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Geralt is perhaps seven years old, standing by the roadside, newly alone in the world. He’s a smart boy, his mother says so. It doesn’t take long to understand that she’s deceived him. Especially not when the man calls his name.
Geralt is perhaps seven years old, standing by the roadside with a grizzled old man, with two earthly possessions to his name: a half-empty bucket and a broken heart.
And soon, they’ll take his heart from him—at least, so far as anybody knows.
He doesn’t mind so much, just then, eyes wet and burning and trying not to be ashamed because he’s here, alone, and his arms are bare. Trying not to blame himself—for being such a bad boy that the leaving him did not even leave a mark.
-
He does not know it—bless him, he does not know it—but Visenna sits by the side of the road, hunched over on the driver’s bench, clutching at an arm where the black seems to pour in without end.
Because her son had a kind heart filled with love, and she broke it open. And now it spills out over her skin—the znak serca —staining her black where it aches in the open.
It throbs like a burn wound, and she knew this would happen—she knew she would bear the mark—but she still weeps at the sight of it, larger than any she’s seen. The band spans the width of her hand, but she takes a deep breath. Feels it rattle in her chest.
He will be safe. She has seen it.
-
Kaer Morhen is an impossibly large place for a young child who has grown up sheltered by the wood.
Vesemir tells him that it means ‘Keep of the Elder Sea,’ because there used to be a great deal of water all ‘round, but there isn’t anymore. Only the remains of the beasts that lived there, baked into the rock.
And they haven’t got anything or anyone, not even their skin.
Geralt is lucky to have skin, for all that soon it will be covered with bruises.
He is lucky to have shelter, and his very own name, and perhaps they took the bucket from him, but Vesemir says that he will have a sword and a duty, and that this will be all he needs.
Geralt is not yet well-versed in black humor.
-
There are a few marks scattered among Geralt’s yearmates. Some of them have flirted with village girls, for all of their youth.
These boys are still callous and arrogant, ripe for a fall. Some taunt Geralt, for they feel in all the ignorance of youth that their cruelty is a badge of honor.
The joke’s on them, though.
Only three in ten survive the Trial.
And Geralt?
Geralt survives it again and again.
-
So he loses the color of his hair, and the softness of his eyes. He loses his soul, if the tales people whisper are to be believed.
But he gains unparallelled instincts, a wolf-like sense of smell, and the means to survive just about anything this twisted world can throw at him.
And a horse he names Roach.
They’re not fifty miles from the old fortress when he makes his first kill. The would-be rapist’s guts are steaming in the cold air, and the girl shrieks at the sight, at the blood covering her dress, and at Geralt, white-haired and cat-eyed.
She throws up and passes out, and Geralt is kind enough to move her onto her side, just in case. Her father ran, but he’ll come back for her. He ran like a dog at the sight of Geralt, but he must love his daughter to have struggled so to reach her.
Geralt pauses, a hand on the girl’s shoulder, and looks over at the corpse.
His arms are black, black, black. Not a speck of unmarked skin.
“But I’m the monster.”
He stands up, breathes deep. Looks into the brown, brown eyes of the horse that has never once balked at the sight of him.
Makes sense.
This is his first lesson in what not to expect from the world.
-
Julian Alfred Pankratz is a beautiful baby.
He has a full, soft head of blonde hair, and the most striking blue eyes. His hair darkens, but his eyes change not at all from that startling shade of blue.
“We thought you’d grow out of them, but there you are. Just made to win hearts, dearest.” His mother says.
But Julian does not particularly want to win hearts.
He wants to be left to harass the kitchen staff into handing over pots and pans for him to bang on. Wants to make grass whistles down by the river. Wants to listen to the hymns and the bawdy tavern songs his nanny hurries him away from.
“My little jaskier .” His mother calls him, long after the buttercup gold has faded from his hair. “You will always have music.”
And he does.
Just not always inspiration.
-
Julian Alfred Pankratz is a beautiful boy, too.
Girls love musicians, he finds quickly. Love to watch his fingers fly over the strings of a lute, the slots of a flute, and over soft skin.
He’s a terrible flirt, quick to sing sweetly and laugh as if the world holds some golden, unknowable humor.
He smiles, and the other boys cannot think of striking him, for the trouble they’d face would be immense. This protection will not last for very long, but for a while, he enjoys it.
If nothing else, he is a clever, contrary boy.
Admiration is his to play with, to guide up into airy choruses and rich, sweet cantabile. His voice will only sweeten as the years pass, and in this he is blessed, because not much else will.
Nothing could ever touch him—that is, until pretty Adira strikes his cheek, and he feels the sting of it on his arm. His voice falters, and his eyes grow wet as he watches the first strand, thin as spider silk, shimmer into place.
He doesn’t even realize what he’s done until he races home, frightened, his little lute thumping against his back almost as loudly as his heart in his chest.
His mother grasps him tight—which she very seldom does—and frowns. For all that she has called him a little heartbreaker, she has always shaken her head. Smiled. Her little jaskier. Her singing dove.
Her eyes are damp in the firelight. Disappointed. Sad.
Julian feels like a cool wind is blowing between his lungs, and stutters to breathe when his father, sat with his reading, begins to laugh.
“Starting young, little scoundrel? You’ve already got ardent admirers.”
He doesn’t understand until later, as he’s being tucked into bed.
Nanny tells him about the sorceress that placed this curse on humankind, for it could be considered little else. She tells him of the betrayal that led her, soaked in salt tears and rain water, to throw her arms open and declare the whole of humanity a careless terror.
To break hearts so easily, to abuse each other so recklessly—it would leave a mark.
Julian learns the song:
An’ you will know the damage wrought
By all the careless fights you’ve fought.
The human heart’s a fragile thing,
And so, in breaking, leaves a ring.
He thinks of his mother, and his father, and he stares in the dark at the mark on his skin.
He thinks of Adira, crying.
Of his mother, frowning.
Of his father, laughing.
And he thinks, Why would you laugh at that? Why? Why? Why?
-
Julian Alfred Pankratz is a beautiful man, if one were to be honest, more than a handsome one. And so he cannot help but be admired, regardless of how arrogant the claim itself may sound.
He strikes out on his own, determined to find some meaningful adventure, some proper inspiration, and gets more strands wrapped across his skin for his trouble.
He can’t help it.
He falls in admiration, in lust , perhaps—but he never allows himself to sink any deeper into love. His patrons admire his voice, his energy, his ceaseless cheer. And so, of course, do the women he dallies with.
Sometimes, he inspires them. Sings to them of possibility, of promise, of individual destiny. But he does not swear to anyone.
Perhaps some of them fall a little bit in love with him, and that’s all right. A little love won’t hurt, for he ensures that it is never more than a little love. A gentle affection. He doesn’t mind the bands, if they’re thin.
Because these things are nigh impossible to avoid, in this world.
Humans always seem to break each other’s hearts.
But he takes care never to love them back.
It wouldn’t do to mark up a lady’s skin so.
His mother taught him better than that.
He takes the name ‘Jaskier.’
-
Geralt has, on his person, one pair of very wet, very uncomfortable boots, and a kikimora leg that is, honestly, beginning to smell. (Not that they don’t already have a particular odor to begin with.)
He ventures into the inn, looking for the alderman, and is not at all surprised to find trouble immediately.
He is unmarked, blameless in the breaking of hearts not because he is careful, but because he is so monstrous that no one has ever wanted to keep him.
Rather, everyone tries to keep him away .
It’s a system that seems to work for the humans he serves along the Path.
Except, it seems, for Renfri.
-
Geralt does not often interact with children.
Rather, their parents tend to rush them inside and bar the doors, unless there is to be a stoning, and then the children better resemble demons, faces contorted as their parents are into caricatures of hatred.
And so he thinks of Marilka as a very small adult, capricious though she may be. Yet still, the thought of someone with such small hands and bright eyes taking up a blade fills him with little but distress.
You will grow, He thinks. You will grow, and your arms will be marked again and again by all the ones who loved you. Perhaps, one day, a mark or two will glisten gold with forgiveness. You will live a life. You will grow.
-
Stregobor covers his arms, but Geralt knows what is underneath.
The man ruined lives, murdered the innocent, and stared down at their remains with unbridled fascination—as if the girls were all sacrificed to his study.
He surrounds himself with images of naked women, frolicking in a garden where no mortal woman would ever feel safe. The fruits are ripe and hanging, and Geralt will not contribute to this evil.
No matter how pretty it looks.
-
Renfri keeps her arms covered, too, even as they tangle together in the woods.
She smiles above him, lilting and soft. Coaxing.
She thinks he can be moved.
And for a moment, just a moment—
Geralt wishes that he could .
-
He looks to Marilka, sees the determination in her eyes.
This is what it is, to be a Witcher, He thinks. This is the mark that stones leave.
She tells him to leave, and never to return, and he understands— she has grown already.
This world has very little patience for any of them, and now she knows it, too.
His will be the first mark on her arm, a wisp-thin thread left by a stranger who cared for her future, and treasured her acceptance, however brief.
And he will never know.
-
Geralt is forced to leave Renfri’s body behind, one more woman to be split open under Stregobor’s greedy eyes.
He knows that one of the marks on the sorcerer’s body must be hers. She, too, was a child once. She, too, was abandoned at the side of the road, a needle in the ear of a man and a long walk ahead.
She found her sword.
There’s cold comfort in that, but Geralt lets himself take it.
He makes it out of the town, damp with sweat and sore where the stones struck him. He soothes Roach, who is restless from the distress he carefully pretends is not his own.
The ride is quiet, again.
He is alone, again.
Geralt has to his name a few coins, a few bruises, but not a mark upon his arm.
He wonders if it is because he is heartless, or because she was.
Or, perhaps, because he is unable to be loved.
-
For all that Jaskier is a talented composer with a sweet voice, not every crowd is in the mood for music. Sometimes, this is a good thing—if he can’t make coin, he can save it by eating the rolls thrown at his head.
On darker nights, he chews bone for marrow.
Such is fortune, beyond the hallowed halls of the family seat.
But today Jaskier is lucky, because today he meets a legend. A very grumpy legend, true, with milk-white hair and tired eyes and very little patience.
Geralt of Rivia is the sort of man that people whisper about as they pull each other through the safety of a sturdy doorway.
But he doesn’t stop Jaskier from following him to fight off a devil, so.
-
Geralt wakes to the smell of warm dirt and moss, the scent of medicinal herbs clinging to an elvhen woman who sneers and laces them with abuse.
But he cannot blame her.
If there were any sense in the world at all, far more humans would have their arms dyed black for all that has been done to the ones who came before.
Filavandrel shows them his arms, at the heavy crossed threads of black and gold. Shows him what the ‘Cleansing’ meant to him. Some of his people, he says, have forgiven him for their suffering. Others cannot.
Geralt knows that he will not leave a mark when the elf-king cuts his throat, but he knows that if he did, it would burn gold.
-
Jaskier follows him down from the mountain caves with a sway in his step born of the rush of survival.
He commends Geralt for what he thought was a rather brilliant performance, and the man levels him with a hard stare.
“You really don’t have any sense of fear.”
“Nor shame, really. I haven’t time for it.”
It’s unusual to see such cat-like eyes roll.
“But I respect him. He’s survived a great deal, and had the strength to forgive through all of it. Not something just anyone can manage.”
-
Yet still, he sings a song rooted only tentatively in reality, and Geralt watches as he saunters along the path, strumming at a ruined king’s lute given in some strange sense of kindness between opposing sides.
He has known the man for perhaps a day and he is already confused.
For all that Geralt has struck him, threatened him—for all that they both had nearly been executed—Jaskier has not once given off the sense of fear.
His arms, which Geralt sees when he rolls up his sleeves to wash…
His arms are threaded with marks—thin bands of heartbreak. There is not an ounce of fear or respect or good sense in the man.
Geralt does not know why he can’t seem to make him leave.
-
The problem is that he doesn’t realize just what he’s given Jaskier by allowing him to come along.
Jaskier has purpose, now.
The sense of safety doesn’t hurt.
And for all that Geralt is most always curt and stoic, he slows his pace when Jaskier stumbles. Waits for him when he ducks into inns and outposts to gather information and turn songs to coin.
He only sighs when Jaskier eagerly sings his praises, determined to keep that promise.
He makes room for Jaskier, and it does not escape the bard’s notice.
It’s tough, Jaskier thinks, to need someone without knowing.
It’ll be alright to be that someone for a while. Geralt is a good sort. He just keeps it secret.
-
Geralt stretches out over a large rock, half-submerged in the waters of the river. The sunlight has warmed it, and it would be a perfect place to indulge in some rest, if not for his companion.
He’d left Jaskier to bathe unattended once, and he’d managed to attract a herd of drowners.
Geralt sighs.
“You know, it always seemed strange to me how people bleach their skin to hide the marks.”
Geralt does not bother to open his eyes, ignoring the sound of Jaskier wading closer. He thinks, unprovoked, that the man would wither if left alone for too long.
“Do they?”
“...You don’t ?”
Before he can do much else, gentle hands are on his skin, lifting his arm in one as the other traces fingers over blank flesh.
“Jaskier.” He warns.
“You really don’t.”
“No.”
“ How ?”
“No one’s ever cared enough to be heartbroken over me. Better that way.”
The ensuing silence is unnerving. They’ve been on the road together for some time now, and he knows that Jaskier is rarely quiet when he has something to say.
The air is heavy with things he has to say.
He settles, it seems, upon: “I think I might, if you left.”
Shortly thereafter, they go their separate ways for the first time.
Geralt does not look at his arms later, hip-deep in water, and think, Liar.
-
Jaskier finds him.
He always finds him, always smiles and eases in beside him—or across from him, if they should meet in a tavern.
Geralt does not sneak about to hear Jaskier sing. It is sometimes a not-altogether unpleasant side effect.
The bard could not speak without his hands, could not sing without dancing. It is impossible not to look at the turn of his fingers in the air, the turn of his lips as he smiles.
He feels the weight of Jaskier’s gaze roll over his back as he takes his notes and composes tunes and turns of phrase. Recounts the battles for which they were apart, submits to basic treatment after the battles for which Jaskier awaits him at the inn.
And sometimes, he slips off to the sensation of Jaskier’s clever fingers struggling to hoist him onto Roach’s back.
“Y’can sing about it.” Geralt smiles with red teeth. “Hell of a fight.”
“Fuck you.” Jaskier says, like there’s wind in his throat.
-
Geralt lies naked beside another prostitute, entertaining her questions, skin steaming in the cool air beyond the heavy quilts.
“This… I definitely know.” She says.
And then she begins to sing a song that Geralt knows too well, now. He has told Jaskier this story, has heard his pain sung back to him, lilting and crooked.
He sighs as long fingers move down to his leg, as soft breasts shift against him.
“Were destiny a kinder bitch, a whore like me wouldn’t have to settle for her client’s telltales. A friend of yours came through here last month, headed for Temeria…”
For a moment, Geralt thinks, I don’t have any friends.
But he does, doesn’t he?
At the very least, he knows a man who would be insufferable for months if he heard him make that claim.
They all have stories. The woman, the bard...and the royal family of Temeria.
Geralt goes on foot, shoulders braced against the cold, footsteps crunching in the snow. And in the quiet, he rasps,
The vampire bled, as white as a sheet
And yet her dead heart did beat
Did beat…
For once, the scar does not ache quite so much in the cold.
-
In the palm of his hand, Geralt holds a guild medallion that is not his own.
Remus lies here, packed in salt, and Geralt cannot close his eyes for him—they are missing, gouged out.
Best not tell Jaskier.
He thinks of this when he turns the tale, thinks of the bard’s manner when he recounts to the king exactly what he and his sister—dear, departed Adda—have produced.
Their little girl, their striga.
Her father protects her in his inaction, and damns himself. She is hungry, and he thinks of her mother, and in guilt or grief or some facsimile of love, he covers the creeping black of his arms and lets her take his people.
The king asks him, “Is it true what they say? That the mutations that grant you your... abilities ...also erase your emotions?”
Geralt has been asked this question too many times. He has long given up on answering it.
People are rarely satisfied with, I wish.
And there’s never a damned djinn around to grant it.
Geralt has to his name far too many emotions, and another story to tell to an eager bard with grey-blue eyes and an easy smile.
He’d better survive this.
Survive these noble bastards insisting that love led them to torment countless others.
But he is the monster, the unmarked beast who cannot comprehend the sort of affection that leads one to cannibalize the innocent.
Foltest tells him, For all it brightens, love casts long shadows. I envy you. To live and never have to fall in love.
Geralt thinks of soft lips and lilting notes protesting the sweet agonies of this same phenomenon.
He thinks, for the first time, This is not what love is.
He does not know how to tell this story.
He nearly doesn't have to.
Triss tells him, later, "Anyone else would’ve killed the princess. You chose not to."
It's because he's an idiot, probably.
-
Geralt trudges into the inn, clothes weighted down with selkiemore innards, and stares flatly at Jaskier, quill in hand, ecstatic at the sight of him.
Another triumphant song for Jaskier to exaggerate mercilessly, no doubt.
He’ll be insufferable on the road, rhymes with swallowed...followed...hollowed... damnation. It’s odd, how accustomed he’s become to ceaseless mumbling and humming.
The bard leads the entire sodding tavern into the chorus of Toss A Coin and Geralt takes a deep breath and does not scream at all. Witchers aren’t meant to be folk heroes.
They’re not supposed to keep travel companions, either. Bar the Cats, but they’re mad as...well—a bag of cats.
Jaskier sidles up to him, reaches out to touch him, and realizes what a truly sticky and unpleasant prospect that would be. Instead, he smiles as prettily as always.
He promises any number of earthly delights, if only Geralt will keep him from being murdered for those delicate lines crossing the soft skin of his arms.
As Jaskier bathes him later on, he notes that some of the marks have turned to gold, and glitter in the candlelight.
He softens minutely as clever fingers comb through his hair, smoothing out tangles and scratching just so at his scalp, he can almost imagine why.
-
“How many of these lords want to kill you?” Geralt asks.
“Hard to say. One stops keeping count after a while. Wives, concubines, mothers sometimes.”
But they’re never the ones who come for him—not with anything but a laugh, a smile, a hand upon his marked arm.
These, Geralt supposes, are the women who glitter gold—the ones that have forgiven him.
What must it be like, he wonders, to know that you are forgiven?
-
“Who knows? Maybe someone out there will want you.” Jaskier smiles.
“I need no one. And the last thing I want is someone needing me.”
“And yet...here we are.”
-
Geralt will never owe Jaskier anything again after tonight’s revelries.
He expected to ward off a few angry lords, perhaps to be wheedled into thoroughly humiliating a few drunken noblemen at arm wrestling, but not to fend off a magical hurricane and more than anyone’s fair share of magico-political horseshit.
All of these people—all of these arrogant power hungry fucks— are eternally bound up in the znak serca , casting webs of heartbreak around each other.
So easily, they whirl about each other, inflicting love and pain as if it were some perverse game. As if they are not fortunate to have it, however briefly, before dashing it upon the rocks with a gruesome flash of teeth.
-
He looks at Jaskier, panting, shirt open, lute grasped white-knuckled in his hands. His eyes lock on Geralt’s, bright and more than a bit guilty.
He brought them here.
Like a puppet, Geralt thinks. His arms done up in strings.
-
Can’t quite seem to stop them from yanking them back together.
-
He hasn’t slept in days when Jaskier finds him next.
There’s not a mark on his skin, but he can feel a strand around his throat, tightening like a noose, dragging him back…
He doesn’t want to think about it. He’s not suited to caring for people, especially not a child. He’ll keep his back to Cintra, and once he finds this damnable djinn, he’ll sleep just fine on that side.
Geralt rubs at his eyes, sore and dry, and grasps the net with renewed determination. He can’t sleep. He needs to.
For a moment, he thinks he’s hallucinating the sound of the bard’s voice, drawling another bawdy crowd-pleaser, but then it doesn’t go away.
Jaskier is here, tossed aside by another noble muse, come to haunt Geralt’s waking hours as well. The chatter is almost comforting for a while—over the years, he’s become used to falling asleep to it.
But it isn’t helping now .
Not when Jaskier urges him to turn back and find the child that Destiny has willed him.
He doesn’t see that Geralt can’t.
Can’t risk the heart he finally breaks belonging to a child, or acknowledging once and for all that he is unlovable entirely, even by a child all his own.
No one misses him when he leaves. Not even Jaskier, who told him he would.
“You know the Countess de Stael once said to me that destiny is just the embodiment of the soul’s desire to grow.”
There’s a black pit in Geralt’s stomach, and a burning in his head and eyes. “Did you sing to her before she left?”
Who left their mark on whom?
-
He did.
He did, when he lost his temper.
He left his mark in shards of clay and blood—so much blood—spilling from Jaskier’s lips.
He’s left his damned mark after all.
-
Yennefer has one mark on her right arm—a modest, but solid band. It matches the straps of her outfit, sharp and sexually intimidating.
She smiles, slow and wicked when Geralt glances at it.
He gave his permission for her to ask about his scars, but she offers information instead, with all the vicious determination of a penitent, baring their wounds.
“It’s meant to be a deterrent,” She says. “Meant to tell us off for some horrible thing. Sometimes, I think I want a thousand more, but I only have the one.”
She does not say, No one else has loved me enough for their heart to break when I drop it.
But Geralt knows the feeling, and the echo in her throat.
He envies her a little, to have been worth loving, once.
He wonders if he could ever give her what she wants.
-
He wakes up in the holding cells and realizes, Probably not.
Especially not if what she wants is to use Jaskier as bait.
He braces himself for the beating he must inevitably receive, absorbing what he can and suffering what he cannot.
He says, “I want you to burst, you son of a whore.”
And his wish is granted.
The second cut appears on his skin, a znak serca in its own right.
He wished for this.
-
When he finds Jaskier outside the manor, it feels briefly as if the sun is rising in his chest. He’s alive, walking, talking... panicking.
Yennefer is inside.
Yennefer is attempting to entrap a djinn.
He knows, from the burning of new scars, that this will not end well. His conscious stings at him again, in the plaintive fear on Jaskier’s face. On the lovesick misery on Chireadan’s.
“You have to go in there, don’t you? I recognize the look. I know how you feel.” The elvhen man sighs.
But he doesn’t know at all.
-
Geralt makes a wish.
-
They’re traveling together, again.
Geralt fells monsters, and Jaskier composes odes glorifying the whole mess of it.
It works, the bard claims, and Geralt rarely argues. Often enough, it wins them lodging for the night and food in their bellies.
Sometimes, they’re forced to share the same bed. This is fine, because there is no true place in Jaskier’s heart for him.
He’s glad that he’s never marked Jaskier, never managed to ruin another patch of skin with his own facsimile of emotion.
It’s only right that hurting him has left such ugly, unnatural marks.
You couldn’t have his heart, so you nearly murdered him instead.
Jaskier picks out a chord, and sings another love song.
-
Jaskier has a rather nasty habit of believing in people.
It dims his eyes when they’re forced from some villages by angry locals, brandishing stones and farming tools, as if Geralt is the thing that should have been destroyed.
It weighs down his step when Geralt reminds him that he is a monster, and that he should not think ill of them.
This ridiculous bard, eternally smiling, ties himself to a sinking stone, all in the name of friendship. Comes back over and over, trading applause and admiration and nights spent in silk sheets in favor of cast stones and raised voices. Simple hatred.
Geralt can’t understand it. It gives him a headache.
These days, he’s taken to running a rough thumb over the three cuts on his arm.
-
Jaskier tries to keep the local butcher and the alderman from robbing Geralt blind, a thing that Geralt, were he present, would warn him not to do.
Just let them have it.
But Téa lets them have it first.
-
Borch talks about the hole inside of him.
But the hole isn’t inside. It’s stretched across his arms, empty and yawning.
Yennefer only rends it further...and then Geralt finishes the job himself.
-
“Look,” Jaskier says. “Why don’t we leave tomorrow?”
The thing is that everyone leaves, but no one has ever tried to take Geralt with them. And now, more than ever, Geralt does not believe that they ever truly will.
“We could head to the coast. Get away for a while.”
He should have listened.
-
He knows what tears smell like—salt and flat misery, a void where hope used to be. He can smell them on Jaskier, hear the skin-creak of clenching fists.
But he doesn’t turn.
“Right. See you around, Geralt.”
But he doesn’t.
-
The self-hatred claws at his skin, echoing from his heart and down his—
No, that’s…
Those are the marks spreading over his forearms, the left thicker than the right.
Black, black, black.
I’m the monster.
But loveable. Once.
Fuck.
-
-
Geralt was reared to be practical, analytical—quick to make snap decisions in the direst of emergencies. He was trained to be a creature of instinct.
Now, he is choosing to ignore it.
He turns back toward Cintra with the taste of iron on his tongue.
-
Which is how he ends up dying in the back of a cart, ghoul venom running through his veins and dragging him into a boiling fever.
He thinks maybe he hallucinates the auburn hair, the soft hands, the lilting voice. A familiar voice, a singing voice...but not Jaskier’s.
“The only thing I’ve ever been good at.”
The healer applies medicines to the bite on his thigh, just like she did when…
“Come closer.”
She sits beside him, expecting a helpless, weakened patient, and gasps when his hand grasps her arm.
“I want you to look at me. How do you like my eyes? Do you know, Visenna, what they do to a Witcher to improve his eyes?”
“ Stop it. ”
“Do you know that it doesn’t always work?”
“Stop it, Geralt.”
“You knew I was a monster even then.”
“ No. ”
She places her hand on his and guides his shaking grip, pushing up the sleeve of her dress.
His breathing comes shallow, from venom or shock, he cannot say.
The flesh is black from the curve of her wrist to her shoulder, tendrils creeping over her chest. “You’ve never been a monster.”
“Then why didn’t you want me?”
“I wanted you more than anything. I loved you more than anything. But I saw what would happen if I did not let them take you. And it was so much worse than a broken heart. I couldn’t regret keeping you safe.”
She turns their hands about, nudging at Geralt’s sleeve.
“You’ve broken hearts yourself, but this will change in time. For now, you have to sleep. You need the energy. Find her, and keep her safe.”
He feels the press of lips to his forehead even as his eyes flutter shut.
“Don’t go.” He begs. “Please.”
He hears a wet, rasping breath and knows that his mother is crying. He can almost see her, in his mind’s eye— her skin shining gold.
-
He welcomes the weight of Ciri falling into his arms.
Welcomes the responsibility. The weight of the world. The weight of his own actions.
He will never wear her mark.
But he should probably address the other two.
-
He has someone to live for, now.
Someone to take care of—or at least better care of.
Ciri does not sing as they walk, does not wander off to collect sweet-smelling herbs and flowers along the Path, does not hold entire pointless conversations with Roach.
“You’re thinking of them.” Ciri says from her place before him in the saddle, idly braiding Roach’s mane. “You’ve been rubbing at the mark.”
“It’s...strange to travel apart.”
“You know that one is his?”
“Sometimes it flickers gold.”
Her nose scrunches up when she frowns. “He forgives you and takes it back ?”
“...I hurt him very badly.”
“Do you think you marked him back?”
Once upon a time, Geralt hoped he would.
He knows better now.
He knows that, if Jaskier bears his mark, it is already shining gold.
-
-
It is not.
At least, in his hallucination it is not.
Geralt is very glad that Ciri stayed back at the village for this—that she did not argue, as Jaskier so often did, about bosom companions and seeing the action —because he thinks he’s bleeding rather a lot.
And the image of Jaskier is crying through gritted teeth.
“ You stupid fuck. ” It says. “Take me off your hands? Grip the bandages, go ahead. Do it yourself.”
“I was wrong.” Geralt confesses. “When I told him that.”
“Who’s him? I’m right here, you utter bastard.”
“You’ve never been so angry in the dreams before.”
A roll of the eyes, and his companion moves as if to rise.
Geralt tries to prop himself up, reaching out, “No. Not you, too— please .”
The hallucination seems to panic, pushing him down. “I have to get more herbs from your pack. Roach bit me, by the way. I—”
“Don’t go where I can’t see you.”
Silence. Yawning, unsettling silence. Then, “What?”
“Can’t see you anymore. Can’t hear you. Catch your scent sometimes in the taverns, when you’ve only just left town. I’ve slept in the beds you’ve left behind.” His smile is more a baring of teeth. “Is that monstrous?”
“Little creepy, yeah.”
Geralt’s arm stings.
“You’ve missed me.”
“I’ve always missed you.”
“I didn’t think you’d mark me. I thought…”
“I wish I hadn’t. I wish it was true, that I didn’t have a soul. Left a bruise on you once and hated myself for a week .”
Quietly the vision says, “You were keeping me safe.”
“Keep everyone safe.”
“You’re good like that.” It sounds like he’s smiling, but he’s more a blur now than a shape, and Geralt can’t quite tell.
“My arm hurts.”
“I know, love.”
Soft fingers in his hair, firmer than the wind. He shouldn’t die here. Has to get back to town, and...there’s someone there. Not Jaskier, but someone.
“I look at the mark every night—because you love me, don’t you? You didn’t think I’d leave, and you can’t forgive me for it.” The sound of breath, shaking. “I still sing the songs. Your songs. I have others; I could get by. But I still sing about you, because you’re still a hero. I do this—” He taps Geralt’s arm, right over the mark. “Because of this. ”
“It didn’t mark you when we parted ways before. Didn’t mark me. ”
“How could it? I knew I’d see you again—I knew that nothing could stop me. ...except you, it turns out.” He huffs. “And now here we are. With you bleeding everywhere again.”
“Hmm.”
“You’re the first person who understood me and didn’t mind. And I think maybe I understand you, too. I think we’re a little bit made for each other.”
Geralt coughs out something that’s like a laugh, but feels like a punch in the lungs. “That’s poetic.”
“I write nothing but love songs about you.”
-
He wasn’t hallucinating.
Hallucinations do not usually kiss you.
But he is definitely very badly injured.
So they stay in the village for a while, where Jaskier sings his songs and Ciri braids flowers into crowns because there’s really very little else to do.
And then Yennefer shows up, battered and furious.
But she quiets when Ciri curtsies for her and says, pleased to meet you.
And she sighs when Jaskier rests a hand on her arm with his gold, gold band.
Geralt stays down and lets himself be told off and told on and loved very viciously until they are all of them gilded and laughing quietly to themselves.
-
“This is absolute bullshit.” Yen says, plucking a flower from her potion with a smile on her face. “ Fucking Fringilla.”
“We all know you’re going to murder her by now.” Ciri hums. “It helps me to draw pictures.”
“That’s horrifying.” Jaskier laughs. But he doesn’t stop picking at the strings.
Geralt, propped up on the headboard, surrounded by strong-smelling flowers, sneezes and glances down at his own glimmering bands.
And then at his bard, close by his bedside.
Smiling.
-
They have, between them, one promise from the angriest witch on the continent, a young girl who seems to enjoy sword training and a proper lullaby in equal measure, and each other.
And that’s a great deal.