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“If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands!”
And with that one sentence, Jaskier shatters.
And everything changes.
there is love in your body but you can’t hold it in
Melitele knows Jaskier has had enough practice picking up the broken pieces of himself, whether it’s literally pulling his skin back together after being too troublesome or reassembling the shards of his heart after someone carelessly, unknowingly damages it.
He’s broken and been broken countless times before and really, it should be nothing new to witness himself do so once more. Because Jaskier has always loved freely and deeply, but it had been different this time.
And yes, he’s long since lost track of how many windows he’s leaped out of before the sun has risen or how many hushed promises have turned into hazy tavern memories. But this time, it was Geralt.
It was his livelihood and his muse and his very reason for making it through winter, and it was different to any other love he’d nurtured - it was the only one he’d offered slowly and steadily, the only one that had been so sharply spat back at him.
Never has he struggled so much to even breathe right as he turns away.
it pours from your eyes and spills from your skin
Geralt is so, so fiercely angry that he forgets how to be guilty.
That is, until he sees Jaskier’s expression, because Jaskier should be angry or upset or amused but he’s simply a brave face, a faux smile, a testament to Geralt’s mistakes.
An excuse is made about collecting the rest of the story but they both know there’ll never be an accurate song sung about a dragon hunt. And if Jaskier’s expression isn’t enough, the bitter sorrow and sharp pain that radiates from him even after Geralt has turned around is evidence enough.
He’s messed up and he’s messed up horribly and he’s frozen in place as he hears Jaskier’s footsteps fade until they’re too far to follow.
Part of him hopes Jaskier will stay so things can go back to normal but by the time he remembers to move, the only trace left of him is a lingering floral scent that does nothing to fill the sudden void in Geralt’s world.
tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks
Jaskier walks until his feet hurt and then he carries on walking because that’s what he always does when his heart breaks. Only this time he’s certain the blisters on his feet will heal long before his heart does, if it ever does.
He’s no stranger to this sort of pain, he’s travelled a path paved with the disdain of people he’s loved, but Geralt’s blow seems to have hit the hardest of them all despite never truly touching him.
And worst of all, he doesn’t dare sing about it lest anyone get the wrong idea about witchers, for that would unravel decades of effort and he couldn’t bear to see their kind suffer just because it turns out he has a weak heart.
“Toss a coin to your witcher…” he sings, tempted to toss and lose the coin that’s been nestled in his pockets since Posada.
He’s a fool for keeping it, he knows he is, but he can’t bear to part with it, can’t bear to admit that he’s been cast aside by yet another love.
and the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts
It’s no secret that Geralt is a quiet person by nature.
He’s never pretended otherwise, which is why it was such a shock when Jaskier slots into his life as if he were born to do so.
Because Jaskier talks enough for the both of them and he becomes an expert in knowing what Geralt is feeling, even when he himself hasn’t figured it out. And Geralt hates it at first, hates the way Jaskier knows when he needs help with bargaining or when he just wants to get away from people and shelter in the forests.
He knows he doesn’t express his gratitude enough, he knows that Jaskier deserves someone who can match his love, who can hold his hand in broad daylight instead of curling up with him in the dead of night under the pretence of necessity.
It doesn’t bother Jaskier though, and all the bard asks for in return is tales of heroics and heartbreak for his songs - Geralt hates himself for so harshly providing the latter.
there is love in your body but you can’t get it out
Sometimes, just sometimes, Jaskier regrets building up his career on Geralt’s adventures.
He’d never imagined that they’d part ways - or rather, he’d let his guard down and forgotten to remember that most people leave him eventually - so he’s wholly unprepared for how much it hurts to sing about witchers when he’s no longer travelling with one.
But he does it anyway because he’s loved Geralt from the start and he doesn’t think he’s capable of ever not loving Geralt and he doesn’t know what else to do with himself.
So he keeps going.
On and on.
He travels as far as he can so that he can stay out of Geralt’s way, taking his broken heart with him and ignoring the way he feels like its shards are tearing into his insides a little more with each passing day.
it gets stuck in your head, won’t come out of your mouth
There is more than one town in which Geralt wants to murder a bard.
His bard - for that is what everyone knows Jaskier as - has created masterpieces and they are being butchered by men with far lesser voices, by men who don’t deserve to sing them in the first place.
And Geralt yearns to hear the original versions but it seems he is fated to hear Jaskier’s pain second-hand. He asks around, of course he does, for where to find Jaskier, but nobody knows what to tell him and he has never been good at bargaining for information.
He wishes he knew how to say more than please and thank you but Jaskier was his communication and without him, he can only really achieve the minimum required from him.
Regret pools in his gut every time Jaskier’s trail fizzles out.
sticks to your tongue and it shows on your face
Performance has always been Jaskier’s area of expertise but gods is it difficult to pretend he isn’t drowning in the love he was never meant to keep for himself.
He doesn’t know what to do with his compliments and his teasing and his fond exasperation because all of it was for Geralt and if Geralt doesn’t want it, doesn’t want him, he doesn’t know what to do with it, with himself.
He wastes some of his unwanted love on drunken adventures and always regrets it when he’s asked to stay and give up his travels or asked to leave and flee before a betrothed returns - both demands are knives that sink into his chest and add to the cracks in his heart.
It seems that nobody can truly understand what pleases him but he cannot fault them for he has forgotten how to be honest, whether it’s with others or himself.
Jaskier is tired of loving and hurting as if they are one and the same.
that the sweetest of words have the bitterest taste
“I care for you,” Geralt tells Ciri.
“I want you to be safe,” he adds sincerely.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, because he is.
But all he’s doing is repeating what Jaskier had done, what Jaskier had taught him, and the words sometimes refuse to leave his lips because even they know someone else should have had the right to hear them first.
And all Geralt can do is hope Ciri understands that he means well, he really does. She does, of course, because she is far smarter than she seems and because she too has learned from Jaskier - another fact that sends wave after wave of sour guilt through his mind.
With no way to cure it, his guilt only festers.
darling heart, i have loved you from the start
Jaskier was a mere infant the first time he was abandoned, not that he truly remembers the woman who had decided she didn’t want to take care of him anymore. He only knows because his parents had held it against him, as well as every other heart he failed to win over, right from the start.
Geralt hadn’t abandoned him, Jaskier reminds himself every time he feels anger rise inside of him, he was the one who had abandoned Geralt. And he feels terrible, especially after hearing about Cintra, about Nilfgaard, about everything.
A part of him firmly believes that Geralt is safe because he refuses to think that the love of his life could die without him feeling it, but a part of him is too scared to hold onto that faith.
“I’m weak, my love, and I am wanting…” he sings, because he is.
But only ever for his white wolf.
but you’ll never know what a fool i’ve been
Geralt takes Ciri to Kaer Morhen and feels sick when his brothers tell him how soldiers have been none too gently questioning any bards they come across.
He feels stupid when he realises that all this time, he’s been endangering Jaskier by not trying hard enough to find him, to make sure he’s okay, to apologise for his cruel words on the mountain.
And he feels even worse when he thinks of what little Jaskier has told him about his past, of how he had never spoken of his parents, of how his touch had lingered as if waiting for permission that he hadn’t thought to grant.
Oh, how ungrateful he had been of the first person to teach him the true meaning of emotions.
“You have to find him,” everyone says, and he can’t bring himself to argue.
there is love in our bodies and it holds us together
Funny how one can never be prepared for the sting of a whip, Jaskier thinks.
A brief flirt with fame had inflated his ego but no matter because bleeding out in a stone cell is the perfect way to remember that he is nothing and means nothing to anyone.
He lives, of course he does, but only because he hangs onto the possibility of once more meeting a golden gaze the same way he hangs from the ceiling and ruins his wrists, which is to say he does so every day.
And he’s okay with all the superficial agony inflicted upon him because although nobody learns anything from him, he learns from them that they’re still searching, that Geralt is safe, and that he has no true reason to be upset.
He doesn’t even care that there’s not a single person he can think of who would bother trying to save him.
but pulls us apart when we’re holding each other
Witchers cannot travel in time but Geralt so dearly wishes they could.
He doesn’t find Jaskier before snow starts to fall and travel becomes impossible.
He fails and it’s his fault that Jaskier is out there somewhere - possibly hurt, possibly dead, and possibly worse - when he is given warmth and love and everything his bard deserves more than him.
A deep chill settles into his very bones and although he is offered blankets, he knows it cannot be averted except by Jaskier’s touch. Oh, how he craves the warmth of sharing a bedroll and waking up at ungodly hours so Jaskier can learn about the constellations for his newest ballad.
He wants nothing more than to take back his words and keep Jaskier in his life, in his arms.
we all want something to hold in the night
A noble lineage meant that Jaskier was taught independence before anything else.
It meant he was always “a big boy who needs to stop wasting time” and “not a child anymore, for goodness sake” and “such a pathetic excuse of a noble, you should know better than that by now” but he was never truly loved.
And he never learned that he was meant to be loved, never learned that the affection he gave was supposed to be returned in equal.
So as Jaskier wobbles and stumbles through his escape, collapsing into the forest floor when his legs refuse to support his weight any longer, he just closes his eyes and pretends that he’s not in his own arms, that he’s in the arms of someone who cares enough to look for him.
But of course, he’s not.
And he wakes up alone.
Over and over again.
we don’t care if it hurts or we’re holding too tight
Geralt leaves at the first sight of spring.
He couldn’t possibly wait a day longer when he’s made Jaskier wait so long, even though he can’t be sure if Jaskier is even still waiting for him or if he’s moved on, which he had every right to do.
He forgets how to plan and finds that his resources run out before he’s crossed even two towns, but he makes do from under the cover of shadows and night because he couldn’t bear to give up, not on Jaskier.
With the bounty on his head, he finds himself fighting monsters just to survive rather than for coin. And with the bounty on his head, he finds himself having to treat his own injuries because he can’t ask a healer and he doesn’t have his best friend to help him.
Nothing hurts as much as Jaskier’s absence.
darling heart, i have loved you from the start
The only reason Jaskier survives past winter is because he heads to the coast.
He’s lucky that despite his reputation for trading secrets, he’s never traded all of his own. He’s always kept his love of the open water to himself and that’s the only reason he makes it there at all.
It still hurts to curl up inside his secret little coastal home though, because he’d spent so long imagining what it would be like to bring his- to bring Geralt with him. But he knows that can’t happen because Geralt had grown tired of him and wants nothing to do with him.
He doesn’t have a lot of food and he knows he should be concerned about that but he can’t bring himself to care because for the first time in over two decades, he doesn’t have anything - note, anyone - to live for.
but that’s no excuse for the state i’m in
It’s harder than it had seemed to travel without being seen.
Geralt knows how to hunt. He knows when to hide and when to begin travelling but for some reason, getting to Jaskier is far more difficult than any contract he’s ever taken.
He’s never been one for Destiny but he finds himself practically praying to her for a way to reach his- for a way to reach who he so dearly wants to make his again. His bard, his friend, his Jaskier.
Roach jerks to a halt every time he almost falls asleep whilst still on the saddle but he doesn’t learn from it, he can’t afford to when he so desperately needs to make amends, so desperately needs to figure out how much damage he’s caused and then fix it before he loses the best part of his life.
Desperation has never been his colour but then again, he's never cared for being fashionable.
my heart swells like a water at work
There’s a knock at the door but Jaskier doesn’t have the energy to move.
He stays where he is, huddled by a fire that’s long since run out of fuel to burn, and hopes that if it’s another mage, they kill him quickly this time. But it’s not.
“Jaskier, please!”
He blinks.
It can’t possibly be who he thinks it is, who he wants it to be, can it?
It can.
“Jaskier?” Quieter this time, as if he’s worried.
And then a crashing thud echoes, followed by his favourite set of footsteps and a hand on his shoulder.
He flinches without meaning to, not sure if he wants to laugh or cry. Geralt offers him a small smile and he promptly decides to do both.
can’t stop myself before it’s too late
“I’m sorry, Jaskier, I’m so sorry.”
It’s an apology long overdue, Geralt knows that, but he has to try, he can’t stop himself from trying, not this time, not when it comes to Jaskier.
And he looks so awfully small wrapped in blankets that Geralt can feel his heart clench. He feels even smaller when he melts into Geralt’s touch as if he’s never been granted the luxury of being held as he cries.
“I know,” Jaskier replies between sobs.
There’s so much more that Geralt needs to say but it’s a start and it’s more than enough because Jaskier is alive.
“Come to Kaer Morhen with me,” Geralt says, not sure if he’s asking or demanding or begging. But it doesn’t really matter which because Jaskier agrees all the same and he’s just glad he has another chance.
hold on to your heart
Jaskier doesn’t want to get comfortable again.
Well, he does. More than anything. But he doesn’t want to risk the consequences again, he doesn’t think he can live through another heartbreak because there’s so little of his heart left intact and he’s scared to lose himself entirely.
So he goes to the school of the wolves and he gets help for his injuries - and scars, but he doesn’t want to think about that any time soon - but he can’t bring himself to relax, not entirely.
He’s sure they can smell his constant worrying and he feels awful for being such a pain but he doesn’t know what he’s meant to do and his fingers itch for a lute but he doesn’t want to annoy anyone by asking for one.
“I’m okay,” he promises, knowing that it’s a broken one even as it leaves his lips.
‘cause i’m coming to take you
It’s a month before Geralt clocks on to the problem and risks leaving, returning just before dawn with a lute that he places on the table beside Jaskier’s bed.
It’s another week before music fills the building.
It's two more everyone finds themselves humming or singing along every time they hear the lute being played. And another before Geralt finds Jaskier waiting for him where he usually trains, a hesitant smile on his face. “Thank you.”
Geralt nods. “It was the least I could do.”
Jaskier frowns, slowly shaking his head and shuffling his feet. “It’s far more than that. Music, it- it’s almost everything to me, I can't explain it...”
Geralt exhales softly. “But I can understand it because, Jaskier, you’re almost everything to me.”
hold on to your heart
A childhood filled with recklessly throwing around his heart meant that Jaskier became more careful with who he truly trusted over time.
Not careful enough, but still too careful to forgive and forget.
But Geralt is patient and kind and more affectionate than Jaskier has ever seen him and he can’t help falling in love all over again, not that he’d climbed out of it in the first place.
He wants to let go of the dragon hunt, he really does, but Geralt’s words still sting and they, along with his mother’s and father’s and countless fleeting lovers’, flash in his mind every time he thinks about surrendering his heart once again.
And he’s scared, he’s oh so scared that Geralt will get bored of him, sick of him, fed up with him again.
‘cause i’m coming to break you
Geralt waits until summer is waving goodbye before telling Jaskier.
He can feel Jaskier’s doubt rising, he can feel the way he’s not sure whether he’ll be invited to stay for winter or not - he will, of course, because he has become one of their own and it would be foolish if he wasn’t.
But when a week goes by without even the faintest echo of a lute, he and Ciri gather up the prettiest flowers they can find and after their evening meal, he offers them to Jaskier.
“I love you,” he admits softly.
Jaskier is still for all of a few seconds before he starts crying.
And Geralt’s whole body is telling him to run because he hates to see tears in his favourite blue eyes but he resists that urge and slowly, carefully wraps his arms around the bard instead.
“I think I’ve loved you for a long time, Jaskier, and I don’t think I could ever not.”
Jaskier doesn’t reply, but he falls asleep in Geralt’s embrace and finally lets his guard down, and that’s answer enough for anyone.
hold on
The war rages on but Jaskier finally finds peace.
Nothing about their life is particularly easy but he has never been more at ease because as much as Geralt had hurt him, he’d also helped him to heal far more than anybody else ever has.
“You have my heart,” he confesses one morning, after waking up to Geralt’s rare but increasingly more common smiles.
“You can keep it to yourself, your love is enough for me,” Geralt murmurs.
Jaskier blinks slowly, suddenly overcome with the urge to cry. He doesn’t, but he does curse softly. “When did you become so poetic, my dear witcher?”
Geralt chuckles, pulling him impossibly close and leaning right beside his ear to reply, “When you taught me how, my dear bard.”
It takes a matter of seconds for Jaskier to decide that he wants to get married.
hold on
Geralt says very little the day they lawfully commit to spending the rest of their lives together.
He says very little as Yennefer and Ciri craft their rings and loop them into matching chains. He says very little as Eskel and Lambert place their bets on who’s going to cry first - they’re both idiots, it’s obviously Jaskier - or who’s going to remain dry-eyed. And he says very little as Vesemir gives them his blessing.
But when they return to their room, Jaskier places his hands on either side of Geralt’s face and smiles softly. “Geralt, my love, will you tell me what’s wrong? You’ve barely said a word.”
And finally, Geralt cracks. “We vowed to stay with each other until we die, right?”
Jaskier raises an eyebrow. “Of course, but I would have done that with or without the ceremony, you know that.”
“Witchers live for a long time, Jaskier. I-”
Jaskier places a finger on Geralt’s lips, grinning. “You beautiful fool of a witcher, do I look like the kind of bard that’s going to die any time soon?”
When Geralt really looks, it’s obvious that he doesn’t.
And so, with that one sentence, everything changes again.
For the better this time.