FAREWELL WANDERLUST BY THE AMAZING DEVIL FOR THE TUNE CRUISE * SCREAMS *
HI I AM THE ONE WHO REQUESTED FAREWELL WANDERLUST AND FORGOT TO SPECIFY WHICH SHIP. OF COURSE. GERASKIER OR JASKIER POV WHATEVER REALLY, OK? THANKS. ILU.
🎶The Evening Earworm Tune Cruise: The SS 200🎶
Port of Call: Geraskier! 🐺👨🎤Itinerary: Farewell Wanderlust by The Amazing DevilCaptain: @kiomaya 🧜♀️
Farewell Wanderlust, you’ve been oh oh so kindYou brought me through this darkness but you left me here behindAnd so long to the person you begged me to be
He took in a deep, steadying breath. His fingers trembled around the neck of his lute. Eyes closed, he mentally coached himself, willing his nerves to settle at least long enough for his voice to sing true. It’s just another performance. How many times have you done this before? It’s no big deal.
Except he knew he was lying to himself.
This was hardly “just another performance.” Far from it. It took him forever to finally write a song sharing Geralt’s “defeat” of the dragon with the world. Even longer to perform it. And, when he finally did, it was… not his best work. One could hardly expect him to sing such a tale with such passion and intrigue when its epilogue was laced with a pain he couldn’t bring himself to bare. It was technically perfect, as his work of late usually was, but the emotion was missing. He was missing.
This song… This performance… This is where it had run off to. Where it’d been hiding ever since his return from that mountainside. It took him longer than he’d like to admit to finally recognize it as the problem - or perhaps he’d known all along, but refused to acknowledge it because it would reopen too many wounds, resurface too much hurt. Finally, the lacerations across his heart had begun to scar just enough for him to look, to examine, to embrace.
All that had happened… It was an indisputable part of him now, no matter how much pain it caused him, and would continue to cause him. He couldn’t move forward while leaving a part of him in the past - it was all or nothing, and he understood that now.
He doubted the unsuspecting townsfolk filling their bellies at the local tavern particularly cared to hear about his heartbreak. Songs of joy and adventure and triumph tended to draw far more coin than songs of misery and suffering and defeat. But this wasn’t for coin, not primarily anyhow. For this one song, this one performance, it wasn’t about the job.
It was bout reclaiming himself. About owning his life. About declaring his agony so irrefutably that he would have no choice but to recognize it as his own and finally, finally, start to address it head-on.
And wasn’t that a kind of personal victory, in its own, awful way?
He opened his eyes. He gazed out upon his feasting audience, upon their grumbling banter and stomping feet and clanking flagons. And he saw hair of white, and swords of silver, and eyes of yellow.
Delicate, flitting fingertips plucked away the beginning notes, deceptively light and whimsical. His voice followed in sweet accompaniment, painting the first syllable in a long, arcing embrace before twirling into its prancing opening measure.
“You look like I need a drink he winked as he slipped from my grasp to the barAnd you are?”
As he rounded out the opening lyrics, the catchy, playful tune drew those listening ears into a light nodding alongside his rhythm. Just as he’d once been distracted by Geralt’s splendor, so too were they taken by his light sing-song, and even as something more sinister began to sneak between his words they sooner suspected the start of some grand tale than the foreboding of tragedy.
Sooner just evidence of the Witcher’s social neglect than a pattern of distancing dissent.
“Every time that you fumble, I’m the laugh from the backWhen you think about him, my wings start to flapWhen you make a mistake, my feet lift from the floorAnd when you lie there awake every night love, I soar”
The notes were turning darker. The words weren’t turning towards a new tomorrow. Rather than circle back, they basked in their darkness, reveled in the furrowed brows and wary glances. His pace built, the ebb and flow of his song’s tide swirling into a tumultuous churning from shore to shore. Too late to swim to safety, the listening hearts searched for the sun - surely it was just around the corner, just after the next typhoon?
Surely, he’d come to his senses and warm up to the company?
“I’m the heartbreak that aches far too much to be shownAll those letters unsent and that garden ungrownI’m the captain of courage you’ve eternally lackedI’m the Jesus of wishing to Christ he’ll come back”
The wave crashed down upon them. Hope of survival glimmered in its wake, breaking free of the surface for a vital breath of precious air. A single ray of sunlight touched their faces… but it proved only to be the eye of a surmounting storm, one which raged more furiously than anything before it. It dragged them back down into his suffering, and like troublesome dogs their faces were forced to behold his wretched distress. But rather than recoil away from the filth, they stared, held in place by the voice that wrapped around their necks like nooses. They witnessed the unfolding of his wounded heart, the casting aside of the love that had poisoned it, and the thrashing of his despair in this pit he’d been left in.
How could someone so beautiful be capable of something so cruel?
“Come devil come, she sang, call out my nameLet’s take this outside cos we’re one and the sameOur god has abandoned us, left us, insteadTake up arms, take my hand, let us waltz for the dead”
The notes of his lute had slowed once more, heavy and trudging. Where once had been whimsy now there rang spite: a lesson learned, and with it the reckless abandon of love’s unburdened prisoner. Only here, at the very depths of his sorrow, could all his emotion at last gather into a crude ladder he could use to pull himself out. Because Love had cast him down, he stood up. Because Love had said he couldn’t, he did. Because Love demanded he stay, broken and defeated, he threw Love away, put himself back together, and reached for something new.
He didn’t know what kind of life could possibly come after Geralt, but he knew, at least, that he’d rather search and know than never even look.
“Farewell Wanderlust, you’ve been oh oh so kindYou brought me through this darkness but you left me here behindAnd so long to the person you begged me to beHe’s down. He’s dead.Now take a long look at what you’ve done to me?”
It was hardly a happy resolution. It was ugly and gritty and tormented, but then what else could have ever come from this war? Nonetheless, as he led his audience into this final arch of their journey, his song blossomed into a kind of vindictive triumph, one that dared the world to try, just try and drag him back into the darkness. It would not, it must not, they collectively swore.
Perhaps, one day, Geralt would come back. It’d be splendid if he did - truly. For then, he could see the rotting carcass of the man Jaskier had to shed in order to forge himself anew. Then, maybe, he’d realize the sins he’d committed, recognize the way he’d sheared Jaskier’s heart to shreds and cast them off the mountainside.
But whether or not he ever did would no longer be a thing Jaskier concerned himself with.
“He’s down, He’s deadHe’s gone, He’s lostHe’s flown, He’s fledNow take a good long look at what you've all done to me”
As Jaskier declared his final words to the crowd, his fingers flew along the strings of his lute, releasing its last, swelling vibrato through the small tavern. The sound grew and grew, until at last it burst into an abrupt silence that swept in and suffocated what few lingering embers might still yet burn for the captivating Witcher.
For a suspenseful moment, not a soul dared disturb it, and even when the daily rumblings of the tavern began to creep back into place no one offered applause - such a thing just didn’t seem right after such an emotional experience as the one which had just unfolded all around them. Not even Jaskier himself offered any levity to the situation, trading his usual bow and playful quip for a simple nod of his head, more for himself than his audience. A small, silent affirmation of his deed, a thanks he afforded himself for finally releasing his pain to the winds of change.
He turned from them and retreated back to his sparse belongings, joining the rest in the tavern in a strange normalcy that pretended like nothing had ever happened. Not but a single soul challenged it, stepping towards him so quietly he hadn’t noticed them until a tiny, trembling finger touched the sleeve of his doublet. Startled, he turned to regard his visitor, a now-distant corner of his mind wondering if he’d find a calloused hand gloved in black.
Of course not. The touch had been too small, too flighty, too careful.
She stared up at him with a round, teary-eyed face, mouth hanging slightly ajar as she still searched for something to say. Studying him, seeing her own shaken state reflected in him, her brow furrowed, and in her eyes he saw an approaching understanding. At last, she murmured, taken with frightful awe, “That... was miserable... ?”
His eyes flickered down, catching the glint of a small trio of coins sequestered in her upturned palm. He knew well what her drifting, questioning inflection reached for, but he only smiled and shook his head, folding her fingers closed around her coin.
“Sometimes, my dear,” he whispered, voice still shuddering from lingering passion, “life is miserable.”
He paused. Chuckled. Hoisted his lute upon his shoulder by the strap of its case.
“And that’s okay.”