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After that first time, when Jaskier had realized that the title of Butcher was detested by Geralt, he’d never said it to him again. ‘The White Wolf’ was born that day, and over the next two decades he worked tirelessly to kill the moniker of The Butcher of Blaviken.
Doubly so, when he learned the true story. Renfri, Stregobor, all of it. Geralt’s pain, his heartbreak.
All of it.
He never called him ‘Butcher’ ever again, after that.
So hearing it in song hurts tenfold.
He hears it first in a tavern, with Ciri. She’s shivering, and hungry, and they’re far enough North he thinks to be safe from Nilfgaard’s eyes and ears, and with his hood up no one recognizes him.
The bard is not Jaskier, and he does not have his talents, but Geralt can imagine Jaskier’s voice filling in the gaps this bard leaves, flowing into the empty spaces of emotion as he is so proficient at doing.
Now you’ll walk with no one by your side / Did you ever even care?
It emphasizes how much Jaskier hates him; beyond how disappointing, beyond watch me laugh, beyond everything else that one word forces Geralt to confront how much he’d fucked up.
It was a deserved hatred after all, every line of the song dripped heartbreak, just as Her Sweet Kiss months and months prior had done the same.
Jaskier’s hatred of him is deserved, the hurt Geralt feels at the title is not.
He has no right to be hurt, he thinks, when every accusation, every word of contempt is warranted.
Jaskier has a right to his anger, Geralt has no right to feel heartbroken himself.
No word that I’ve written will ring quite as true.
The tavern joins in - perhaps Jaskier himself performed this here, Geralt thinks, bathed in the fire’s glow and beauty and grace - and it is a wave, a fire; burn Butcher burn burn burn burn burn
This hatred is a long time coming, Geralt decides. He’s always known he was a monster, and hurting Jaskier so is perhaps the worst sin he’s committed.
Jaskier, who was always kind, and undeservedly loyal, and who never smelt of fear at Geralt’s black eyes or his overall Witcher-ness.
Who made the people forget about The Butcher of Blaviken and replaced him with The White Wolf.
Until Geralt spat in the face of his kindness on that mountain, until Geralt threw his heart onto the jagged edge of the stone and left it cracked and discarded there.
He deserves this, Geralt knows.
And he tells himself the heartbreak is for a friend, and not something he’s too much of a coward to put to words.
When they reunite he doesn’t tell Jaskier he’s heard the song. Either of them.
He’s lucky Jaskier even accepted his apology, accepted his plea to return to the Path - if you might call it that - with him and Ciri. He hopes, perhaps naïvely, that if he doesn’t mention it it will go away.
Because that’s worked well in the past.
And so they travel together, and it’s like it was before, and it’s not. They are trying to rebuild a relationship from the ashes of Geralt’s fuck-up, from the shattered pieces of Jaskier’s heart. (And, the witcher admits to himself, in the quiet of his own mind, his own.)
It all comes to a head in a village that years ago Geralt had rid of a griffin. He’d barely survied, a slash to his chest almost too much for potions and witcher-healing to handle, and the villagers had been grateful enough to pay for his healer as well as the bounty.
Now, he makes the mistake of letting his guard down, and they see the yellow eyes which should have always meant monster.
“Oi, Butcher!” Both he and Jaskier wince, just as a stone catches his cheek. “We don’t want your kind here.”
“Good people, perhaps you do not remember but-” Jaskier’s placating is cut off as Geralt grabs his arm, shaking his head.
Another stone, thrown by another man, splits his lip.
Let these people hate him, he is used to it. But they shouldn’t hate Jaskier too.
But Jaskier looks disturbed, almost panicked, tracking the sluggish trail of blood down Geralt’s cheek with his eyes.
“No,” he insists, “they have no right-”
“They have every right,” Geralt retaliates, with perhaps too much emotion.
“I’ll go,” he says to the villagers, only batting away the next stone because it came dangerously close to Jaskier, “but allow the bard to stay, him and the girl are human, and they are travel-weary.”
“Geralt, no,” Jaskier tries again, watching wide-eyed as more villagers take up stones.
It hadn’t been this bad in… more than a decade. Before Ciri was even conceived. Of course there were backwater shitholes that clung to bigoted beliefs like dungberries to sheep, but the overall consensus had changed.
“ Leave Butcher!” Is his reply.
“Burn, you beast!” Comes another.
Geralt watches as Jaskier blanches, swallowing heavily against his doublet, and before they have to talk about it he turns tail and starts walking back towards the entrance of this shit-hole with a whispered reasssurance and instruction to Ciri to stay safe with Jaskier.
“Geralt!” Jaskier runs after him, looking torn. He wants to fight, but Geralt being recognized is already bad news.
“Take Ciri to the inn,” Geralt intones, “look at her; she’s exhausted, she needs rest.” You do too. “I’ll make camp outside of town. I’ll hear you if you need me.”
“I…” Whatever the bard might have said is cut off as Ciri, up on Roach, makes a noise of uneasiness as Geralt’s loyal steed grunts in discontent and warning, sensing danger to her master.
They’ll stone them all, if they’re not careful.
Without a word Geralt turns his back and goes. Jaskier doesn’t stop him.
He’s woken a few hours later by a broken branch.
Geralt leaps into consciousness, grabbing for the dagger by his head. Two familiar scents greet him before he sees their forms in the darkness, and his body relaxes.
Well, two human scents, and his girl Roach.
“What are you doing here?” He grunts, sheathing the dagger.
“Got kicked out of the tavern,” Ciri says cheerfully, practically skipping to his fire and making herself at home. “Don’t tell me you have no supper.”
“I left you coin to buy your own supper.”
“I don’t want that inedible shit they call stew,” she huffs, staring at him disapprovingly upon realizing he hadn’t hunted anything.
“You’re safer there,” he tries again, raising an unamused eyebrow. “What happened?”
“Fuckers don’t deserve our coin. And I punched the innkeeper.”
Geralt sighs, praying to Melitele for strength. “ Ciri- ”
“They deserved it.” Ciri frowns, glaring at Geralt like he’d personally offended her by trying to ask.
“We’re not supposed to be drawing attention to ourselves.”
“Then they shouldn’t have deserved the punch.” She crosses her arms, done with the conversation.
Defeated, Geralt stands. Guess he’s hunting for their supper, then.
“I’ll be back,” he grunts, only now looking at Jaskier - who’s been worryingly quiet, in general and after a scuffle like that usually leads him. Maybe he’s remembering how much trouble it is to travel with him. He tips his head, a silent request.
Jaskier follows him to Roach, still unnervingly silent. He looks almost… heartbroken.
Please don’t remember I’m a monster.
“What happened?” Geralt’s voice thrums through the evening air, dark and gruff.
“The innkeep insulted her,” Jaskier mumbles, shaking himself back into full-awareness.
“So did my brothers, and she handled herself; she knows we’re not meant to be making scenes out here. She can get it out with her training.”
“Well, maybe they shouldn’t have made a scene first,” the bard hisses, sudden fervour in his voice.
Geralt stares, that crease forming above his brow like it always does when he wants to ask but isn’t sure how.
Jaskier takes pity on him. “He asked if she needed help getting away… from you. And then when she told him to fuck off there was an implication, he suggested, well- he asked if we were… well, he didn’t think she was your daughter.” Monsterfucking whores was the exact phrasing. “He deserved the punch.”
“Hm.” Geralt takes his bow from Roach. “Stay with her, please?” Stay with me.
“Of course.”
The witcher turns to the forest, looping the bow over his back, only to be halted by Jaskier’s voice, suddenly and shockingly sincere- “ Geralt- ”
He turns back and meets Jaskier’s eyes, a horrifying moment of emotion passing between, things left unsaid beating against his chest maddeningly. Cornflower blue so deep he could get lost…
Jaskier’s mouth opens, and then closes.
He’s going to leave him, Geralt’s sure. He wants to beg him not to, but the illusion is faded now - he’ll never get it back. The whimsy and adventure of this life has been… well, burned from his bard.
The moment passes.
“Don’t get eaten,” Jaskier jokes unconvincingly. “And come back with a feast.”
Geralt’s mouth tips into his almost-grin, and he nods. “I’ll do my best, bard.”
Later, when Ciri is sleeping, Jaskier tries again.
“You helped those people, and they threw stones at you today.” He sounds so unbearably sad. Geralt can’t stand it.
He grunts.
“They are not the first to hate mutants.”
“They called you Butcher.” Jaskier rasps the phrase like it was a great sin in itself.
Geralt swallows, watching Jaskier’s lashes kiss his cheek as he furiously blinks. “They are not the first for that, either,” he says after a breath.
Cornflower blue whips and meets his unnatural gold as he hears a heartbeat jackrabbit, a breathless gasp escape past soft lips.
“My song…”
“I’ve heard it.”
The bard crumples, and he reeks of heartbreak again. Anger too, sadness, shame.
Geralt knew he should have just stayed quiet, he could have bought himself more time .
“I never meant…” Jaskier’s eyes are full, the tears mocking Geralt as the fire lights them. “I’m so sorry.”
Geralt shrugs, looking away from the flames in Jaskier’s eyes - Burn, Butcher - he goes back to sharpening his swords, needing something to do with his hands. Maybe he can save this.“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
“But-”
“You don’t.”
“I knew what it meant to you, and I still- I was angry and-”
“You were right to be angry; I treated you horribly, I didn’t deserve any of the kindness you gave me, and I was still ungrateful.”
“No,” Jaskier stands, a flurry of limbs, and takes to pacing back and forth, so close and yet so far away from the witcher. “No don’t- You’ve apologized for that, and I forgave you. You owned up to your mistakes; do not do yourself and me the disservice of not allowing me to do the same.”
Geralt’s hands still.
“I was angry, and heartbroken- don’t you dare apologize again, not right now - but I knew what that name was to you. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe I wanted to hurt you too, and that was wrong of me Geralt. It was wrong. And then later… after the song was already popular, I saw flyers.”
Mutant freaks and dangerous elves are walking among us
They are a plague on our world
It’s time to burn the butcher and every freak on our glorious Continent
“I stopped singing the song after that but the damage was done. That dreadful name was on their tongues again and I’d put it there.”
“Jaskier-” Geralt sits, shocked, as Jaskier puts blame on himself for something that isn’t his fault.
“No, you pig-headed oaf! Why is it all-or-none with you? No blame or all of it; that’s not how life works Geralt. I was wrong to include your old moniker in my song, at the absolute least I should never have performed it. Not in the political climate as it is today, not ever.”
Jaskier’s chest heaves like he’s run a mile, and if the galloping heartbeat is anything to go by he feels that way too. Geralt flounders for what to say.
“People called me Butcher before the song was written, too.”
“It doesn’t make what I did any less wrong.” Like his strings had been cut, Jaskier slumps back down onto the log that had served as their dining table that night.
“They took my pain and turned it into hate,” he whispers.
Geralt squirms, his whetstone a welcome weight in his palm.
“It’s alright if you hate me,” he murmurs into the night, feeling what’s left of his heart crack again. “I don’t… it’s okay if you do.”
Maybe that’s what Jaksier is really upset about, that he hates Geralt but is too good of a man to tell the mutant outright after he’d practically begged him to return to travelling with him.
The bard just gapes at him, mouth slightly parted.
“Geralt, you idiot, I could- how could you ever think- I don’t hate you.”
The witcher grunts, forcing himself to look back into Jaskier’s gaze. “I know you’d only ever… after the first time you never called me that again, when I heard it I knew it meant we were done.”
The crack grows inside of his chest, a chasm grows.
“Done?” A tear finally escapes Jaskier’s bottom lashes, Geralt wishes he could wipe it away. “You want me to go?”
“ No.” Geralt’s eyes widen, his entire body seizing in fear. “I don’t, I just… don’t you want to?”
“Never,” Jaskier’s flair for the dramatic evades him, he can hardly form these few words, “I thought… you should hate me. ”
“I don’t. I never did. I could never.” It’s not that the words themselves are profoundly sincere (though, for Geralt, they are quite close), it’s the way he says them.
“Oh. I- I could never hate you either. I can be angry over your decisions, your actions. I can be hurt by them. But I… I should never have used a title you’ve associated with hate. Not even while heartbroken.”
“I despise myself more for breaking your heart than I feel undeserved hurt at how you responded to it.”
Well, Jaskier thinks, at least we’ve gotten him to admit he was hurt.
“There, was it so hard to admit that you were hurt?”
Caught, Geralt makes a noncommittal noise and busies himself with anywhere but Jaskier again.
“You should at least be honest with yourself over how you feel, Geralt,” Jaskier replies. “Hurting you is what I’m apologizing for now. No-” he puts a hand up, silencing the witcher, “no you said it yourself; anger and frustration is not an excuse to hurt you. Even thoughtlessly. Please be honest with me now.”
It takes a long time for Geralt to be able to quell the storm raging in his mind, and the growing abyss in his chest. Jaskier waits patiently for him, as he has for two decades…
“I know what I am,” he says at last, “I know that I can’t escape Blaviken - the title is my penance to carry. But, I think it hurt more knowing it was…” he sighs, “it was you, it was your words. Like you had finally remembered what I am too, and I knew I’d failed you, and that hurt the most. But Jaskier, I deserve it, you don’t have to apologize.”
Jaskier stares at him, eyes so full of emotion he can hardly bear it. “Oh, dear heart,” he whispers, kneeling in front of Geralt and raising a hand to his cheek.
The witcher doesn’t flinch, though he does feel his slowed heart stop altogether.
“You are not a monster,” Jaskier goes on, voice just barely carried by the wind, “I know you think differently, and I have always corrected you, and I will do the same now.”
Geralt has to restrain himself from leaning into the touch, but he can’t stop himself from letting his eyes flutter shut as Jaskier runs his thumb over his cheek.
“You did not deserve this,” he runs over the already healing cut, “you did not deserve to be labelled ‘Butcher’, you did not deserve to have someone you trust use that title despite knowing its true meaning. And even in the midst of my grief, you do not deserve to be hurt in turn.”
Geralt has always been a selfish man, he leans into Jaskier’s touch, the warmth and comfort of it almost brings him to his knees.
What’s more, he doesn’t smell hate on Jaskier. Nor disgust. Nor anger.
“I healed, and when you apologized you gave me what I deserved from you, and I accepted it. Allow me to do the same now, to you. I love you too much to allow you to believe otherwise.”
Golden eyes snap open. Surely he misheard, surely-
“Oh Geralt,” Jaskier could almost laugh, “surely you knew?”
“You love me?”
“I was not subtle about it, dearest.”
“I never knew, I never thought you could love someone like me.” He didn’t deserve Jaskier’s love, doesn’t the bard see?
Jaskier does laugh then, or he almost does. It is something between a laugh and a sob. “How could you know, I suppose, when you carry such a heavy burden upon your shoulders, hating yourself the way you do.”
Jaskier’s palm still lays flat against his cheek, grounding him. Sending him to the skies. Both.
“I love you too.”
Jaskier had dreamed of this moment for years, decades even. He’d always fantasized about some grand gesture, or perhaps some grave wound forcing their feelings into the open.
This is the only way it could have happened, he realizes.
“I regret my actions,” he whispers, “and one day I’m going to prove to you that you deserve an apology over them. Until then, if you’ll have me, I will start by loving you, in every way possible, and I will be the balm to your wounds as you are the security to my home.
I will protect you in all the ways I can, and care for you with the entirety of my soul. I only ask that you treat me as what I am; someone who loves you, not a fantasy, and not someone who is making a mistake.
If you return my feelings you know how inevitable my regard for you is, how it pulses and crashes as timeless and unstoppable as the tide; that is not a mistake. It is love, and I have accepted yours with nothing but tender joy in my heart, but I cannot allow my own to be given if you believe yourself to be a conman for taking it.
So please, agree to these terms; that you will endeavour to love yourself as you love me, and that you allow me into your heart fully to chase away the monsters in your mind, and we will have eternity and more.”
They feel like wedding vows, they feel like more.
And Geralt, with his lack of words and talent in weaving them - but a keen understanding on how it feels to hurt someone you love, the hope that they will take your apology, that they deserve to at least hear it - can only say one more thing.
“Jaskier, I forgive you.”