Work Text:
lies
it’s you shovelling it-
lies
if life could give me one blessing-
lies
it would be to take you off my hands-
lies
i’ll go get the rest of the story from the others-
i don’t love you
witchers don’t have emotions, everyone knows that.
witchers can’t feel mundane emotions like joy or fear or embarrassment
or love.
they never had and they never will because they rely on instinct and training and discipline and a life of solitude.
the path has no time for distractions, no matter what form they come in
and jaskier is nothing but a distraction.
he’d helped with earning witchers some respect and his ballads were occasionally entertaining
but geralt didn’t care for his metaphors or his embellishments or the way he spun truth into musical lies;
geralt has more important things to concern himself with.
i don’t need you
bards are a resilient species, everyone knows that.
they fight for their career and they work hard to get their voices heard
and the lucky ones find a muse that inspires them to continue with their craft no matter what obstacles they face.
jaskier had been lucky
because he’d found his muse within a friend
and life had seemed perfect because there was never a shortage of experiences to be sung about,
until there was.
but jaskier is dedicated and he doesn’t need to travel with witchers to tell their tales;
he’ll sing about them even if it breaks his heart.
i don’t ever want to see you again
roach silently questions geralt as soon as he makes his way back to her
but he ignores her
because he doesn’t want to think about the blue eyes that should be asking him for details about the dragon.
he’s sick and tired of people walking in and out of his life
and he’s nothing less than furious at the foolish bard that had caused him so, so much pain.
and he doesn’t want anything to do with jaskier,
especially not if there’s a child out there who can easily destroy the continent,
who he owes at least a decade.
because i’ve moved on
jaskier has always been known for his charm
and his ability to find a place to rest his head after a performance.
and he can’t bring himself to sing about the dragon quest
but that doesn’t mean he can’t sing people’s praises and convince them to let him stay the night,
paying them in everything but coin.
and if he can’t think when travelling between towns because he feels his muse had taken his heart with him,
he’ll never let it show;
he’s a performer and the show must always go on,
he must always go on
and on
and on.
and things are perfect
things are not perfect.
geralt finds himself being thrown to destiny’s wolves
and he struggles to make sense of what his path has become, of where it’s started to lead him,
but he prevails.
and he’s locked in a cell and cintra falls and the lioness’ reign comes crumbling down.
but even as he’s dying,
even as he struggles to face his mother and the childhood he’d never been allowed to experience,
he manages.
he survives and he runs and it turns out the girl in the woods had also been running
and somehow,
they end up running directly into one another.
i’m okay with us just being friends
there are many things jaskier has talked his way into
like contracts and banquets and inns claiming to have no rooms left.
but geralt?
travelling with geralt had been his greatest accomplishment and he’d found something with geralt that he never had with anyone else:
he’d found love.
he’d fallen hopelessly in love and he sometimes wonders how geralt had never been able to see it
but if it makes his witcher happy, jaskier will keep his feelings to himself.
he’s been doing it since he was born
and it seems he’s fated to continue doing so until the day he meets his end.
because i don’t think about you every single night
naturally, geralt had habits.
he’d found himself routines that ensured his survival and kept him alive
and jaskier had wormed his way into them
and he finds himself asking the bard to start a fire as he hunts for food,
only to be met with an empty night.
it scares him at first,
how easily he’d gotten used to jaskier grumbling about the cold and curling into his side or sitting hunched over a notebook as he scribbles away,
but he doesn’t dwell on it.
he doesn’t have time to waste on thoughts of people he no longer needs concern himself with.
i’ll be fine without you
jaskier was used to being hurt.
a life of travelling with geralt and hunting the stuff of nightmares had kept him well-versed in injuries
and they’d always stitched one another back together and make sure new scars were treated respectfully,
but jaskier finds he has no interest in tending to himself.
helping geralt had been his privilege
and he’d never refused to bandage geralt’s wounds
but when he finds himself leaping out of a window to escape a lover’s wrath or being attacked whilst camping in the woods,
he simply hopes for the best and pretends nothing has happened.
and he’s fine,
he’s fine on his own.
can sleep tight when i’m not beside you
geralt doesn’t need a djinn to get some peace
because he finds it in the absence of angry husbands and furious wives,
in the absence of nonsensical ramblings and endless rehearsals and countless questions about parts of his life he has no intention of sharing.
and it’s nice not having to share his bedroll.
it’s nice not to have to wake jaskier up because he has no concept of urgency.
there are nights where he doesn’t get to sleep because the silence is suffocating
but it’s not because he prefers listening to the steady beat of a bard’s heart,
of course not.
i’m moving on
jaskier wishes he were a child again.
he wishes he could shed his life as the witcher’s bard as easily as he’d shed his life as a noble
but he can’t.
he writes new songs, moves on from singing the praises of a man who spared no praise in return,
but requests for geralt’s tales follow him to every tavern.
and it’s all he can do not to relive their last conversation every time he sings because all he wants to do is forget it,
forget the pain,
forget the way his peace offering had been torn to pieces
and destroyed by his white wolf’s howl.
i don’t cry about you
sometimes geralt understands the human habit of shedding tears,
especially when he catches ciri staring wistfully at other kids her age or baked treats that remind her of the life that’d been snatched away from her.
because ciri becomes his whole world
and he doesn’t know how to tell her that she deserves to have everything her young heart desires.
and sometimes,
just sometimes,
when she manages to surprise him by perfectly mastering what he tries to teach her,
he thinks he can appreciate why jaskier always used to cry upon hearing about the successes of his students.
never seen tears in my eyes about you
if there’s one thing that never changes about jaskier, it’s his smile.
it’s the way he lights up a room when he starts singing
and how he births laughter from even the most somber of environments.
and once cintra falls, he takes it upon himself to carry on,
to raise people’s spirits.
so he paints a grin on his face and carries on singing about hope and glory and everything that makes people forget about the war and destruction around them.
and only when he’s done for the night does he crumble,
behind closed doors,
with no witcher to distract him from his tears.
gonna be fine if i die without you
yennefer starts to help ciri with her chaos,
coaxes the child into confessing that she’s worried about geralt being so sad.
and yennefer calls geralt a fool and tells him to go find his bard before he dies with regret festering in his heart,
but geralt dismisses it.
he strives only to keep ciri safe,
to make sure that the daughter he’d left alone never feels so lonely again.
so he cares very little for his own solitude,
cares very little for the way a part of him knows both ciri and jaskier have a place in his life,
in his heart.
i’m gone
being stubborn is in jaskier's blood;
he's terrible at letting things go.
he’s so terrible that he’d returned to cintra over and over again to check up on the lion cub whose future was entwined with a white wolf,
and he’d told her stories of witchers and their kind hearts.
and every time she’d asked about her destiny,
he’d paint her a future filled with hope and distract her with a new ballad or a stolen dessert.
so when she’s presumed dead but there soldiers across the continent still hunting her down,
he prays that somewhere out there,
a wolf and a lion have found each other.
these are the lies
there are more and more occasions where yennefer and ciri spend time together,
where geralt is left to his own devices.
and if he lurks outside taverns just to hear bards sing the songs he used to be granted knowledge of far before anyone else,
well,
nobody has to know.
and if he growls when nobody manages to hit all the right notes because jaskier’s songs deserve better than untrained entertainers doing it only for the coin,
well,
nobody has to know.
but that doesn’t mean he wants jaskier back in his life or anything,
of course not.
that i tell myself at night
people will always need songs
and jaskier will never stop providing them
but there are some ballads that he keeps hidden in a notebook reserved only for the thoughts he expresses under the cover of darkness.
and when there is nothing but silence in the room he’s rented or the alley he’s hiding in or the tree he’s settled under,
he tells himself it’s okay,
that some hearts are made to break.
and only the stars hear how he sings of eyes,
of amber eyes filled with strength, of purple eyes filled with power, of green eyes filled with potential,
but never of blue eyes.
these are the lies
the three of them make their way to kaer morhen
and vesemir greets them with skeptical but open arms because he is wiser than most.
he waits until they’re settled before pulling geralt aside and asking him why there are songs of a white wolf’s destiny travelling across the continent
but geralt doesn’t know how to answer.
he says he no longer associates himself with bards
and flinches
under the disapproval he receives in return
but his answer remains the same as winter passes by,
as ciri thrives under the safety of those who wish only to see her bloom.
that are keeping me alive
nilfgaard find him eventually
and he tells them nothing as they pierce his skin.
they threaten to take his fingers and he laughs, spitting blood in their faces,
warning them that he’ll slash his own vocal cords before living without his hands.
and when his lute is shattered over his back,
he closes his eyes and tells himself he can endure it if it means he’s finally proving that he was a worthy friend after all.
so when they get bored of him and toss him into the night,
hoping he’ll die before they try again,
he makes his way to the nearest tavern and starts singing.
these are the lies
lambert tells geralt that he looks terrible as soon as he arrives
and geralt merely grunts in response,
arguing that he’s never been better because he’s home and he’s brought ciri home and that’s what really counts.
he doesn’t mention the way stepping into the library reminds him of how jaskier had so dearly wanted to visit the place geralt had grown up
or how he’d nearly forgotten how to breathe when he’d found the soft blue doublet he must have accidentally picked up when packing so many months ago
because it doesn’t matter,
it means nothing.
these are the lies
embellished truths are practically lies
and jaskier knows how to spin them better than most.
so he denies being a witcher’s bard or a princess’ bard and he tells everyone he sings for no-one but himself.
not everyone believes him but when he spends each night with someone different, they stop questioning his loyalties,
or lack thereof.
and he trades for another lute,
never again speaking of what it is that he trades,
and he carries on spinning tales of wolves and lions just to make sure nobody loses faith in the people he loves the most,
even if they don’t love him back.
i’ve got a new girl
the djinn’s wish had created a rift
but yennefer and geralt decide to bypass their old feelings in favour of being there for ciri.
they work together with vesemir to support ciri
but when she wakes them by screaming in the middle of the night and refuses to speak of her nightmares,
neither geralt nor yennefer can help.
because sure, they calm her down enough for her to get back to sleep,
but they never soothe her enough that she rests through the night undisturbed.
and although they don’t say it,
they both know a certain bard would do much better.
and she’s my whole world
jaskier’s new lute is beautiful.
he misses filavandril’s lute but he doesn’t let himself mourn
because that would mean acknowledging the tiny fragments of wood still buried in his skin from where he couldn’t reach to pull them out.
so he focuses on his new lute
and names her after his favourite horse
only so he can pretend that sometimes, he’s simply waiting by her side
rather than walking into another town to risk his life just to use his voice.
but every time he’s forced to leave towns,
he can’t help wishing his world was a little more
than a bard and his lute.
and i don’t care if you’re not sleeping alone
geralt has his own room
and there’s no bard to complain that the floor is too cold for either of them
and he never jolts awake because freezing feet had just touched his skin
but it still feels uncomfortable.
he hates that the others can see right through him,
can see that he’d been more rested when jaskier had used him as a blanket or curled around him in a strange imitation of a blanket.
sometimes he wonders what it would be like for jaskier to be there
but then remembers that jaskier can fall and probably has fallen into most beds that he pleases,
and he stops wondering.
because life is so good
death seems friendlier with each passing day
and for every day jaskier spends dragging himself along despite the pain,
he wishes that he could be someone else,
someone that isn’t being hunted for information by soldiers and mages that want to pick apart his memories.
because he doesn’t know what they claim he does
but he doesn’t have it in himself to betray anyone if there’s even the slightest chance they’re still alive.
and he knows he’s a fool to continue singing about his witcher
but he does it anyway
because he refuses to live a life ruled by fear.
i’m doing so good
eskel beats him in practice every day for a week
but instead of being smug about it like he normally would,
he just shakes his head sadly and tells geralt to go and get his bard back so he can get his brother back.
and geralt wants to argue that he hasn’t gone anywhere
but he can’t deny that a part of him will always remain inside the blue eyes that had dared to lock gazes with his black ones.
and maybe he’ll never find that part of himself again
because he doesn’t know how to look,
only jaskier does.
don’t spend hours sitting here by the coast
he goes to the coast eventually,
of course he does.
he wishes he had some way to make sure the people he spends so long thinking about are still alive
but all he can do is wrap his arms around himself
and wait.
and he does.
because when his questionable life choices catch up to him and there are so few places he’s able to go without finding trouble,
the ocean is the only audience he can have.
and it becomes routine
to spend his time watching the waves wash away the secrets he carves into the sand.
these are the lies
ciri is the one to put two and two together.
she’s the one who realises that her dandelion and jaskier are one and the same,
realises that the obligations geralt had ignored were being seen to by the same person who he’d blamed for creating them.
and she refused to talk to him for two weeks
because she’d loved jaskier and she’d looked forward to his visits,
and she misses him.
and nobody sides with geralt
because ciri is their youngest and the cause of her sadness will always be shunned,
even if the cause is another of their own.
these are the lies
jaskier is found again,
and the coast is ruined.
nilfgaard takes the little peace he’d found
and shatters it in the same way they shatter his bones.
jaskier does nothing but insult them until a woman radiating ill-intent takes over and delves so deep into his mind that he forgets his own name.
he never figures out what they find
because they’re gone by the time he remembers who he is
and he’s left lying amongst the ocean waves,
where he stays,
oblivious to the whole family of people trying desperately to find him and bring him home.
because the truth is
geralt is a fool.
he’d asked for a blessing and lost the first one he’d ever been given as a result.
because jaskier was nothing short of a blessing,
freely offered to him no matter where his path led.
and he’s ashamed to admit that it’d taken him far, far too long to realise that,
quite possibly,
his path had always led back to jaskier.
but they don’t find the bard in any tavern they come across and nor do they hear whispers of where he might be performing next.
so geralt hopes,
he just hopes he’s not too late.
i’m about to lose it
jaskier is not the kind of person who dies
but he certainly feels like he has no life left in him.
he runs out of food halfway through winter and the traps he’d set with the memory of how his witcher had done so are useless
because nothing is as foolish as he is to remain by the coast when snow starts to fall.
but he has nowhere to go
and nothing to do
and each sunrise gets dimmer as the days go by,
along with the light people always used to say they could see shining in his eyes.
don’t think i can do this
it takes both yennefer and ciri to locate jaskier
because it turns out the last mage to interrogate him had meant to let him die a lonely death
and something about that causes everyone’s blood to boil.
and geralt knows it’s not rational for him to care so deeply for a bard
but jaskier had never been just a bard.
they don’t wait for winter to pass to find him because they have portals on their side
and it’s a good thing they do
for when they reach him, their bard has not only blue eyes but blue bruises and a blue tinge to his skin.
if i’m not with you
kaer morhen becomes quiet.
there’s a hush that seeps into the very walls as jaskier lies unconscious in one of the spare rooms.
they try to have someone with him at all times because it feels wrong to leave him alone
and usually,
geralt sleeps by his side
or ciri curls up next to him when she can’t fall back asleep.
and it’s strange
to have him so close
and yet be so far away from him because he seems unable to wake up.
it takes spring to bloom for yennefer to sense life within him and for the first time since the hunt,
geralt feels as though he can breathe;
he just hopes jaskier can too.
these are the lies
destiny is a pain
so jaskier opens his eyes in an empty room
and panics.
he only panics further when geralt smells his fear from all the way outside and bursts into the room with a sword still in his hand
and he panics even more when yennefer follows close behind, purple already crackling at her fingertips;
he continues to panic until ciri pushes past both of them
and doesn’t hesitate before wrapping her arms around jaskier.
he flinches
but he lets the embrace happen
as geralt and yennefer drop their guard and offer up small smiles that most people never get to see.
these are the lies
it takes time,
as most things do;
jaskier says nothing until summer arrives.
but once he starts talking, the others take to him like moths to a flame.
and he manages to impressively surpass his reputation by slotting perfectly into their lives.
geralt is hesitant at first
but jaskier is not one to hold a grudge against those he loves
and he listens patiently as geralt stumbles over his apologies and his confessions and his sincere honesty.
so it takes time
but the two of them learn to build a home that lives in their hearts
and they call it love.