Secret headcanon that Jaskier and his sense of curiosity is a fucking menace on a normal basis, and even worse when geralt finally brings him to winter in kaer morhen
Jaskier at Kaer Morhen is like herding a toddler who seems fixated on finding everything that could potentially kill them
Listen, Geralt knows that Jaskier isn’t human (okay he’s known this information for a few months because it took him fucking twenty years to realize Jaskier was an elf), but just because he knows jaskier isn’t human now doesn’t make the witcher any less worried about him injuring himself
Because as the years have shown, if there’s one thing other than music that jaskier has a special talent for, it’s getting himself into trouble
So really, geralt just must be an idiot if he didn’t realize what was going to happen bring Jaskier to Kaer Morhen
One really bored bard trapped in a half demolished keep riddled with tunnels, hidden rooms, and high places?
Geralt is notorious for forgetting that beneath all of the pomp and circumstance of being a bard, jaskier is actually pretty competent, and with that competence comes an insane ability to climb, otherwise known as the bane of geralt’s existence
On their first day in the keep jaskier immediately finds the highest point to climb to, a crumbling tower looming over the courtyard
Geralt spends a nervous hour searching for his bard before spotting him and promptly, as jaskier would call it, ‘flipping his shit’
He snatches his bard from his spot on a rather fragile looking wall of the tower, bundles him and blankets and deposits him in front the the fireplace while he makes supper
By the time he returns with stew, jaskier has already spirited away with lambert, who has undoubtedly promised to show the bard some tunnel or other
It’s only then that geralt realizes it’s going to be a very long winter
No amount of overprotective grumbling from geralt manages to convince jaskier to stay within his sight, much to vesemir, eskel, and lambert’s amusement
Vesemir’s amusement starts to fade the day he comes into the main room to find jaskier high up in the rafters, swinging about like there isn’t a thirty foot drop to a stone floor waiting upon the wrong move
Eskel begins to fear for jaskier’s tendency for high up places after spotting the bard somehow scaling the creaky bookshelves in the library
Lambert is by far jaskier’s worst enabler, and his steadfast partner in crime
Together they manage to give geralt, vesemir, and eskel a number of heart attacks
The time they disappeared for hours beneath the keep exploring the tunnels
The time jaskier insisted he could surely climb his way around the outskirts of the keep without coming inside (geralt shut that one down halfway through)
The time jaskier decided to ‘make friends’ with the monster living in one of the hot springs
The time they found a trapdoor in the pantry and were stuck for three hours
The day jaskier and lambert invented ‘aard the bard’ will go down in history as one of the most stressful days of geralt’s life
Even for all the stress that jaskier causes geralt with his endless stream of curiosity and pranks pulled between him and lambert, geralt still manages to enjoy the time together all winter
Geralt just thanks melitele that his hair is already white, so at least he won’t be getting any gray hairs from the stress jaskier puts him under
Soon it will be time for them to return to the path, to monsters, and witches, and camping under the open sky
For now, geralt holds his bard close and prays to whatever gods might listen that jaskier might not get himself killed tomorrow
