Chapter Text
When it happens, Geralt is not ready.
He hasn’t spared a thought about his saddlebags in ages, probably ever, really. They just migrated from Roach to Roach since he got out on the Path and it’s just how things are and have ever been. It comes as a surprise, then, when on a rather chilly autumn night, as he and Jaskier are settled by a cozy fire, they just seem to explode.
It’s not really an explosion that goes boom like a Dancing Star or a Grapeshot. It’s more like water poured into a glass too small to contain it all, overflowing slowly at first and then faster and faster, drenching everything around it. In the tenuous light of the campfire, under Jaskier’s curious, then concerned, then giddy eyes, almost a century’s worth of… things come bursting out of his bags. Geralt curses.
“Geralt? Geralt? What is happening?” Jaskier asks, standing up to approach the seemingly endless cascade of items that are now heaped over a large part of the little meadow they are camped in for the night, engulfing their bedrolls, their boots, and Roach’s saddle. Roach, however, keeps nibbling on on the other side of the glade, apparently unperturbed.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, you already said that Geralt, it doesn’t really explain anything, does it? Why are there... what is this?” Jaskier picks something from the ground near his feet, turning towards the fire to examine it. “Why do you have a… cloth doll in your stuff? And why is there so much stuff?” Jaskier’s voice is getting higher like it does when he’s starting to stress, and Geralt doesn’t like it when it reaches that high. It gives him a headache.
“Uhm. The magic must have run its course.”
“Magic? What magic?” Jaskier’s voice, sadly, doesn’t lower at all with Geralt’s explanation.
“The bags. They’re enchanted. Bottomless. I guess they need to be reenchanted.”
In a final dribble, dozens of keys clatter out, spilling down the pile. A ball of yarn poofs out and rolls away, till finally the flow stops altogether.
“What do you mean ‘enchanted bags’, Geralt?” Jaskier’s voice shatters the stunned silence.
Oh. The voice is lower now, by a lot. That’s when Jaskier is angry.
“Magic, Jaskier, you know magic.” Now that it has stopped, Geralt comes closer to the bags. There are hundreds of objects, of every kind. It’s gonna take hours just to go through them all.
“Are you saying, Witcher, that while I have had to carry on my own back the very, very few belongings you approve of as we travel, and, I cannot stress this enough, they are very, very few, you had bottomless saddlebags filled to the brim with what seems to be years — ney, decades of… shit?”
“Hmm.”
“Are you saying, dear heart, that I could have put my second outfit in one of your bags at any time without inconveniencing Roach in the least, along with my notebooks, a mirror, a night robe, anything, I could have put anything in there and it would have fit?”
The voice is rising in tone again. Geralt is mentally counting the number of weapons on the ground; there is enough to arm a small mercenary company.
“You had to learn how to be essential, Jaskier,” he replies, as he considers if the Ard'aenye could be a good substitute for his steel sword, which took several hits the last time they fought bandits.
“I? Me?” he shrills, sending several birds squawking away from where they had been serenely perched, “Are you fucking kidding me here, Geralt?? You have enough-” Jaskier picks up a handful of rings, “-jewelry to buy a house in Novigrad and I am the one who needs to stick to the essential? Me? When we met I didn’t even have a bedroll to my fucking name!”
“Good thing you do now.”
“Geralt!! I can count at least three different bedrolls in this godsdamned mess!”
“I forgot about them,” Geralt shrugs. He forgot about most - all - of this stuff, actually. He knows he’s supposed to clean his bags out every winter at Kaer Morhen but he never actually does. Everything he needs is near the top anyway.
Jaskier huffs, and puffs, and waves his hands quite dramatically as he always does when he’s angry or offended or both, which happens often enough, but Geralt ignores him and starts to go through all his things.
“We need to call Yen.”
Silence. Silence is suspicious when Jaskier is involved. As Geralt turns, the malicious glint in his partner’s eyes sets a chill along his spine.
“Oh yes. We absolutely do. I’m sure she will be delighted by all this. Let us find the xenovox in the middle of all your junk and let’s call her.”
---
The contents of Geralt’s saddlebags that night:
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4 silver weapons (3 swords, 1 dagger)
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5 steel weapons (2 swords, 2 daggers, 1 knife)
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1 ax
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2 sets of bows and arrows (1 broken bow)
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1 flail (“Really, Geralt?”)
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45 keys (“How could you possibly have 45 things to unlock?”)
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68 pieces of various jewelry, of which 29 are ornate with precious stones
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5 doublets, the most recent one being out of fashion for at least 15 years
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4 pair of leather pants
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8 shirts, all black, of course
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35 socks (14 pairs, 7 singles)
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3 pairs of boots
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2 sets of chest armor, in worse condition than the one he currently wears
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4 pairs of gauntlets, plus one
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56 books and letters, of which 7 are from Jaskier, who kicks up a storm about his fantastic erotic prose being abandoned at the bottom of magical bags with no regard for his talent nor his feelings
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89 meters of twine and rope
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3 repair kits (“Explain to me why we paid 100 orens to the last armorer, Geralt, if you always had these with you!!”)
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4 linen towels or sheets
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3 statuettes
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8 balls of yarn
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2 dolls (“No, really, two dolls?”)
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Numerous items of food in various states of decomposition
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8 bottles, 7 of which empty. The eighth is tightly sealed with a waxed cork and Jaskier eyes the murky liquid suspiciously.
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5 coats and cloaks
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3 bedrolls
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1 waxed tarp for a tent
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6 wooden stakes
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ingredients for potions that are probably no good anymore
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potions that are probably no good anymore
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57 hair ties
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1 chain
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12 bags of different sizes, none of which is enchanted
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1 xenovox
---
Yennefer, when she portals in the glade, is already laughing (Jaskier was the one who made the call as Geralt went to bury all the decomposing stuff a little bit further in the woods). She doesn’t stop when she sees the different piles the Witcher and the bard have made of the things, and laughs even harder when Geralt asks, quite politely, if she can enchant his saddlebags again.
For reasons Geralt finds safer to not examine, she does.
“How long?” Jaskier asks, after thanking her profusely and with more curtseys than Geralt has ever seen him do.
“Till mid-winter,” is the reply. She doesn’t stay one minute more and leaves as she came with barely a wave of her hand, an amused smile still painted on her lips.
“Well, Witcher-mine, now to put everything in again! And we’re going to go to Novigrad to sell all this shit before winter!” Jaskier says, previous anger apparently forgotten. Novigrad is two weeks away from where they are, but Geralt has learned to pick his battles.
---
The following spring, as Geralt absent-mindedly stuffs a roll of thread into the bag, a very annoyed and incredibly effective imitation of Jaskier’s voice comes out of the leather to say, “You are overburdened! Get rid of unwanted items by throwing them on the ground, selling them, or getting a craftsman to dismantle them.” Geralt sighs, looking to the sky for patience, as Jaskier rolls on the ground, his body shaken by unending laughter.