Imagine if Jaskier had seasonal depression. He deals with it the best he can when he spends the winter season in Oxenfurt, trying to schedule his lectures in the time that the sun is out, when he feels marginally less like walking, talking, smiling is akin to wading through quicksand.
And then Geralt invites him to Kaer Morhen for the winter, and Jaskier doesn’t even think before agreeing wholeheartedly. And the sheer novelty of the keep, the other witchers, and the hot springs are enough to hold the worst of the depression at bay. At first, that is.
Jaskier thinks he is doing a good job of acting upbeat, but fails to take into consideration that Geralt knows him. The witcher knows what the bard is like when he’s just performing versus when he’s truly happy, the way his whole face lights up in pure joy when there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.
And as the days pass by, Geralt can no longer fool himself into thinking that Jaskier just needs time to adjust, to get used to the cooler temperatures, to get to know Eskel, Lambert, and Vesemir. He notices how the bard spends more time in his room, how he stops playing his lute, how he basically stops talking.
And Geralt doesn’t know what to DO. The path down from the mountain has long since frozen over, and Geralt isn’t entirely sure what the problem is, let alone how to fix it. Even telling the bard stories of his past hunts, with more details than the witcher ever willingly gives, doesn’t cheer the bard up. More often than not, Geralt can do nothing but watch helplessly as Jaskier’s mind drifts, the song writing material the bard begs for constantly doing nothing to alleviate the scent of miserable, depressed, hopeless.
Finally, realizing that the past three weeks have been utterly horrible for the bard, the witcher bitterly apologizes for forcing Jaskier’s hand, for pressuring him to go somewhere he doesn’t want to be.
And Jaskier is…very confused. It takes a good hour of discussion, for which Jaskier is thankfully more mentally present than he has been lately, for the bard to explain Geralt did nothing wrong, and that Kaer Morhen is lovely. Having not interacted with humans often (or really at all) during winter, Geralt just squints at Jaskier’s explanation of ‘I get sad during winter, it’s me not you’, clearly searching for the lie.
It takes some convincing, but finally Geralt seems to accept the bard’s words. The witcher even gives a thoughtful hmmm when Jaskier explains that he really is like a buttercup, open and vibrant when there’s lots of sun and closing up when there’s no light to be had.
It surprises Jaskier when Geralt asks him what helps, and the bard sheepishly responds that besides sunlight, he hasn’t been able to find much else that works.
Perhaps even more surprising, however, is the way that Jaskier finds himself practically dragged from his room the next day, up several flights of stairs in the pre-dawn purplish gray glow to an open balcony. Here, Geralt buries him in furs, and sits with him.
Jaskier is confused, and it takes him an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize that Geralt has taken his self comparison to a flower quite literally. Still, the cool air contrasting with the almost overwhelming heat of the furs is nice, and he is disappointed when he realizes that he has been talking with the witcher long enough that the sun is nearly setting once more after a scant few hours.
And when Geralt comes the next day, and the next, and the next, Jaskier quickly begins to look forward to their “sunlight sessions”, as he has mentally dubbed them. Sometimes Jaskier spends the whole time babbling, words flowing from his lips as easily as they do when he walks beside Roach on the Path. And Jaskier loves these days, loves leaning against the witcher and speaking of whatever comes to mind, feeling an uncommon sense of peace at the knowledge that there is no rush to move, to hunt, to survive within the stillness of the keep. It’s a nice sensation, and Jaskier can see why Geralt comes to the mountain every winter.
But there are also days when Jaskier can barely get out of bed, when he feels like Geralt’s swords have been tied to his eyelids. And Jaskier wishes these days weren’t so frequent, that he could just convince his head that he is happy, that Geralt didn’t have to deal with him like this.
He doesn’t have the energy to do anything when Geralt comes to get him the first time he’s having a bad day, besides find it vaguely amusing in a detached sort of way how Geralt is using his words and all Jaskier can manage is grunts. If he’d been a little more present, he would have squeaked at the way Geralt picked him up, carrying him along the route that is quite familiar by now. He definitely would have been embarrassed at the looks the other witchers send him and Geralt when the silver-haired witcher marched past the training grounds like a man on a mission.
But as it was, all he felt was a small sense of fondness as Geralt carefully set him down on a pile of furs, leaning the bard against his chest as the first rays of the sun made their way above the horizon. And as his mind cleared as the sun rose, he couldn’t help but feel lucky, that he’d somehow found his own twin rays of golden light that shined on him day or night, bringing him happiness and warmth.
