knows he has no reason to feel threatened by some horny humans when jaskier is so painfully in love with him but its the principle of the thing, okay? these people will learn to respect their relationship. geralt and jaskier have worked too hard for them to try and act like it doesnt exist, especially when jaskier’s most recent ballad ode to my witcher’s bum has gone the continent version of viral.
and so he keeps doing these things, and it continues to work like a charm.
#and jaskier totally sees whats going on#but he doesnt care he finds it entertaining and so cute#so he just lets things playout however they playout#Listen hes spent 20 years wanting geralt to fight for him okay let the bard have this#possessive geralt is okay Sometimes#geralt of rivia#geraskier#jaskier#the witcher
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♡ My thoughts on Yennskier + headcanons ♡
(Edited post)
- What makes this whole thing so funny and exciting to me is that Yennefer used to think that Jaskier was just some annoying sing songy twit before. While Jaskier's dramatic arse used to consider Yennefer an enemy until she saved him from Rience XD XD XD
- I adored the everliving FUCK out of their scenes together in season 2! Their dynamic is so fucking good! AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!
- Yennskier, the ship we didn't know we needed, but definitely deserved! Their chemistry is so fucking perfect and their dynamic works so well!
- Personally I think that this ship is actually, currently, THE healthiest and most wholesome one of all my Jaskier ships! At least as of season 2! (Even if Geraskier remains as my OTP)
- In Oxenfurt, when Jaskier and Yennefer got to know eachother better without Geralt's presence to distract them both, ever since they saw the real, raw and vulnerable sides of eachother and became friends, I couldn't help but notice how absolutely toothrottingly perfect they are together!
- Legit, and I kid you not! I can't picture Yennefer and Jaskier having anything other than that deep kind of connection where you know that you are loved, appreciated and adored, despite all your flaws. The kind of love where you know you're not alone, that this person is your family and will always have your back no matter what.
- Yennefer, despite being one of the most powerful sorceresses on the entire continent, treats Jaskier as an equal by the time Ciri gets possessed. (Bro, like even Geralt doesn't do that! Jaskier is his friend, sure, but I've never seen Geralt treating him as an equal.)
- Yennefer and Jaskier have a mutual respect for eachother, they trust eachother, they enjoy eachother's company. All of those things are A CRUCIAL part of having a solid foundation to build a honest, sturdy, long-lasting and happy relationship upon.
- From compatibility POV, they work together a lot better than Geralt and Yennefer did. With Jaskier, there are no djinn related consent issues, there wouldn't be any communication issues and he would probably be a positive influence on Yennefer's mental health.
- Whereas her relationship with Geralt was quite frankly chaotic, explosive, sometimes even toxic. It was built upon a shaky foundation of lust, djinn magic and exchanged favors. Like c'mon, their time together as an on-and-off couple mostly consisted of having kinky unicorn sex, trauma dumping, dealing with magical, gorey and insanely dangerous situations, then talking about said situations until they have a fight! Leaving eachother every time in the end because they can't seem to make it work long-term. They're incompatible because in canon, the only thing that finally made them stick together for good, was an orphaned girl in need of protection. It's not right, kind of like parents who are postponing their divorce until their daughter grows up :/
- Jaskier on the other hand, despite his magic-less ordinary humanity has a hilariously witty, optimistic, stupidly brave, highly empathetic, loyal and supportive personality. Yennefer would have an understanding partner who loves her, cherishes her, acceptc her for who she is without judgement nor pity. A partner who would make it his life's mission to help her see the good things this world has to offer, to make her happy because she deserves it!
- Damn it all, they both have been through enough, they both deserve a break. They actually GET eachother. I can already feel a drabble forming in my brain, set a week or so after the whole Voleth Mier shebang, Jaskier is struggling with PTSD and nightmares about Rience, Yennefer is struggling with guilt and shame because she put Ciri in danger. So while Geralt is too busy with Ciri's training to be there for Jaskier and he feels too betrayed to be in Yennefer's company, neither Yen nor Jask have anyone to turn to in Kaer Morhen, except eachother. Three months confined to a witcher keep together? Now that is a LOT of time to spend with someone you can be openly vulnerable around, bond with, heal and share joy with, unexpectedly falling in love....
- Yennefer too is an extremely good match for Jaskier, it's almost uncanny how much she completes him! Jaskier would finally have an understanding and loving partner who truly saw him when others didn't bother. And Yennefer liked what she saw, the familiar face of a simple human bard who offered kindness and compassion to strangers even if it could kill him. She saw courage, honesty, forgiveness and so much good, a collection of rare qualities she had never thought could exist within one single person all at once. After Voleth Mier, all that goodness was given to her so freely, it is still being given to her everyday, so she knows a treasure when it looks her right in the eyes with such easy warmth. She would make it her life's mission to cling onto him with everything she's got, to love and cherish him the way he deserves, to protect the only person she deems worthy of holding her heart!
- They have a lot in common too. From both having a knack for fashion, both being mischievous little shits at heart and both having high standards when it comes to personal hygiene. To also having similar tastes in both alcohol, humor, luxury and entertainment.....if Yennefer's kinky orgy party and Jaskier's reputation as the biggest slut on the continent is anything to go by.
- Speaking of sex, both of them having a high libido and exceptional skills in bed aside, they're fucking GORGEOUS people! Why wouldn't they find eachother attractive?
- Yennefer is basically a Goddess, beauty personified! She is elegant and breathtaking, everyone knows it.
- However, since a majority of the Witcher fandom usually dismisses Jaskier in favor of simping for Geralt, I can, I must and I WILL gush about how pretty Jaskier is! Cuz clearly some of them bitches be blind, Yennefer is one lucky witch!
- Jaskier is like only 1,5 inches shorter than his grouchy snowman friend. Meaning he is tall as all hell and he definitely isn't lacking in the muscle department either, that bard is jacked yo. His voice is soothing and his vocabulary is extensive enough to make the most experienced of whores blush from pillow talk. He has VERY soft looking hair and he has one of the most angelic fucking faces I've ever seen. His eyes are the clearest shade of blue and his expressions + mannerisms are absolutely adorable! Ok, I'm done gushing, onto the next point....
- Unlike Jaskier, I don't think I have a dummy thick enough of a vocabulary to express how much dopamine Yennskier fanfics give me, more specifically when their husband and wife act from Oxenfurt becomes an inside joke for them, leaving the rest of Kaer Morhen's inhabitants confused as fuck.
- Geralt getting a bit jealous? His brothers wondering when that could have happened? Ciri feeling bamboozled as well?
- It's all shits and giggles until somebody giggles and shits. It won't take long until their inside joke is no longer a joke. They already bicker like a married couple anyway XD
- I can not help but also headcanon Jaskier as not fully human. It would be sad if he up and died on his dear immortal wife. I don't necessarily picture him having chaos or other powers in this scenario, but when I do, I think that they would discover them together on accident.
#jaskier#julian alfred pankratz#netflix witcher#witcher netflix#dandelion#jaskier dandelion#witcher ciri#yennefer of vengerberg#yenneferthewitcher#yennskier#cirilla of cintra#cirilla fiona elen riannon#geralt of rivia#witcher geralt#witcher headcanon#yennefer x jaskier#part elf jaskier#nonhuman jaskier#immortal jaskier#witcher ship
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@zeebee823 THAT'S SUCH A COOL IDEA I HAD TO WRITE IT OUT IMMEDIATELY (along with geralt finding out abt Sandpiper even if he's too drunk to fully process lmao)
Also more Aves stuff here
"There are so many good ballads to make here," Jaskier sighs happily, looking over at the ruckus the other Witchers are making as they fight for the last bone on the table. "The pack of Wolves, reunited at last, denning down together for the season."
"Hm," Geralt says, equally as happily, enjoying the length of Jaskier stretched out on him. They may still be unusually hesitant around each other, kissing like trembling teenagers rather than decade-old friends falling into something new and wonderful, but at least they way they touch each other still has the same familiarity as before.
"Barring one Cat and one Griffin, though," Yen says, her need for accuracy winning out over the drunken sleep she was about to succumb to. She smacks weakly at Jaskier's feet in her lap, face scrunching up adorably in irritation, and Geralt leans over and kisses her for it.
What neither of them are expecting, though, is Jaskier choking on his drink at her sudden input and tensing up in their laps. Geralt turns to him sharply, Jaskier waving away his concern as he asks, "Did- did you just say Griffin?"
"Yes," Geralt replies, frowning at the way Jaskier grimaces at the affirmation. "Coën is a Griffin witcher. What-"
"Ah, fuck," Jaskier says, stumbling out of their embrace to his feet. "Shit, gotta talk to him."
Yen laughs at the look on Geralt's face as his drunken brain registers that Jaskier is now no longer in his lap. "Aw, is the puppy dog sad that his little birdie left him?"
"Fuck off," Geralt mutters as he helps her up, both of them stumbling after where Jaskier had disappeared. The bard had always been mind-boggingly fast when he was drunk. "I missed him, alright?"
Yen snickers and they lean on each other as Geralt tracks Jaskier's scent through the halls to Coën's room. After a few moments of admiring the stars outside, Geralt actually stops to think about it and grows more and more mystified by Jaskier's behaviour as they walk, curiously wondering what on earth had Jaskier acting like that.
The bard pacing outside the room when they approach, muttering and mumbling to himself under his breath, nervously pulling at his clothes every few seconds.
"COËN!" Geralt shouts, then hiccups. This way Jaskier won't have to worry for much longer. Yen helpfully kicks the door for them. "COËN!"
"Meletile above, Geralt, what the fuck is wrong with you?" Coën snaps as he jerks. open the door. Geralt wrinkles his nose at the smell coming from inside, then wrinkles it further when Remus waves cheerfully at him from the bed, half-naked. "Are you all drunk?"
"You're drunk," Yen shoots back intelligently, and Geralt nods in support. Coën looks at him with an expression seeming to question his choice of companions and also his sanity, then jumps in shock when Jaskier suddenly grabs him by the arms and turns him around.
"Coën! I am so sorry, I really didn't know you existed, promise!" He exclaims, looking beseechingly at the flabbergasted Griffin. "Really, I thought there was no one from your school left, I swear, or else we wouldn't have, wouldn't even have thought about it."
"Wh-what?" Coën says, looking towards the two of them for an explanation and also leaning slightly away from Jaskier. "What is he talking about?"
Geralt and Yen shrug at him- they've started doing things in sync nowadays, which makes him feel sort of gooey inside- and Coën rolls his eyes in exasperation and turns back to the bard. "Jaskier, what?"
Jaskier sighs in distress and pulls a hand down his own face. "Look, I- what do you know of the Aves?"
Geralt frowns. "The branch of the Resistance that helps the non-humans round the Continent?"
"Damn good at what they do, too," Remus says, lazily walking up and plastering himself to Coën's back. "Kind people, them. What about the Aves, bard?"
"Ah, well," Jaskier says, pasting on a smile and bowing to them all. "Sandpiper of the Aves, at your service."
Geralt feels his mouth drop open as he turns to look at Jaskier, even as Yen cheers drunkenly. "What?"
"You're the Sandpiper?" Coën says disbelievingly. Jaskier reaches into his jacket and produces a sandpiper feather with a wink and a smile.
"Fucking hell, Geralt," Remus says, impressed. "What on earth did you do to snag a catch like this?"
Jaskier ducks his head and blushes, pleased, eyes flickering to Geralt to see his reaction.
Geralt is still busy processing this new information that explains so much but also raises a million more questions- but stops everything to smile at Jaskier at the question, as mushily as his face will allow, tipping his head onto Yen's. "I have no fucking clue. I'm still trying every day to be good enough for him."
"How much did you drink?"
"He's amazing!" Yen cheers, which makes Jaskier go from a lip wobble to barely holding back tears, and makes Remus walk up and gently pry the bottles from their hands.
"It's an extremely noble thing that you and your team are doing, yes, but what on earth does that does this have to me being a Griffin, Jaskier?" Coën asks patiently, redirecting the bard's attention back to him.
"Right! Right- Geralt, Yen, I love you but please shut up for a bit now. So, here's the thing- when we first started the Aves, we needed a stronghold for the- well, everything, I guess. Papers, important people, a place to drink. But there isn't really a place that's, uh, free of soldiers or spies, right? So then I remembered that Geralt mentioned that the Griffin's keep was in Korvir, which is the one place far enough from Nilfgaard and Redania and Cintra to be safe. So we-"
Geralt raises his head from Yen's to stare indignantly at Jaskier, "You remember that, but you couldn't remember that I told you to get the peaches I liked from Oxenfurt seven years in a row?"
"Kind of- shut up, Geralt- tracked it down in the mountains- and got it repaired."
Yen opens her eyes to join Geralt in the indignant staring. "You could track down an abandoned Witcher's Keep in the mountains, but you got so lost in the fort today that four separate witchers couldn't find you?"
"Will you please shut up, Yen."
"Wait, wait," Coën interrupts, waving his hands about. He looks adequately like someone who was dragged from his lover's embrace to confront three drunks in the hallway and told his old home had been taken over by his brother's lover, who was also a key member of the Aves. Geralt, personally, has decided that he's going to process it all later. "Are you telling me that you... repaired the Griffin Keep? And people are living there now?"
"Well, yes, we had contacts in the area who owed us a favour," Jaskier says, shifting nervously. "And don't worry! We made sure the remains of the witchers trapped inside got a proper burial, and I made sure we could rescue as much of the place as we could, and-"
"Jaskier, Jaskier, it's fine," Coën says, letting out a laugh of disbelief and holding his hands out. "I'm not- I'm not mad, it's just a lot to take in. Are you serious?"
Jaskier nods.
"Damn. Fucking hell, can I see it?"
Jaskier perks up immediately. "Of course! It's your old home, you don't even need to ask." He scrambles through his pockets until he produces a xenovox from somewhere and flicks it open. "Alessandra! Alessandra, wake up, dear."
The xenovox light flickers on and a scratchy voice comes through, irritated and groggy from sleep. "Jaskier, you dick, it's fucking past midnight, what do you want?"
"I've met a Griffin witcher."
The line goes silent for a while. "Well, fuck," The woman says finally, "Are they mad?"
"No," Coën says, shaking his head and stepping forward to take the xenovox. "But I would like to see my home, if it's all the same to you."
"Of course!" The stranger says, sounding as earnest as Jaskier had, if still half-asleep. There's the sound of bedsheets being thrown aside and a loud crash. "One moment, I'll just track the xenovox and open a portal for you all immediately."
Geralt groans loudly. Jaskier shoots him an unimpressed look. "No one's making you come, you know."
"Shut up. I'm coming with."
"I'm not," Yen announces. "I will throw up if I do. I am gonna- hic- go to bed. Goodnight, assholes."
"Goodnight," They chorus to her as she goes, Remus risking his hand as he ruffles her hair when she passes, an unfortunate habit of his that they've all been violently subjected to.
A portal opens before Yen can kill him, luckily, and Jaskier and Coën slip through immediately. Remus cheerfully claps a hand on his back and dodges a fireball and does the same.
Fuck portals.
Jaskier's there on the other side, though- letting Geralt fall into his arms with a laugh and holding him close until the dizziness passes. Geralt nuzzles into his neck and snuffs, breathing in his scent slowly until he feels like he can stand without embarassing every witcher to ever live.
"Better, love?" Jaskier whispers. Geralt nods and stays in the hug a moment longer before straightening up and looking around.
His eyes widen.
It's a Witcher's Keep- just like Kaer Morhen used to be when he was a child; torches lighting up the grey stones to brown, heavy tapestries and cloth draped over the walls, well-worn tables and armchairs in the centre and books and papers and weapons all scattered across them. There's people running about, children and adults alike, scampering to clean up the mess and staring at the four of them with wide eyes.
It's so different. Unscathed from violence. Geralt hadn't realized how many grief-filled memories the Wolf Keep held in the blood spattered on its stones until he'd walked in here.
Remus seems to be thinking the same, if his awed melancholy is anything to go by. Coën is crying silently beside them, eyes darting around the whole place intently, like it would disappear if he blinked. He's trembling too, and Geralt let's go of Jaskier so he can half-hug his brother in comfort.
A woman walks towards them from the end of the hallway with a determined air around her and holding herself with authority, looking like she was about to charge into battle any second. The people scattered around the room fall into place behind her in a tangled jumble, staring at them and whispering amongst themselves.
"Master Griffin," Alessandra says in a clear, strong voice as she reaches them, meeting Coën's eyes unflinchingly. "If you hold any grudge against us being here, if in any way you think it a slight against your brothers and sisters, then just say the word, and I promise we will leave your Keep immediately."
Coën visibly gathers himself back together and puts his hand on his shoulder with a bark of laughter. "Madam, please. My brothers and sisters would have been honoured to house the members of a noble cause such as your own in our halls. Of course you can stay. You all can."
A huge cheer goes up in the halls, tension visibly breaking, and Jaskier throws himself onto Coën with a whoop, hugging him so tight that Geralt hears his joints crack.
"Why the fuck did we get stuck with the fucking assholes and not Coën's instructors? Fucking unfair," Remus grumbles to him, and Geralt hums in amusement.
"Your maintenance of the place is beautiful," Coën praises enthusiastically. "Better than even when we lived here. You've truly done a spectacular job here, my fair lady. Now, come! Let's see the rest of it!"
Alessandra stares at Coën with wide eyes, looking slightly teary and very overwhelmed. "Dammit, Jaskier," She hisses wetly, smacking the bard without looking away from where Coën is leading the children further into the Keep. "What the fuck? Why did you wake me up to supernaturally beautiful men complimenting me in the middle of the fucking night? I fucking hate you."
Remus laughs and pats her sympathetically on the arm, before pulling her along to where everyone was going. "Trust me, it doesn't get any easier in the daylight. Why don't we get you sent back to bed, sprout, you look like you're about to drop."
"Come on!" Jaskier suddenly pops up in front of Geralt as he goes to follow, and he barely stops himself from backhanding his lover to the ground. "No one's really here apart from the chaos children and the people who can't leave, but let me show you around!"
"You call this no one?" Geralt says amusedly, gesturing to the two-score crowd of people now surrounding Coën and Remus and chattering at them as they walk off.
"Yes, there's usually more when we all meet up- us Aves need a break too, once in a while," Jaskier says, towing him away in the opposite direction. "Let me show you my room!"
Ten minutes later, they are extremely lost.
"Why did I trust you again?" Geralt asks, scrunching up his face. The alcohol is wearing off a bit now, the buzzing in his head less loud, and he has enough of himself back to feel more or less exasperatedly fond of Jaskier's horrible navigation sense.
"Oh, hush, you," Jaskier chides, opening random doors and peeking inside. "I know this hall, it has the unicorn tapestry on the left side, which means- aha! Welcome, Geralt, to my humble abode."
Geralt walks in and is immediately assaulted by the pleasantly musky scent of the warm room, with hints of Jaskier's perfume in the background. "Nice room."
Jaskier preens. "Thank you, darling. I transferred most of my stuff from my Oxenfurt room here when we all jumped ship, and it made it quite homely, if I do say so myself. Ah, don't- be careful with those papers, they're important!"
Geralt skims them, shifting the delicate pages to the side. They're names- rows on rows of people whom the Aves have rescued, persecuted for something or the other, as well as maps and intensive sketches of webs of people allied and at war. "Jaskier."
"Yes?"
Geralt looks him up and down with new eyes, trying to spot the leader of the Aves in his old companion's frame. "You did all of this?"
"Yes, well," Jaskier smiles softer, walking up next to him. "I'm well aware of the privileges I had when I was back at Oxenfurt, as did the others. And we- after the- the Tree-" He swallows hard, visibly fighting back tears. Geralt pulls him close and rubs his fingers gently. "After that, Geralt, I- I had to do something with all that extra leeway. I had to."
"It's amazing," Geralt says, voice full of emotion. He kisses Jaskier. "You're amazing."
Jaskier ducks his head and blushes again, blotchy red high on his cheeks. He's tipsy as well- not going off into fictional grand tales or bragging. "Oh, shut your gab, it wasn't much. All I did was pester my friends into research and help a few families get to where they needed to go. Everyone else did the rest."
"You shut up," Geralt says, kissing his cheeks. "Doesn't look like the Aves would have existed without you, Jaskier. And even your part requires an incredible amount of bravery, that shit isn't as easy as people say it is."
"Don't I know it," Jaskier huffs. "Thank you, Geralt."
Geralt hums, nuzzling into Jaskier's neck. He hesitates as something occurs to him, but the alcohol loosens his tongue before he can stop himself, "... Have I been holding you back, all these years?"
Jaskier snorts. "Did you see a war waging these past years for me to be a part of the Resistance for? Do you think I secretly wanted to be a spy in the courts of the spoiled nobles all these years rather than go on our wonderful, fun adventures? I chose to follow you, you dumb lump of coal. Hell, if anything, the sheer amount of horrors I've seen you take down without breaking a sweat helped harden my nerves enough for me to do this whole thing in the first place."
Geralt sniffs and wraps his hands around Jaskier, mollified.
"And it... hurt, thinking of you," Jaskier admits, and Geralt presses an apologetic kiss under his ear. "But, Meletile, Geralt, you have no idea how many times we had a close call and I would be so fucking scared, because I was responsible for people now and if anything happened it would be on me. And then I'd run my fingers through my midnight scarf and it would feel like you were there next to me, and that I could do it."
Geralt presses in closer and makes a note to dye some more clothing for Jaskier when he gets the time. "I'm here for real now."
"You are," Jaskier says fondly. "And I wasn't expecting it to get this big, you know? But then more and more people joined in, and next thing you know, I'm an urban legend."
Geralt hums happily. "Good. You deserve to be a story too."
Jaskier laughs, loud and delighted. "Geralt! That is the sweetest thing you've ever said to me. Oh, come here, you."
They kiss for a good long while.
"You're the Sandpiper," Geralt says again when they stop for breath. He can see it now, actually- a version of Jaskier made of the little skills he'd picked up through the years; haggling and persuading and running and comforting and hiding and cunning. He tries not to, but ends up pouting a bit, petulantly. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it's not the easiest thing to confess to without sounding like a lunatic?" Jaskier raises an eyebrow. "Yen only knows because she found me as the Sandpiper while the idiot was on the run. But regardless, I was gearing up to tell you anyway. Probably would have told you in a week. Or three."
Geralt hums and kisses him again. "I have so many fucking questions for you, by the way. About how the fuck you managed to take over a lost Witcher's Keep, for one, when you can't even stitch our clothes well enough after all these years."
"My stitches are perfectly fine, you boor," Jaskier replies heatedly, kissing him back. "Both of us just have extremely active lifestyles that end with them tearing again and again."
Geralt hums mockingly and Jaskier huffs and shoves him onto the bed. He climbs in after, eyes twinkling. "Now. We seem to have gotten ourselves a perfectly empty hallway all to ourselves, with no one around to hear us. Up for some fun, darling?"
Geralt moans teasingly and puts his hands up to grasp the bedpost. "Yes, Sandpiper," He replies in the same tone Jaskier calls him the White Wolf and Jaskier throws his head back to laugh and then pounces.
#the aves#sandpiper#jaskier#geralt of rivia#coën#remus#alessandra#astrapia#(thats her codename btw)#griffin witcher#geraskier#geraskefer#my fic#the witcher#witcher oc#yea fuck netflix lol we're doing it better#i guess this is exposition disguised as fic? lmao#also this would have been better to post after id built it up more? but also fuck it i wouldn't have kept the inspiration till then#yennefer of vengerberg
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For the fic title ask:
"Loveletter to nobody" or "A warrior's cry".
Thank you!
Oh, oh boy, Anon. For "a loveletter to nobody", I would write a sad old Lambert story.
Lambert is the last witcher.
Not just the last wolf, but the last witcher. At some point, he had to return to the Path.
Could be that there was no one saving people from monsters, or perhaps he got itchy feet. Either way, he's old and he's tired and he's so fucking lonely.
He never thought he'd miss Kaer Morhen, or the eulogising, but he does.
To combat the loneliness, he writes letters to those that have passed. He tells them all the things he should have said when they were alive, but never could.
He tells Geralt how much he looked up to him and how angry he got every time Geralt threw himself into harm's way for people that didn't give a shit.
He tells Eskel that he's worth more than the fucking Path, and he was always good enough. He should never have lived in anyone's shadow.
He tells Coën that he loved him. Not back-slapping, drink buddy love, but actual, full-hearted love, and it broke Lambert's heart when Coën chose to die rather than live.
What he tells Vesemir... well, that's between Lambert and the old man's memory.
When it's Lambert's time, he lies down beneath the stars and closes his eyes, the letters clutched to his chest.
When people find them later, they read about Lambert's life and the people he cared for, written tenderly and with unrepentant emotion.
The legacy of the prickliest bastard to ever walk the Continent is that witchers loved.
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Okay so THOUGHTS:
Do not talk to me about Eskel or Triss' hair. Do not. No.
Speaking of Triss I am DELIGHTED that they didn't make her FUCKING INSUFFERABLE like in BoE.
Voleth Mier (Derogatory)
I was so fucking worried I'd have to watch yennefer be a prisoner of Nilfgaard for a majority of the season but she was not and I'm happy
FRINGILLA
FUCKING
FRINGILLA
I'm so glad we got to see more of her and her motivation this season I fucking love her a whole lot now
(Also the first time I watched s1 was after I took a biology class so I always thought "flagellum" when I saw her. Sorry queen </3)
Her and Francesca........ Sapphic activity
DARA MY BOY!!!!!!!
NENNEKE! FUCKING LOVE NENNEKE THEY DID HER SO GOOD
CIRI MY SWEET BABY
I'm so fucking glad we got to see her do more than run around and be scared. We actually got to see her be sassy and fierce and funny and a kid. I love her.
HER AND GERALT!!! THAT IS HER DAD!!!! HE LOVES HER SO MUCH
YENNY BOO
Yenny boo!
Yenny boo <3
Yenny boo :(
Yenny boo :)
...Yenny boo.
Gonna fucking cry I love her so fucking much. I. Her. I love her.
MOMMA YEN! We're not at the best spot with it right now but we got our start and we're gonna get there besties I know it. I can feel it.
They're gonna be such a fambly.....
YENNSKIER STANS WE FUCKING WON THIS SEASON HOW ARE WE DOING
The softness. The trust. The understanding. The vulnerability.
The hands.
The hands.
Holy SHIT we won.
Rience was every bit as sadistic and ruthless and just as much of a Fucked Up Twisted Guy in the books.
And I fucking loved it.
THE TORTURE SCENE??? HOLY FUCKING SHIT JOEY'S ACTING WAS FUCKING IMMACULATE
And yen acting all drunk... cute
"This is my wife." WE ACTUALLY HEARD THAT. WE HEARD JASKIER CALL YENNEFER OF VENGERBERG HIS WIFE. THIS WAS REAL.
He screamed not to hurt her and I just. A moment. I need a moment.
YEN FUCKED UP HIS FACE <3
"Goodbye. Good luck. And good riddance." I thought this would be a bitter geraskier line but it was a soft yennskier line and I just. Ah <3
Roach :(((
...I simply ignore it its fine she's fine-
Tissaia & Yen :( Tissaia cares so fucking much about her and it hurts and she doesn't even know Yennefer is protecting Ciri and OUCH
Everything regarding the Elves was so fucking heartbreaking. They deserve so much better from the Continent.
The moment the babies went silent and it was followed by the women crying was absolutely fucking chilling.
Jaskier doing what he can to help the Elves... I fucking love him.
BURN BUTCHER BURN
My FUCKING GOD
He was BITTER
And I honestly think he still might be????
The Hug though......
THE DWARVES
JASKIER STILL NOT FINISHING HIS INTRODUCTION TO YARPEN
SO GREAT
Yenralt is destined to break my heart I suppose...
But the way he reacted when he knew she was there... :')
Their reunion was lovely at least
Istredd and Geralt were the Duo I didn't know I needed (as were yen and cahir) and it was loads better than a shard of ice. Very good. Like it
Philippa <3
The REVEAL
I did NOT expect it this early but I knew it was coming but I still GASPED
GOD
GOD
On the whole, putting aside a... very big series of misteps regarding one particular witcher, I actually very much liked this season! I thought the experience of watching it was far more enjoyable than when I watched season one, and it was worth the wait! I had a hell of a weekend watching it <3
#mine#hannah watches witcher#the witcher s2 spoilers#the witcher spoilers#the witcher season 2#the witcher#witcher
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Meta/headcanons for @twird96, who asked for anything Witcher. Big surprise, I was given an inch of freedom and picked Geraskefer to talk about.
I am entirely positive that if they ever actually managed to all get in bed together it would be a direct result of Jaskier and Yennefer having a fight. Geralt has absolutely no idea how them bitching at each other about total nonsense got him laid but he’s not going to question it. Now, getting them REPEATEDLY all in bed together would theoretically be a bit trickier, except Jaskier and Yennefer also both have zero (0) shame and zero (0) fucks to give, and Geralt, again, is not going to question the situation. Geralt knows better than to question the situation. That might BREAK the situation.
I would entirely believe Jaskier and Geralt had never fucked each other before Yennefer got involved but took to it like ducks to water. Like, sure, it’s not gay if it’s in a threeway, exceeeeept Jaskier has Feelings and he is going to make them everyone else’s problem. He is definitely going to do that, and Geralt is definitely going to regret it but also not stop sleeping with him, because that is who Geralt is as a person, he regrets all his emotional connections but if you take one he’s had for a day and a half from him he will kill everyone on this continent and then himself.
Jaskier does not think Yennefer smells like lilac and gooseberries, but refuses to tell either of the others what he actually DOES think she smells like. Geralt thinks he’s an idiot with no nose. Yennefer is like, it is literally my perfume?? wtf else would I smell like???? Jaskier still refuses to agree with either of them or provide an alternate scent. Yennefer finds it incredibly annoying and they have definitely argued-their-way-into-fucking about it before.
Geralt is in the middle. Even when he’s not actively in the middle, he’s still kind of in the middle. He also really, really likes watching the other two go at it, though, which they both figure out very quickly and are both entirely willing to abuse for various reasons. It is possibly one of the only things they agree about, ever. They also have really good sex together, which they both appreciate but also kind of are exasperated with themselves by, like, how and why is THIS IDIOT one of the best fucks of my life? HOW and WHY.
Geralt really does question nothing about this arrangement. It’s like, sure, this might as well happen, my hot friends might as well both want to be my datemates and fuck me stupid every chance they get, I’M not complaining. Except he totally does pretend to complain, because he is Geralt and having too many Emotions(tm) is not something he is ever gonna willingly admit to. Yennefer will probably get at least some of said Emotions(tm) out of him eventually but Jaskier definitely never will so he’d better hope he’s in the room for Yennefer managing it, the poor man.
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