Archive of Our Own

Chorus 

I’m pouring a drink to forget
That I’ve forgotten who I am
Pouring a drink
I don’t know what else to do

Drinking excessively hadn’t worked. Not long term. The first few days of headache and tender stomach had helped with the grief and rage; he had something else to do, after all, such as puke into a bucket and wish himself all manner of death.

Neither had writing songs. He’d composed several new ones, and even written something to cover the dragon hunt, even if Geralt would never hear it, or appreciate it. It didn’t really matter, Jaskier told himself. Geralt had never appreciated anything Jaskier had done. 

Nor all the pretty boys and lovely women that Jaskier could coax into his bed -- and there were a lot. That Jaskier found himself spiteful with them -- take that, you white wolf bastard -- probably didn’t help either.

“I am,” Jaskier told the woman he was bedding, “thirty-nine years old. Can you believe that?”

The woman -- someone who’d cheered and clapped as he sung his new song about the dragon, and had winked at him -- shrugged her shoulders. It did interesting things to her bare breast, or at least Jaskier assumed they were interesting. He wasn’t really looking. All he could see in front of him was Geralt’s face, furious and grief-stricken, telling Jaskier that Geralt would wish to be free of him.

Wish granted, Jaskier thought. You’re free. I shan’t bother you any longer. 

“Thirty-nine,” Jaskier repeated. “I feel as though I have wasted all the best parts of my life, and there are years I shall never get back again.”

She wriggled again and while he was no longer as young as he used to be, Jaskier couldn’t quite help but respond to that. “You’re wasting this time, too,” she told him. “Come on, forget it.”

Forget.

Oh, if only he could.

But what he could do was give the lady a nice memory, so he tried to do that, and if he wasn’t quite as enthusiastic and attentive as he should have been, she didn’t seem to have any complaints.

I used to fall in love, Jaskier thought, when the woman was sleeping. Every time, even if it was only for an hour. This used to make me happy.

He used to love. Loved everyone, every pretty person or happy face or soft hand. Jaskier was born for love; he sang for love, played for love. Adventured, for love.

Gave up his youth to follow a man who would never -- could never -- love him back. Jaskier thought he’d accepted that; that some sort of rough tolerance was all he’d ever get, and that he would be content with being Geralt’s very best friend in the whole world. It was a low bar, but he was still above it.

Or had been.

“I could have loved you,” he told the sleeping woman. “Once. I’m sorry.”

He gathered up his clothes, dressed. It wasn’t like him; he didn’t steal away from a bedchamber like a thief. He stayed, made breakfast, shared a bath and a glass of fresh squeezed juice. Laughed and joked and fell in love and imagined one time it would stick for more than an hour or so. 

Oh, it stuck all right. Stuck to the man who might as well have thrown him bodily from the mountain.

Bridge

Well it happened over the years
I never noticed it at all
Because you can’t see the change from day to day
But right now it’s taking all I have
To try to face myself at all

There was a girl in the tavern, and by girl, Jaskier meant young child that should not be unattended in a place of drunken men and bawdy women.

She was thin and had hair so blonde as to be almost white. 

Jaskier finished the set and went to sit by the fire. Someone bought him a drink and he drank it without really thinking about it.

“Excuse me,” the girl said.

“There’s very little excuse for me,” Jaskier responded. “What did you want?”

She picked at the edge of her sleeve; her clothes were a hodgepodge of very well made and also last year’s fashion, and bits of cobbled together fabrics. One of the refugees, Jaskier thought, without a great deal of surprise. Or sympathy. There were too many refugees to feel sorry for them all, and Jaskier’s pity was all tied up in his current self-absorption. Sorry for himself took up the spot normally reserved for other people’s plights. He could give her a few coins, to ease his guilt, but that was all.

Of course, she wouldn’t care; no one cared about altruism. Just money.

“Did you know him, the man in your song?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Geralt of Rivia.”

“Do you think such a man can ever, really, be known?” Jaskier wondered. “I don’t know-- heroes don’t really have time for such common things like a bard or a girl.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question in any sort of practical manner,” she scolded. “I’m not looking for a hero. I’m looking for a man.”

So was I.

“I’m quite certain I never knew him,” Jaskier said.

“But you’ve met him,” the girl insisted, and there was something about her eyes; maybe she had just a touch of power, a hint of chaos… something. Jaskier wanted, suddenly, to care for her, to take away her fears, to help her.

“Many years ago,” Jaskier agreed. “I was maybe only five years older than you are now. I met the man himself. Butcher of Blaviken. The White Wolf. Hero. Monster hunter. Witcher. He’s big and strong and mean. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Not really,” she said. “What I want to know is how do I find him.”

“Oh,” Jaskier said. He was pretty sure Geralt had said he could never father children -- an aside when Jaskier had been teasing him about all the whores he bedded -- but the girl vaguely looked like Geralt. A little. “Why? You don’t look like you're the sort to be having a monster problem.”

“What I want him for is my own concern,” she said.

“Well, then what I wish to be paid for this information is mine,” Jaskier said. “Tell me something I can use in a song, or a piece of magic, or a bit of wonderful gossip. Anything will do, really.”

“Well, then,” she said, “did you know that the dryads of Brokilon have water that can make you forget? It wipes away everything in your past, and lets you become one with the forest. One of them. My friend, who is an elf, he stayed with them. I could not give up my destiny, but--”

“Well, that’s certainly interesting information,” Jaskier said. “A little more potent than the traditional way of drinking to forget.”

“My friend,” the girl said, “he drank to forget the great cleansing.”

“I met him once, you know, King of the Elves. Filavandrel. King of the Edge of the World. The great cleansing. A mass grave for every elf in the land. I’d drink to forget that, too.”

“So--”

“Last I saw Geralt,” Jaskier told her, “he was headed toward Sodden Hill. I can’t tell you anything more than that, but ask around. He’s big and has white hair and he kills monsters. Otherwise, park yourself under a flier for monster hunting work. He’ll find you.”

“You’re almost no help,” the girl complained.

“Here, then--”

Jaskier fidgeted around in his lute case. He had music and notes, papers and letters. And. “Here. A girl drew this, quite some years ago, but he hasn’t changed any.”

A sketch, done once after the party. Geralt had dispatched an entire coven of drowners, saving the village, and there’d been a feast in his honor. The drawing showed Jaskier hanging off Geralt’s shoulder, smiling at the artist. Geralt was grumpy, as he normally was. There was a pain in Jaskier’s chest -- he’d been happy, once. 

“You’ve gotten older,” she commented, looking at the drawing. 

“As I said,” Jaskier told her. “But you go on, take the picture. I don’t want it anymore.”

“Thank you,” the girl said. “Should I-- give him a message, when I find him?”

“There’s nothing left to say,” Jaskier said. “He already said it all. I would only give him what he wanted. What’s your name?”

“Ciri,” she said. 

When I could be anyone, why would I wanna be me?

They met in the forest, crashing together like the tide of inevitability. 

“I found you, I found you,” Ciri said, and Geralt didn’t even have to ask her name. He knew it as well as he knew his own. Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, lion cub of Cintra. Daughter of Pavetta, granddaughter of Calanthe. 

Child of Surprise.

Destiny.

“Were you looking?” Geralt asked, because he didn’t know. He’d tried to find her once, to collect her, right before the fall of Cintra, to keep her safe. But he hadn’t known if she knew about him. Calanthe certainly hadn’t wanted her to; had tried to send another child in her place. Had arrested Geralt to prevent it.

So why would she know? 

Why would she even want to find him, as badly as he’d neglected her?

“Of course,” Ciri said, as if this was a matter of no particular question. “My grandmother sent me to find you, just before she died. She-- she said you were my destiny.”

“You are,” Geralt told her. “I didn’t believe in destiny, not for a long, long time. And even when my eyes were opened, I refused to see. But here you are. How did you even get here? Where--” Too many questions and he sounded like J-- 

Geralt cut that thought off. He wasn’t going to think that thought.

He was not.

It didn’t matter anymore.

“I’ve just been looking for the longest time,” Ciri said, “and I didn’t know where you’d be, and no one would tell me if they knew you. Took me forever just to find out you were a Witcher. And I’ve been on so many adventures. Which are nothing at all like the stories. Adventures are mostly wet and miserable and scary, and finding out you can do things, and not knowing how to do the thing again when you need it. And people chasing you, and people trying to keep you from leaving, and people who want to be your mother, even if your mother’s been dead for just ages, and no one could replace her anyway, and --”

Geralt smiled, letting himself smile, letting himself be carried away on the tide of her words.

“--and I met an elf boy,” she went on, “who was a good friend to me, and I was less than a good friend to him--”

Well, that sounded painfully familiar. 

Geralt was, without even being aware of it, twining his fingers with hers. He needed something solid to hold on to. Everything recently had been danger and death, floating away from himself. Losing himself, somehow. There was nothing to hold on to. It had all felt so damn useless. Killing monsters, what even was the point? He’d nearly been killed himself, and there was a certain ache when he realized he was, in fact, going to live through it.

“Come, there was a farmer back this way,” Geralt said, gruffly. “Food, a place to stay.”

“Really? I wonder-- I met the farmer’s wife, she found me after-- well, after some other things happened, and I’m sorry about the horse, I really am, but I was scared and upset, and apparently, my voice just. Does that, sometimes.”

“Like your mother,” Geralt said. “Do you know the story?”

“A little,” Ciri said, looking up at him. “My parents died when I was very young.”

“I was there,” he said, “the night they got engaged.”

“Was it a nice party?”

Geralt laughed, but it was a hard laugh. “It was certainly memorable.”

Jaskier had been there; in fact he was the only reason Geralt had been there at all. One evening, protecting your very best friend in the whole world.

Back before he knew what endless evenings without him would be like. 

“You can tell me about it, sometime,” Ciri suggested.

“Hmmm.” 

Geralt found one axiom true for his entire life. When you don’t know what to say, it is better to hold your tongue and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

It wasn’t that Geralt didn’t have thoughts -- or feelings, no matter what people said about witchers. But people believed him to be a monster, and it was easier, so often, to just play the role. To be the monster, so no one looked at the man, underneath.

Jaskier had looked. He’d looked and maybe even found something.

And you sent him away.

“Fiona!” The farmer’s wife came running out of the house, then. “I was so worried, I-- well, who’s your friend.”

The farmer himself was currying down his horses. “That’s our guest,” he said. “Geralt of Rivia. The witcher I found, half dead of stupidity.”

“Hmph.” Well, he wasn’t wrong, really. “Where’s Roach?”

“She’s in the stable, don’t you fret none,” the farmer said. “Get inside and wash up, it’ll be supper soon.”

“Why are you being so nice to us?” Ciri asked. Her fingers clamped down on Geralt’s hand.

“I’m not,” the farmer said, with a sly tip to his mouth. “You haven’t had our cooking before.”

“Oh, you,” his wife said, smacking his arm. 

Domesticity, Geralt thought, could hurt more than slings and arrows. 

He missed Jaskier with a sudden ache that he could almost touch. Like he’d put his hand to his chest and it would come away bloody. They’d always teased and mocked and sometimes been downright rude to each other. But the bard kept coming back.

Must have been for a reason.

Do what pleases you. I’m trying to work out what pleases me.

Jaskier had asked him to go to the coast, once.

Geralt wondered if that’s where he was now. On the coast. Maybe, now that Geralt had found the girl, finally found her, he could go to the coast. He didn’t know what he’d say, if he found Jaskier. But maybe some words would come.

Or none at all. 

Jaskier had never seemed to need them.

Or maybe it was that Geralt had never needed them, and Jaskier had been-- aware of that. In a way that very few people were aware of Geralt as something other than a Witcher.

Come to think of it, there were so many things that Jaskier had done for Geralt’s comfort. And when had Geralt ever given the same consideration back?

Never, that’s when.

He was so used to humans hating him, fearing him, that the one time he might have had a friend, Geralt pushed and shoved and insulted and demeaned until he wore away at the heart of the bard.

Enough.

Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove. Dandelion. Buttercup. Jaskier. Bard. Fop. Fool.

Jaskier turned a complete circle. The path of the trees seemed to close behind him, leaving him in a green, growing sphere.

Really, quite too many plants, all things considered.

And voices.

Not the voices in his head which had been there since he’d first figured out what singing was, but other voices.

Whispering his name, whispering his songs. Whispering the things he didn’t dare whisper to himself.

“Well, hello?”

He reached for his lute, the precious thing that Toruviel had given him to make up for breaking his old one. Toruviel’s lute. Priceless, precious. Perhaps even magical, given to him by the black eyed elven woman.

An apology.

Jaskier carried it everywhere. He’d never even considered getting a new one.

The wood seemed to speak her name, wrapped itself around him.

I am Julian Alfred Pankratz. Dandelion. Jaskier.

That was who he was.

But is it who you want to be?

Well, there were so many answers to that. He’d always wanted to be better than Valdo Marx, troubadour of Cidaris. Better in any number of ways, including having Valdo acknowledge it. Which was never going to happen.

Valdo Marx… who wrote in the classic style, who did everything by the book. He had talent, if Jaskier had to admit it, but no heart. He was a consummate professional.

And considered Jaskier to be a rude, ruffian, pandering to the masses and about as worthwhile of the title Bard as a sow. It didn’t matter to Valdo that Jaskier could walk into any bar, any tavern, any wedding, and perform Toss a Coin and someone -- nay, more than half the people there -- would immediately know who he was.

But that’s still not who you want to be.

“What do you care?” Jaskier burst, spinning around trying to see who was speaking. There was no one, just the crazy thoughts in his head. No one cared. No one.

“I want to be someone loved,” Jaskier admitted, finally, falling to his knees in the middle of the mossy glade. 

You are loved.

Hundreds, thousands of people sang his songs, knew his name. Were happy to see him when he arrived in town.

And it wasn’t enough.

It would never be enough.

“I want--” Melitele, it was hard admitting it, even if there was no one to hear it. “I wanted him to love me. I thought we were friends, and that was enough, it was. It was enough to be near him and to have him sometimes smile at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. He was my friend. And now-- now he cares not for me at all. Would wish me away.”

The woods came alive around him, women of tree and leaf and grass.

Elves. Humans. Others.

People at peace.

Who’d found their place in the world.

“You can stay, Julian. Stay with us, sing here and be loved.”

Jaskier thought about it. He could. He could stay.

“You would love me?”

“Everyone would love you,” the woman said. She was a wildness that was beyond beauty, and a beauty entirely made up of wilderness. She was the tree, and the leaf, the stream and the wind.

She was an answer and a question.

And a home.

“Pour me a drink,” Jaskier suggested.

Verse

“It’s a very good likeness,” Ciri said. She was trotting along beside him, her horse finally accepting that Roach was not going to bite or kick. Roach didn’t have much to say about it, but showed the same resigned exasperation that Roach showed to everything that wasn’t Geralt.

“Hmmm?”

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Ciri complained, reaching into her bag.

“Don’t need to,” Geralt said. “You talk enough for the both of us.”

Now that seemed familiar. Jaskier had talked a lot, too. At first, Geralt had wondered if it was a Jaskier thing, or a human thing. Given that Ciri talked almost non-stop, he was beginning to think it was a human thing.

“Or maybe, it’s just an ‘other people around you’ thing,” Ciri said, answering his thoughts rather than his words. He wasn’t sure how she did that, but it was nonetheless disconcerting in the extreme. “You talk so little, people feel the need to fill the space up, just to make sure you haven’t died. Otherwise, how would we notice?”

“Roach would notice,” Geralt pointed out. He felt tired, again. Like he’d used up all his words and finding new ones was going to be harder. 

“Roach would not notice,” Ciri said. “She’d just keep going until you fell off her back. And then she’d probably piss on you.”

That was, in fact, probably true.

“Hmph.”

“In any case, you’re smiling in this likeness, and I keep wondering if I’m going to see it in person, or if the artist was taking liberties.”

“What?” 

“The likeness,” Ciri said, waving a piece of parchment at him. “You haven’t been listening at all, have you?”

Jaskier had taught him, over the years, that it was bad form to admit he hadn’t been listening. Of course, knowing it was bad form and actually not doing it were different things. “Not really.”

“Oooh,” Ciri said, swatting him with the piece of parchment that he could see smudges of charcoal on. “You know, whatever you think, you’re still a part of this world, and not apart from this world. Other people matter.”

“Says the girl who has always mattered,” Geralt said. “To everyone. You’re a princess, the lion cub of Cintra. You’ve always mattered.” Whereas Geralt never had. Not to his mother, nor any of the villages he’d saved. He didn’t even matter to Yennifer anymore. 

“That’s hurtful and unfair,” Ciri said. “No wonder Jaskier didn’t have anything to say to you. You’re really horrible, did you know that?”

“I’m aware,” Geralt grunted. He paused. “You know Jaskier?”

“Not really,” she said. “We met. He said he was there for my parents engagement party. He seemed nice. But sad.”

“Sad?” Geralt didn’t think he’d seen the bard sad for more than a few minutes at a time. Jaskier lived on the very outside of his skin, but it meant the feelings didn’t seem to run as deep, or last as long. It was a skill. One that Geralt wished he had. Witchers weren’t supposed to have feelings. They were unnecessary. They hindered the job.

Not for the first time, Geralt wondered if they’d done something wrong, when he’d become a Witcher.

“Wait, what did you say?”

“You weren’t listening again,” Ciri grumbled, then said, “I told him about the waters of Brokilon, he told me about the King of the Edge of the World. He gave me the likeness, and told me where to find you.”

Geralt held out his hand. Let me see this likeness. He didn’t actually say it, there were too many words and too many feelings hanging around the words, like stones that were going to drown him, in the end.

Ciri handed it over, and Geralt spread it open across Roach’s mane.

He didn’t even remember this likeness, it must have been years ago, but someone had drawn him and Jaskier. The bard had a cup of wine in one hand and his other arm slung around Geralt’s shoulders.

There was something about the pose; he wasn’t smiling, as Ciri said, but there was something… about his face. A feeling of contentment that he didn’t currently have. He’d misplaced it a while ago, really.

He’d been happy with the bard around. Not really willing to admit it, but he could admit he missed Jaskier’s presence.

He missed the bard’s nonsense and the bard’s insight.

He missed the damn bard, just accept it.

Finale

In the end, Geralt knew it was his own fault.

He couldn’t see Jaskier actually going through with it. Forgetting. Everything. To rid himself of one painful memory.

It didn’t make sense.

Jaskier had a wonderful, beautiful life with fans that loved him. He had women and men crawling over themselves to get his attention. He had fame and some small amount of wealth. He was of noble birth, and despite his disdain for that life, he could have gone back to it -- to the coast -- whenever he wanted.

He could have anyone, anything.

Why would he want to forget Geralt badly enough to give all that up?

Geralt wasn’t worth that. And maybe it was because he couldn’t understand his own worth in someone else’s mind, that Geralt couldn’t actually believe that Jaskier would make that decision.

He started by searching for the bard.

When he looked at it logically, Jaskier always just sort of showed up in Geralt’s life; he hadn’t had to go looking for the bard. He’d be sitting in a tavern, nursing whatever ox-piss they were passing off as beer that day, and Jaskier would come in, sing a few songs, and then sit with Geralt for the rest of the evening. The next morning, he’d be packed and ready to tag along on yet another adventure.

Jaskier was like some sort of natural, inexplicable event in the heavens, an eclipse or a star shower. There was a red moon in the sky and it was time for Jaskier to accompany him on another few jobs.

A month, two, three, sometimes as many as six, and then the bard would get distracted, and Geralt would grunt a farewell at him, and then he’d be gone for a year. Or two.

He’d thought, after that last, disastrous day on the mountain, that it might be a while before he saw the bard again.

Or maybe, he wouldn’t see the bard again.

But he never thought that Jaskier would throw his whole life away.

For Geralt.

It took a month or more of travel with Ciri before he admitted that they weren’t going to find Jaskier, and they started the long trek to Brokilon.

Jaskier was there.

He was young again, and smiling; the bright, brilliant nineteen year old that had come up to Geralt without a fear or care in the world, and commented “I love the way you just… sit in the corner and brood.”

It was almost that exact moment again. Except in all the ways it wasn’t. Jaskier still had his lute, and he was singing to a group of women while sitting on a stump under a weeping willow. The very picture of pastoral delight.

And he looked up at Geralt. “Well, aren’t you a big, broody sort of fellow, with two very scary-looking swords?”

Ciri clapped his hands. “Do sing something for us, would you?”

“By all means,” Jaskier said, and he gave Ciri that clever wink of his, not even looking back at Geralt, like the witcher meant nothing to him.

And never had.

“Around your house

now white from frost

sparkles ice on pond and marsh

your longing eyes grieve what is lost

but naught can change this parting harsh…”

Geralt gave one of his signature grunts, because he didn’t know how else to express it. The song was haunting and beautiful, and Geralt had only heard it in parts, while Jaskier was writing it.

“So, tell me, truth, what do you think of my singing?” Jaskier asked, and Geralt turned on his heel to respond to it--

What had he said, so many years ago, and Jaskier had been annoyed by it, had yelled at Geralt and scolded him for his rudeness. You need a nap! Like the witcher was naught but an overtired child.

Was there forgiveness to be found?

But Jaskier wasn’t looking at Geralt at all. He was smiling at Ciri, the women who’d gathered under the tree.

“I think you have a beautiful voice,” Geralt said, soft, unheard.

Refrain

Julian liked singing. He liked that the women and the creatures of the forest, of his home, gathered to listen to him. He sang and he played and they came and listened.

There was a girl there, with strange, green eyes, like a cat in the darkness. Like the moss under a downed tree. Like the very secret places in his heart where jealousy lurked.

She was a lovely child, not very old, maybe fourteen or so. At the same time, whenever Julian looked at her, he saw reflections of himself.

He didn’t recognize himself. Was this who he was?

How--

“I like your songs,” the girl said. She held a single coin in your hand. “I’ve heard them, on my travels. But it’s not the song you sang the first time we met.”

“Have we met, little miss? I don’t remember,” Julian said. That wasn’t strange, he barely remembered anything, and it didn’t even matter. He was happy here, and the weight of memories gone didn’t burden him at all.

“We did,” she said, soft. “You forgot?”

“I never forget a lovely face,” Julian said, and without thinking about it, he looked up at the man who came into the forest with her.

He was tall, broad, with white hair and golden eyes. He scowled, his expression driving the forest women several steps away.

But I forgot you. I forgot. I forget.

“Well, I don’t blame you,” the girl said. “I’m not much, and you only talked to me for a few minutes. Is it nice? Forgetting? One of my friends forgot. He’s here, and he looks right through me, the same way you do. I couldn’t be enough for him, I couldn’t make the right decisions for him.”

“What are you talking about, little miss?”

“You’ve forgotten who you are,” she said, and he thought her name was Ciri. Not Ciri, though. Something more, something else. Something other, something important.

“I’m just who I need to be,” Julian said, even though it was a lie. “I’m here, I’m singing, I’m happy.”

“What’s your name?” Ciri asked, holding out her hand.

He extended his own hand, as if he could do nothing else. “My name is Julian.”

“Is it?”

The man, the beautiful, hard, cold man grumbled something under his breath that sounded like Dandelion.

“Yes, yes, it is. It’s always been Julian,” he said. “Although sometimes-- sometimes I think I traveled under another name. Away from-- away-- when I traveled.”

“Do you remember traveling? Your companions? Friends? The songs you wrote for the heroes you met. Have you ever-- tossed a coin to your witcher?” She passed the coin to him, warm from her fingers.

“Ciri, what are you doing?”

“He’s part of this,” she said to the man-- to the Witcher. “You know it as well as I do. We’re not complete. He belongs with us.”

“If he wants to forget me, let him,” the Witcher growled. “Let him be-- Julian. Let him forget the wrongs I did him, the pain I caused him--”

“When a humble bard, graced a ride along--”

She sang and her voice was filled with emotion, some emotion. Julian knew the tune, and he plucked it on his lute. Why did he know this song, he’d never heard this song, this--

“With Geralt of Rivia, along came this song--”

And that was the Witcher singing, rough and coarse and unmelodic, his voice like a cat’s tongue rubbed on sandpaper. Itching at Julian’s nerves. Scraping them raw. Peeling back a layer, like a pearl, the shimmer that formed over something irritating, a grain of sand. A nugget of truth.

“Toss a coin--” Julian turned the coin over, letting it roll over his fingers. A slight of hand trick he’d learned so long ago he forgot--

He--

--remembered…

“Geralt!” Jaskier burst out, suddenly, memory rushing in like a tidal wave, threatening to drown him.

If he hadn’t known the man in front of him so well, Jaskier wouldn’t have realized the way Geralt’s shoulders eased tension, the way he relaxed, so minutely.

He was… relieved.

Geralt was--

“Are you happy to see me?” Jaskier wondered, blinking. 

Geralt harumphed. “I wouldn’t want to keep a man with bread in his pants… waiting.”

“Three words or less, Geralt,” Jaskier said. He wasn’t sure if he was expecting anything. He wasn’t sure that he wasn’t. Geralt. After all this time, and he’d come-- had he come looking for Jaskier?

“Jaskier,” Geralt said, and then, to everyone’s shock, he dropped to one knee in front of Jaskier. “Forgive me.” He took Jaskier’s hand, the coin still clenched between trembling fingers, and pressed his forehead to it.

“You-- you--” Jaskier spluttered, trying to find his center. Trying to find the surety of purpose he’d once had. “You wished to be rid of me. I was trying to give you want you wanted, you arrogant, hurtful ass!”

“I’ve been fighting destiny,” Geralt admitted. “You. Ciri. Yennefer. All of it. I’ve been fighting it all, and I’m done fighting. I am sick to death with it, and I--”

“I forgive you, idiot,” Jaskier said with a sigh. “You’ve been spending your whole life pretending you don’t have any feelings. No wonder you don’t know what to do with them when you have them. You don’t even know what they are.”

“I depend on you,” Geralt said, “to teach me.”

Ciri, the girl, laughed and Jaskier actually looked at her. Looked at her, and recognized her. Oh, oh, lord, the princess, the lion cub of Cintra, oh Melitele! “Your highness,” Jaskier said.

“Things got complicated, after you left,” Geralt said with a shrug. Understated, taciturn prick.

“I can imagine,” Jaskier said. “You’ll have to tell me the tale. How am I supposed to write new songs if you’re keeping all the fun bits to yourself.”

Geralt grunted and jerked his head toward the border. Come on, then, the gesture said. Come with us, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.

“You know,” Jaskier said, grabbing his lute. He had a satchel of clothing somewhere, money-- “will you wait for me, you know you could say more than a handful of words once a year. Just three will do.”

“Keep dreaming, bard.”

Jaskier shook his head. One day, one day, he’d get Geralt to admit it. 

Destiny. They were tied together. And no matter what, that couldn’t be broken.

Jaskier had time.