He sees her last. After the blood and the gloom and the despair that plagued his sight, after the death and the wails and the pleas that teared at his chest, he sees her last.
Chaos, he thinks, has never looked more serene.
In another place, at another time, it would be beautiful.
Now Yennefer meets his eyes from across the hall and a sudden jolt shakes her whole and she runs, gods, she runs to him with such helplessness and relief that he knows he will welcome the most bruising hug, if it means it will keep her afloat. There is a weeping beauty in sadness, but not for her eyes. Never for her eyes.
As she buries her head in his shoulder, he feels her heart digging a hole in his chest. He holds her tight.
"Thank the gods," she whispers, as though to herself, "thank the gods you're alive."
In another place, at another time, he would make a joke, perhaps about the feeling not being mutual, just to steal a smile and a banter from her lips.
But he has no heart for that now. Not even for that.
He only has a chain clenched tight around his heart and gutting his voice in shame every time he opens his mouth to speak. "Yennefer, I–"
At once, she looks at him. "No words." As though she knows what he would say, as though she knows all he hasn't done, and mourns him anyway. She shakes her head, eyes huge and dark and pleading. "You can't stay here, it's dangerous. You have to go. You have to find Geralt."
"Yennefer, Yen– I know." His fingers dig into her arms and he can't bear to loosen his hold, he can't bear to let her go. Not yet. He smiles, soft. Leans to search for her eyes, for just a moment of peace in their turbulent current. "I just wanted to see my darling witch."
Yennefer stares at him for a moment, shoulders tense. Then, she huffs a laugh. Her expression softens, almost crumbles.
He feels her hands shaking where she holds him and the corners of her lips tremble as though with all the unspoken screams of the sea trapped into a single shell, wailing and weeping and waiting to be heard. He only wishes he had time to put her heart to his ear.
Her voice is quivering as she speaks. "I don't know where Ciri is," she says and it sounds like the complaint of a mother and a child crushed into one, like the world's cruelest crime, the earth's deepest regret, choked in swallowed tears. "I don't know where she is, I don't–"
She doesn't let her face break, as if she knows that when the bottle cracks, there will be no end or beginning, as if she knows he will only have to stay there, and hold her through it. And he cannot stay here between death's teeth.
She can't afford this too.
But he knows terror when he sees it in her eyes, for it is not frequent, and floods them with a different kind of darkness. It breaks his heart.
She looks at him for a moment deeply, in thought. Then she lets out a sharp breath. Quiet, exhausted. "Gods, Jaskier. I'm losing everything all over again. And then," she nods at him from tip to toe and laughs again, as though she finds it absurd, "here you are. Here you always are."
Maybe it sounds painful, because she winces.
Maybe she cannot bear looking at him, maybe in hope it will hurt less if she loses him. But Jaskier doesn't abandon her eyes, only stays there, because their violet melts just like then, just like that other time she was all bereft and scared and he got to see it, and knew. Yet again, a familiar kind of despair.
But, gods. What else could one make out of shared pain, except for love?
A tear flows down her cheek, and he wipes it away with his thumb before it shatters. He holds her face. "Hey. You are not in this fight alone." He swallows, voice thick, hand firm as though to caress the love on her skin and right into her. "Not anymore."
Oh, she has been alone for so long. So long that her first instinct is to disbelieve him, doubt him, squint. But it is only for a moment.
Because his thumb is still stroking her cheek clean of stray tears and her brows can only twitch in desperate acceptance as she slowly covers his hand with hers and leans into his touch, closes her eyes. Presses on, as though to memorize the shape of his palm when it's missing, as though asking of him to remember her shape.
Jaskier can't hear her, but feels her own voice in his head as he prays they don't become no more than a memory.
"We'll meet again." She looks at him again and now her voice is steadier.
It makes him smile. He will miss this. Offering a hand for her to lean into every now and then. Watching as she rises again, indelible.
A chuckle, as the curtain threatens to rise. "Eh, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Besides," he speaks softer now, like a lullaby, like a confession, "I could never be done with the likes of you, Yennefer of Vengerberg."
A promise.
And Yennefer smiles, through the tears, and shakes her head. How strange, how comforting. To fight so hard for a purpose, and to know the purpose is willing, at last, to fight back for you.
With a deep sigh, she raises her head. And there she is again. Solid, seething, like a burning hill. "Don't leave Geralt alone."
"You know I won't." Then, pleading. "Be strong."
He knows she will be. It's mostly to remind himself.
Slowly, their hands drop away, and he hopes the warmth of her touch lingers on his hand for a while.
"Be brave," she replies, but she knows too. "I won't be there to save you this time." Jaskier huffs, mostly to hold back tears. "Well, then," she continues, and her voice is suddenly strained in a half-laugh, half-sob, an attempt perhaps, to seal the promise back. "Goodbye. Good luck–"
Only, she can't.
Her voice dies in her throat, and she presses her lips together, in refusal, in grief. Her eyes are wet again.
Jaskier lets out a silent gasp and shakes his head, pulling her close one last time, tighter than before. This is too much. He can't ask for too much. So he only lets her steal some breaths from his chest before he lets her go, and places a kiss on her head.
He feels her holding her breath, or his, as she pulls back and silently looks at him one last time.
And then, like a cord snapping in two, she turns around and walks outside the room. She doesn't look back.
And Jaskier watches numb. Her form disappears behind the walls and he stands wrecked, a sob threatening to rip his throat apart.
Broken, trembling, he smiles at her remaining memory, and decides to seal her promise himself. "Good riddance."
His voice echoes like a lost melody in the quiet forest and makes Yennefer stop. Her lips form a short smile.
Truth is, she thought it would be better. Seeing the last of him in a far away part of her memory, because this was no time for weakness, no time to let him steal all of the strings left that hold her facade together, and make her face what's underneath. But oh, how her knees give in, relieved.
How about this then, a weakness welcomed, waiting for her with open arms.
She turns around. "No use, I'm afraid. You always pop up in my way like a stubborn sprout."
This, except it's him, here, once again, somehow still standing, perhaps the only one.
Jaskier laughs. He laughs at their old quip, but it's nothing like the way he used to, no bite or sharpness or preparation for a comeback. It's only breathy and fond, and tired. He is tired. His eyes, bloodshot under the moonlight, awake and waiting for something that will always slip through his fingers. His shoulders slumped and untouched, a wailing space hollowed in their place, his hands hung and soft and gaping, empty.
She takes pity in them as he opens his arms.
It's the same old thing. Unchangeable among everything, it makes for wretched comfort. For she can feel his arms wrapped around her back before they actually reach her, and his face buried in her hair before she has the time to settle in his warmth, and hold him close, closer still as he clings, as though by clinging he will rip away a part of her and keep it still on him after she's gone.
She feels the lump choking his throat as she presses herself against him. His hand, on her hair. On her head. Shaking.
"My darling, darling witch."
This time his voice is no melody. No, it crawls, writhes, dies on her shoulder where his head is buried, sobbing and voiceless and wrecked, and yet still tender, like a broken heart.
She bites her lips in a smile and hopes to carve it upon his chest. She can't afford no more tears. "Pretentious, foolish bastard." Jaskier muffles a chuckle in her hair, and she takes just a few more moments, just to memorize the bruises his desperate fingers leave on her back. Then, she pulls back slowly, looks at him. "Take care of–"
"You know I will take care of him," he interrupts, solemn like a vow, undoubtable. As though he was offended just by her thought of requesting.
Yennefer stares at him for a few seconds, a fond, vexed look in her eyes. "Yourself," she says firmly and watches as Jaskier's expression falls at once, and his eyes suddenly gleam just a bit foggier than before. With a sigh, she holds his head between her hands and places a kiss on his forehead. "Take care of yourself."
Somehow, she knows he will.
Jaskier holds her wrists like he would hold an injured flower, and presses his lips just there, above her pulse. "You too. Be safe." Then, as though knowing she was never one to make promises, he ties her to himself. "For me."
A clever move. She doesn't say her ties are already laid elsewhere. He knows, he always did.
Only, with a smile, she nods.
A last caress on his cheek, a place to leave her weakness behind, and know it will be safe. One last admission of longing before they bury it in the ground. Then, they let their hands drop and she turns away without looking back.
And there, once again, the last one standing, he looks at her fading form from behind.
"What's that thing you keep saying to Yarpen everytime you meet?"
Jaskier's face, buried into the crook of her neck, surfaces for a moment to look at her questioningly. Yennefer does not grant him a glance back. Only, her hand continues to stroke at his hair absentmindedly as she stares out the window, at the setting autumn sun.
He knows at once, of course. There are few things that torture him in his life, but few as they are, they leave little room for mercy.
He sighs. "Well," he mutters, somehow unwillingly, "it happens to be my full name."
Yennefer's eyebrows raise in amusement, the corners of her lips slightly twitching. He thinks of kissing them, the way he has done and will do, soon, but perhaps not now, for he has settled warmly in her arms and the curious scrunch of her nose is far too endearing from down here.
"Hm. You're a funny little thing..." Her fingers scratch playfully at his head and he feels himself blushing. Then, finally, she looks at him. Daring. "I want to hear it."
His heart drops to his stomach, just a little, and he suspects she feels its absence under her hand because she keeps on staring, waiting. Her eyes glint with unspoken thirst, gentle like that of a little kid discovering a shell buried underground.
A shell, maybe, of an old self. One that he shies away from now, before her. He shakes his head.
"Ah, it's not important." What's gotten into her now to unearth this, of all things? "It's ugly anyway."
Yennefer rolls her eyes, fond, insistent.
"Come, now," she prompts and her voice is oh, so soft that his heart almost crumbles back to its place, just to feel the sound vibrate on her skin. A cunning smile. "Do I not have the right to know my husband's name? I may even use it."
At once, he laughs. Silent, surrenderring, certain there is no escape and it's so unfair and so, so sweet, the way she forces his own hand to dig inside his chest.
His face returns to its hiding place into her neck.
"Julian," he says, a bitter taste. "Julian Alfred Pankratz."
She hums, satisfied. Now that she's seen it, the relic, she averts her eyes.
"Why use it, then?"
Jaskier muffles a chuckle against her skin, trapped. He considers not answering. But it's not like she will not know anyway. And maybe he has been alone in knowing for too long.
The images of another life flash before his eyes and he winces in distress.
"Perhaps," he swallows, shrugs, "it sounds more imposing." Fraudulent attention, false power, enough to feign importance. Reeking more than royal. He smiles. "At least, I thought so when they called me that. A bit scarier."
He thinks, the name of a flower is not always heavy enough to rock the ears, and this is why he chose it for himself. Only, perhaps other ears are more welcoming to what is heavy to the tongue.
Then, again, it didn't make much of a difference, did it?
Yennefer sighs, brows slightly furrowed as though pensive, working it in her mind. It's almost a relief, the lack of impression it's left on her.
"Julian..." she whispers after a while, not so much calling him by his name as feeling it on her tongue, letting it flood her mouth. His whole body shivers in her arms. Soft, light, like a feather's caress, she feels it, dusts it like she would a rare finding settled between her hands. She squints her eyes, picks apart every sound. "Julian, Julian..."
A lump is suddenly choking his throat, and he can't help but smile, let out a breath that has been weighting on his chest.
"Strange," he breathes, laughs. "It sounds beautiful when you say it. It sounds..."
"Important?" Yennefer smiles faintly and meets his gaze. He smiles back, grateful. Nods. "That's good," she shakes her head, lowers her look just a bit as a thought clouds her eyes. "It's good... to hear your name uttered like it's something precious."
Jaskier parts his lips to say something but forgets it at once. He stays there, still, staring at her face and the way the evening paints her eyes in a deep haze, and makes her look even softer than he could ever have imagined her. Glowing, like a gleaming stone. That's what it is, then.
He grins and sits up to look at her properly, to take her in.
"That's right, Yennefer of Vengerberg," he whispers, slow like a prayer, tender like a poem, and brushes her hair back, finds her eyes.
Then, he holds her face gently in his hands, and she leans into the touch to lay her own name between them in return. And he kisses, at last, the smiling corners of her lips.
Jaskier laughs as Geralt sits beside him on the pebbles and raises his eyebrows, not looking at him still. "Now you can tell the salt of tears from that of the sea too?"
A light hum. "Always could."
A red ray escapes the setting sun and hits the waves, making the tears in his eyes melt as they mirror it. He sniffles and wipes at the trails his previous crying had pathed on his cheeks, and puts on a brave smile. Not really a smile. A curve of lips, at least, because Geralt is here now, the warmth of his body resembling a lit hearth, and it's a kind of comfort. Always has been.
Except. Geralt is staring at him.
Geralt is waiting.
And it's nothing, it really is. Jaskier likes to convince himself it is trivial, because how else could he mend a broken heart, if not with lies. The truth just seems too far out of reach.
But maybe now he is tired. And maybe in another time he wouldn't talk about it, he would only smile wider but now Geralt's stare is so gentle, and his eyes so safe like the sun on a spring's day.
"I feel like I've been missing, you know," he says at last and looks at him straight, soft, because Geralt really does know. "On love. And it's been too long."
What Geralt doesn't know, perhaps, is the way his heart clenches inside his chest and curls on itself like a child punished in the corner. So he frowns. "You? Jaskier, you can have anyone you want. I've seen you." Then, a smile, almost fond. "You fall in love with everyone."
Everyone, everyone. Anyone. Anyone there is. Anyone who looks like maybe, maybe, they will stay, or he is just too careless at this point that he tries anyway. A heart that never has too much. He knows they won't stay. And he knows the one who will stays for a different reason. So, so close.
He smiles, bittersweet, and lowers his look. "Yes, indeed. Everyone." Everyone, she sent a letter today. Never to meet again, never to be seen. Jaskier shakes his head. "And me? Who of all them has fallen in love with me, Geralt?" As if to answer his question, a seabird cries along. The sea, too, a cruel mistress. His voice quivers. "I feel like a desperate dog chasing love, while running from it all the same."
With the corner of his eye he sees Geralt parting his lips and a fake hope blooms in his chest, fading at once when he holds back, and stays silent. And he can only bask in the imagined possibility of what he intended to say.
The tears are done with him now. Only numbness remains.
Eventually, Geralt speaks. "If it is any helpful, no one has ever been in love with me either." The lightness in his voice sounds exactly like the pained strings mending Jaskier’s heart.
But oh, what a foolish man. Jaskier can't help but smile and turn at him, and for a bit he remembers that lonely as it is, he can't stop loving. "Well, that's just not true. I'm in love with you."
As though he doesn't know, as though it's not as simple as it was uttered, Geralt flinches. Jaskier chuckles and averts his gaze again, a little happier than before. Love, it is simple. It's what he does.
Just not something that happens to him.
"Well, then," he hears after some moments, "that makes us even."
He laughs before he thinks. "It does?" And then.
His head spins at once, eyes wide as they meet Geralt's, almost afraid. No, not afraid. Unbelieving. It's been so long, you see. But Geralt only rolls his eyes, oh so fondly, and before Jaskier manages to splutter any words sweet lips are on his, and a hand holding his nape. And it's not like other times. Not like everyone else. It's certain and terrifying and deep like a promise, like two stray roots finding each other through the earth and keeping their living hearts bound forever. Like what he has been craving for so long he forgot he may one day have it. Like Geralt.
And then, as though to seal it, this promise, Geralt pulls back and looks at him like he always does and Jaskier wonders, wonders how this that he never caught stands right here, catching itself. Geralt smiles, voice soft as a feather. "I'm in love with you, Jaskier." And that's it. Simple as that.
His eyes are burning again and Jaskier can only nod, and smile back. And it's almost funny, almost tender how love happens to be so close, so close he can taste its kiss without even trying, just for once.
She feels Jaskier's soft breath on her stomach and shivers as his lips curve on her skin. He shoots her a questioning look as though he's too occupied tasting the night off her body to hear her. "Forget about what?"
A sigh.
She closes her eyes for a moment. Swallows the pain down to her heart. It doesn't matter. It's the last night. "This." A twitch of her lips, and she doesn't dare look at him now. Instead, she looks out the open window. "Us. These past months."
At once, Jaskier stops paying all his attention to the poems he is stroking and looks at her, a frown between his eyebrows. He lays his head on her belly, and it's so warm, so heavy with tenderness. What will she do with all this tenderness, all this poetry?
His voice sounds a little hurt as he speaks. "How can I?" Before his certainty has time to echo, Yennefer's tongue turns again to blade, and she laughs.
"You're lying."
"Yennefer..."
"Don't."
Her body is tense under his head, his touch, but he doesn't move, as though insisting on the softness. And his eyes, huge and staring and, oh, the complaint. Did she already forget about the softness?
She keeps her lips from quivering, her voice from trembling. Shakes her head as though pleading. "You don't fool me, bard. We aren't in the keep anymore. You're leaving tomorrow." His hand is lying between her breasts, and she tries to rebuild the wall they had so desperately wrecked. "You will be sleeping around again. Never staying afterwards."
Jaskier is almost out of breath now, out of words, and until now she had never taken pride in stealing his voice with pain, only with pleasure. Something wet on her skin. His lashes brushing against it, she realises. But he can't speak. Not to say anything of importance, at least.
He knows she is right.
And yet he doesn't seem to admit it. A silent chuckle. "You know a thing or two about leaving, don't you?"
He means it as an insult. Still, Yennefer smiles and looks him in the eye, deadly. "As well as you do, bardling, yes."
"Why wouldn't I stay?"
"Because you can't." He parts his lips to speak again, but suddenly, oh, she is so tired. She lets herself slump and lets him look, and the sharpness in her voice breaks. He knows how it's supposed to go. There is no point in arguing over it. "Because I can't. I have somewhere else to be right now." Then, a whisper, a plea. "You know that."
Slowly, she threads her fingers through his hair, and as though she pulls loose a thread, he lets out a breath and closes his eyes. The line between his eyebrows now runs deeper. "I know."
He catches her hand and places a kiss on the inside of her wrist. Then he crawls up to her, up to her lips, like a worshipper who thinks he is forsaken by his god, while he himself has forsaken his faith. He kisses her.
He kisses her.
Then, he hides his face in the curve of her neck and breathes her in. "Can a heart forget a love?"
Can you pass by an empty room without remembering the time it used to be full of life? Does absence grieve for its present or its past?
A sigh, broken. "If it can't afford otherwise."
She feels his smile against her skin, his muffled voice. "You don't really believe that."
The breeze blows in the room, and the curtain shivers like an awakened ghost.
Yennefer shakes her head and softly, almost absent, she places a kiss on his hair. "It doesn't really matter anymore."
They couldn't even if they wanted. Not after everything, standing before nothing, their sides digged up and empty and lost and all that remains close being each other, crumbled and less than half of themselves, trying to form something less than a whole.
But Jaskier insisted, faint as it sounded, because she was stumbling on her feet and her shoulders were dragged by the earth and her eyes hadn't gone a second without flooding throughout the day. So much that he knew he had to save some of his tears to give her, in case hers ever dried up. Not letting her hurt bereft of tears, at least he could give her that.
The bed is fit for two whole people. Broken, hidden from her, a smile.
They won't sleep tonight.
They will say it's only for a few moments of rest, if rest could ever be so agonizing. They will say it's no use to roam the continent now, in the dark of the night, holding themselves from collapsing onto each other only for the sake of the names constantly hanging from their lips, now by so weak a string they almost let them drop. They will say it's only for rest.
And this is what it is.
This, and also the way he takes off his coat and his vest and suddenly his shoulders appear so shrunk under the worn-out shirt that she rests her hands on them without thinking, because they look like hurting. She caresses more than rubs them, and hopes it's enough. It's love, she won't say. It should be enough.
This, and also his hands coming up to unlace her shirt and help her peel it off her body, and then her skirt, and then, she stands still in her undergarment, and waits for him to also strip to his shirt. And then they face each other, hands on their sides, tired and empty, and they stare.
He affords a smile, faint. She smiles back. It's all they can afford.
This, as they slip under the thin blanket and they haven't done it for quite a while, but it feels so familiar now, like slipping back into their older broken molds, only they don't fit quite right anymore. This is a different kind of broken.
How gentle, then, how kind, to crumble again together.
His arms are open, forever open and waiting, and she thinks none of it as she crawls inside and wraps her body around his, clings tight and brusing. He happily welcomes the bruising. It's proof she's still here.
Her nose nuzzles into his shoulder and he buries his face in her hair, and breathes in the ashes and the exhaustion and the pain and the lilac and everything that makes her. Deep breaths, nonstopping. So that he memorizes the scent.
He only pulls back just a little, just to take a look at her eyes. Swollen and cut and bloodshot, and he suspects his are not much different as they're mirrored. But there's comfort, too. There, pooling between the crinkles along with the tears, carved between her eyebrows.
At least, at least.
He knows he's not much. At least, just enough. Enough to find the faint wave of hope between the flood of her eyes. Enough to mold a little dimple on her cheek where his thumb strokes, and make her eyes flutter close.
Less than whole. But holding her, just enough.
They will not sleep tonight.
Only, in a moment of despair, similar to so many other moments, she will kiss his lips. And he, he will kiss her too. Softly, barely there, for reassurance. He will kiss her lips, and then he will kiss the side of her neck. And then her shoulder, bare and slumped, and she will cling tighter on him because she has to cling somewhere, even just for a little bit. Just for tonight.
Only, in a moment of love, similar to so many other moments, she will bare her lungs in sighs and he will find shelter there, inside her as though to replace the lost warmth, or try to.
Alright, everything will be alright. I love you, everything will be alright.
Just for tonight, just for their lips to whisper each other's names too, the ones they so discreetly cover up in daylight. As though they could ever hide.
They will not sleep.
Not tonight, not for many other nights afterwards.
Instead, he will place one last kiss on her lips, and then rest into the crook of her neck, as she rests into his chest, and the gaping holes by their sides may prevent it from being whole, but for now, it's just enough.
It could never be more than that, anyway.
And if the lullaby he mutters and the soft vibration of his chest makes her eyes droop after a while, she will never admit it. If her lips tremble on his skin moments before her lashes do, to slowly fade his voice in a dreamless sleep, later, he will speak none of it.
Later, they will say they did not sleep that night.
Jaskier has not taken more than two steps outside the shed, just enough to feel the absence of Radovid’s hungry stare, when he freezes. It’s not the sound, not that alone. No, the way his knees suddenly go numb is because he knows what follows just a little too well, and that he catches with the corner of his eye, still hidden behind the corner, and a sudden sob gets caught in his throat. A flame. A flick of flame.
“Is there another way?”
Lips still fervent, touch still burning. Somehow he has managed to count the lashes of his eyes one by one, golden under the moonlight as is fit for a prince, and leans to kiss them. “What do you mean?”
“For this. For us.” A complaint. As though he doesn’t know already. “Maybe you could come with me.”
A laugh. “In court? Right. We can stroll in the throne room and duet on Song of the Seven.” The prince has no time to answer, for his lips are captured again in a kiss. Mostly to savour, mostly because of the knowledge that looms over their heads that there is no time for savouring. Mostly that, but also because he can’t bear seeing the look in his eyes, that of a hidden truth, of a grief he is not ready to admit to himself.
He doesn’t admit it. Not yet.
His first instinct is to run, and only after he has stepped back on shaking feet and hidden in the shed does he remember to curse his cowardice. Ciri. He has to get to Ciri.
Yet the screaming in his mind has a different voice, one he has not managed to forget even after all this time, one that makes him wince with an invisible pain, that paralyzes his legs and weighs down on his chest like a rock, cutting his breath. A voice then, behind him.
“Jaskier?"
And how foreign the name suddenly sounds on his lips, how distorted.
Fighting to regain his voice, he turns at him. Stutters. “He’s here. Rience.” And then he meets his eyes. And then, the shreds of his heart cutting bloody through his chest, he admits it. “Oh. But you knew that already.”
It’s absurd how beautiful Radovid’s eyes look under the moonlight, under the shadow that falls on them. Something that resembles guilt, but not quite. No. A violent hope. He shakes his head. “You don’t have to go outside.”
Absurd. Because it’s his words that make Jaskier’s legs finally solid, and his breath steadier, sharp. And now it’s easier to look him in the eye. But now, despite the terror, despite the shaking, he has to go.
Only, he doesn’t.
For the moment he huffs, half-dismissal half-pain, the moment he turns his head and remembers Ciri’s laughter and chooses to try to be brave, at that moment there is a bruising grip around his wrist. At that moment, his throat is stopped by a knife.
He gulps in a breath, stills. The blade is cold and sharp and licking his skin and it feels so awfully familiar, so awfully alike the kisses that carved their peculiar love on him just minutes ago. “Radovid.” It’s not a question, because he already knew. It’s more like a plea, trembling and honest and soft, as though he can’t afford otherwise. Because somehow, even now, he still hopes.
Yet the prince only pulls their bodies close, and makes amends out of his sight. “I can’t let you go outside.” A shaky breath. A parody so spot on Jaskier almost laughs. “I’m sorry.”
Then shouting, like soldiers giving orders. Then, a scream.
“Ciri…”
It’s no more than a breath and the knife presses into his throat, gently, lovingly, for it doesn’t cut. And Jaskier hears the screams, and the shouting and the sound of his name wretched out of the girl’s lips with heartbreaking complaint , and Yennefer’s name, and Geralt’s and the void that answers back as she fights alone, unarmed, a child, and Jaskier feels tears burning his eyes and struggles against the blade. “You have to let me go,” he pleads and thinks, for a prince, Radovid’s grip is solid. For a lover, it’s exact.
Laughter, outside. He knows that laughter. It makes his skin crawl and his legs shake again and he wants to run, to do something, anything. But Radovid wraps his arm around his chest and feels the tremors of his body on his, and swallows. “Rience can’t hurt you if you don’t go out. And I won’t have to hurt you either.”
It sounds almost like regret.
It sounds almost like a promise. And twisted as it is, this shield that backstabs him, Jaskier feels the warmth of his body just like he did before, and the blade on his throat like the sweetness of a caress, and the sound of his heart beating so loud it almost shovels its way inside his own back, and replaces the pieces of his broken one. And the tears streaming down his eyes seethe with selfishness and guilt, for he can’t tell apart the ones drawn out by the screams outside, and the ones reserved to quench the thirst of the knife.
Jaskier. Jaskier!
A sob tears his throat apart before any foreign blade manages to, in hope it will be enough of an answer, enough of a presence. An apology. His knees buckle as though the earth drags him down, wailing, this is where you should be, this is where you were supposed to be, for her.
And Radovid holds him tighter as he cries, as he kneels on the ground shaking, eyes blurred and empty, he holds him in a mocking embrace, a gentle lie, whispering wrecked comforts in his ear, “This is not what I wanted. This is not what I wanted, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. This is not what I wanted.”
What else, what else could he have done?
It is tender, perhaps, the way their fingers entwine on Jaskier’s chest. The way Radovid buries his head between his shoulder blades as though between the pieces of a mirror he himself had shattered, and keeps him close.
“Destiny must have something to do with it. The future, us. You sing its stories. You can’t possibly refuse it.”
Deft fingers buttoning a rumpled shirt, arming. A huff. “I sing what I choose to sing. Destiny is only an excuse for the world’s most abominable actions. I have never known anyone using it to explain good deeds.” Blue eyes blazing attentively under the moonlight. “Have you?”
The prince doesn’t answer. Only, he lowers his gaze.
The shouting outside suddenly becomes choked, terrified. Another voice, howling above all others.
Ciri!
Jaskier lets out a loud gasp, like surfacing from deep water, and his shoulders slump in relief. Yennefer. Fire for fire. Always, just before it’s too late. He heaves a deep breath, and closes his eyes. Radovid’s body slowly goes rigid behind him with the same realization that made him welcome the knife, but now, he finds he doesn’t care as much.
Come, we don’t have time.
Jaskier-
He parts his lips but his voice is cut by the silver blade suddenly digging into his throat with more force than before, choking him. Only now, the prince’s hand is shaking.
He will be alright. A pause, as though to make sure, as though knowing somehow that he can hear her, and waiting for confirmation. Come on .
Then, deafening and long-awaited, silence.
The last remnants of fire crackling somewhere over the body of a soldier, and even the cicadas have stopped singing. In the air, the hum of fading magic.
Radovid is breathing shakily, almost inaudible over the thumping of his heart. His knuckles have gone white around the handle of the knife and he presses on, as though for an excuse to hold Jaskier tighter. His voice comes out hushed. “You called her.”
Jaskier tries to swallow. “Let me see you,” he whispers, quivering. “I need to see your eyes.”
Suddenly like the blast of lightning, the knife is gone.
Radovid’s arm is no longer holding him in place and Jaskier gasps again, sharply, but ever so silent as though afraid to scare away what’s still left unspoken. His body sags exhausted, like the crumpled paper of a failed song heaving its last breaths. The tears have not yet dried up, only limp tired down his skin. He doesn’t run.
Instead, he turns to Radovid.
“When did you call her?” The prince is trembling lightly, and staring into his eyes and oh, he sees now, the pain and the cruelty and the fear and the love, the love. He sees it all. Radovid shakes his head. “Was it before we…”
Silence.
There is something flowing down his throat, and Jaskier wipes it away to see the tips of his fingers turning red. The smallest tickle of blood. He only lets out a breath as an answer and gazes at the man before him and sees, and is seen in return. This is all he had asked for, after all, isn’t it?
The corners of Radovid’s lips are trembling in a terrible smile as he speaks again. “Well, at least now we’re even.”
“Even!” Jaskier huffs, but it resembles more the remnants of a resigned sob. His face spasms, crumbles along with his voice, which he only recognizes after he feels his tongue moving, so gutted that it sounds. “How could we ever be-”
“Thank you.” A hand on his own stained one. Radovid’s voice is low and deeper than before, the same as it was when he was whispering Jaskier’s name on his skin. Honest. “For seeing the best in me." The knife slips to the ground. "But you failed to see the rest of it.”
There is an ache in his chest, and Jaskier looks at their hands, then back at him, into his eyes, and slowly, something softens inside him as though to let his heart mold in the shape of his pain. There is no use for a mask now, anyway.
“The rest of it,” he mutters, an admission, mostly to himself. He hears his own despair laughing at him in mockery, ignoring how it grows against itself. A smile, then. Broken. “And what did you fail to see?"
Radovid stares at him for a moment. Deflates.
Then he raises his hand on Jaskier’s cheek and shuffles closer, so achingly close that he steals the breath from his lips, just like Jaskier did before, and the air between them can only echo the wails that silently bury themselves in each other's lungs. Jaskier holds back a whimper, wanting, waiting. Even now.
But it’s only a ghost.
Only the faintest of caresses, lips barely touching, before Radovid meets his eyes again and his stare is suddenly unyielding. "That you will always go back to them."
And Jaskier, almost apologetically but not quite anymore, smiles faintly.
Radovid’s lips hover over the smile as though in need to cherish their slightest betraying line. But need has only brought them so far. He averts his look, suddenly unable to meet Jaskier’s eyes, and stands up abruptly, almost on the run.
The space his presence leaves behind weeps empty and the cold memory of his touch feels nothing like the coldness of the blade, not at all.
In a momentary panic, Jaskier grasps his hand, and makes him still.
And there, kneeling at last, holding the hand of a man who would be a stranger tomorrow, who would be, by destiny, a king, he looks up and Radovid looks down, and his eyes have become so extraordinarily clear they make for a polished armor and shield.
Jaskier knew. But as he speaks, his voice weighs on his tongue like a dead song. "You will regret this one day." And even though he doubts, now more than ever, he adds, "I know you will."
Mostly because he can't help it. This wretched hope.
Softly, helpless, Radovid laughs, and it's just like that first night, in the bittersweet confession of the song. "Good. That means I will remember you still."
Only for one last moment.
Then his gaze becomes stern, and Jaskier forces himself to let go of his hand and thinks, he didn’t have enough time to learn how to do that.
The next moment, he is alone.
The tears have now dried up and pull mercilessly at his skin along with the smudged black kohl. Somewhere, in a corner, a lute laments for a last stroke of amateur fingers to sing a melody gone rusty. The moonlight is fading.
Jaskier closes his eyes, swallows. The tears, the sobs. The guilt. Truth is, there is not enough time to grieve. There is nothing he could have done.
Only, he stands up and grabs his lute and walks outside the shed, among the paths of dead soldiers and burned words, and the air howls bleak and hopeless through the hollow gap in his chest.
It's only like this. Geralt, despite all, will never be alone and Jaskier, despite all, will stay.
for my dear @moonysrz i wish you the happiest of birthdays and all good things in life ♡ || 1.1k, G, emotional hurt/comfort [ao3]
Jaskier is lingering in front of the room's door before he knows it.
Habit, it's a cunning thing. For habit it is. What else, he thinks, lying to himself, what else could lead him up the stairs now, when Geralt barely spared him a look as he entered the inn and walked past him to the room. What else, for he doesn't know if he can bear it anymore, admitting the love.
It is always lacking anyway.
Only, the habit. The way Geralt's eyes, in their momentary glance, were full blown black and his face pale and his hands, no matter how he tried to hide them, were trembling. Jaskier knew better. He knew it was too loud, staying around people, and he knew the shoulders Geralt brushed with a patron almost had him breaking down.
He knew all that because once he used to hold him while the potions faded out, and sometimes he can still feel Geralt's body flinching in his arms, and what a painful comfort, what a loving pain that was.
Now he is touching the door knob and thinks it is the closest he has gotten to touching Geralt the past weeks, after everything.
He closes his eyes, breathes shakily. He can almost hear Geralt's strained breathing on the other side of the door. And his heart clenches, wails, what about it, it won't be like then again, not in the way you want, but oh well, he was never one to walk away, damn his loyalty. He was never one to hide the love.
Slowly, silently, he opens the door.
He knows the sight. Has seen it a thousand times before. Geralt hunched at the side of the bed, shoulders tense so as not to betray their shaking, back turned so as not to betray the pain. Only he never managed to hide from Jaskier.
And now Jaskier doesn't know if he wants to remind him that. Still. He enters the room, and closes the door behind him.
One. Two steps. Ever silent, ever careful.
A whisper. "Geralt?" And oh, what an ache it leaves on his tongue, calling his name in silence, what a sweet compromise. Still, no answer. He stands beside him, raises his hand just right over his shoulder, and lets it hover. Burning almost. "Can I get you anything?" Slowly. A brush of fingers, just to reassure.
"No," Geralt flinches at once and he steps back like a scared animal. Hand still raised with no place to rest.
He knows. The gruff tone, the strained voice. The abrupt tone. It's the potions. Only now Geralt's voice is just a little more sharp, as though he is afraid of letting out too much of himself. Only now it hurts just a little more deeply, and just a little too personal.
He watches as Geralt's fists curl on his lap and, defeated, he nods with a small smile. "If you want anything, you can..."
Call me, he would say. Ask me anything. Ask me to stay by your side forever, and I will. I will do it even if you don't ask. He would say. But he stays silent. For better or for worse, even now, Geralt already knows, and it's still not enough.
Thus he turns around.
"Jaskier."
Nothing. A breath of a voice, as though it doesn't want to be heard. Or just wants to be heard by Jaskier alone, because Jaskier always hears. Heart digging its way out, he looks at Geralt again and, oh, Geralt looks back. And it's nothing like he thought.
It's exactly as he knows, and selfishly pretends to have forgotten. Geralt looks at him still slumped, eyes still half black and sunken in their sockets and drowning in what feels like regret. Like a plea.
Sometimes Jaskier thinks maybe it's also his fault, just a little. Maybe he doesn't reach out enough, or has to reach out too much, because the deeper the wound, the stronger the cure must be.
A plea indeed. Geralt suddenly looks like the shell of who he is, shaking and wanting, exhausted, and in the shadow of his gaze Jaskier discerns the same need, no, want, that tortures his empty hands, his gaping embrace. And what a fool he is, he who was never hesitant in love, holding back from the one who needs it the most.
He holds his breath, smile ever present, and gentle. "Perhaps if..." Clears his throat. "Do you want me to--"
Hold you. Do you want me to hold you. He doesn't need to say, because Geralt almost sobs with longing, and something breaks in his face, and leaves him crumpled and bare. "Please." Then, as though remembering, he lowers his look. Shakes his head. "If you want." Begging, desperate. "Just for a bit."
Gods. Gods, and poets and lovers and damned verses, they matter not as his heart weeps inside his chest and Jaskier lets out the breath he was holding, a huff, relieved and almost incredulous. Of course he wants. Lacking, he only ever wants.
Slowly, silently, almost shaking, he sits on the bed and leans back on the pillows, and bares the screaming hole of his arms with hope at last to complete it.
And oh, how gently Geralt fits in his hug, how perfectly. Just like he always did. Hesitant, at first, until he buries his face in his chest and Jaskier feels trembling hands crawling behind his back, limbs tangled in a desperate attempt to be hidden, tucked away in familiar warmth, and safe.
And suddenly all that remains unspoken doesn't matter anymore. Suddenly nothing matters, only this, here, Jaskier wrapping his arms tight around Geralt's body, tighter still so that he never loses him again, only this, the beat of their hearts filling the silence between them as one slows at last, and the other beats faster, and Jaskier hides his face in white hair, and lets the burning flood in his eyes flow down.
"I miss you." A whisper. Only that, and Geralt hides deeper, as though to disappear in the most welcoming absence.
Jaskier feels his shirt suddenly damp, and closes his eyes, breath shaky. "Oh, Geralt." And unspoken everything will remain, for no words can fill the void better than this, holding him at last. He presses a kiss on his hair, ever so soft, and rests his cheek there, voice quivering. "Oh, darling. I'm so sorry."
Geralt doesn't speak. Only, he clings on him tighter, and cries silently.
Maybe it's nobody's fault, after all. It's only like this. Geralt, despite all, will never be alone, and Jaskier, despite all, will stay. As he does now.
He stays until Geralt's heartbeat is slow and faint, and his eyes have closed.
