Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They’re walking home from school in the gathering dusk when Ciri spots something, and stops him, her hand tugging at his sleeve. “Hey, wait, look!” she says, and Geralt turns to see a notice pinned to the streetlight: one of those hopeful ones, damp now with cold, the words a little faded, the strips at the bottom curling upwards.

It reads: Lessons from a music postgrad, 15 crowns/hour, any age, any skill level, almost any instrument! (As long as that includes guitar, piano, violin, lute.) Call Jaskier.

The handwriting is clear if a little too full of unnecessary flourishes. Someone, presumably this Jaskier, has doodled cartoonish instruments and flowers on the borders. Daisies and dandelions and buttercups, which, Geralt thinks, is what Jaskier means, if he remembers it right. Unlikely to be a real name, then; who calls their kid Buttercup?

Ciri’s looking up at him, doing the wide pleading eyes that he is irritatingly susceptible to. “Can I?” she says. “Please, Geralt? The music teacher at my school is shit.”

“Language,” he tells her, automatically and hypocritically, since she’s picked up most of her language from him.

“But can I?” she persists. “C’mon, please, Dad? I’ll pay for it in chores.”

It’s not the promise – which he doesn’t believe – but the ‘dad’ that sways him. She doesn’t use it often: it’s only been three years since she came to him after her grandmother died, and she still has faint memories of her own parents that she seems scared of losing, as if calling him and Yen mum and dad will make them fade further. But even if it’s a tactic, he’s still a soft touch for it.

“I’ll check him out,” Geralt says, ripping one of the tabs off the bottom of the notice and stowing it carefully in a pocket. “See if he’s any good.”

“And if he’s not, will you find someone else?” she asks. “I’ve barely touched the guitar Uncle Lambert bought me, Mr Hakan doesn’t think it’s a proper instrument, he wants us to play clarinets and flutes and all that orchestral crap.”

Geralt sighs at her, and she grins back, unrepentant. He remembers the first few weeks after she came to live with him, quiet and cowed, creeping around the house as if she had died along with the rest of her family and found herself a ghost, haunting the living. He’s not proud of much in his long life, but he’s proud of this, of having helped this smart, sparky child find her way back to herself.

“What chores will you do?” he says, changing the subject, and listens to her make wilder and wilder promises for the rest of the short walk home.

When they reach the house, Roach greets them with all the enthusiasm an elderly and forgetful Labrador can muster, as delighted to see Ciri as if she’d been gone for months rather than a day. Geralt walked her earlier, so he digs into his pocket for a treat instead, and draws out the thin scrap of paper.

Well. No time like the present.

He takes off the glamoured ring Yenn made him when he first took charge of Ciri, and drops into the bowl on the shelf by the door. There shouldn’t be a physical change, really – his glamoured self is just as tall and broad, it’s only the hair and eyes and face that change. But becoming himself again always feels like talking off too-tight trousers, as if he’s been holding his breath and can finally relax.

Leaving Ciri fussing over Roach in the kitchen, he ducks into the den to make the call. When it connects, the voice on the other end is young, cheerful enough to make Geralt grit his teeth. “Julian Pankratz speaking!”

“Jaskier?” Geralt asks, suspiciously. “The music tutor?”

“My nom de – musique, I guess,” the man responds, with a terrible Toussaintois accent. “So call me Jaskier. What’s your instrument?”

“Not me,” Geralt says, quickly, and the horror must translate across the phone because Jaskier laughs at the other end of the line, a quick huff of breath. “My daughter. She’s twelve. Guitar.”

“What level?”

“Uh.” He doesn’t know, really. “She can pick out a few tunes. Self-taught. Her school won’t teach it, not classy enough or something.”

“I hate that snobbish bullshit,” Jaskier says, real venom in his voice, before he clearly remembers who he’s speaking to, and adds, “sorry, I promise I won’t swear in front of your kid, I’m good with kids. Lots of siblings, older and younger, so lots of nieces and nephews too.”

“Got references?” Geralt’s fairly sure this kid is what he seems to be – it’d be an elaborate and chancy trap and he doubts the people looking for them are that subtle – but he’s not letting anyone in a room with Ciri till he’s checked them out.

“Oh, sure. Hang on—” The voice goes distant, humming under its breath, before it comes back on the line a few moments later with two names, both parents of kids he’s currently tutoring. “And if you want to check out my credentials, you can talk to my doctoral supervisor, Professor Callonetta at the university, she’ll vouch for me.”

Geralt writes the names down, adding Julian Pankratz too; he’ll ask Yenn to run her own searches when he calls her later. She knows people who know people, part of a complex system of favours owed; give her a couple days and she’ll know if this Jaskier rings any alarm bells in the worlds above and below, at local or federal level both.

They make arrangements for the first session later that week, a freebie to see if Ciri wants to carry on, Jaskier tells him: “No point in sticking with a teacher you don’t like enough to listen to.” Geralt finds himself warming to the kid. If it’s a hustle it’s a charming one, or maybe he’s just as inept at getting paid as Geralt used to be, back when his contracts were posted on the streets like Jaskier’s sign.

“I’ll text you the address,” Geralt says, and he will. After Yenn’s run her checks.

“Great,” Jaskier says. “Oh, wait, I didn’t ask, what’s your name? And your daughter’s?”

“I’m Geralt,” Geralt tells him. “She’s Fiona.”

There’s a pause, like Jaskier is waiting for something; Geralt lets the silence linger. Eventually he says, “Geralt No-Last-Name. OK. Cool. See you Thursday.”

They hang up. Ciri’s still fussing Roach in the kitchen, so he sticks his head around the door, says, “First guitar lesson booked for Thursday, four o’clock,” and leaves before her squeal of delight hurts his ears.

He goes upstairs to use the bathroom. In the mirror, he looks himself in the face, eyes gold and familiar once again, and wonders if he’s taking an unnecessary risk. The fewer people they know, who know them, the better. But he won’t lock Ciri away, won’t stop her living her life. She goes to school. She has friends. She can have fucking guitar lessons if she wants.

And if there’s any danger from it, well, that’s what him and Yenn are for.

By the time Thursday comes, Yenn has put her feelers out across the worlds both mundane and not, all of which return clean. Julian Alfred Pankratz, aka Jaskier, has done little worth noting, aside from the usual drunken teen misadventures and ill-advised hairstyles on his socials, and even that less than Geralt might have expected from the exuberant voice.

So now he’s waiting uneasily in the kitchen while Ciri does homework, not sure why he’s so uneasy. They’ve been living in this cosy little house in the Oxenfurt suburbs for a full year now, and nothing has happened at all, despite the hurry with which they left Ard Carraigh, fleeing overnight following a tip off from one of Yenn’s contacts. Yenn is still in Novigrad, where her work is mostly based these days; she portals over on weekends and some evenings, carefully, so that no one knows she’s gone. The legend of their dramatic break-ups comes in useful, these days; when she glares and denies all knowledge of that ass Geralt of Rivia, people tend to believe her.

It wasn’t like they made a mistake in Ard Carraigh, nor that the prince minister was that close. The tip off said the search had narrowed down to the state, not even the city; but still, it was better safe than sorry, and so they’d packed up and left, poor Ciri resigned to it after a most of a lifetime spent on the run. She’s a resilient kid though. She makes friends fast, and moves on from them equally fast. He worries about it sometimes, but he doesn’t see what choice he has till she’s grown and able to look after herself.

Which makes it all the more important that he does what he can to give her a normal life, with the normal experiences most twelve-year-old kids get. Like guitar lessons.

The doorbell goes at five minutes to four, and Geralt nods at Ciri. “Stay there a minute,” he tells her, and she rolls her eyes indulgently.

“Sure, I’ll wait while you vet the university student. He might have… gasp… pens.”

She’s so like Yenn sometimes, it makes him miss her all the more.

Distracted by her teasing, he answers the door without remembering to put on the glamour, only realising his mistake when it’s too late. Fuck. Fuck. Aside from Ciri and Yenn and his fellow witchers, no one’s seen his real face in a year. But he was at home, he wasn’t thinking. Stupid.

It’s too late now, too. He could axii him but he can’t do it every week without side effects, and if he does it now and then changes his face there’s a chance Jaskier will remember something’s off. He can’t do anything that makes him odd or memorable.

He’ll just have to hope Ciri hates the guy and doesn’t want him to come back.

While Geralt briefly panics, the university student is shuffling on the step, probably trying to keep warm in the bleak autumn wind. He’s wearing an orange knit cap pulled low over his forehead and a slightly clashing red scarf wrapped three times round his neck, over a deep blue duffle coat. His eyes are a much brighter blue, shining out between cap and scarf, above a nose pink with cold.

“Hey!” he says, the same ridiculously upbeat tone Geralt remembers from the call. “You must be Geralt, right? I’m Jaskier! Good to meet you.”

“Hmm,” Geralt says, by default, because what he wants to say now he’s paying attention is you look like a cartoon character but he has enough self-control not to. “Come in.”

He shows Jaskier into the den, watching while he unwinds the scarf and unbuttons his coat and opens his guitar case. The instrument looks old, but well cared for. “This room ok?” he asks.

Jaskier twangs a guitar string. “Great acoustics!” he says, grinning.

Geralt can’t tell if it’s a joke or not. “I’ll go get Fiona,” he says. Looking at Jaskier, he’s more convinced than ever that there’s nothing to fear from him, which is just as well, considering the mess he’s already made.

When he comes back, ushering Ciri in front of him, Jaskier is sitting on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, guitar on his lap, looking like every floppy-haired front man on every folk album Vesemir has ever owned. “Hello Fiona,” he says. “I hear you want to learn guitar.”

Ciri shrinks against Geralt, suddenly shy; he puts a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be next door,” he says.

“Sit in!” Jaskier says. “The more the merrier. You can play the triangle.”

That shakes a laugh from Ciri, and Jaskier smiles back. “You want me to stay?” Geralt asks her.

“I’m ok,” she says, and walks forward, guitar in one hand. His little warrior. She sits on the easy chair opposite the couch, and nods at Geralt.

He backs out, heading to the kitchen to prep dinner, the sounds of chords and soft explanations through the wall a surprisingly soothing background music.

After an hour, he hears Ciri racing upstairs, shouting “See you next week, Jaskier!” and when he turns Jaskier is leaning in his doorway, coat on, scarf hanging almost to his knees.

“Sounds like it went well, then,” Geralt says.

Jaskier grins again – Geralt doesn’t think he’s seen him straightfaced for more than a second – and says, “She’s a good kid. She’s clearly put some effort in. Does the same time next week work okay?”

“Sure,” Geralt says, and then, “oh, wait, what do I owe you?”

“First one’s a freebie, remember? I’ll text you my account details for next time, you can transfer it, or send it via CoinToss, whatever’s easier.”

“Cash is easier,” Geralt says firmly; he tries to leave as small a digital footprint as possible.

“All right, old man,” Jaskier says, and winks. Then he stills, his face suddenly blank, before he shakes himself and smiles again, a false one this time. It doesn’t meet his eyes. “I should,” he says, and moves away from the door, stumbling slightly.

Geralt, torn between asking what’s wrong, and not wanting to be overbearing, does nothing. Jaskier winds his scarf tightly around his neck and lets himself out, and Geralt watches as he walks down the path, presumably heading for the nearest bus stop.

Despite his bright colours, he looks hunched over, small.

Not that it’s any of Geralt’s business.

Over the next month and a half, Geralt watches as Jaskier becomes one of Ciri’s absolute favourite people.

Geralt normally talks to Jaskier a bit before the class starts, while Ciri’s getting her stuff ready – catching up on what Ciri’s learning, or letting Jaskier pet Roach (Roach also loves him, as Jaskier seems to have an unerring ability to find the perfect spot behind her left ear), or just exchanging pleasantries about the weather or whatever music Geralt’s listening to. Jaskier seems to have heard of every band in the last hundred years; Geralt’s not heard of anyone Jaskier recommends. It’s a novelty, to talk to someone who’s actually seeing his face. And Jaskier’s good at reading Geralt’s expressions for someone who doesn’t know him well. It’s oddly relaxing.

Added to that, Jaskier’s talkative, and apparently always in a good mood, and patient with Ciri. Geralt can see why she likes him, but still:

“It’s not right,” he tells Yennefer when she calls one Thursday, after she and Ciri have had a chance to catch up. “She does the homework he sets. When has she ever done homework without bribes?”

“I’ll admit it’s a change to have our conversations be all about Jaskier rather than all about Roach, but the content is more or less the same,” Yennefer says. They’re on the Xenovox app, and he can see from her expression that she’s not taking this seriously. “Oh, don’t look so worried, Geralt. It’s cute. She’s probably got a crush.”

“Maybe,” he says, though he doesn’t honestly think so; Ciri gets embarrassed when she takes that kind of liking to someone, usually. She seems to relax around Jaskier in a way she rarely does with anyone.

“If I didn’t know that you are nearly two hundred years old,” Yenn says pointedly, “I’d suspect that you were jealous.”

He frowns, thinking about it. Yenn waits; over the many decades of their acquaintance, she’s learned that she has to be patient when it comes to Geralt and the having of emotions. “I don’t think so,” he says eventually.

“Well, let me know when you figure out what’s got the stick up your arse,” Yennefer tells him cheerfully. “I’ve got to go now. Be good. I’ll see you at the weekend.”

“I love you,” he says.

“I know,” she says, and he wishes once again he’d never let Ciri watch that film.

The following week, at the end of the class – which has focussed on a mix of Mighty Melitele rock songs and classic Kaedweni folk music for some reason – Geralt nods Jaskier into the kitchen rather than just waving him off at the door. “I was going to have a beer,” he says. “You want one?”

“Ah, no, thanks,” Jaskier says. “Coffee would be great though?”

Geralt hums and puts the machine on. When he turns, Jaskier is standing by the door, hands clasped behind his back, a faint quiver in his arms as if he’s trying not to fidget. The pose is vaguely reminiscent of how the trainees used to stand when he was a boy, lined up waiting for inspection. “Sit down,” Geralt says. “This isn’t an interrogation.”

Jaskier grins, blushing slightly, and slides onto one of the bar stools by the breakfast counter. He’s a little too tall to sit comfortably; his legs are splayed and he grips the seat between his thighs, tapping at it like a drum. “I didn’t think interrogation,” he says. “Parent/teacher conference, maybe. Am I getting my money’s worth, that kind of thing.”

“Am I?” Geralt asks.

Jaskier shrugs. “I guess that depends on what you’re hoping for. I mean, I’m not teaching her scales or the type of music that will get her a grade certification, though I can, if you want. Personally I’ve always found that the easiest way to turn a kid off an instrument, but it’s what some parents want, so, you know, if that’s the end goal, you’re paying, your wish is my command.” He does an odd little half-bow. He’s wearing the stupidly long scarf again; it brushes the floor and Roach growls at it from her basket.

“Roach, no,” Geralt says. The dog subsides. Jaskier loops the scarf around his neck a second time to keep it out of the way. His sweatshirt is a deep rose pink with little green treble clefs on it; Geralt’s yet to see him in an outfit that isn’t a) brightly coloured and b) clashing. It works, somehow. He passes Jaskier a mug of coffee and the kid takes it, long fingers wrapping around the china. “And no, that’s not what I’m after; she gets enough of that pressure at school. I want her to play what she likes. I want it to be fun.”

“Well, if you ask my parents, I’m incapable of anything serious,” Jaskier says, a little sourly. He winces and waves a hand. “Sorry. They mean well. There are just some things we don’t agree about.”

“They don’t believe in fun?”

“Not traditionally, no,” Jaskier says. He sighs. “But they’re covering my post-grad, even though they don’t understand why I want to study music, so I can’t complain really.”

“Hmmm,” Geralt says. For the first time, Jaskier looks deflated. He doesn’t like it. “I just want Fiona to have the chance to find out what she enjoys,” he says. “At the moment I guess it’s guitar.”

“And next year it might be something much more terrifying,” Jaskier says, saluting Geralt with the coffee mug. “You’re a good dad, Geralt No-Last-Name. Here’s to people working out what pleases them.”

Geralt raises his bottle of beer awkwardly. He’s hardly an expert in that regard. Becoming a witcher wasn’t something he got to choose, and nor were Yennefer and Ciri, not that he regrets them. The idea of working out what he wants is strangely new. “Anyway,” he says. “Thank you. For the lessons. Ci— She’s enjoying them.” Shit. He looks at Jaskier, who doesn’t seem to have noticed the slip.

He’s too relaxed around Jaskier. It’s dangerous. He should know better.

“I’m glad,” Jaskier says. “Thanks for the coffee. I should go.”

“Interrogation over,” Geralt says drily, and Jaskier turns from picking up his guitar and laughs, his eyes shining, and Geralt is – struck with something, suddenly, a warmth that seems to come out of nowhere and fill him to the brim.

He thinks, fuck. And stays there, frozen, as Jaskier lets himself out, letting in a brief burst of cold air that doesn’t make any difference to the warmth Geralt is feeling.

The problem is, Geralt’s been on the run for three years now. He’s not used to spending time with someone who isn’t either related to him, being raised by him, or more-or-less married to him. He didn’t realise how heady it could be. And Jaskier seems like a decent human being. He cares about music, clearly. He’s a good teacher. He laughs at Geralt’s jokes.

Geralt probably needs to get out more, but he can’t. He’s a wanted man across the Continent, at least in the world below; he suspects Emhyr’s got his face on some kind of mundane official watchlist, but as Geralt’s living under a false name and a false face that doesn’t matter so much. It’s the people from his world who are more likely to find him. At least no one knows what Ciri looks like, not really; at least she doesn’t have to go about in disguise.

It started thirteen years ago. He was in Cintra hunting a bruxa and had tracked it to the main park. It was late, so late that the only people around were the kind likely to avoid him.

Still, when he heard a fight he went to investigate because it could have been the bruxa, but it wasn’t. It was a burly security guard beating up a scrawny twenty-something while a woman screamed. And Geralt had never been very good at standing by in those kinds of situations, but there was power in the scream too. They were his people, world below people. He had to help.

So he broke up the fight, knocked out the security guard, and helped the young man to his feet. At which point the young man thanked him, and offered him any reward he cared to name.

Geralt still isn’t sure why he asked for the Law of Surprise. Vesemir thinks it was destiny, but Vesemir believes in stuff like that. Geralt just remembers thinking it would be funny. The pair were so young, they so clearly had nothing. He would have bet any amount of coin that they were running away. And there was this kid telling him he could have a reward. So he asked for the Law of Surprise, as a joke. He was so sure they had nothing to give him. But the woman collapsed and then he knew. And the man went to help her, and when he got her to her feet again Geralt realised who she was. Pavetta Riannon.

Geralt isn’t one for gossip magazines, but he’s always kept an eye on kings, in case they got it into their head to try and kill him. Even when times changed he watched the royals, sure they had more influence in both worlds than they pretended, just like the Brotherhood did. And there had always been rumours that the Riannons were closer to Geralt’s side of the tracks than some, that there was magic in the blood.

He apologised, of course. He promised he’d never claim their child, that that was something witchers had done five hundred years ago. They told him Pavetta’s mother didn’t approve of their relationship so they were eloping, but the security guard at the Riannon mansion had spotted them leaving and chased after them. And they said thank you, and Geralt said, no problem, and that was that. Just a funny story for Yenn and his brothers.

Except six years later, Pavetta and Duny drowned. Ciri went to live with her grandmother, and Geralt knew that was the right choice, she was with her family. But three years after that Calanthe and her husband died as well, and Geralt knew that was no accident. Calanthe must have had suspicions, too, by all accounts she was a paranoid old bird. There were no photos of Ciri anywhere after she turned six, which is a blessing now.

He found Ciri before anyone else could. It was the right thing to do. Or it was destiny, if you preferred. Geralt didn’t know exactly why the prince minister wanted her, but he’d been watching Emhyr’s rise through the federal government ranks to the top, watching as he brought the states closer and closer together. The man wanted power, that was clear; and soon after Geralt claimed her as his child he realised Ciri had inherited whatever gifts the Riannons possessed. The nightmares that made the walls of Kaer Morhen shake were proof of that.

Yenn thinks there might be no limit to what Ciri can do, once fully in control of her chaos. And one thing Geralt knows is that he doesn’t want to see prince minister Emhyr with no limits to his power.

So he doesn’t regret it, any of it. But till now, he isn’t sure he understood what he’d given up. Back when he walked the path he was a loner, but there were always people who would speak with him, who knew what he was. That wasn’t always a good thing, but he’d never had to hide or pretend. He’d never truly been lonely. Not until now.

That weekend, Yennefer portals in for a quiet Saturday. They watch TV, and Ciri paints all their fingernails, and Geralt braids her and Yennefer’s hair and then lets Ciri braid his, even though she does three huge twists, one on each side, which makes him look ridiculous. That’s probably why she does it, of course.

Once Ciri’s asleep, Yennefer and Geralt have an early night too. It’s rare enough they get time to themselves, and they make full use of it. Afterwards, as they lie in each other’s arms, Geralt says, “I’m not jealous.”

Yennefer makes an interrogatory sleepy noise. Her fingers trace gently over the scratches her nails have left on his back.

“Of Jaskier,” Geralt clarifies. He watches as Yennefer makes the connection, her mind spooling back to the conversation several weeks ago. She shifts, moving to sit up, eyes turning darker with that sharp amusement he’s always loved. “If anything, I’m jealous of Ciri.”

“Geralt!” Yennefer says. Her lovely lips curve into a wicked smile. “You have a crush.”

He groans and rolls over, burying his head in the pillow. “He’s… sweet. He makes Ciri happy. He’s a kid.”

“He’s twenty-three,” Yennefer says. “So, you know, only about an eighth your age.” He can’t help but feeling she’s enjoying this a little too much. The two of them have lived too long, and been together too long, for things like exclusivity to matter much; they love each other, and that’s all that counts. But even though Yennefer has always kept her other partners to herself, she takes great pleasure in teasing Geralt about his, as if he were an unrefined innocent, incapable of managing his own affairs.

“It doesn’t matter,” Geralt mutters. “He’s Ciri’s teacher. He’s too young. I’m not going to do anything.”

“Oh, live a little,” Yennefer says. “Even for people like us life’s too short not to follow our hearts. Or our groins, at least.” She pulls him back over so she can kiss him, tugging at one of his over-large braids. “Is he interested?”

“I doubt it,” Geralt says. “He must think I’m ancient. I’m sure he’s got a lovely girlfriend or boyfriend his own age.”

“No sign of a partner on his socials,” Yennefer says brightly.

“I’m not talking about this any more.” He knows Yennefer. If she decides to interfere… well. Things tend to either go amazingly, or worse than anyone could ever have dreamed.

“All right, my love,” Yennefer says, settling back down. “I just think you should remember there’s more to life than witchering and parenting.”

It touches a little too close to the bone, to the emptiness of his long days. “Did I not prove that to your satisfaction, my lady?” he asks, changing the subject, and nips at her throat, and any further teasing ceases as he demonstrates another of his interests, one which Yennefer has no complaint about, if the noises she makes are any indication.

On Monday afternoon Jaskier texts to rearrange the next lesson from 4 to 5.30 because of a rehearsal for some performance he’s involved in at college. Geralt stares at the text for a while. Jaskier ends all of his messages with little emojis of guitars and flowers, the same way he covered his streetlight ad with doodles. It’s insufferable. It’s cute. There’s no way he’s straight, surely? Or is Geralt being what Ciri always accuses him of, heteronormative?

(He’s never going to tell Ciri that he’s had more partners in more positions than anyone her age could conceive of. He and Yen gave her the sex ed conversation when she was ten, and that was awkward enough to last him a lifetime.)

Before he loses his nerve he texts back, Fine. Since it’s late do you want to stay for dinner?

Then he winces. That seems much more suggestive and less friendly than he intended. He quickly types, Fiona would love that. He debates whether to add a grinning face but that would probably just make it all worse, so he presses send and then puts the phone down resolutely and takes Roach out for a walk.

When he gets back, he approaches the phone like it’s an unexploded bomb. Which is ridiculous. He is, as Yennefer never tires of telling him, nearly two hundred years old. He’s acting like the shy teenager he never actually had the chance to be, one of the awkward young men from the TV shows Ciri likes. He doesn’t understand why he’s feeling this way. Jaskier is attractive, yes, but Geralt’s known plenty of attractive people and was never this moved by them. So why now?

There isn’t a good answer. Even if he’s lonely, that doesn’t explain the attraction, the fact that he wants more than just a friend. Geralt’s never been analytical enough to entirely understand himself and he’s too old to change his habits now. He likes Jaskier’s smile. He finds his company relaxing, despite the way Jaskier talks and talks. That’s enough.

He takes a breath and turns the phone over. The little green box flashes up on his lockscreen photo of Ciri hugging Roach. It says, oh thank you but I wouldn’t want to put you out

Is that a yes or a no? Is Jaskier wanting reassurance he’s wanted? Geralt has no idea. He lost any chance of understanding nuance when people stopped using punctuation. He takes a screenshot of it and sends it to Yennefer. This is a no, isn’t it?

After five minutes or so she responds. I’m afraid so. Sorry, love.

Well, then, Geralt thinks. That’s that. It’s a little mortifying, but at least he tried. A hundred years ago he wouldn’t have even known he was interested, let alone done anything about it. He focuses on feeling proud of that, and not how uncomfortable he’s going to feel seeing Jaskier on Thursday.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have to wait that long.

He’s chopping carrots early Tuesday evening when Ciri shouts, “Geralt! Come see this!” There’s a shrill note of fear in her voice.

Panicked, he rushes upstairs to find her listening to local radio and simultaneously refreshing Noticeboard. He catches the end of the bulletin: “... are advising people to stay away from the area.”

“What is it?”

“Something weird over by the lake,” Ciri says. She shows him the local newspaper’s feed: blurred pictures, claims of deaths, people responding underneath with more blurry pictures and higher death counts, then pictures of police tape, an official statement of at least one casualty.

“Drowners,” Geralt sighs. There aren’t many monsters still around. Between witchers and modernity many species have been hunted into extinction; after all, medieval peasants didn’t have machine guns. If it weren’t for Yennefer, he’d have had to get a proper job by now, though he can’t think what he’s qualified for. As it is, he still gets called out for the odd tricky hunt by his brothers, and at least these days they’re paid well for it. This one… well, it’s their home; he’ll do it for free. But he’ll have to be careful not to get caught, with all the witnesses and the news. It’s a large lake though. If he approaches it from the north…

“You’ll go kill them, right?” Ciri asks. She has strong feelings, understandably, whenever there’s news about people dying in water. Her eyes are welling up, a faint shake in her fingers.

“Of course,” he says. He kisses the top of her head. “Don’t worry about it. Switch that off.” And only then does he realise: Ciri. He can’t go. He can’t leave her.

He takes his phone out of his pocket to call Yenn, then remembers she’s at that soul-sucking Brotherhood conference this week, which means she won’t have access to any mundane tech, as it dampens the magical essences or some such bullshit.

Who else? Ciri has friends, whose parents he vaguely knows; there are definitely a couple of people he could call and say there’d been an emergency. But then he’d have to drop Ciri off at their house; no one would agree to come round to theirs. And their house is the one warded six ways and back again by Yennefer and Triss. It took them hours, and then they did Ciri’s school the next day. Nowhere else in Oxenfurt is as safe. But she’s still a kid; he can’t just leave her for however long this will take.

“I’ll be fine,” she tells him, clearly reading his thoughts, but her fingers are still trembling, twisting together in her lap.

“It can wait,” he says.

“But what if—” she says, then stops, but he knows what she was going to say because he’s thinking it: what if more people die. What if you could have stopped it.

But what if it’s a trap? She needs someone, someone who can call the police in the worst case – Geralt trusts Yennefer’s wards – or soothe her after a nightmare in the best case.

Then he has the idea. Possibly a terrible one. But also the only one he’s got.

Hey, he texts Jaskier. This is a big ask. But it’s an emergency…

An hour later, when Jaskier arrives, Geralt’s potions and swords are safely hidden in the trunk of his car. When he opens the door, Jaskier looks flushed, like he ran all the way there; he looks young, and absurdly innocent, all round cheeks and blue eyes. Fuck, Geralt wants to kiss him. He didn’t even hesitate, just dropped everything and came rushing round to help out some kid he hardly knows.

“Jaskier,” he says. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

“Oh, sure,” Jaskier says. “Honestly, don’t mention it. I told you, I have many brothers and sisters, and they have many children, I am an extremely experienced sitter.”

“Still—” Geralt says, and then stops, because he can’t just keep thanking him, it’ll make the whole thing even more weird. “Dinner’s on the stove, make sure she eats something. Bedtime’s at nine. There’s popcorn in the cupboard if you want it. I should be back in a few hours.”

“I brought my guitar and a wide range of kids movies,” Jaskier says, shucking his coat and guitar case and moving into the kitchen. “Kids movies are the best movies anyway.”

Geralt calls upstairs to let Ciri know Jaskier’s here, then follows him into the kitchen to show him where everything lives. Jaskier nods, his hands fidgeting on his satchel, picking up on Geralt’s tension. “Is Mrs No-Last-Name all right?” he asks suddenly.

“What?”

Jaskier flushes deeper. “You said it was an emergency. And I just – I don’t know, I’m sorry, I figured—”

“Fiona’s mother doesn’t live with us,” Geralt says, at something of a loss, falling back on a half-truth, because he can’t explain him and Yennefer without explaining a whole other world Jaskier has no idea about. “She’s out of town.”

“And she’s not my mother,” Ciri says from the doorway. She’s scowling. “I’m adopted.”

Fuck. People drowning… Of course she’s feeling sensitive.

To do him credit, Jaskier just blinks. “Okay,” he says. “Well. Thank you for trusting me with that, Fiona. What do you want to do, dinner then movies? Or movies then dinner? Seems like it’s being an odd night, we can do it backwards if you want.”

Ciri eyes him sceptically, but he just bounces on his heels and waits, face open and cheerful. “Backwards,” she says in the end.

“Cool!” Jaskier says, smiling. “Backwards nights are the best. Why don’t I make some popcorn while you look at the movies I brought, see what you’re in the mood for.” He nods at Geralt as Ciri heads to the microwave, clearly signalling, you can go, I got this.

Geralt hesitates. Yennefer dug deep into Jaskier’s life and found nothing. He’s been coming to their house every week for nearly three months. Geralt’s never seen a hint of anxiety or nervousness. If he had any ill-intent, he wouldn’t get through the wards. It’s safe.

Before he can change his mind, he nods back at Jaskier, and goes.

The hunt is like every other hunt: dull, wet, cold, ending with Geralt covered with more viscera than he cares to think about. He’s out of practice; the drowner got a few digs in. Nothing that won’t heal, but it’s uncomfortable.

He washes off as best he can in the lake, a mile from where he left the drowner, downs a vial of Swallow, and then squelches his way back to the car, dripping blood and water all the way. By the time he makes it to his vehicle he’s damp rather than sodden, but he feels terrible, potions wearing off enough that the exhaustion hits. He gets in, determined to drive carefully. No one can see him like this, veins standing out black on his face, stinking of lakewater and ichor. Bad enough Yenn’s going to complain about having to magically clean the upholstery, again.

He starts driving. And then drifts. As if between one blink and the next he finds himself pulling up outside his house, almost crashing into the curb. He has no recollection of the journey at all.

He manages to open the car door and then can’t find the energy to get out, slumping over himself.

He hears the vibration of someone walking down the path.

Hears, “What the fuck. Are those swords?”

And then everything goes quiet.

There’s a strange light at the corner of his eye, flashing red against his closed lid. He groans, rolls over to get away from it, and feels the faint ache of healing wounds. It comes back to him in a sudden wave: the news, the drowner, Ciri. Jaskier. He opens his eyes, sits up.

“Oh thank fuck,” Jaskier says.

He’s in the den, lying on the couch. Jaskier is curled up in the loveseat in the corner, phone in hand, lit up by the lamp on the low table next to him. The streetlights are still on outside; it’s either very late or very early.

“Fiona said you just needed to sleep and you’d be fine,” Jaskier tells him, as Geralt sits up, wincing a little. “She wouldn’t let me call an ambulance.” His voice wavers a little, stress, uncertainty. “I’m guessing you’re not going to tell me you’re, like, an extreme LARPer.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Geralt grunts.

“Live action— never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’m also hoping you’re not going to tell me you’re a serial killer.”

Geralt sighs. He meets Jaskier’s eyes, knowing that he doesn’t have a good enough imagination to come up with anything remotely plausible. “I’m a witcher,” he says.

Jaskier stares, mouth half open. He looks both stupid and oddly adorable, mostly because Geralt can’t sense any fear on him, or even nerves. “You’re a what?”

“A witcher,” Geralt says again. Then grudgingly adds, in explanation, “I kill monsters.”

“I— I know what a witcher is, gods,” Jaskier says, putting his phone down and scrubbing a hand through his hair, over his face. “I just thought they were only in stories.”

Geralt shrugs. It’s been a long time since he felt the need to validate his existence.

“And in Oxenfurt suburbs, apparently,” Jaskier mutters. “I mean, shouldn’t you have armour? Or a horse?”

“I used to,” Geralt says. He lifts his slightly damp shirt to examine the raised red lines of his wound. Already knitted over, probably won’t even scar.

“And now, what, you have a hatchback and a dog and a daughter—”

“I’m retired,” Geralt tells him, and Jaskier lets out a wild laugh that is half amusement and half incredulity.

“You don’t look like you’re retired,” he says.

“Mostly retired,” Geralt amends. He looks up. In the low light, Jaskier is a little pale, clearly tired, but still not anxious or afraid. “Are you all right?”

“I’m not the one who got sliced open by a monster,” Jaskier says, then, when Geralt keeps looking at him steadily, he adds, “I’m fine. It was a bit of a shock, obviously, but Fiona didn’t seem surprised at all, so then I thought maybe I was dreaming, but then I didn’t wake up and now, well, I guess I’m… talking to a witcher.” He smiles a little ruefully. “It’s not how I expected Tuesday to go, I’m not going to lie, but it’s definitely more exciting than how most of my days turn out.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” Geralt says. He isn’t going to risk explaining Ciri – even if he trusted Jaskier, the fewer people who know the better – so he adds, “there’s a lot of prejudice out there, still.”

“It’s not like anyone would believe me.” Jaskier’s eyes widen. “Wait, does this mean – is other stuff true too? Mages and elves and the Conjunction and, I dunno, vampires?”

“Most of it,” Geralt says, “yeah.” As the mundane world has got more and more powerful, the remnants of magic and myth have tended to hide, in the open if they can, in darkness if they can’t, slipping in and out of the world above and the world below.

“Fuck,” Jaskier breathes. “That’s so cool.” His fingers twitch. “I’ll keep it to myself, Geralt, I promise.” He looks both solemn and gleeful, excited to have a secret to keep. But his sincerity rings out too.

“Thank you,” Geralt says. He stands, looking at the clock behind him, sees it’s past three in the morning. “You must be tired. Let me drive you home.”

“Oh, uh, sure.” For a moment Jaskier looks disappointed – as if he was hoping Geralt would sit up all night, telling stories – but he masks it well. Anyway, he’s made his position clear on not wanting a relationship beyond the professional, so Geralt’s determined to be professional too. “I’ll just get my stuff.”

They’re quiet on the walk to the car. Which smells, but more of lakewater than blood or drowner, fortunately. The passenger seat is clean enough, and Jaskier slides into it, bag on his lap, guitar case between his knees. Geralt turns on the engine, ignoring the way wet is seeping through the back of his pants, and waits for Jaskier to give him rough directions.

He lives about a half hour drive away, a little further in and up, midway between where Geralt lives and the university. It’s a residential area, from what Geralt remembers, low apartment blocks and house shares and a few larger family homes. Nice enough, and out of their budget. He realises, suddenly, how little he knows about Jaskier: whether his family is wealthy, or anything else about what he does outside of studying and teaching, where he’s from, even. He let Yennefer look into all that; he wasn’t interested. Which makes it all the stranger that from the odd five minutes of chat here and there he’s found himself attached. Geralt doesn’t do people. He’s known for it.

Maybe Ciri’s softened him up. Maybe Jaskier’s just that likeable. Or Geralt’s just that pathetic.

They’re about five minutes away when he says, “I know that wasn’t the most normal babysitting session, but what do I owe you?”

Jaskier startles and turns from where he’s been staring out of the window, lost in thought. “Oh, no,” he says. “You don’t have to pay me. It was a favour.”

“I want to give you something for your time,” Geralt says firmly. “You… you really helped us out tonight.”

Something bitter crosses Jaskier’s face. “I wasn’t going to just call an ambulance and leave you bleeding out,” he says. “I’m not an arsehole.”

“Still,” Geralt says. “We’re not friends. It’s not like I can owe you a favour in return. Call it fifteen crowns an hour? Same as the lessons.”

“Fine,” Jaskier says. His face has hardened. “If you like.”

“I’ll have the money Thursday,” Geralt says. Jaskier’s either unhappy or pissed and he doesn’t know which and he doesn’t know why. His healing wound nags at him; he doesn’t have the energy to try and work out what he’s done wrong.

“Fine,” Jaskier says. He looks out of the window again. “You can drop me anywhere round here.”

“Right,” Geralt says. He pulls in, waits while Jaskier undoes his seatbelt. He feels awkward, a little sad, at the strange tension in the car. “Listen,” he says, and reaches to touch Jaskier’s hand, not sure what he’s planning to say next.

But at the touch of his fingers, Jaskier sags, turning to him; a swell of want fills the car, not simply arousal, something deeper. Jaskier’s eyes flutter closed, his head angled towards Geralt’s; and Geralt, caught in the moment, leans in—

Only for Jaskier to recoil, pulling away from Geralt’s touch, his other hand fumbling for the lock, out of the car before Geralt even quite registers the movement. He leans in to gather up his bag and his guitar, his heart racing like he’s just run up a mountain. “Sorry,” he says, sounding almost agonised, “I’m sorry, I should—” and then he’s turning away.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, confused, and Jaskier flinches. He says, “See you Thursday, Geralt,” not looking around, his back a straight unhappy line as he walks swiftly, almost jogging, across the street and past an apartment block and into a large three-storey house on the corner.

Geralt stares at it. There’s a flagpole out front, with a flag hanging from it, a deep black background and a design of a silver bowl with bright, twisting orange and red flames leaping from it. He can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. His mind has gone entirely blank.

He never knows how long it is before he puts the car in drive and heads home, once more almost on autopilot.

The house is quiet when he gets in, Roach snoring softly in the kitchen, Ciri sprawled out on Geralt’s bed upstairs, dried tear tracks on her cheeks. He takes a moment to tuck her under his comforter and kiss her softly on the forehead. He’d move her to her own room, but he doesn’t want to wake her, and he doesn’t think he’s going to sleep any more tonight.

The xenovox Yen gave them – the real one, not the app – is in a locked drawer in the study. He gets it out, feeling the heft of it in his hand, knowing he needs to do this, wishing he didn’t have to. Feeling, once again, like a fool.

He opens it, says her name and waits.

When she responds – his name on her lips sleepy, as if she’s just rousing – it makes his heart clench. Gods, he loves her, her and Ciri, with all the depth of longing two hundred years gives you. And he’s put them both in danger again.

“Yennefer,” he says. “I fucked up.”

This time she says his name sharply, a question, and then a portal opens in the room and she’s there, her arms around him. He lets himself be held, lets himself breathe into her white linen nightgown. “Tell me,” she says, and he does: failing to remember the glamour in the first place, and then, later, the hunt, the return, telling Jaskier what he is, the awkward ride back, the almost kiss.

“So what’s the problem?” Yennefer asks, stroking his hair. “Sounds like a typical day for you, love, saving people and getting confused by them.”

“The house he went into had an Eternal Fire flag outside,” Geralt says. “A real one, from a church, not one of the knock offs you get online.”

There’s a long silence. Then, “fuck,” Yennefer says, and detaches from him, pacing the room. “I didn’t think – his family must live near Oxenfurt, they have an Oxenfurt street code, he’s still registered as living at that address, I didn’t think, I didn’t check.”

“It’s all right,” Geralt says, driven to comfort her too. “You didn’t know, how could you have known? If he had it down as his religion anywhere you’d have seen it, wouldn’t you? So maybe, maybe it’s not—”

“Oh, Geralt,” she says. She comes to him again and they stand holding each other, drawing strength from each other.

“I trusted him,” Geralt murmurs. “I told him what I was and he was excited, not disgusted, I could swear to it. But when I touched him he couldn’t get away fast enough.”

“Who you are,” Yennefer says, scolding, loving. “Not what you are, dearest, who you are.”

Geralt nods. It feels like grace, forgiveness he doesn’t deserve. “The church has changed,” he says, almost to himself. “They don’t burn people in the streets anymore, they’re a registered charity now, respectable…”

“They still hate people like us,” Yennefer reminds him. “If they found out about Ciri, it’s not them we’d need to worry about, it’s who they’d tell.”

“I know,” he says, feeling sick at the thought of it. “I know. Should we move, do you think?”

Yennefer is quiet a while, considering it. “You’re a good judge of character,” she says in the end. “The wards would have stopped him coming in if he planned to hurt you. I don’t think we should rush into anything. I’ll do a bit more digging, all right? If he said he’d keep your secret, and he meant it, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Just for a couple of days.”

He holds her tighter. She sniffs. “But first you need a shower,” she says. “You smell like a drowned rat.”

“Maybe that’s why Jaskier ran away,” Geralt says, and she laughs, and he buries his head in her hair and breathes out a wordless prayer to gods he’s not convinced exist that he hasn’t just endangered them all because of a bright smile and a pretty pair of eyes.

Chapter Text

It’s the buzz of his phone that finally rouses him. He’s been lying on his side for some time, curled up, caught in that peaceful state somewhere between sleep and consciousness, where your thoughts drift and you don’t have to mind them.

He is vaguely aware, even relaxed and drifting, that he doesn’t want to wake up, that there is something waiting for him that he would rather not have to face. He ignores his alarm, ignores the sunlight through the gap in the curtains, ignores the sound of his housemates getting ready for class, ignores everything that would break him out of blissful ignorance.

And yet the faint vibration of a text message gets through.

He sits up, yawning, still not fully awake, and fumbles for his phone. Sees Geralt No-Last-Name on the screen.

And remembers.

Shit. Witchers are real. Monsters are real. He tried to kiss Geralt.

It’s the last one that is most shocking. For a long moment he has to press his forehead into his knees and just breathe, trembling, till the nausea subsides a little. It’s all right. He didn’t do it, he stopped himself, it’s all right.

When his hands stop shaking, he reaches for the phone again, unlocking it to read the message, or rather messages, three of them in a row. They say:

I have to cancel the lessons for a few weeks.
Sorry but I think it’s for the best.
Will explain when I can.

Jaskier thuds his head into his knees again. Will explain when I can. Yeah, right. He doesn’t need to explain, does he, it’s perfectly obvious why after what Jaskier did. There’s no way he’ll be welcome around Fiona again, and he doesn’t blame Geralt for wanting to protect her.

I understand, you don’t need to explain he writes back and then blocks and deletes Geralt’s number, in case Geralt says something kind in return. Because Geralt is kind, and a good parent, and also apparently a heroic figure out of legend, and he doesn’t need Jaskier anywhere near him, corrupting him by his very presence.

He needs to get up, he needs to do something. Keeping busy is the best way to keep his mind off what happened, how weak he is, despite everything.

He takes a shower, the water pounding hard on his head, then gets dressed and goes downstairs; he should eat, he feels faint. He’s trying very hard not to think about anything beyond the next simple step: shower, clothes, breakfast. If he can just focus on small things, he can stop his treacherous brain taking him places he shouldn’t want to go.

Karl is in the kitchen, because Jaskier’s always had shit luck. Most of his housemates are bearable, some of them he even gets on with; they’re all followers of the Fire of course but most of them are like him, they just agreed to stay in the church’s university housing to please their parents, or because it was cheaper. But Karl – Karl is a true believer, almost a zealot. He’s always keeping an eye on them, trying to make them join him for daily worship, and Jaskier could swear he reports any infractions to the university pastor too.

“Morning,” he says, and puts the kettle on for coffee. “You want a drink?”

“Afternoon, actually,” Karl says, in his nasal, perpetually disapproving tone. “Late night?”

Jaskier shrugs.

“I know it was,” Karl says smugly. “I saw you getting dropped off in the middle of the night by some old guy. Friend of yours?”

Oh seven hells, no. Of all the people to have seen – or to have thought they saw, anyway, Karl sees sin everywhere. Jaskier swallows down bile, keeps his voice light. “That was Geralt,” he says airily. “I tutor his kid, he asked me to watch her last night and he got back so late he gave me a lift home. That’s all.”

He’s explaining too much. He sounds defensive. When he turns, clasping his hot mug tightly, he can see the derisive, sceptical look on Karl’s face. “What were you doing up anyway?” he asks.

“Some of us are studying a real subject,” Karl says. “I was writing a paper.”

And you’re too thick to get your work done without pulling an all-nighter, Jaskier thinks and doesn’t say, but maybe Karl reads it in his face anyway. Jaskier’s always been too expressive, too loud, too emotional. It doesn’t matter how much he tries, he’s never been able to rein himself in. He’s seen how the others look at him, his outfits, his instruments. He knows what they think.

But he’s so, so tired of keeping himself under control. He has to let himself have something.

“I’m going back to bed,” he says abruptly. “I think I’m sick.” He coughs pathetically and leaves the room, feeling Karl’s eyes on him all the way.

He does go back to bed, after asking Essi to make excuses for him in class and cancelling his evening tutoring session. He’s feeling shivery and even though he knows it’s stress he figures there’s no harm in taking a day off, just until he can pull himself together again. He always manages it eventually, papering over the cracks with a jaunty smile and a joke or two; this time will be no different.

After a while he sleeps, falling in and out of confused dreams of warm golden eyes that make him feel even worse when he wakes. His unconscious mind likes to betray him like that, likes to give him what he can’t have, what he shouldn’t want, so that he wakes feeling both lonely and disgusting.

There’s a gentle knock at his door.

Probably one of the nicer housemates come to check on him, Jaskier decides, cheering up a little; what he needs, really, is a night relaxing in front of the telly, something to make him feel normal again.

But when he opens the door he sees the university pastor, Erich, and behind him—

“No,” he says, without meaning to, brain gone empty in fear, and takes a stumbling step back.

“Karl called me,” Erich says, frowning, but kindly. “So I called your parents. They’re worried about you, Julian, they need to know when… when you’re having trouble.”

“And they called me,” Rience says, pushing smoothly past Erich into the room. He’s always smaller than Jaskier remembers. He has this trick of taking up more room than he should do.

“I’m not,” he says, “having trouble, I was just childminding, I just got a lift home, it’s nothing, nothing happened.”

Rience stands very still, examining him. “But did you want it to?” he asks, so softly, and Jaskier is silenced. He sits back down on the bed, drops his face into his hands and sobs.

There’s a shift and a creak as Rience sits next to him. He slings a comforting arm around Jaskier’s back and Jaskier, damn him, can’t help but sag into it. He can’t remember the last time someone touched him. Till Geralt’s hand on his, burning, like a fire, and Jaskier was so warm…

He thinks, I am weak, my love, and I am wanting.

That fucking song, that fucking song which got him into trouble in the first place.

“It’s all right,” he hears Rience say, from a distance. “We’ll help you, Julian. We’re here for you. Everything will be all right.”

Erich and Rience talk, quietly; he can hear the sound of a case being opened, someone moving around, pulling out drawers, packing. At one point Rience stands and makes a call; without him to lean on Jaskier folds over on the bed, burying his head into the pillow.

“Yes, Mr Pankratz,” Rience is saying. “I think that would be for the best, if you can let the university know.”

He doesn’t hear the rest. He’s lost, far away, remembering the dingy bar where he sang that fucking song. It was the summer after graduation, and he was back home, trying to figure out what to do next. He’d just turned twenty-two, was thinking about doing a post-grad, but his father wanted him to get a real job and Jaskier wasn’t sure he’d be able to fund the degree if his parents didn’t help. And so he’d ended up doing nothing at all, bored, trying to be on his best behaviour, as if he could please his father enough to change his mind.

He started hanging out with Valdo by default. There weren’t many people his age around, and Valdo was interested in music too. They spent afternoons listening to vinyl, smoking poorly rolled joints of weak hash. They became friends, but even that wasn’t enough to stop Jaskier from feeling miserable, trapped. And in his misery he was reckless, forgetting that their small town and the church community wasn’t Oxenfurt. There were more eyes in Lettenhove, and less forgiveness.

He hadn’t been thinking of anyone in particular when he wrote the song, that was the real irony. It was a fantasy, a dream about a different person living a different life; he’d put all his yearning into it, all his desire to be someone else, someone more honest. It was so divorced from his reality he didn’t think twice about playing it at the open mic night, slipping it between covers of the old folk music his grandmother used to listen to when he was growing up.

But then afterwards Valdo came up to him, a bit drunk, laughing, and said, “that was about me, wasn’t it?” And Jaskier thought it was an invitation, an acknowledgement, recognition, and kissed him, kissed him even though he knew it was a sin.

It was the first time he’d done it. Not the first time he’d thought about it, not by a long shot; but when he was younger he had always fought it, and at university he’d been too scared to find the places where he could have done it. He’d hidden away among fellow churchgoers and spent most of his time being envious of the people he could see doing whatever they wanted, like they weren’t afraid, like they didn’t know it was wrong.

So when Valdo said that, he felt such relief: that he didn’t have to be scared, that he didn’t have to hide – he realised, in that moment, that he’d been scared and miserable his entire life and the idea that he didn’t have to be was the greatest joy he’d ever experienced.

But Valdo didn’t kiss him back. Valdo pushed him away, in horror. And he told everybody, the rumours flying till they got so loud even his parents heard.

When they told Jaskier that they’d found a place that could help him, he’d been so grateful. He’d had plenty of time to repent by then, to forget the joy, or at least to acknowledge that that was how temptation worked. He wanted to be helped. He didn’t know what they meant was they would carve pieces of him away until he was no longer the person he’d been, until he was smaller, broken.

But then he was already broken, had been born broken, and no matter how hard they tried, it seemed like he could not be cured. So in the end he lied, to them, to himself, forced himself to be small and safe and good. Anything to make it stop.

And it was working. He had been all right, he was doing better, he was controlling it.

Till he met Geralt. It was like a dam breaking; all those feelings rising in him again, stronger than they’d ever been before. And he liked it, which was how he knew there was no hope for him.

He feels it when Rience returns, standing over him, as if his shadow is something tangible. He rolls over and Rience touches his shoulder. “Julian? You need to come with me, now.”

And Jaskier, numb, obeys.

They drive. Rience doesn’t talk, and Jaskier’s grateful for it, for a couple of hours of grace.

He leans his head against the window and stares unseeing at the houses and fields going by. It doesn’t seem possible that it’s still the same day as it was when Geralt drove him home. He had been mad, then. He had struggled so hard with his feelings for Geralt – gruff, handsome, thoughtful, kind Geralt. He looked forward to Thursdays like a thirsty man looks forward to water, partly because Fiona was delightful compared to some of the other kids he taught, but mostly because of Geralt, those five minutes of conversation with someone who looked at him and didn’t seem to see there was something wrong with him.

He said no to the dinner invitation, of course, because he couldn’t risk getting closer – the closer he got, the worse he felt because Geralt had no idea that Jaskier liked him in a way he shouldn’t. And he knew his self-control wasn’t strong enough to keep him safe for more than five minutes. But watching Fiona didn’t seem like an issue, so he said yes to that.

And then Geralt got hurt, and Fiona got hysterical, and he found himself watching Geralt sleep, not like a pervert, but because he wasn’t sure if Geralt was going to be okay. And then Geralt woke up and trusted him, and Jaskier thought, happily, that maybe he could do this, just have a friend, leave it there.

But on the drive home Geralt made it very clear he didn’t see Jaskier as a friend at all, which hurt. And because he was hurt, when Geralt touched him, he’d been weak again, wanting more than just a touch.

And now here he is. And it’s for the best. Everyone is trying so hard to help him, he ought to be grateful.

From experience, he knows that if he keeps telling himself that, eventually he’ll start to believe it.

The centre is somewhere between two and three hours outside of Oxenfurt, set in spacious grounds; when he sees it Jaskier remembers just how rich the church is, and also how much his parents must be paying, and how disappointed they must be that the first time wasn’t enough. Rience pulls up in the parking lot to the side, takes Jaskier’s bag from the trunk and carries it in for him, his other hand on Jaskier’s shoulder, steering him. He can feel the press of it through his shirt, like a brand, searing.

“I guess you won’t need reminding of the rules,” Rience says as Jaskier is signing his name in the residents’ book, focussing on carefully shaping the ups and downs of the letters. He shakes his head, and Rience continues, “So we’ll see each other after dinner for the first group session, all right? You’re in room 4, up and to the right.”

Room 4 is identical to room 10, the one he had before: a single bed with good quality linen, a window that only opens a couple of inches, a bedside table and a narrow wardrobe with a few drawers inside. The bathroom will be down the hall a ways.

He closes the door – no lock on it, there are no locks on any of the doors except the ones leading outside and the one to the basement – and unpacks. He realises that Erich and Rience between them have made sure to only bring his most sombre clothing, which is just fucking typical. Like a flash of colour runs the risk of making his… proclivities worse.

Dinner is served at six, ten minutes from now, so instead of doing what he wants to, which is crying, he finds the bathroom, splashes cold water on his face, and heads down to the canteen.

He’s one of five or so this time. Last time – when he was there for two months, because he resisted the treatment – it shifted from four to ten residents, and another twenty or so people who came for sessions during the evenings and weekends, like they needed continual reinforcement. Sometimes those occasional visitors would disappear and other people in the group would whisper about how they were lost, now. And Jaskier would think, maybe, actually, they were free.

But that was in the middle – after he realised there was no cure for him, and before he prayed desperately for that not to be true.

No one talks much over dinner. They encourage everyone to share in the sessions, but not to make friends outside them. Jaskier’s pretty sure they don’t trust them not to, like, have an orgy or something, which even he knows is stupid. People like him aren’t completely indiscriminate even if they do have less control over their urges than normal people. He would never dream of kissing Karl, for instance.

The other residents are all white, mostly around his age – there’s a scared kid who could be under eighteen, and someone maybe a little closer to thirty – but Rience has said before that they mostly treat teenagers and university students, who are still just about young enough to be saved.

After dinner, they go into one of the study rooms, sit in a half circle with Rience at the centre. “Welcome, everybody,” he says, and they murmur back. Rience prays, for guidance, for strength. Jaskier sits staring at his lap. He doesn’t really believe that there’s a higher power any more. Or at least he doesn’t believe that the gods care much about people, or they wouldn’t let people like Jaskier happen.

“Julian,” says Rience, and he lifts his head up. “Why don’t you introduce yourself.”

“Um,” he says. “Hi, everyone. I’m Julian, I also go by Jaskier, I’m studying for a post-grad in music at the university at Oxenfurt.”

“And?” Rience prompts. “Tell them why you’re here.”

“So, I, uh.” He stops. He feels a sudden desire to run. This is his business, he doesn’t want to share it. But withholding things is a sign that more intervention is needed, so he forces himself through it. “I was here a while back and it really helped, but. Back at college, there’s a lot of. Temptation. I was tempted.” Rience smiles at him encouragingly. “So my housemates – I live in church housing – they could see I was having trouble so they spoke with my pastor and my parents, and now, here I am!” He swallows. “And I’m grateful,” he says, and the worst thing is that part of him is.

“Tell us about being tempted,” Rience says.

Jaskier stares at him, flushing, looks round the room. No one will meet his eye, no doubt relieved they’re not in the spotlight. “I don’t see—”

“Julian, you have to trust in the process,” Rience reminds him. “I know it’s upsetting but you have to confront your urges so you can move past them.”

He closes his eyes. Just get through this, he tells himself. Lie. Get out of here, and you can go back to managing your own risks, in your own way. There’s no music allowed at the centre, because nothing is allowed that might bring any joy; it almost drove him mad last time, or maybe it did drive him mad. He can’t entirely remember what he was like before those two months – he knows he was unhappy, a lot – but he thinks he was better, too. More creative. More of a person.

“I was tutoring this kid,” he says. “And her father… He was… I don’t know. He was nice. Mid-forties maybe and he was already grey but he worked out, and he was quiet, and you could tell he was a good dad.” He blinks, determined not to cry. “I liked him.”

“It’s a common theme,” Rience says, “that what you’re looking for really is a better connection with a father figure, that your childhood didn’t give you the love that you were looking for, and so you search for it elsewhere, in perverted ways. So for Julian, this—” He looks at Jaskier expectantly and Jaskier supplies:

“Geralt.”

“This Geralt—” he says, and then stops, staring at Jaskier like he’s said something either obscene or miraculous. “Geralt,” he repeats, softly, almost to himself. “With grey hair. And a daughter.”

The group shifts, unsettled. Rience shakes his head, re-engages. “This Geralt,” he continues, “is a representation of the father figure Julian needs, but as Julian is no longer a child, the feelings come out twisted…”

The others seem to be listening attentively. Jaskier realises two things, almost detachedly, that he feels like he ought to have realised before. Firstly, this is bullshit. He knows how he feels about his father, okay, and Rience isn’t wrong, it’s always been perfectly clear that his dad is disappointed in him, that he wishes Jaskier was different. But that has nothing to do with his feelings about Geralt, or the rugby centre forward at school, or even fucking Valdo. There’s no world in which the two things are connected.

And secondly, even more shockingly, Rience is enjoying himself. He likes making them uncomfortable, humiliating them, forcing them to share things that ought to be private. His gwent face is excellent but Jaskier can still see it. Perhaps he was too invested last time, and then too messed up, but it’s so clear now. Rience likes watching them break.

He has to get out of here. He has to persuade them he’s better so he can leave before they crush him. He doesn’t think he can survive this a second time.

When he looks up, Rience is watching him, and Jaskier is for some reason deeply and suddenly afraid.

After a hundred years, the session ends. Jaskier goes upstairs, cleans his teeth, gets changed, goes to bed, fails to sleep.

It’s still early – lights out is at half nine, morning worship at half six – and despite not getting any sleep last night he spent most of the day in bed, so his cycle is totally ruined. But there’s no light he can turn on, and they took his phone, and he can’t risk leaving the room. So instead he lies there and wonders whether it would be better to try and run, or to fake compliance until they let him leave. The problem with the former is he has literally no idea what he would do next – his parents wouldn’t welcome him home; he couldn’t go back to the Eternal Fire university residence; Essi would probably let him stay on her sofa for a while but he’d be penniless, his parents would stop paying his fees…

He cuts the thoughts off before they spiral out of control. He’ll give it a day or so before he does anything drastic. He knows how to play the game, now; it worked last time, maybe he can get out of here within a week, and he can manage a week, right?

It’s deep into the night, but he’s still awake, and so he hears the footsteps coming down the corridor. He sees the door to his room start to open, a dim glow coming in from the emergency lighting outside.

Someone steps in. They stand over Jaskier’s bed and mutter something, and Jaskier, who was pretending to sleep, finds himself opening his eyes.

Rience is looking down at him, fully dressed. He says something else, something Jaskier can’t quite grasp, the words almost seeming to caress the air as they fall from Rience’s lips.

The world wavers, then settles with a high-pitched hum ringing in his ears. And Jaskier stands up, starts walking, following Rience out of his room and down the main stairs – past reception, where the night watchman is asleep face down on the desk – until they stop at the door that hides the steps down to the basement.

Up until that point he hasn’t even wondered what he’s doing. Everything has felt far away, relaxed, like it’s a dream, and with dream logic he hasn’t thought to question it. But the sight of that door – nondescript, plain white, keyhole under the knob – breaks through whatever spell he’s under and he freezes.

Rience turns from unlocking the door, and his face twists into a snarl when he sees Jaskier standing there unmoving. He says something else, and Jaskier is aware enough now to understand it’s in a language he doesn’t know, and that the words seem to land on him like a heavy weight. He staggers, and then Rience’s hand is grasping the front of the T-shirt he was sleeping in and pulling at him, and while he’s not as out of it as he was he still can’t stop himself from obediently walking down the stairs and into the hell waiting below.

It doesn’t look like anything. That’s almost the worst of it. It’s just a long, narrow room; a projector screen at one end; a few chairs dotted around. But on one side is a white sink, scrubbed clean, a locked cabinet below where they keep the medicine. And next to that is the machine, cables and electrodes neatly coiled on top of it.

Jaskier starts shaking and cannot stop and yet, still, he is walking, like the words Rience spoke are chains dragging him further into the room. He tries to open his mouth and finds his teeth clenched together, tries to resist and his muscles only shake harder.

He ends up by one of the chairs closest to the sink and falls into it, legs giving way. Rience pulls up a chair opposite him, stares at him awhile, while Jaskier tries, tries and fails, to take a breath deep enough to let him cry for help.

Eventually Rience waves a hand and the terrible weight on Jaskier’s chest, the pressure keeping his mouth closed, both lift. He clears his throat, and says in a voice that hardly sounds human, “was that magic?”

Rience smiles. “And what would you know of magic, church-raised mundane that you are?” His teeth look sharp in the room’s bright light. “Has Geralt of Rivia been telling tales?”

“Geralt – of—” It’s not the kind of name anyone has nowadays, redolent of the myths and legends that Jaskier used to love as a child. Geralt No-Last-Name, he thinks, and nearly laughs. Geralt of Rivia, the witcher.

“A prematurely grey-haired man, well-built, with a daughter, hiding out in an Oxenfurt suburb… How bizarre that someone like you should somehow stumble across one of the most wanted men in the Continent.” He eyes Jaskier’s no doubt open-mouthed and dumb-struck face and sighs. “Keep up, Julian. You’re going to tell me where the witcher is.”

Jaskier shifts in his chair. “You’re a mage,” he says. “The Eternal Fire hates mages.”

“I am, and they do. What better place to hide out, eh? The last place anyone would think of looking.” He seems smugly pleased.

Jaskier’s thoughts are sluggish, but he’s not stupid; he’s slowly starting to put things together. “You’re in trouble,” he says. “You think finding Geralt will help.”

“I think you, my dear, are my passport back to riches. Maybe even a palace position once the prince minister gets involved. So I wouldn’t try my patience. There’s a lot at stake.” He holds a hand in front of Jaskier’s face, and with a click of his fingers there’s a fire burning, inches from Jaskier’s eyes. He tries to recoil, but finds his body still inert, unmoving. He’s not tied down, but it doesn’t make any difference; somehow Rience is keeping him there.

“Can’t you,” he pants, “can’t you just read my mind or something?”

“That’s delicate magic,” Rience says. “You don’t want to end up a vegetable, do you? Besides.” He smiles wider, waves his hand, his eyes gleeful where they reflect the flame. “My way is more fun.”

“You enjoy this,” Jaskier says. “This… it’s torture. And you like it. When I tell—”

Rience shifts back on his chair, closes his fist to extinguish the flame. “Who will you tell, Julian? Who do you think would believe a faggot like you over a respectable man like me?” He leans forward again, presses a hand between Jaskier’s thighs, presses down till his genitals ache. “You should count yourself lucky. Fifty years ago we used to cut the balls off people like you. A hundred years ago I’d have burned you in the street. Now it’s all fucking talking and the odd bit of aversion therapy. Still, I make do.”

“You don’t even,” Jaskier says, tears in his eyes because in the end this is the worst part, this is going to be the part that hurts the most, “believe in it, do you. You don’t even think you’re helping.”

“There’s nothing to help, you moron,” Rience says. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Though fortunately your church disagrees, and pays me well to try and fix you, with all my little toys and tricks.”

Jaskier squeezes his eyes shut, feels water seep out between his lashes, and the next thing he knows there’s a sudden sharp pain in his cheek and his head hits the back of the chair. The surprise of the slap makes him bite down, and his mouth fills with the metallic taste of blood.

“Now,” Rience says, “if you’ve quite finished whining, back to the question at hand. Geralt of Rivia. Where is he?”

“I’m not telling you,” Jaskier says. If he can just hold on. It will be morning at some point. Rience will have to stop at some point. He’s the centre’s director. He’ll be missed, even if Jaskier isn’t.

Rience smiles again. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

He starts – small, Jaskier supposes. Hands on. Punches and slaps that hurt, that make him feel skittish, but don’t actually do any damage, just wind up his fear till his heart rabbits in his chest. He bites down on his lip, keeps his mouth closed. Thinks of Geralt, the way he turns up his mouth in a cautious motion that’s not quite a grin when Jaskier says something funny. Thinks of Fiona, bent over her guitar, fingers stretched to play a chord, the triumphant look on her face when she gets it right. Jaskier’s lived a nothing sort of life, really: he’s never been anywhere, he’s never risked anything, but maybe it was all leading to this moment when he’d have a chance at last to be strong.

It seems odd, to Jaskier, that Rience doesn’t use the machine, with its discreet little wires and electrodes. Maybe it’s because it’s designed not to truly hurt, just to shock, and so it’s not enough for him. Or he doesn’t understand the power it wields, despite all his experience. Because Jaskier knows if he made a move towards it he’s not sure he could hold out, and so he is pathetically grateful that he never does, that instead he calls forth the fire at his fingertip and brushes it against Jaskier’s arms, the fingers of his left hand, till the flesh cracks and turns red.

It hurts, it hurts so much, he can’t stop himself from screaming, but it’s a different kind of pain from what he’s used to in this room, dull and deep rather than sharp, and somehow, stubbornly, he’s holding on. And in front of him Rience is sweating – perhaps it’s possible to over-exert yourself, with magic, Jaskier thinks wildly. Because Rience is holding him still, and he must have made the night watchman fall asleep, and he must be making sure no one can hear Jaskier screaming, and there’s the fire – that’s got to take effort, right? That’s got to get too much?

After a lifetime, or at least that’s how it feels, Rience rocks back. His eyes are slightly bloodshot. “I’m starting to get bored, boy.”

“Fuck you,” Jaskier dribbles, blood and saliva falling from his mouth in long strands.

Rience stands up, pacing. Jaskier breathes, snatching air, again, again, from a bruised chest that hurts to move. “I don’t have time for this.” And then, suddenly, he laughs. “Oh, I’m being such a fool,” he says brightly. He walks back to Jaskier, pats him on the head. “You just stay there a minute.”

He leaves the room. Jaskier stares muzzily after him. The world’s going wavy at the edges, but before he can pass out, Rience is back, holding something, shiny, squarish, and Jaskier’s heart sinks. It’s his phone. Rience has his phone.

“There I am, reverting to the old ways and forgetting what century we live in,” Rience says. He presses Jaskier’s thumb to the lockscreen, and like a traitor, despite the blood on his skin, it opens.

He blocked Geralt, but he didn’t delete his messages. But then why the hell would he? It’s not like he could have foreseen any of this.

“Let’s see,” Rience says. “You were at his last night, weren’t you.” He hums as he scrolls. “Ah, yes, a babysitting request for the princess.”

Princess? Jaskier thinks.

“You do live a boring life,” Rience says. “Dinner invitation declined, well done, Julian, you didn’t want to risk an evening with a hot witcher, I suppose. Scheduling, scheduling, wait, here we are. Address.”

Jaskier closes his eyes, all his energy gone. There wasn’t even any point in being brave.

He can hear Rience moving away, his clothes rustling. And then he’s talking again, he must have made a call. “Yes, I know what time it is. Oh, stop complaining. Listen. You’ll never guess what. One of my patients—” Jaskier winces at the derisive tone— “has been tutoring the last Riannon, it turns out.”

There’s a gabble of excited noise on the other end of the line.

“I know!” Rience says, high-pitched, jubilant. “Yes, I know where. She’s with the witcher. So we’ll need backup. Can you— Yes, good, all right, see you then.” He disconnects, and then Jaskier feels a hand in his hair, his head being tugged back. He blinks and gazes into Rience’s smug, satisfied face, and spits a bloody globule up onto his cheek.

“I’ll forgive you that,” Rience says, wiping it away, then wiping his hand on Jaskier’s T-shirt. “Someone will find you in the morning, probably, but by then I’ll be long gone. Off to make my fortune.” He giggles, and for the first time Jaskier hears the underlying insanity in his voice. “Goodbye, Julian.” He presses a kiss into Jaskier’s hair. “You can go back to your tiny little life now.”

He vanishes out of Jaskier’s sight. The light goes off. The door closes. The key turns in the lock.

For a long while, he finds himself immobile. Then, something in the air shifts, and he realises he can move again. Distance, or Rience let go of the spell, who knows which.

He tries to stand, but his legs give way, and he lands with a thud on the cold tile. Briefly he wonders about giving up, despairing: what can he do, after all, with his tiny little life?

You can warn them, he thinks. Rience talked about backup; he wouldn’t want to go after Geralt on his own. That’ll take time. There’s maybe enough time for Jaskier to get there first. But no time to lose. He can’t wait till someone thinks to unlock the basement door; when Rience is nowhere to be found in the morning there’ll be panic, no one will know what to do.

He rolls over. It’s almost pitch black, and he’s glad, because if he had to look at the sterile blank room where he was broken, over and over, he’s not sure he’d have the strength to move.

There’s a faint glow coming from over by the sink. A grate, he realises, set high up. For air. Maybe it’s a way out.

He forces himself on to his knees, and then crawls – too light-headed to think of standing yet – to where the light comes in. There’s just enough for him to see the grate, square in the wall. It’s not huge, but it might work. If he can get up there.

The sink should take his weight, but his hand… He stops to think a moment and then pulls a chair over to the sink, the rough edge of it rubbing against his burns on his left hand and making him cry out. But it’s not as bad as he feared, his fingers are clumsy but he can move them, grip things even though it makes the tender flesh send stabbing pain through him.

He manages to climb on the chair to look at the grate, which is held in by loose rusting screws. With his good hand, he gets a purchase and starts to twist.

It takes an age but all he has is this one thing to focus on, fumbling and swearing and finally, finally, the grate comes loose. He’s broad in the shoulders but he thinks there might, just, be enough room. He clambers into the sink, which creaks a little, and gets his arms up into the hole to start to pull himself out.

When he finally makes it through he has to lie on the ground for a while, staring up at the clear night sky, the sprinkling of stars. There’s a brighter edge of sky in the east where, at some point, the sun will start to rise. It’s fucking freezing, and he’s dressed in just a T-shirt and loose pyjama bottoms, no shoes. And, he thinks distantly, as if he’s thinking about someone else’s problems, he’s not had any sleep and is in a ton of pain and probably in shock.

But it’s not like he has a choice. Geralt and Fiona are in danger because of him.

He starts walking.

Chapter Text

It’s been a long time since she’s seen Geralt like this: this desperate, this unsettled. In the early days of their acquaintance, while she suspected his stoic facade was covering up all sorts of uncertainty, he’d been living the same way for so long that he let very little of himself show through his layers of armour.

She had peeled the layers away piece by piece over the years, not always kindly. But she still rarely saw him at a loss. In fact, before now, she can think of only once: the night he realised he was the last one left who could protect Ciri, and what that meant.

And now this Jaskier has got under his skin. A hundred years ago, when Yennefer was a more possessive type – always looking for what she wanted and how to take it, never satisfied with what she had – she would probably have hated him, this ridiculously young mortal she’s never met. But while she’s not much less possessive, she is so certain of Geralt that she doesn’t mind sharing him; no one can make him any less hers.

Geralt spends nearly ten minutes agonising over what to say in his text messages; he looks like a lovelorn fool and while she knows this is serious, she still takes a moment to find it cute. That done, he goes to rouse Ciri, and she heads to the kitchen to make breakfast. Only to find herself, not long after, with an armful of affectionate and slightly teary twelve-year-old.

“Mama! You’re here!”

“Morning, duckling,” she says, resolutely ignoring the way her heart swells at mama. “You want magic pancakes or real ones?”

“Real ones please,” Ciri says. “Magic ones don’t keep me full till lunch, it’s like my body knows they’re not real.” She goes to sit at the bar.

“They’re the same at the atomic level,” Yennefer says mildly, and Ciri groans.

“It’s too early for a lecture, Yennefer.”

“Fine.” While she’s mixing batter and then burning pancakes, she keeps an eye on her daughter. Something’s still bothering her. When she slides the plate with the stack of slightly frazzled food over, she says, “no syrup until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“Mu-um,” Ciri complains. Yennefer raises an eyebrow, waits for her to crack. “Is… is Dad all right?”

She wasn’t expecting that. “Geralt? Geralt’s fine. Takes more than a drowner to bother him.” A deal’s a deal: she gets the syrup out of the cupboard and watches as Ciri upends it.

“He was hurt though,” Ciri says. “And now you’re here. Usually that means he was hurt worse than he let on.”

“That’s fair,” Yennefer allows. “But no, he wasn’t hurt that badly. I just missed you both, that’s all.”

“I thought you had to go to a conference.”

“I did, but it was boring. So I decided to come here instead.”

Ciri beams. “Can I do that with school?”

“No you may not, because you are a child, and therefore you don’t get to make your own choices.” She ruffles her child’s hair. “Unless they’re fun ones that I agree with.”

She and Geralt decided earlier not to alarm Ciri till they knew more. They’ll tell her, either way – Geralt is determined not to lie to her, and Yennefer can see why, and tends to agree with him – but they’re going to wait till the evening in the hope that by then they’ll have a plan.

“Finish your pancakes,” she says. “Then Geralt will take you to school” – and sit outside it till it’s time to pick you up, she doesn’t say – “and tonight we’ll all hang out together. Sound good?”

“The best!” Ciri says, and races away to get ready.

Once the two of them have gone, Yennefer sighs, metaphorically rolls up her sleeves (the shirt she’s wearing cost two hundred crowns, she’s not going to wrinkle it) and starts going over all the research she put together two months ago. Aretuza would break every rule every country has in place for educational establishments these days, but there’s no denying it taught its students to be methodical: everything is still saved and sorted neatly.

She doesn’t find anything implying that Jaskier aka Julian Alfred Pankratz is a zealot successfully hiding his zealotry. He never mentions religion – his social media is mostly random photos, reblogs of other musicians (he has very strong opinions about very specific musical techniques that mean nothing to her), and very occasionally a video of him playing a wide range of instruments, though again Yennefer has no idea if he’s doing covers or original work.

The problem with being a mage in the modern world, Yennefer thinks sourly to herself, is that no one has figured out how to effectively blend magic with technology. If she could just reach into the internet and find out what she wanted to know with a few well-chosen words in Elder, her life would be so much easier. Instead she has to rely on Scryer, like everyone else, rather than scrying, which only a few people can do.

She sighs and Scries “Pankratz+Eternal Fire” in case that leads anywhere. And is vaguely surprised that it does, though the Pankratz in question appears to be Jaskier’s father, an unsmiling man with the same eyes and hair. Various local newsfeeds from the small town of Lettenhove report on various dull functions that he’s presided over, or church fundraisers he’s orchestrated. One photo shows him surrounded by his family; Yennefer spots a gangly, pimply Jaskier, who looks both uncomfortable and desperately bored.

So maybe it’s just a family thing. Jaskier wouldn’t be the first to continue to pay lip service to a parent’s beliefs rather than risk getting cut off, whether or not you agree with them. Geralt is a bit like that with Vesemir, who still thinks the decision to raise Ciri is an amusing mistake Geralt will get over in time. Yennefer can imagine a situation where dour Alfred Pankratz agreed to fund his son’s frivolous post-grad on condition Jaskier lived somewhere respectable and rule-bound.

The thought prompts an itch at the back of her brain. She prods at it, and realises it’s about the frivolous post-grad. She didn’t go so far as to work out a timeline of Jaskier’s life when she was doing her initial research; that would have been obsessive and unnecessary when what she was looking for was any red flags – arrests, or connections to any far-right Nilfgaardian federalist groups, or what have you. But now it strikes her as odd that Jaskier is twenty-three, but has only just started the post-grad. She doesn’t remember finding any employment records or other signs of activity in the year between his graduation from Cintra and his arrival at Oxenfurt earlier this autumn.

Yennefer falls down something of a rabbit hole at this point, and emerges confused and slightly irritated at not spotting the gap – perhaps even more annoyed than she was when she realised she’d failed to check where Jaskier actually lived. Because the anomaly is even more obvious, when you start to look.

Between the end of the summer after he graduated, and the start of his post-grad a year later, there is no evidence Jaskier did anything. He didn’t post anything, or get tagged in anyone else’s posts. He didn’t have a job or an alternate address. She hits up one of her contacts, who does something terribly dull in federal admin and has access to all sorts of databases, who gets back to her an hour or so later with confirmation that there’s no record of him using his ID for any interstate or international travel.

So where was he, all that time?

When Geralt gets home, she fills him in on her research while Ciri does homework in the other room.

“So,” she concludes, leaning against the kitchen sink while behind her the dishes wash themselves, “I’m going to try and figure out what happened last year. If it wasn’t for that, I’d say that the fact he lives in an Eternal Fire frat house shouldn’t be held against him. There’s no sign he was ever invested in it, though I’m sure his father made him join a Kindling cadre when he was a teenager and do all those stupid outdoor things people get nostalgic about.”

Geralt doesn’t move from stirring the tomato sauce for tonight’s dinner. Yennefer suggested takeout but Geralt has this thing about vegetables and healthy diets since he became a father, which is ironic, given how he ate when she first met him. All he says is, “Hmmm.” He’s at his most monosyllabic, as always happens when he’s anxious or upset. She dips into his mind, and learns that what he is thinking is, in fact, I like outdoor things.

“You’re actually not that worried, are you,” Yennefer says. “You don’t think there’s anything to find.”

“I’ve been wrong before,” Geralt says slowly. “I want to be sure. But… I’ve met him, Yenn, and he’s either the best actor I’ve ever met, or he is what he seems to be.”

“Plus the wards let him through,” Yennefer says. “And you were right, back at the start, if this is a plot it’s an extremely chancy one: it relies on you having seen the notice, Ciri deciding she wanted to play guitar, and months of getting close to her before… what? If someone found us, they’d likely just try and snatch her from school. I know Emhyr’s not that subtle.”

“And he had the chance, last night,” Geralt says. “I was thinking about that. I was out, and then I was injured. He could have taken Ciri then.”

“So either this is a weirdly long game, or he’s a plant but he doesn’t know it, or… We are hyper-vigilant paranoiacs.”

“With reason,” Geralt says. He leaves the stove and walks over to embrace her, stroking the length of her hair as she leans into his chest.

“Do you want to tell Ciri?” Yennefer asks.

“The next guitar lesson is meant to be tomorrow,” Geralt says. “We’ll have to tell her then, if he’s not coming. But why don’t you take one more day to dig, and we’ll decide after that.”

She knows that he’s putting off upsetting Ciri; the poor child has had so much taken from her that even the lack of a tutor once a week will be a blow. And perhaps, also, he’s holding out hope that he wasn’t wrong to like Jaskier. Geralt’s trust is hard-won, which makes its loss significant too. But after a full day of poking at the life of Julian Alfred Pankratz, Yennefer is inclined to be hopeful that neither he nor Ciri will be disappointed. A foolish hope, but she lets herself indulge in those, occasionally.

“All right,” she says. And then, reaching up to tug at his hair, “you’ve turned me soft, young man.”

“I’m sorry, old lady,” he tells her, and she can feel the curve of his smile against her head.

The following day is a repeat of the previous one. Geralt takes Ciri to school and stays to guard her. Yennefer spends several fruitless hours trying to get in touch with anyone who might have answers about Jaskier’s missing year. She is wary of starting with his parents – they must know, but she isn’t convinced they’d tell her, and she doesn’t have time to track them down and read their minds. And Jaskier doesn’t seem to have friends, from what she can see: he has some followers online, but no one he regularly interacts with, from home or from university.

The best option she finds is someone called Essi, who features in some of his photos and apparently studies alongside him. But like a sensible young woman, her phone number isn’t online and her social media is fairly locked down. Yennefer calls the university music department and asks them to have Essi call her but she doesn’t hold out much hope of a reply; her message was vague enough to just sound weird.

The first mage who works out how to pull mobile numbers from the aether is going to make so much money. Maybe Yennefer should add that to the list of research projects she likes to pretend she’ll get around to one day.

Her head is hurting. She needs water, and a break. She heads to the kitchen to get some, and stops to investigate what there is to snack on (just vegetables, for fuck’s sake, Geralt). She’s trying to decide whether she will stoop to a raw carrot when the doorbell rings.

The wards haven’t so much as twitched. It must be the postman, though the address isn’t listed and all they ever get is junk. Or a neighbour perhaps.

Well, she did want a break. She goes to answer it.

It’s not the postman. For a moment she doesn’t even register who it is, because they’re no longer standing at the door, but leaning drunkenly against the wall next to it. And then, “Jaskier?” she asks, with a level of surprise that she feels instantly ashamed of; nothing is allowed to surprise Yennefer of Vengerburg.

Jaskier blinks. Exhaustion comes off him in waves; his eyes are half-lidded, his whole body trembling. One of his cheeks is swollen with a ripening bruise, and his arms are clutched around himself in a useless attempt to keep warm given the bitter chill. There are muddy footprints leading up the path, and when she looks down she sees that his feet are bare and bloodied. He looks like he’s been walking all night, and given what he’s wearing, that might well be the case.

“Mrs… Geralt?” Jaskier says. His voice scrapes. “I’m sorry. I had to—”

And then his words peter out entirely, and he’s falling so fast she barely manages to rearrange the air to cushion his landing.

The first thing she does is transport his unconscious body to the sofa, looking quickly about her to check that the street is quiet. As far as she can tell, there’s no one to see, and if anyone asks Geralt later he can axii them into forgetting.

The second thing she does is think Geralt!! very loudly. The connection between them bursts into panicked life: fear, anger, pain – and so she projects calm emotions till he settles. When his feelings are pushing against her brain, it’s very hard to focus enough to make her message clear.

When Geralt’s relaxed a little and she has the mental space, she presses her wish into his head: Get Ciri. Come home. She’d convey that Jaskier is here, if she could, but that’s too complex, compared to the feel of their daughter and their home, which Geralt will easily recognise. She registers his understanding and agreement, then swiftly closes down their bond despite how reassuring she finds it. There might be a lot more effort needed from her today and she can’t waste any of it on self-indulgence.

She looks down at the prone form on the sofa, and for a moment doesn’t know where to start. His left arm, now splayed at his side, looks worst: inflamed red skin, broken blisters covered in mud. He is completely filthy, like he’s fallen onto damp soil more than once.

Gritting her teeth, she vanishes the dirt, casting it out into the backyard. Once it’s gone, she can see more clearly what she has to contend with: burns on his arms; bruises on his face and torso when she raises the T-shirt to look; scrapes on much of his exposed skin; cuts, bruises and more blisters on his feet. She’s not a natural healer, but she can do a little, and fortunately Geralt has a cabinet well-stocked with both her remedies and mundane medicines.

She focuses on the burns and the damage to his feet, nudging away the infection, encouraging the skin to knit and heal. Once that’s done, she collects antiseptic and her salves and gently starts to dab them on the hurts that remain.

Jaskier starts to stir as she’s working on his feet so she retreats a little in case he panics. He blinks those pretty blue eyes Geralt is so fond of, and she watches them widen in confusion and then, as he hurriedly sits up, fear.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s all right.”

“You’re a mage,” he whispers, looking down at his healed wounds, and she realises that he is frightened of her as herself, rather than as a jealous wife. For some reason, she finds this oddly cheering.

“I am, but I’m a good one,” she assures him – and if he takes it to mean virtuous instead of skilled that’s his lookout. “I’m guessing from the state of you that you ran into a bad one.”

“Yes, I – fuck.” He starts to tremble, sinking back on to the sofa. “It’s my fault, he knows where Geralt lives, he took my phone—”

“Who is he?” Yennefer asks, sharp, and regrets it when Jaskier blanches. Aretuza was too good at training mages to be intimidating; she’s never really lost the knack. She holds her hands out soothingly, and sits down in the chair opposite him. “I’m sorry, I’m just worried. My name is Yennefer. Geralt’s on his way. Can you tell me who hurt you?”

He pants in and out, a few shaky breaths, and then says, “Rience. His name is Rience.”

Motherfucker. It can’t be the same one, can it? Surely not, after all these years? “Jaskier,” she says, as gently as her nature allows, “I think I know who you mean, but will you let me check? Can you picture him as clearly as possible in your mind, so I can see him?”

His mouth gapes a little in surprise and she holds on as best she can to her patience. He’s very young, and he’s been thrust headfirst into a world he had no idea existed; she crosses her hands in her lap, fingers touching her wrists, and waits.

“You can do that?” He’s smiling a little. “That’s so cool.” He closes his eyes. “All right—”

She’s already sliding into his head to see a dark-haired man she recognises from a century ago, his hair curling around his collar, a sickly, compassionate smile on his face, and she’s about to back away when the memory swirls and grows, like a tidal wave, pulling her down, pulling her under.

“Please don’t,” she says, but it’s not her voice; it’s Jaskier’s voice, but she’s in his body, trapped, motionless. She’s sitting in a chair and Rience is sitting by her side, his fingers resting on a machine on the floor between them. There are cables leading from it and circling round her wrist, an electrode taped to the back of her hand.

“Look at the picture, Julian,” Rience says, softly, patiently, and she looks down at her lap to see a photo of two men embracing, locked together in a kiss; and then there’s a flash of pain and a swell of nausea that throws her back, back into her own body and—

“Get out of my head!” Jaskier is begging, his hands tugging at his hair; he’s slid off the sofa onto his knees, doubled over; she feels a phantom sickness in her gut.

“I’m out!” she says, “Jaskier, I’m out, I’m so sorry, what was that—”

She’s starting to see parts of a puzzle coming together and she doesn’t like it, she doesn’t like it at all. Because Aretuza was a hell that nearly broke her but at least it never pretended to be anything other than what it was. And she knows how many different ways humans have found to torment each other, and sometimes the worst are the ones they pretend are kind.

Jaskier curls up over himself and sobs; and of course that’s when the front door slams open and Geralt’s thudding footsteps race down the corridor and stop when he sees them.

“Yennefer?” he says; and behind him Ciri says, “Jaskier?” and Yennefer forgets herself and snaps, “Ciri, not now!” and Jaskier lifts a tear-stained face and says, “Ciri? Like the…” before his expression twists and he goes on, quiet and wondering, “like the princess?”

The silence that follows is so heavy it seems to ring in Yennefer’s ears. She takes a deep breath.

“Right,” she says. “Let’s start again. I think it’s time for some proper introductions.”

Chapter Text

He never entirely remembers how he gets to Geralt’s house. The night must have brightened into day but in his mind it’s all just a blur of dark woods and pain and the sound of his own panting breaths. He remembers falling; he doesn’t remember getting up but he knows he did. He remembers car horns at one point, when he was stumbling along the side of the highway, and that, terrified, he’d pushed through a hedge into the field behind it and stayed there cowering for minutes or hours.

The only clear thing is Yennefer’s face, before he knew her name; her concerned, bright purple eyes; and he felt so guilty, and then he felt nothing at all.

Now, hours later, he still feels numb. But possibly it’s because he’s feeling so many things all at once that they have cancelled each other out and turned into a kind of white noise.

This is what he has learned, since he woke up:

Fiona’s real name is Cirilla. That Cirilla, the lost princess, the one the papers occasionally claim they have found, or whose body they claim has been found, the one they print strange aged-up pictures of on the anniversary of her disappearance. There are always rumours about her still being alive, but Jaskier always dismissed them as clickbait.

Apparently not. Apparently, after her parents died in that ‘sailing accident’ and her grandparents died in that ‘car accident’, she got rescued by Geralt – who is linked to her by the Law of Surprise, which they talk about as if he should know what it means, only he doesn’t – and they’ve been hiding out ever since.

Jaskier’s never paid enough attention to politics to understand quite why the new prince minister, after decades during which the old royal family of Cintra lived quietly without bothering anybody, suddenly decided they were a threat to him. It was all fairly abstract, and his parents and everyone he knew from church approved of the current regime, so he didn’t think much about it all. Now, he’s furious. Who the fuck orders an innocent child to be hunted?

So that’s the main thing. But in explaining all of that Geralt and Yennefer between them kept dropping one bombshell after another. In no particular order, Jaskier has learned that:

1. There is a secret Brotherhood of Mages, which expelled Rience for illegal magic over a hundred years ago.
2. Yennefer, who is a member of the Brotherhood (albeit a reluctant one, from the tone in her voice) knows about this because she was there.
3. Yennefer is over three hundred years old. Geralt is nearly two hundred years old. They have been married (or together, or something) for over a hundred years.
4. They really hate the Church of the Eternal Fire, because the church used to burn people like them alive and some of their friends died.
5. Friends they had over a hundred years ago.
6. Geralt lives in a neat little house in the suburbs and his daughter plays guitar and they are also part of an insane world of magic and violence.
7. Jaskier’s head hurts.

At a certain point during the increasingly complicated explanations, Fiona – Ciri – wanders away, apparently bored. Jaskier is clinging on to his sanity with the tips of his fingers, and the twelve-year-old princess is bored.

What, and Jaskier cannot stress this enough, the fuck.

The weird thing is that he’s not in pain anymore – well, aside from the headache. Yennefer’s magic is good. But it makes it all stranger, because he feels like he should be hurting, should be in shock, and the disconnect between what his mind is telling him and how his body feels is making him… untethered, like this is all a dream, and he’ll wake up in bed, or, worse, in the basement, and the past two days won’t have happened at all.

“Here,” Geralt says, suddenly. Jaskier must have been drifting again, because the room is darker than he remembers, and Yennefer isn’t there any more. Geralt is standing over him, holding out a coffee.

“Thank you,” Jaskier says, taking it. The mug is warm and heavy in his hands, and he concentrates on it for a while, breathing steadily in and out.

Geralt hums to himself and goes over to a wicker hamper next to the armchair. He pulls out a purple blanket, and returns to sit on the sofa next to Jaskier, tucking it round his shoulders and over his lap. “You looked cold.”

“Yeah,” Jaskier says, and runs out of words. He closes his eyes. He imagines leaning against Geralt’s shoulder, but the minute he does he remembers the kiss and jerks away. Then thinks, what does it matter, idiot? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to kiss men. The evil mage who set your arm on fire told you so!

He laughs a little, under his breath.

“What’s funny?” Geralt asks.

“Nothing, really,” Jaskier says. “It’s just been a really weird couple of days.”

“Hmmm,” Geralt says. He puts an arm around Jaskier’s shoulders, carefully. Jaskier tenses at first, but he’s so tired and cold that little by little he relaxes into it, his head tipped back.

He’s almost asleep again when Geralt says, “I need to apologise.”

That makes him lift his head again and turn to look at Geralt’s face. The witcher looks upset, and it makes his heart ache. “What for?”

“When I took you home and saw the Eternal Fire flag, I panicked. I thought you could be a way for the government or the church to get close to us. I didn’t stop to consider whether that made any sense. If I had, I would have known it didn’t. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”

That was why he cancelled the lesson, Jaskier realises, and has to shake his head as if to clear it of everything he’s been afraid of, the last couple of days. It’s like a literal weight off his mind; he finds himself sitting slightly taller. “Well,” he says. “I mean. You don’t really know me.”

Geralt’s eyes crinkle a little. “I think I do,” he says. “I know what I need to.”

Jaskier’s feeling too many feelings again, and the white noise is rising in his ears. “I’m really tired,” he mumbles, and the way it comes out feels like he’s apologising for something as well, and he’s not sure what. But it doesn’t matter: Geralt is moving, taking the mug from his hands, and then Jaskier is lying on his side, the blanket over him, and the last thing he’s aware of are fingers stroking through his hair like he’s a child.

When he wakes up, the room is dark; night has fallen. He lies there for a moment. He can hear Geralt and Ciri talking and moving around next door in the kitchen, accompanied by the clatter of plates.

There’s a low lamp on the table by the armchair where Jaskier waited for Geralt to wake up, two nights back. Yennefer’s sitting there now, reading a book. When Jaskier moves, she looks up at him.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” he says, automatically, then realises he means it. His arm and feet don’t hurt at all anymore, and his headache’s gone away too. “More magic?” he asks, sitting up again gingerly. He’s been lying on the sofa for what seems like hours. He’s starving. And he really needs to pee.

He gets up, glad to find that his legs hold him, and heads towards the toilet in the hall. Yennefer says, “there’s a bathroom at the top of the stairs if you want to take a shower. I left some of Geralt’s spare clothes out, they should fit you, more or less.”

“Oh. Yes. That would be – thank you.” He’s still finding talking hard, like he has to winch each word up from a deep, deep well. It’s so alien to him, normally, but it happened the last time he was in the centre too. That feeling of suffocation, like he had folded himself into a small box and was trapped there, unable to breathe or stretch or think.

In the shower, blissfully hot water pummelling at his back, he thinks of the long months at home, re-learning how to be even a semblance of himself. While his parents tiptoed round him, cautious, but also – and the hurt of this is still raw – in some measure pleased. That he was quiet and biddable and good.

He shakes his head. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, but he’s sure of two things: he’s not going back to his parents’, and he’s not going back to the church house. And while that feels terrifying, like a looming wave about to crash down on his head, the fear is a shadow of the last year and he thinks he might be able, slowly, to step away from it and leave it behind.

But first they have a wizard to fight.

He dresses in Geralt’s clothes – all black, which he’s vain enough to be annoyed about, because black is not his colour – but soft and warm. Geralt’s a little wider than him, but not much taller, so everything fits ok.

When he returns to the sitting room Yennefer looks at him and grins, but not meanly. “Oh dear me, no,” she says. “You look like a sad monk.” She waves a hand and the clothes change colour, the jeans dark blue, the T-shirt a faded rose, the hoodie a deeper red.

“That’s a good trick,” he tells her, sitting back down on the sodding sofa.

“Isn’t it?” She seems satisfied and smug, and he dislikes her, then, for what she has: power, and confidence, and Geralt. Not that he has any claim on Geralt – how the witcher must have laughed at his aborted attempt to kiss him, when he has a love affair that spans a century.

“Listen, Jaskier,” Yennefer says. “Dinner’ll be ready soon, and we need to talk about our plan of defence for when Rience comes but first, I have to… what I saw, when I was in your memory—”

Sickness rolls in his gut; a phantom burst of white light in his head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he grits out.

“You don’t have to,” she says, quietly. “Not till you’re ready, and not with me, either. But I think you should, with someone. And Geralt and I both know more than we should about being hurt by people who thought they were doing the right thing.”

It’s too big to contemplate, just then, the thought of pulling all the mess and pain and guilt and fear up out of his head and seeing it lie there, sticky as tar. Perhaps she knows that, because she sits back with a sigh.

“I just have one more thing to say,” she says, carefully; with such care that he sees abruptly that care is hard for her, and hard-won. “I know you and Geralt kissed, and I want you to understand that that’s okay. Both in terms of wanting to, and doing it.”

Jaskier stares at her open-mouthed, his head staticky again with too many conflicting ideas. “But he’s your husband,” he says eventually.

“We aren’t actually married,” Yennefer says. “But it doesn’t matter; you’re right, in the way that it counts: we love each other, and we always will. That doesn’t mean we can’t love other people. Or sleep with them, in my case, I’m more about the casual fuck. Geralt takes it all a bit more seriously.”

He knows she’s trying to shock him and it works, the tips of his ears going pink. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Just keep it in mind,” she says. “You didn’t do anything wrong, and you don’t have anything to feel guilty about.”

She speaks with such firm conviction that Jaskier feels the foundations of his world shift, just a little. He knows it’s not going to be that easy – even if he wants to unlearn everything he can’t just wave a hand and make it so the way Yennefer maybe could – but just the luxury of doubt feels new, like a door has opened and fresh air is blowing in.

When he looks over at Yennefer, he can see – not pity, she’s clearly not the type to do that or invite it – but something better. Understanding, maybe. Empathy. “It’s going to be all right,” she says, one hand clasped loosely around her other wrist. “You’d be amazed at what people can survive.”

Geralt, Yennefer and Ciri talk over dinner about uncontroversial things: school, Roach, Yennefer’s work (she seems to be some kind of liaison between the world as Jaskier understands it and the world that he’s just discovered exists, resolving difficulties where a human desire has impacted on a non-human need). Jaskier mostly inhales food and lets his mind go blank with a pleasant hum of possibility, maybe, maybe, maybe going round it in a loop.

When they’ve all finished eating, Yennefer shoos Ciri out of the room with tender determination, and Jaskier realises that this is where the bubble of unworried existence bursts. He looks between Yennefer and Geralt’s grim faces and feels himself shrink.

To his surprise, Yennefer just says, “so, Rience has your phone, which means he knows where we live. Presumably he has some allies and it’s taking them a while to get their act together, but if he’s discovered you’re missing, Jaskier, he’ll know he’s lost the element of surprise. So we need to figure out how he might attack and when.”

He swallows. Maybe they’re kind enough to ignore it, but he can’t. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean—”

To his surprise, Geralt reaches across the table and takes his hand. “He tortured you, Jaskier. And you didn’t tell him anything.”

Heat rises in his cheeks, though he doesn’t know why he’s embarrassed. “Well, yes, I suppose.”

“I put you in danger the minute I showed you my face,” Geralt says. “What happened to you was my fault. If anything I should be apologising to you.” He withdraws his hand and nods, like the conversation is over.

“You couldn’t have known that,” Jaskier argues. The thought of blaming Geralt has never crossed his mind; just as, clearly, the thought of blaming him has never crossed Geralt’s. It brings with it a rather heady sense of relief. He feels so guilty about so many things, putting this one burden down is like coming up from deep water and finally taking a breath. “It was just a combination of... bad luck and shit people.”

Yennefer laughs. “That sounds like the story of our lives. We’re always in danger. We barely notice it anymore. And besides, Rience is no match for me, and he doesn’t know I’m here. Geralt and I had an explosive break up three years ago exactly in case something like this happened.”

“Sneaky.”

“Thank you,” she says briskly. “Do you think he does know you got out?”

Jaskier thinks about it. “I’d be surprised, actually,” he says slowly. “The centre was just somewhere for him to hide, I got the impression he was leaving and not looking back. But he was definitely getting help, I heard him talk to someone about backup.”

“Hmm,” Geralt says and he and Yennefer exchange glances. “So it could have got out wide.”

“I think,” Jaskier says, “that getting hold of Ciri was his way back in – to power, or forgiveness, or something. I’d be surprised if he told anyone he didn’t have some sway over.”

“He wouldn’t want the word spreading, in case someone else got in first,” Yennefer agrees. “Well, let’s work on that assumption: he’ll come here, probably after dark, with muscle, or some hedgewitches, or both.”

“We should drop the wards,” Geralt says. Yennefer turns her head sharply.

Jaskier says, “wards sound helpful, though, are you sure we don’t want some?”

Geralt huffs and Jaskier feels a weird happiness despite the seriousness of everything they’re talking about. “Element of surprise,” he says. “He’ll think we’re undefended. He can portal in, and then you can raise them again, stop him getting out.”

“What about Ciri?”

“Vesemir can look after her for a night or two. He’ll be careful. No one will know.”

“It’ll be messy, fighting inside the house,” Yennefer says. “Lots of rooms they can run to, depending on how many of them there are.”

“We’ll still win,” Geralt says blithely, and Yennefer grins sharply at him.

“It’s just blood’s a pain to get out of carpets,” she says. But apparently they are agreed, because they both stand; Geralt disappearing upstairs, Yennefer stacking plates and dishes and taking them over to the sink.

“I can wash up?” Jaskier offers. Yennefer smiles at him, and waves her hand, and everything is suddenly pristine. It’s a clear reminder of how out of his depth he is, how human. Weak again. He says, “I want to stay.”

She stares at him, steadily. “I meant what I said about mess,” she says. “This isn’t your world. There’s no police, hardly even the concept of a fair trial. The Brotherhood would execute Rience, if I handed him over, but they’re interested in Ciri too, so I can’t risk that.”

“You mean you’re going to kill him. Him, them, however many show up.”

“Yes,” Yennefer says. Her eyes are fixed on his. “You don’t have to see that.”

“It’s not that I want to,” Jaskier explains. “I just… I feel responsible. I don’t want to hide, not knowing what’s happening, that would be worse. I need to be here.”

She nods, her face unreadable. And when Geralt comes back downstairs, with a sulky-looking Ciri and a bag of clothes, she tells him, “Jaskier’s staying,” in a tone that allows no argument.

Yennefer tries to explain the wards to him, but it is eerily reminiscent of his old physics classes: at a certain point it all just becomes noise. He understands that she can come and go at will, but no one else can. Understanding that and seeing it is quite different – the whirling circle in the sitting room leading to an entirely different place makes his brain hurt and he has to look away.

Ciri and Yennefer disappear through the spinning hole in fucking space, Ciri with her arms crossed and every inch of her displeased. Geralt opens up a locked cabinet and comes back out with his swords, gleaming and very clearly not decorative, sitting with them resting between his legs, close to hand.

“I hate portals,” he says. “Yenn thinks it’s funny.”

Jaskier sits on the floor, his back to the portal, so he doesn’t have to keep feeling like he’s on a rollercoaster about to swoop downhill. “Who’s Vesemir?”

“Another witcher,” Geralt says. “He raised me. Trained me. Still lives in the old witcher keep; it’s a wreck, but it’s well-guarded. No one will get to Ciri there; it’s probably being watched, but they’ll lie low, stay inside.”

“Geralt…” Jaskier says. “You don’t have to tell me this, but… why do people want Ciri this badly? Why are your family being watched?”

“It’s a long story,” Geralt says.

Jaskier indicates the quiet room, the empty portal. “There’s nothing else to do.”

It’s not even that long of a story when Geralt tells it: as Jaskier has grown used to, Geralt doesn’t waste words. He explains the Law of Surprise, how it used to work, when witchers walked the path in greater numbers and would occasionally get a chick or a dog or whatever the farmer’s wife had bought at market…

Or, sometimes, a child.

But in the modern age, no one asked for it anymore. It was almost a joke, Geralt says, among him and the handful of surviving witchers, a ‘remember when’ kind of story.

He tells Jaskier about the hunt that took him to the park, the scream, the rescue, the claim he made because he thought it would be funny. Jaskier feels like he’s getting the best kind of bedtime story – about kings and queens and star-crossed love affairs – only it’s all real.

And then Geralt explains how Ciri was left alone and undefended and so in the end, he honoured the Law of Surprise and took charge of her. There’s a calm pragmatism in his voice that sits so strangely with ideas of destiny that Jaskier flounders a bit. He’s been raised to believe that everyone is a sinner in need of redemption, and has always half rebelled against the idea of judgement. But Geralt seems to be saying there is such a thing as fate.

Geralt seems to worry the longer he’s silent, raising an enquiring eyebrow, so Jaskier tries to explain what he’s thinking. Which makes Geralt stay quiet for a long time too. Then he says, “witchers were made, not born. Our only role was to walk the path and kill monsters till we died. Yennefer was meant to manipulate royal courts in the interests of stability as far as the Brotherhood understood it, that was what mages did. So much of what was true has been turned upside down in the last hundred years as the mundane world grew. So I don’t know if I was destined to raise Ciri, it was just something I had to do. And whether it was my choice or something bigger pulling the strings doesn’t really matter to me, as long as I face each decision and do what seems right.”

“But it’s hard,” Jaskier says, because that seems clear from Geralt’s face; from the first moment he met Geralt he thinks he recognised a kindred spirit, someone who needed things and wouldn’t let himself.

“Not Ciri,” Geralt says quickly. “I don’t regret it. It’s just… lonely sometimes. Wearing a glamour. Having to plan for a week to see my brothers for an afternoon. Never being seen with Yenn.” He swallows, and Jaskier wonders if he’s ever expressed any of this before, even to himself. “Sometimes I would like to go outside as me, to walk with someone else as myself.”

Jaskier feels a terrible urge to take Geralt’s hand; he bites his lip to resist it; then remembers he doesn’t have to anymore. It still feels like one of the hardest things he’s ever done, to reach out, but he does it anyway.

Geralt’s hand is dry and calloused and slightly cold. When he feels Jaskier’s fingers on his he shudders, but not, Jaskier tells himself firmly, in disgust. Just because it’s been a long time. He knows that feeling too.

“But I don’t understand,” he says after a few minutes. “Why does Emhyr want her so badly?”

“We’re not sure,” Geralt says. “Jaskier, listen, hardly anyone knows this, but Emhyr… he’s Ciri’s father.”

Jaskier gapes. “But he drowned. It was in all the magazines, you know, Royals!, places like that.”

“That was the story,” Geralt says. “Actually only Pavetta died. I don’t know whether he made that happen. But I’m sure he was the one who ordered Calanthe and Eist killed.”

It’s hard to take in. “Does Ciri know?” he asks eventually.

“Yes,” Geralt says, his tone slightly angry, and when Jaskier looks up at him he sighs and continues, “we agreed not to lie to her, Yenn and I; we’d had enough of lying. It’s hard. She has good memories of him from when he was her father. I think she just considers them different people. Because whatever he is now, whatever he wants with her, he could have stayed with her after Pavetta died and he didn’t. He chose to return to Nilfgaard, change his name and seek advancement. And Ciri is special. She has power, something elemental, stronger than any mage has ever been, possibly. I don’t know what Emhyr wants her for, but we’re going to keep her safe until she can control her gifts, till only she can decide what to do with it.”

The fierce protective look in his face makes Jaskier’s stomach twist. Geralt loves Ciri, entirely, accepting whatever she’ll become. He’s a good father. Jaskier always knew that. He’d just never let himself think about the contrast to his own.

They’re sitting there, silent, hand in hand, when Yennefer emerges from the portal behind Jaskier; he turns to nod at her. She looks pissed.

“Ciri was being an absolute madam but Vesemir told her she could practice with a steel blade not a wooden one, and frankly I thought the bribe was worth it to stop her pouting.” She makes a gesture and the portal collapses; Jaskier realises that it was giving off a constant low hum that he’s only noticed now it’s stopped.

“That’ll be fun when she wants to do that here.” The tone is dry but Geralt’s face is still so openly fond that Jaskier feels something thump a little in his chest, as if his heart is turning over.

“Shall I drop the wards?” Yennefer asks, reluctance in her voice. Geralt stands, and as he does, as he stretches his neck to one side and the other; he suddenly seems larger, sterner, like he’s pulling on the mantle of the witcher. He nods; Yennefer whispers in a soft breathy language that is clearly the same as the one Rience was speaking and yet so beautiful in her voice that Jaskier manages not to flinch.

There’s no difference Jaskier can tell when she’s done but Geralt breathes out, slowly. He turns to the cabinet where he got the swords, and pulls out a silver disc on a chain, which he slips over his head.

“Witcher medallion,” he explains. “It’ll warn me when someone does magic nearby.”

“We should turn out the lights,” Yennefer says. “Make it seem like everyone’s asleep.” She goes to do it. Geralt turns to Jaskier.

“I’d be happier if you stayed out of sight,” he says. “Will you look after Roach?”

Jaskier’s about to protest that what’s the point in him staying if they won’t give him anything to do – when he remembers that they’re talking about mages and assorted thugs, and what the hell can he do, when it comes to that? So he just nods, and lets Geralt shepherd him and Roach into Geralt’s study at the back of the house. It’s a cosy room, with a window on to the backyard and a collection of interesting-looking prints and pencil drawings on the walls; he’ll have to examine them properly sometime. “Scream if you need us,” Geralt says solemnly, which Jaskier is pretty sure is a joke.

And then he’s on his own.

There’s a beanbag in one corner, and he slumps onto it. Roach nestles comfortingly by his side, and Jaskier pets her distractedly. Without company, his hand has started to ache again, a deep phantom burn. He clenches his fist, and focuses on that instead, wishing he had his guitar with him, not to play, just to hold.

Roach whines, shuffles slightly, and goes to sleep, breathing out little huffing snores. The light out of the window changes as the moon moves across the sky. Jaskier draws his knees up to his chest. He’s never been much good with silence, with just his own thoughts. His parents found it exasperating: the way he talked and talked, the way he couldn’t stop moving. When he was a teenager they found a doctor to prescribe him drugs, which made him slow and tired; he quit them at university but by then it was like he’d skipped a stage in learning to deal with the himness of himself. People didn’t know how to react to the way he bounced from idea to idea, the way he stayed up all night to get that one refrain on an old Keracki folk song exactly right. He knew they wanted him to shut up. Hell, sometimes he wanted him to shut up.

And then there was Valdo, and Rience, and the year of silence that followed; he went back on the pills, grateful that his whirling thoughts were dulled. Once at Oxenfurt he tapered off again and felt some of his hyperactivity return, and this time he welcomed it because it felt like the one small element of himself he’d got to keep. He found kids to teach music to and learned he was good at it. He threw himself back into writing music. And it was fine – it was all fine – but it was still aimed at filling up the silence and the panic that came with it.

Time passes, now, and he tries to breathe, slow and steady, and let his mind dance as it will from good memory to bad. Rience, Geralt, the pictures they showed him at the centre, the drugs they made him take to make him vomit, Ciri smiling, Roach smiling, tongue lolling, as Jaskier scratched her head.

He’s going to make it. It’s a new thought and he lets it come, lets it rise as if it’s someone else’s. There’s a bigger world out there than he ever knew, and he’s going to find his place in it. Yennefer, who he is certain isn’t kind to many people, was kind to him. Geralt, who he is certain doesn’t trust many people, trusted him. There’s a security in that. He’s not alone, and his parents were wrong about him being useless. His parents were wrong about him needing to be fixed. His parents were wrong.

The thought settles, solidly, in his brain, and he prods at it, because he’s never let himself think it before, but now he has he wants to cry. He wasted so much effort on them. He wasted so much time.

Well, not any more. After tonight, if he makes it through tonight, he’s going to start making up for it.

He notices a low hum. He looks round idly to see where it’s coming from. And then someone screams.

Roach stirs and Jaskier buries his face in her fur, clinging to her as she tries to move. The night is abruptly torn apart by crashes of furniture toppling, people swearing, more screams, the thud of running footsteps that suddenly stop. It’s like an action movie is playing in another room, but action movies don’t include the whimpering sounds people make as they die. People are dying, out there. Not Geralt. Not Yennefer. Strangely, Jaskier has no doubt about that. But it’s still awful; and he still keeps hold of Roach and tries not to listen.

There are more cries, of half-articulated anger; more crashes; more footsteps. The door to the study flings open, and Jaskier looks up and sees Rience.

The mage looks terrible. His hair is straggling around his head, his nose is dripping blood, and his left arm hangs loose and wrong. He sees Jaskier and snarls, wordlessly; Roach shifts as Jaskier’s hands tighten in her fur and then she growls, hurling herself at the intruder.

Rience hisses something, his right hand outstretched, and Roach skids sideways, hitting the wall with a yelp. Jaskier hurls himself towards her, shaking, and finds her whimpering but alive; she licks at his hand and he strokes her softly.

And then his head is pulled back with a snap and he cries out as the bones in his neck grind against each other. He’s dragged up off his knees by a force he’s powerless to resist, lurching backwards until he collides with Rience’s body and then the mage’s arm is round his torso, stronger than it should be, his face pressed against Jaskier’s cheek.

His flesh crawls. The terror has killed all thought; there’s no room in his head for anything but endless dull fear.

“I’ve got you,” Rience whispers. “You little shit. You’re mine.”

No, Jaskier tries to say, but he’s closed his eyes so as not to see; his voice is blocked in his throat; the pounding of his heart fills his ears. The world is empty and black and he’s falling, he’s nearly gone.

“Stop,” Geralt says.

Jaskier opens his eyes.

Geralt is standing in the doorway, sword in his hand painted red. He should be terrifying – his skin is paper-white, his eyes full black, veins stand out on his face like trails of ink. And yet all Jaskier feels is a relief that steadies his whole body.

“You’ve lost,” Geralt says. “It’s over.”

Rience shakes Jaskier a little, like a dog with a toy in its mouth. “Not while I have your lover in my arms,” he says, and Jaskier feels the words like slime on his skin. He shudders.

Geralt says, “I’m sorry, Jaskier,” and Jaskier has one second where he thinks his heart might give out entirely, because of course Geralt would choose Ciri first, but then Geralt thrusts his hand out and he’s torn away from Rience, flying backwards. His head hits the windowsill and everything washes out in a sudden burst of pain.

When he blinks, at first he thinks the world has fractured. Then he realises he can’t focus properly. But he can’t quite decide if he should care about that. His mind’s gone fuzzy.

Geralt is kneeling in front of him. He’s cradling Jaskier’s head in his hands, which is nice. Behind him is a shape on the floor, and Jaskier knows the shape is Rience, and he’s dead now, but that’s too much, so he looks at Geralt instead.

“I think I love you,” he says, which is very much not what he’d meant to say.

The witcher smiles. The black ink is rolling out of his skin; his eyes are tinged with gold again. “I think you’re concussed,” he tells Jaskier, prodding at the back of his skull, which fucking hurts.

“I think you – you—” Jaskier says and trails off. “You saved my life.”

“He does that,” Yennefer says from somewhere on the other side of Geralt. “It’s a little tiresome but you get used to it.”

Geralt sighs. Jaskier, torn between crying and laughing, decides that laughing is better. He giggles wetly. Geralt’s fingers sweep over his cheeks, and he realises that he’s crying too.

“I’ll get on with the clean-up then, shall I?” Yennefer says, and then, under her breath, “men.” Jaskier hears her footsteps move away.

“Did we win?” he asks.

“We won,” Geralt says softly.

“That’s good,” Jaskier decides. He’s feeling very sleepy. But there’s something he has to tell Geralt first. “I’m – I want to – but I don’t know.” He stops, swallows, tries again. “I want—” He spreads his fingers and waves them vaguely in the air, as if he can describe the shape of everything he wants. “I want to kiss you. But. Yesterday that was evil. So, maybe, not yet?”

Geralt catches his flailing hand and holds it carefully like it’s a precious thing. He’s smiling, but it’s not unkind. He presses his forehead against Jaskier’s. When he speaks, Jaskier can feel his breath on his lips.

“I’m two hundred years old,” Geralt says. “Take your time.”

Chapter Text

They do move, in the end. Not because there’s any physical evidence remaining – Yenn is very good at what she does – but still, Geralt has an excellent memory. He can’t sit in his study without picturing Rience holding Jaskier hostage, without seeing Jaskier’s face rendered vacant and pale with fear. He knows exactly where Rience fell when Geralt cut him down, where all the bodies lay. He already has to deal with ghosts when he returns to Kaer Morhen, but they’re old ghosts; he gets along with them; they don’t bother him. He doesn’t want the place he’s raising Ciri to have any shadow of pain or violence.

So they move to the other side of the city. If Oxenfurt were a wheel, they travel round it north and west, equally as far from the university as they were before, but in the other direction.

Jaskier lives fifteen minutes’ walk away, which Geralt says is a coincidence, which makes both Yenn and Ciri laugh at him. He’s surrounded by people who don’t take him seriously.

The morning after everything happened, while Jaskier was still sleeping, Yennefer opened a portal into his room at the Eternal Fire student house, and Geralt packed up all his belongings and brought them home. By the time he woke up, Yennefer had tracked down all the applications he’d need for loans, grants, scholarships, and had half-filled them out already. After Jaskier had showered and eaten, she shoved the computer at him grumpily and said, “finish these,” before leaving to collect Ciri.

Jaskier looked through the forms, his eyes wide. “I don’t want to know how she knows my identity number, do I,” he said.

Geralt, who’d been on the receiving end of several of Yennefer’s helpful schemes for his betterment during their relationship, said, “It’s easier to just go along with it.”

Still slightly concussed, Jaskier didn’t argue.

A few days later, he found a sofa to sleep on at a friend’s house, and then ended up moving with said friend, Essi, to a small apartment a half hour north of the university. He found a job tending bar, to help pay for what the loans and scholarships couldn’t cover. He found a psychologist, free, via the university; but the woman specialised in helping people recover from conversion therapy, and Geralt suspected Yennefer had pulled some strings there.

It takes Geralt a month or so to find a place he likes, with a yard for Roach and a bigger bedroom for Ciri, and a highly rated school nearby. It’s a two-storey, two-bedroom little house with sunshine-yellow walls and the fact that it is fifteen minutes from Jaskier’s apartment is a coincidence.

It’s a good house. And Ciri likes the local school better. But the main difference, the one that means Geralt can breathe there, is the housewarming gift Yenn gives him, the day they move.

He’s standing in the hall before the movers come, about to put his glamour on, when Yennefer sneaks up behind him and embraces him. “It occurred to me,” she says, speaking to his back, “that I owe you an apology.”

“What for?” Geralt asks, genuinely baffled.

“I got to carry on my life more or less as normal,” Yenn tells his back. “Go where I wanted, see who I wanted. I couldn’t take you out to dinner anymore, but you always hated that anyway.”

“Too many forks,” Geralt agrees. “Why d’you need more than one?”

She makes an exasperated noise, her breath warm against his spine. “The point is, my beloved barbarian, that I should have realised how hard it was for you here, with no friends. And don’t say you have Roach. Roach is a dog.”

“Roaches were all the company I had, back on the path.”

Yennefer tugs at him, then, and he turns to face her. “The sad fact that horses were nicer to you than humans back then doesn’t stop it being true that you shouldn’t have to live like that now. You’re lonely.”

A terrible suspicion dawns on him. “Have you been talking to Jaskier?”

“It’s possible,” Yenn says grandly, “that a certain sing-songy twit mentioned something, yes.”

“Fuck,” Gerald says. They’re going to gang up on him. Fuck.

“Anyway, happy housewarming,” Yennefer says, and lowers a necklace with a gold disc over his head. It thrums with a soft magic. A new glamour? He twists to look in the hall mirror, and sees… himself.

“Triss made it,” Yennefer says softly. “She’s better at subtle workings than I am. It doesn’t change you, it just renders you kind of… unmemorable, to the average passer-by. If people see you every day it’ll wear off eventually so you’ll still have to be careful with neighbours and teachers and parents but she thinks she can top it up when she needs to.”

Geralt bends down to kiss her, long and deep, stopping only when Ciri makes a retching noise behind them.

They break apart, smiling at each other. “I’m sorry, love,” Yennefer whispers. “I should have thought about changing the world rather than you.”

“That’s my Yenn,” Geralt murmurs back.

“Gross,” Ciri says, “gross gross gross.”

Time goes on. Jaskier still comes over Thursdays for Ciri’s lessons, but now he stays for dinner afterwards. He’s still talkative but less hyperactive, as if he’s settled better in his skin. Mostly, anyway. He has good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks. Sometimes he stays after dinner too, snuggles up on the sofa to watch movies with them, the long lean line of his torso relaxing into Geralt’s chest. Sometimes he’s twitchy, easily distracted, and on those days Ciri and Geralt both know not to get too close and that once he’s eaten he’ll go, as if he can’t stand to be around people who care about him.

But the bad days get fewer. He puts more music up online, mostly covers, but occasionally his own compositions too. He talks about going to an open mic night, the first time he’s done that in ages, and for a moment he seems sad and lost, like there’s a story there. Geralt doesn’t ask. He told Jaskier he’d be patient, and he means to honour that.

Jaskier decides to start dating, men and women both. He tells Geralt defiantly, braced for an argument, and Geralt just hums. “Have fun,” he says. “Be safe.”

It’s the weekend, and they’re out with Ciri in the nearest park. She’s on rollerskates, racing around with very little regard for dogs, paths, or other people. Geralt is half listening out for a crash, and half enjoying the sun on his face, his actual face, and the fact that he can spend time outside with company, without worrying about discovery.

“I don’t even know if I want to date,” Jaskier says moodily. “Katia thinks I should give it a try.” Katia’s his therapist. “But I do know it doesn’t make sense just to… fall from one all-encompassing thing into another all-encompassing thing.” He waves a hand about, encompassing Geralt, who’s oddly flattered.

“You’re young,” he says instead. “You should go out. Live a little.”

“All right, granddad,” Jaskier says, grinning. “It’s just hard to see how anyone’s going to impress me. I have very high expectations after meeting you and Yennefer.”

Geralt sighs. “I’m not some knight out of the stories. And my life’s not normal. You should try other things.”

“Wow,” Jaskier says. “You have even less self-esteem than I do.” He stops and takes Geralt’s hand, then cranes a little to kiss him on the forehead. “I might not always know everything I want but I always want you, idiot.”

Witchers don’t blush, so Geralt doesn’t.

Jaskier starts dating. He asks if he can text Geralt if anything goes wrong, and of course Geralt says yes, and then spends the night poised in anticipation. Jaskier’s a grown man, but he’s also Jaskier. Even if he wasn’t working through trauma, he seems like the kind of person who attracts trouble.

Jaskier never texts for help on his dates but he does send updates, which are, frankly, more than Geralt wishes to know:

This one’s a redhead, she’s adorable.

Geralt! Sex is great, isn’t sex great!

Ugh, he has opinions about music and they’re ALL WRONG.

Fuck, would it kill people to take a breath mint?

Geralt! I just discovered my prostate!

He screenshots the most ridiculous ones and sends them to Yenn so she can enjoy them too. She sends back rolling eyes and puking emojis, and threatens to block his number.

“Admit it though,” he says to her one Thursday night, after Jaskier’s gone home and Ciri’s gone to bed and they’re curled up on the sofa together, “you quite like him.”

Yenn makes an offended face. “He has terrible taste in clothes. His jokes are more childish than Ciri’s. His music is a sequence of over-reaching rhymes. The heart eyes he makes at you sicken me.”

“All right,” Geralt says peaceably, and holds her tighter. “I thought he was growing on you.”

“Like the weed he’s named after,” Yenn mutters. Geralt is fairly sure it’s just her usual prickly refusal to show softness to anyone apart from him and Ciri, so he lets it go.

He finds out he’s right a few weeks later. He’s come back from dropping Ciri at school and is trying to choose between going for a run or shopping for groceries, neither of which feels particularly enticing on a grey not-quite-spring day. While he debates, his phone buzzes in his pocket with a message from Yenn:

You need to go to Jaskier’s

He texts back: why

She says: shoo

Sighing, Geralt thinks for a moment. If Jaskier was in any actual danger Yennefer would have gone herself, so this is something else. And he doesn’t have her blithe willingness to interfere. Instead he sends a message: can I come over?

It’s not something he does often, but it’s not unheard of.

He watches his phone while the three dots that indicate Jaskier is typing come and go, come and go. The text that finally comes through just says sure.

Jaskier’s place is a quarter of an hour away. Geralt makes it in ten. When he rings the buzzer to be let in, the lock releases without a word. On the fourth floor, the door to the apartment hangs open so Geralt goes straight in. It’s fairly basic, but Jaskier and Essi between them have made it homely, if messy enough that Geralt always has to stop himself from tidying up. There are instruments and stands and sheet music everywhere, bright throws and cushions, posters and abstract art on the walls. It’s a bit like what it must be like in Jaskier’s head, he always thinks: busy and vibrant and a little chaotic.

He finds Jaskier slumped on the sofa, his eyes red, surrounded by balled-up tissues and balled-up pieces of paper.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Jaskier says, wiping at his eyes. “Sorry. It’s silly.” He turns his head to the window and grimaces. “Why am I always fucking crying.”

Geralt goes to sit next to him and, when Jaskier tips his head on to his shoulder, takes his hand and runs a thumb soothingly over the back of it. They rest there for a while, in silence, which is fine by Geralt. He’s always been better with actions than words, anyway.

After ten minutes or so, Jaskier says, “One of the things Katia recommends is writing letters to people. You don’t have to send them. It just helps get things out of your head.”

Geralt nods into Jaskier’s hair.

“It is helpful.” He shifts a little, draws his legs up from under him. “I’ve written to Valdo, to my pastor from when I was younger, my brothers and sisters, even to Rience. I sent some of them in the end. My younger sister wrote back, actually. Did you know she was the only member of my family who keeps in touch? Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

It clearly matters a lot. Geralt remembers Jaskier boasting of his large family, his experience with kids. It’s not fair that he’s lost that, because of their prejudice. He holds on to Jaskier tighter.

“I was trying to write to my parents,” Jaskier whispers. “And I don’t know what to say. I’m so angry, Geralt, I don’t think I can stop being angry, but I love them too. They’re my parents. And every letter I write I find myself asking them to forgive me for not being what they wanted, even though it should be the other way round…” He tails off, his hand clenching then relaxing. “But they’ll never ask for my forgiveness. They’ll never believe they did anything wrong.”

“My mother left me on the side of the road near Kaer Morhen,” Geralt says. “I never saw her again. I don’t know why she did it.”

Jaskier straightens to look him in the eye. “Fuck, Geralt, that’s terrible.”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t mean— It’s not a competition. I remember her, a little, when I was younger. We used to play games together. It was just the two of us, and I loved her so much…” He’s lost for a moment. He can hardly picture her face any more, but the sound of her laughter is still there in his ears when he listens for it. “So I know what it feels like to have love and hate bound up together, that’s all.”

“Does it go away?” Jaskier asks.

Geralt has to think about it. “No, not really,” he admits. “But it… well, it scars, I suppose, like all wounds. And I have a better family now, that helps.”

“Yeah,” Jaskier breathes. He gets up, slowly, starts gathering all the crumpled pieces of paper together to throw them away. Geralt catches a glimpse of some of the phrases – how could and do you know and nightmares – before he looks away. “I’m in this group,” Jaskier goes on, abruptly, kneeling by the bin, his back to Geralt. “For survivors. Lots of Eternal Fire kids, there’s a couple who went to the same centre, even, but that’s not the only church that does it. Some of the members want to go public. People don’t know how much it goes on. It’s not illegal in Redania, though it is some other places.”

His back is tense. Geralt can hear the noise his hands make as they twist together.

“And I want to speak up. I do. I want to be brave enough. But I’m scared, because if I do – I want to be a musician, Geralt, I want to be famous, but I don’t want that to be what people know about me…” He shakes his head, angrily. “And then there’s you. I already put you and Ciri in danger once. If I draw attention to myself, if people start watching me… I can’t risk it.”

“Hey,” Geralt says, sharply, which he regrets the minute Jaskier flinches. He goes to kneel in front of him, takes Jaskier’s head in his hands, and has a sudden flashback to the night of Rience’s attack. Of Jaskier staring at him, eyes unfocussed, trembling and pale, choking out a confession. “You can do whatever you want to do. Me and Yennefer can look after ourselves. We’re not here to make your life harder, Jaskier, we’re here to back you up, okay?”

“I just feel like a coward,” Jaskier bites out, his scent bitter.

“That’s not true,” Geralt tells him. “You’re healing, remember? It takes time. You don’t, I don’t know, you don’t break your leg and then try and run a mile the next day.”

“I bet you would,” Jaskier says mulishly, which makes Geralt laugh, because he’s not wrong. He encourages Jaskier up and back over to the sofa so they can curl up together again, Jaskier’s head in Geralt’s lap, Geralt’s fingers combing through his hair.

“Don’t let anyone pressure you into going faster than you’re ready for,” Geralt says, once Jaskier’s pulse has evened out again, the bitter smell of shame fading. “That includes me, by the way.”

“You are being an absolute snail, I promise,” Jaskier says, yawning. “Wait a minute. Did you know I was upset? Is that why you came over?”

“Yenn told me to,” Geralt admits. “She said you needed me.”

“How the fuck did she know?”

Geralt shrugs. “She give you anything, recently?”

“Oh that—” Jaskier sits up, flailing, and shows Geralt a chain hanging round his neck, a delicate golden tuning fork dangling from it. “That fucking witch! I thought she was being nice!”

“That should have been your first clue.” Geralt grins at his outraged expression. “I’ll take it back if you want.”

Jaskier looks at the tuning fork in his hand, curling his fingers around it. “No, it’s all right. You can tell her she’s a meddling cow, though.” Then he gets up, wanders into the kitchen. “I’m going to make tea, you want tea?”

While he’s gone, Geralt texts Yennefer: Jaskier says thank you.

Tell him I’d be happy to turn his father into something squishy.

Geralt follows Jaskier into the kitchen. It’s even more chaotic in here – neither Jaskier nor Essi are much for housework – but just as homely. There are mugs with musical puns on them crowding every surface, Ciri’s drawings stuck on the fridge. He passes Yenn’s message on.

“Can she do that?” Jaskier asks.

“I’m pretty sure she killed her stepfather,” Geralt says. “But then he did sell her for a handful of coin.”

Jaskier’s face goes through a complex series of emotions, from awe to fear to fondness. “Your mother abandoned you. Yenn’s father sold her. Ciri’s father wants… well, we don’t know what, but it’s probably bad. My parents think I’m going to hell. What a collection.”

“I guess you can’t be part of our family if you’re not fucked up,” Geralt agrees.

When he looks up, Jaskier’s eyes are shining. He’s beaming at Geralt, his face open and unshadowed, and Geralt knows then that he’s going to be okay.

When summer comes, Oxenfurt empties of students, and the year-round residents breathe a sigh of relief for a week or two before the tourists start flooding in. Jaskier stays, of course, not having anywhere else to go, though he does spend a weekend at his sister’s. Apparently some of his other siblings come over, bringing their children; Jaskier doesn’t talk about it, but Geralt can almost taste his happiness.

Yennefer rents a house by the ocean for a fortnight, and Jaskier joins them all for a week. Yennefer entertains herself by wearing a different glamour every day: an elderly grey-haired woman, a young boy, a twenty-something woman who could be Jaskier’s sister, Lambert. Geralt has no idea what the neighbours think of them. He doesn’t much care.

One evening, after they’ve grilled in the backyard, Jaskier and Ciri sit by the fire pit with their guitars, practising a duet they’re working on. Yennefer and Geralt are lounging on the back steps, Geralt feeling more relaxed than he can remember in years. Jaskier’s good for him, he thinks. He helps Geralt remember what it means to be human.

Yennefer pours the last of the good wine into her glass. “So,” she says, lifting an eyebrow, “have the two of you…?”

“No. Not yet.”

“So noble,” Yenn teases. “Aren’t you jealous of all the other people he sleeps with?”

“Of course not,” Geralt says. “He’ll let me know when he’s ready. I’m in no rush.”

“It did take you a decade to admit you loved me,” Yennefer allows. She watches Jaskier for a while, his hands on the strings, his face lit up by the flames. “I suppose that means a threesome’s out of the question.”

“Yennefer.”

She shrugs. “I know, I know. Don’t want to blow his mind when he’s barely figured out bisexuality.”

Geralt stares at her perfect profile. “Is that really something you’d want?”

“The idea doesn’t disgust me,” she says, running a finger round the top of her wine glass.

He nudges an elbow into her side. “He did grow on you.”

“He’s not terrible.”

“I love you.”

“I know.” She smiles at him, eyes sparkling, and Geralt wonders what he’s ever done to deserve all this.

The start of term brings with it the usual chaos of shopping for uniforms and textbooks, and Ciri complaining about her new teachers and having to do homework. Jaskier’s working as a TA this year and disappears for a while into introductory classes and office hours and marking.

Several weeks into term, around lunchtime, the doorbell rings. Geralt’s in the den trying to figure out if the sightings of a griffin in Cairngorn are actually of a griffin or whether people are just freaking out about an eagle. He’s not expecting anyone.

When he opens the door, Jaskier is standing on the front step, his long red scarf wrapped around his neck. When he sees Geralt he surges forward and then they’re kissing.

Jaskier kisses like Geralt thought he would: focussed, intense, foolish, his mouth curved into a smile against Geralt’s lips. He closes his eyes to better savour the details, the stubble on Jaskier’s lip against his own, the taste of chocolate and coffee.

When they break apart, Jaskier is flushed and breathing slightly heavily. “Hello,” he says.

“Hi,” Geralt says. “You want to come in?”

They’re barely through the door before they’re kissing again, stumbling their way down the hall. Geralt lets him go long enough to grab his hand and lead him upstairs before they stop in the corridor so Geralt can pepper his face with kisses, so Jaskier can run his hands up Geralt’s back, under his shirt.

Geralt makes himself take a step back. Jaskier hasn’t even taken his coat off. His lips are bitten red. Geralt wants to devour him, but the part of his mind not stupid with lust makes a valiant effort to take back control and just about manages it. “Are you sure,” he checks.

“I woke up this morning,” Jaskier says, “and realised that it’s been a year since you first called me. Do you remember calling me? Geralt No-Last-Name. Your voice, fuck, your voice was the sexiest thing, even though I could barely let myself think it.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, pointedly.

“I love you,” Jaskier says. “You saved my life. I’m sure.”

He’s not lying. He’s not frightened, or uncomfortable. He’s smiling at Geralt, and he’s sure, and that’s all the permission Geralt needs to kiss him again, to guide him into Geralt’s bedroom and on to Geralt’s bed. “What do you want?” he asks.

“You,” Jaskier says. “Whatever you want.”

Geralt shakes his head. “Gonna let you lead on this one,” he says, and Jaskier groans and hits his head back onto the pillow.

“Touch me, then,” he says, and Geralt helps him undress, taking off his coat, unbuttoning his shirt, pulling off his shoes, lifting his hips so he can pull down his jeans and underwear. Once he’s naked, his cock already half hard on his thigh, Geralt strips too, hurriedly.

Jaskier props himself up on one elbow and eyes Geralt appreciatively. “You look like someone sculpted you out of marble.”

Geralt straddles him on the bed, runs one hand through his thick chest hair to tweak at his nipples. Jaskier’s not wearing the chain Yenn gave him, Geralt notices. He planned ahead. It’s just the two of them, and Geralt has to stop and breathe for a moment, overwhelmed, before he moves again. He traces his hands over Jaskier’s body, soft and slow, learning his sensitive places, where he’s ticklish, until Jaskier is limp and writhing, his cock a hard line against Geralt’s stomach. “Fuck,” he’s saying, “oh, fuck, c’mon.”

Grinning, Geralt bends to mouth at his neck, sucking a claim into his flesh, before moving further down his body to lick at his nipples, the crease of his thigh, to draw a wet line up his cock, which jerks, which makes Jaskier whimper.

He leans over to the bedside table to find his lube, then lifts Jaskier up a little so he’s leaning against the headboard, draws his legs up so he’s sitting with bent knees, legs spread apart. Geralt kneels in front of him. “You look so good,” he says, raw with honesty, and Jaskier closes his eyes, his mouth falling open. “Tell me what you want.”

“You,” Jaskier says, eyes still closed like it’s almost too much. “Just you.”

“Always,” Geralt promises. He uncaps the lube, slicks up a finger and carefully presses it into Jaskier, his other hand gentle around his cock to make sure there’s only pleasure, no pain. Jaskier whines and thrusts up against him and Geralt’s finger slips in easier than he was expecting. “You’ve been practising, huh,” he says, and crooks his finger a little, and Jaskier moans like all the breath has been punched out of him.

“Please,” he says, “fuck, Geralt, please.”

“Ssshhh,” Geralt says, and takes a moment to tongue at his cockhead, “now I’ve got you, I’m going to take my time.”

“Fucking pricktease,” Jaskier complains, and Geralt silences him with a kiss, moving his finger in and out of Jaskier’s hole in perfect rhythm with his tongue in Jaskier’s mouth.

Once Jaskier is wordless and wide-eyed again, staring blindly at the ceiling, his teeth caught on his lower lip, Geralt moves away again, adds another finger, moving gently but firmly against the spot that makes Jaskier shudder and writhe. He bends over to take Jaskier’s cock in his mouth, softly at first, and then with more pressure.

Jaskier lets out a long, nonsensical string of syllables that might, somewhere, include Geralt’s name. Geralt pauses to enjoy the sight of him, all his hard and soft edges, all his strength and beauty in Geralt’s hands. “Come for me,” he says, and then takes Jaskier all the way into his mouth, from tip to root, curling his fingers inside, and Jaskier cries out and then comes.

Geralt swallows it down, withdraws slowly and gently, and takes Jaskier in his arms, holding him while he shudders through the aftermath. His own cock is standing tall, hot and flushed just from looking at Jaskier, and he covers it with lube and then presses it against Jaskier’s softening shaft, rocking slowly at first, before he loses control and starts rutting, panting into Jaskier’s neck and listening to Jaskier’s gasping ‘ohs’ until he comes.

They cling to each other, a hot and sticky mess, Jaskier’s head on his shoulder, his body still shaking. It takes Geralt a while to realise he’s crying, but when he does he panics, lifting Jaskier’s head up so he can kiss his closed eyes, his cheeks, the tip of his nose.

“I’m fine,” Jaskier promises. “I’m just so fucking happy—” His voice cracks and he holds Geralt so hard his ribs creak. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I was missing till I met you.”

Same, Geralt thinks. Oh, love, same.

In a while, he knows, he’ll have to get up. The afternoon’s drawing on. He’ll have to change the sheets, go and pick up Ciri. They’re still in hiding. The world’s still moving, everywhere outside this room.

But for now this is all that matters: Jaskier breathing soft and content in his arms, a link to an everyday existence that Geralt thinks might just have saved his life. “I love you,” he says.

“I know,” Jaskier whispers back, a certain smugness in his tone.

“Did Yenn tell you to say that,” Geralt demands, and Jaskier laughs, high and happy, and so Geralt just shakes his head and holds him closer.

There was love all around
But I never heard it singing
No, I never heard it at all
’Til there was you

The Beatles