Chapter Text
Jaskier is lost.
Again.
He’d thought he was getting somewhere with the mountain but he decides he was wrong when he finds himself staring at the same flowering bush for the sixth time in a row.
And this time there’s no way he can pretend it’s a different bush because he’d started counting the number of flowers the fourth time and it’s still the exact same.
“Stupid dwarves,” Jaskier mutters to himself as he picks one of the flowers on the bush, tucking it behind his ear.
He usually hates picking flowers but this one looked a little lopsided anyway and would probably have died soon so he doesn’t see the harm in trying to keep himself from breaking down by wearing it for a little while.
Anyway, the small flower is beautiful and had likely been wholly unappreciated so really, Jaskier is doing it no less than a favour.
He smiles despite himself.
Only to promptly jump out of his skin when someone coughs accusingly behind him.
Turning fast enough to make himself dizzy, he ends up face to face with a very angry-looking woman.
Although he’s sure there’s more to her because she seems to be glowing and there’s an uneasy feeling settling in Jaskier’s gut, a feeling that usually arrives just before he gets himself into trouble.
“Oh, hello there. Sorry, I didn’t see you on the quest before…?”
She ignores him, stepping forwards, her gaze travelling to his ear. “Thief.”
Jaskier places his lute on the ground and raises his hands in surrender. If she is about to attack him, he’d rather not have her break his bones and his lute.
“I’m sorry, what? I don’t know you and I really don’t think I’ve stolen from you… have I? I’m truly sorry if I have, you know what us troublesome bards can be like! Wait no, we’re not troublesome, we’re actually quite lov-”
“Enough. You stole my flower,” she hisses at him.
Jaskier blinks.
Sighing, he pulls his latest accessory out of his hair and offers it to her. “I didn’t know it belonged to anyone, I swear. I just- I was... I’m lost.”
Between Geralt wanting nothing to do with his trouble and the dwarves refusing to travel with him, he means that literally and otherwise.
“It smells funny,” the woman, who Jaskier assumes is a mage, comments.
“I beg your pardon?”
He’s pretty sure he’s not the one who smells bad and the poor flower can’t smell like anything but itself so he’s not sure what she’s getting at.
The woman, who is most definitely a mage judging by the way she glares hard enough at the flower to make it wither and crumble into ash, steps forward again.
Jaskier takes a moment to feel personally offended on behalf of his very temporary botanical companion before focusing on not losing his footing in his haste to scramble backwards.
“Hey, hey, look, I’m really sorry about the flower! It’s just I’ve circled the- your beautiful bush half a dozen times and-”
“You smell like her,” the mage interrupts, having seemingly ignored him.
Jaskier sighs at the familiar phrase. “Like whom? You’ll have to be a little more specific.”
“Vengerberg.”
Frowning, Jaskier shakes his head. “Yennefer? No, no, I can assure you I most certainly do not! If anything, Geralt would be the one who-”
He trails off as he thinks of the two of them, thinks of how they’d both left to spend the night in her tent, thinks of how he’d woken up to find they’d had all the fun they’d wanted without him.
The mage smirks and before he can blink, she’s grabbed the front of his chemise and is staring into his eyes as if searching for his soul.
He wobbles but finds he can’t move his arms to try and remove her hand so he just waits until she lets go and throws him aside so forcefully that he topples right into her precious bush.
Seems rather counter-intuitive if you ask him, but she hadn’t so, just this once, he keeps his opinion to himself.
“Ow!” he exclaims instead as he feels countless thorns tear into his skin despite seeing no roses.
Oh, how he wishes he hadn’t taken his doublet off after circling the bush the fifth time because the sun had started to get a little too intense. On the bright side, at least it won’t be ruined like countless others.
“You’ve been in her presence,” the mage says, apparently not caring about her flowers anymore.
Jaskier sits up, wincing as more thorns dig into his skin with a sharpness that seems entirely unnatural. And probably is.
“Well, it’s hardly my fault if she attaches herself to my- to Geralt, is it?”
“Attaches herself?”
Jaskier has a horrible feeling that he’s said the wrong thing.
The mage waves a hand and Jaskier feels himself be thrown out of the bush to where his lute is lying. Groaning as quietly as possible when the new scratches on his skin burn upon hitting the ground, he quickly pulls his doublet out from where he’d stowed it inside the lute case and pulls it on.
It’s ridiculous, he knows, but he feels safer wearing it.
The doublet can’t protect him from a mage and it definitely can’t make what he’s sure will be magnificent bruises in an hour or so hurt any less but he still feels safer with it on for some reason.
Plus, he looks better in the red of clothing than the red of thorn scratches.
“Vengerberg was happy to steal from me time and time again but maybe being attached to another thief will teach her not to take from me again,” the mage tells Jaskier as if he has any idea what she’s on about.
For the record, he does not.
And he’s not even a thief, he’s a bard for the love of-
He doesn’t get time to voice his protest or ask her what she means because she swiftly conjures a portal and with the flick of her wrist, throws him through it.
At least he has the mind to clutch his lute tightly so it goes with him.
Nausea builds and curls and twists in his stomach to the point of agony until he hits the ground with a dull thud, his whole body aching and his eyes squeezed shut so he can try to pretend this is just a nightmare.
“What the hell?”
Key word: try.
He groans.
As soon as the world stops spinning and his skin stops screaming, he blinks his eyes open and grins up at the angry but curious purple gaze directed at him.
“Hello again, darling Yennefer.”