Imagine if Jaskier didn’t forgive Geralt quite so quickly after the mountain. If after the winter at Kaer Morhen, when Ciri is going with Yennefer for the year to train, Jaskier makes no motion to continue trailing after the witcher.
So then the witcher gives a real, verbal apology, which Jaskier appreciates, but it’s not enough. A sign of guilt is not a sign of change, and when the bard says so Geralt asks what he can do to show Jaskier that this time will be different. Because Geralt knows now how important the bard is to him, and isn’t willing to let his pride and insecurity keep him from selfishly hoarding the attention of the man that makes life on the Path worth living.
And Jaskier thinks, silently, before saying that Geralt needs to commit to talking more. To using his vocal cords for more than just one word responses and noises. Because Jaskier has spent so long giving Geralt every physical and emotional thing the man needs, and Jaskier is so tired. He doesn’t say as much, but he feels like he’s been constantly tugging on a rope for Geralt’s attention, desperately clinging on no matter how hard the witcher pulls away.
And Jaskier’s hands are too raw, the skin too broken, for him to keep pulling without permanently breaking himself.
But maybe Geralt can still see that pain, in what the bard doesn’t say, because he simply asks how much. And Jaskier would be pissed, but from the decades they’ve spent together the bard knows he is asking not to reach a quota, but to keep himself accountable. To have a quantifiable way to ensure he is doing his part.
And maybe it’s that, which makes Jaskier feel sentimental enough to say twenty-four sentences. The bard knows the witcher recognizes the importance of the number, if the small pursing of his lips is any indication, but he just nods.
And…they make it work. Somehow.
It’s not comfortable for the witcher, that much is clear, and by the fourth day Jaskier tells Geralt to stop. That he doesn’t like forcing the witcher to be something he’s not. Jaskier stares down at his lute as he says these words, wondering why he thought this would ever work.
But…then Geralt keeps talking. Even when he gets this constipated look on his face, and Jaskier insists he doesn’t need to keep hurting himself. If Jaskier didn’t know it was near impossible, he would think the witcher couldn’t hear him.
But he can, obviously, because Geralt has started reacting to everything else the bard says now besides him telling the witcher to stop.
The first time Jaskier actually gets an answer to the question he posed mid-rant about a noble in Kerack, the bard almost tripped and fell, only Geralt’s quick reflexes saving him from losing his doublet to a mud pile. And then Geralt actually asks him if he’s okay, with words, and Jaskier is so stunned he’s barely able to stammer out a response.
He’s even more surprised when, at the end of the day, he realizes the witcher didn’t count it as one of his sentences. As if checking to make sure the bard was okay was a given, and shouldn’t be counted towards the mental tally of sentences needed to begin mending their fractured relationship.
Still, it takes weeks of careful conversation before Jaskier becomes more comfortable with asking the witcher questions about himself. And Geralt actually responds, surprised at some of the more basic ones being asked, like why he always wears black or his favorite book. It almost pains the witcher how happy, pleased, content the bard both smells and looks because he’s finally getting the answers to such simple questions.
It hurts more when Geralt notices that, even now, Jaskier does his best to avoid topics that would upset the witcher, like Blaviken and the Trials. He doesn’t pry, doesn’t take advantage of Geralt’s groveling to search for blackmail or stories that aren’t his own to give. He just…wants to know more about Geralt.
The realization feels like swallowing fifty potions at once.
And on the days when Jaskier is tired, sick, or just feeling off, Geralt talks more. He ranks the monsters he’s fought from most to least disgusting, banters with Jaskier about which inn this year has had the worst ale, and on one occasion, when Jaskier had a runny nose and pounding headache and couldn’t sleep, he quietly sang one of the bard’s own songs until the exhausted man’s eyes fell shut.
After five months, the duo stopped keeping track of how many sentences exactly the witcher was speaking each day. By that point, the man often went beyond the twenty-four sentence quota as it was, unless he spent the day on a hunt or unconscious. The bard found it decidedly sweet how the witcher just…added on his sentences to the next day’s in such cases, one time going so far as to say at least 100 sentences in the span of twenty-four hours after he’d spent the last week recuperating from a nasty fight with a pair of mated griffons.
It was new, and it was difficult, but it was good. Geralt hadn’t even noticed how much anxiety and sadness had leaked into the bard’s scent in the past several years, gradual as it was, until it was suddenly gone. And the witcher couldn’t do anything about the past, as much as he wanted to go back and throttle his younger self for hurting his only friend so badly, but he made up for it as best he could in the present.
It wasn’t until the pair went to Kaer Morhen for the winter that they realized exactly how much their dynamic had changed. The bard and witcher were the last two to make it to the keep for the season, and barely at that with the path half snowed-in already in some patches. Thus, Geralt and Jaskier arrived with the bard leaning heavily on the witcher, letting out small laughs as the witcher told the story of the time Lambert thought Geralt was a werewolf chasing him up the path to the keep.
And Lambert wasn’t even pissed off about the story, because he’s too busy wondering when Geralt was placed by a Doppler and why his silver sword isn’t burning him and Jaskier is suddenly no longer all that tired—
Cue a very long discussion in which everyone keeps looking between Geralt and Jaskier, completely baffled, as Geralt explains he’s been working on using his words more this year. Like the man’s silence was just a food preference he no longer favored.
And when asked why, Geralt doesn’t miss the way Jaskier freezes, only noticeable because the witcher still has his arm around his shivering companion.
And Geralt really wants to get the bard out of his wet clothes, in front of a fire, and work on putting back some of the weight the bard lost on the harsh journey. So he just grunts, saying the first thing to come to mind as he steers his friend away before he falls over—
“I’ve traveled with a bard for 25 years. Words are important to him, so they’re important to me too.”
And Jaskier…he definitely doesn’t almost start crying at that while Geralt helps him upstairs to change.
It’s just the melting snow making tracks down his face as the bard smiles so hard it stings through the numbness of the cold.
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