Chapter Text
Jaskier did not remember most of the walk down the mountain.
Later, when he tried to think back on it, the memories came in broken pieces that refused to fit together properly. Wind biting at his face. Loose gravel sliding beneath his boots. The distant cry of some bird circling somewhere overhead. Pine trees swaying dark against a gray sky.
And Geralt’s voice.
That part remained painfully clear.
If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.
Jaskier had spent years turning harsh words into songs. Tavern drunks, bitter nobles, jealous husbands, angry aldermen—he could laugh off nearly anything if he tried hard enough. Words only had as much power as one allowed them.
Except those.
Those had slipped past every defense he possessed.
By the time he reached the bottom of the mountain path, his throat hurt from trying not to be sick.
He stopped beside a narrow stream cutting through the rocks and braced both hands against his knees, breathing hard. The water rushed beneath him, cold and quick from spring melt farther uphill.
For a long moment he simply stood there.
Not crying.
Not speaking.
Just staring at the water while the silence around him stretched wider and wider.
Twenty-two years of muddy roads, terrible inns, and monsters scratching at windows in the middle of the night.Years spent stitching wounds with shaking fingers because Geralt refused to sit still long enough to heal properly. Years humming beside campfires while Geralt sharpened swords nearby in silence.
Twenty-two years.
And somehow, after all that time, Jaskier had still managed to become something unwanted.
A laugh escaped him then, thin and humorless.
“Well,” he muttered hoarsely to the stream, “that’s certainly one way to end a friendship.”
The words vanished into the rushing water.
Jaskier straightened slowly and rubbed both hands over his face. His skin felt cold despite the long walk down the mountain. He realized dimly that he had not eaten since sometime the previous morning.
He could not quite bring himself to care.
The path eventually widened enough to meet the main road. Wagon tracks cut deep grooves through the mud, and somewhere farther south he could hear merchants shouting faintly at one another.
Normally he would have headed straight toward the nearest town. Find a tavern. Charm a room from the innkeeper. Play a few songs. Gather gossip. Pretend the world made sense.
Instead, he stopped at the edge of the road and simply stared.
Every direction suddenly felt equally pointless.
Only now, standing there alone, did Jaskier realize how much of his life had quietly arranged itself around Geralt. Contracts determined their route. Geralt’s silences determined when Jaskier sang and when he stayed quiet. Their coin determined where they slept, what they ate, whether Jaskier could afford new boots before the old ones split apart completely.
Now there was nothing.
No destination.
No monster contract.
The emptiness beside him felt wrong enough that he nearly turned to say something before remembering there was no one there.
Jaskier swallowed hard and adjusted the strap of his lute case higher onto his shoulder.
“Right,” he told himself quietly. “You are a celebrated bard. Beloved across the Continent. You survived Oxenfurt. You survived royal courts. You survived that one duchess in Bremervoord.”
He took a breath.
“You can survive being alone.”
The road offered no reply.
The first tavern went poorly.
Not disastrously. Jaskier had suffered through disastrous performances before. Once in Kerack he had accidentally insulted an entire fishing fleet without realizing it until someone threw an eel at his head.
No, this was worse in a quieter sort of way.
People simply… did not care very much.
The tavern in question sat near a trading route and smelled heavily of wet wool, smoke, and onions. A few merchants occupied the tables near the fire while farmhands crowded the back corner drinking cheap ale.
Jaskier played.
He smiled when appropriate. Bowed dramatically. Added flourishes to his voice where the crowd usually laughed.
But the songs felt hollow in his own ears.
When someone requested ballads about the White Wolf, Jaskier’s fingers stumbled across the strings so badly that he nearly missed an entire chord progression.
He covered the mistake smoothly enough.
Years of practice.
No one noticed.
Still, he did not sing another song about witchers that night.
By the time he finished, the applause was polite rather than enthusiastic. The innkeeper handed him fewer coins than usual and did not bother apologizing for it.
Jaskier accepted them anyway.
Back in his rented room, he sat on the edge of the narrow bed and counted the money twice before letting the coins fall back into his palm.
Not enough.
It would be enough for now, but not comfortably.
Geralt had always been the dangerous one between them, but monster contracts paid well when they succeeded. Jaskier’s music had supplemented their travel, not fully carried it.
Now every meal, every room, every broken lute string rested entirely on him.
The thought made exhaustion settle heavier across his shoulders.
He lay back without undressing and stared at the ceiling beams overhead.
For the first time in years, there was no swords being set aside. No muttered complaint about Jaskier talking too loudly downstairs. No steady presence occupying the next room over.
The silence pressed in from all sides.
Jaskier turned onto his side and shut his eyes tightly.
Sleep did not come for a very long time.
Three days later, he left the main roads entirely.
Partly because towns meant questions.
Mostly because he no longer had the energy to answer them.
“Where’s the witcher?”
“Traveling alone now?”
“No new songs about the White Wolf?”
At first Jaskier had laughed them off.
Then he had begun dodging the questions.
Then eventually he simply stopped staying anywhere long enough for people to ask.
The forest path he chose was narrower than the trade roads and considerably muddier from recent rain. Pine needles carpeted parts of the ground, muffling his footsteps as evening slowly settled over the trees.
It would add an extra day or two to his route toward the next town.
Jaskier preferred that.
The woods, at least, left him alone.
The deeper he walked, the quieter everything became. Even birdsong had begun fading with dusk. Only the occasional creak of branches disturbed the stillness.
Jaskier adjusted the pack on his shoulder with a tired sigh.
He needed to stop soon.
Preferably before dark fully settled in.
He was just beginning to scan the trees for a suitable campsite when something caught his eye near the edge of the trail.
At first he thought it was mud.
Then he noticed the color.
Blood.
Jaskier froze instantly.
Several dark stains marked the ground beside the path, partially soaked into damp earth. Nearby, low brush had been crushed flat, as though something large had fallen through it.
Or been dragged.
His stomach tightened.
Slowly, carefully, Jaskier crouched beside the nearest bloodstain.
Still wet.
Fresh.
Every instinct told him to leave immediately.
Humans bleeding this much in the middle of the woods rarely led to pleasant discoveries.
But then his gaze caught on something half-hidden beneath the ferns several feet away.
A medallion.
A wolf’s head.
Jaskier’s breath caught.
Without thinking, he shoved himself upright and pushed through the brush. Branches snagged at his sleeves as he followed the trail farther off the path.
Ten feet.
Twenty.
“Oh gods.”
A witcher lay crumpled against the base of a tree.
The witcher’s armor had been torn open along one side.
Not a clean cut.
Something had raked through it.
Leather hung in shredded strips beneath one arm while dark blood soaked the gambeson underneath. One leg lay twisted awkwardly beneath him, half-buried in dead leaves and pine needles.
For one horrible moment, Jaskier thought he was dead.
Then he saw the shallow rise and fall of his chest.
Alive.
Barely.
Jaskier dropped to his knees beside him so quickly the impact jarred painfully through his legs.
“Hey,” he said immediately, voice low and urgent. “Hey, can you hear me?”
No response.
The witcher’s skin felt cold when Jaskier pressed trembling fingers against his neck. A pulse beat there beneath the grime and blood—slow, but steady enough not to send him fully into panic.
His medallion rested against his chest, though not a wolf’s after all.
Cat.
The narrow feline face stared upward through dirt and blood.
Jaskier swallowed.
A Cat School witcher.
Wonderful.
Still, Cat School witchers carried reputations for a reason. Sharper tempers. Less restraint. Faster blades.
Geralt had once muttered that half the Continent preferred believing Cats were monsters because it made killing them easier.
At the time, Jaskier had thought the comment unusually bitter even for Geralt.
Now, kneeling in the damp forest beside one who looked half-dead, the memory returned unpleasantly clear.
“Right,” Jaskier muttered faintly. “Well. You’re still a witcher, aren’t you?”
The witcher remained unconscious.
Jaskier carefully pushed aside part of the torn armor to inspect the wound and immediately wished he had not.
Claw marks.
Deep ones.
Four long furrows ripped diagonally across the witcher’s side. The bleeding had slowed somewhat already—witcher healing working stubbornly beneath the damage—but not enough. Fever heat radiated beneath the cold sweat covering his skin.
There were more injuries too.
Bruising along the throat.
A partially healed cut near the shoulder.
Burn marks across one gauntlet.
This had not been a clean fight.
Jaskier looked around the darkening woods uneasily.
No corpse nearby.
Which meant whatever had done this might still be alive.
“Excellent,” he whispered. “Wonderful. Lovely situation you’ve found yourself in, Jaskier.”
The witcher made a faint sound then.
Not words.
Just a strained, rough exhale of pain.
Jaskier’s attention snapped back immediately.
“All right, all right.” He shrugged his pack off his shoulder and dug through it with quick, nervous movements. “Let’s see what idiotic supplies you people insist on carrying…”
Years with Geralt had taught him many things.
How to identify monsters from tracks.
How to tell silver poisoning from infection.
How to cook over a campfire without burning everything black.
And, perhaps most importantly, how incredibly stubborn witchers became when injured.
Geralt hated accepting help while wounded.
Lambert bit people.
Eskel apologized for bleeding on things.
Jaskier had never met a Cat before, but somehow he doubted they were easier.
His fingers finally closed around a familiar vial tucked into one of the witcher’s belt pouches.
Swallow potion.
Good.
Another vial held Thunderbolt.
Absolutely not.
Jaskier set it aside immediately before checking the rest more carefully. Several were cracked empty. One smelled wrong entirely.
Toxicity already high, then.
He grimaced.
“Of course you kept drinking potions while half-dead.”
The witcher’s brow twitched faintly at the sound of his voice.
Conscious enough to hear?
Maybe.
Jaskier uncorked the Swallow carefully and slid one arm behind the witcher’s shoulders.
Gods, he was heavy.
“Come now,” Jaskier muttered, struggling to lift him enough to tilt the vial toward his mouth. “You witchers are always complaining these taste awful. Try not to waste it.”
A small amount dribbled down the witcher’s chin before instinct finally kicked in and he swallowed weakly.
Good enough.
Jaskier eased him back carefully against the tree.
The forest around them had grown darker while he worked. Shadows stretched long between the pines, and somewhere deeper in the woods an animal cried out sharply before falling silent.
Too dark to move him safely.
Too dangerous to stay exposed.
Jaskier rubbed both hands over his face, thinking rapidly.
If the witcher woke hostile, this could become a terrible idea very quickly.
If he left him here, the witcher would likely die.
And despite everything—despite Geralt’s words still lodged painfully beneath his ribs—Jaskier found he could not quite walk away from a wounded witcher.
Not when he knew what to do.
“Damn you, Geralt,” he muttered softly.
Then he stood and began gathering wood for a fire.
The fire remained small by necessity.
Jaskier built it in a shallow dip between roots where the glow would not carry too far through the trees. Even then, he kept glancing uneasily into the dark beyond the camp every few moments while he worked.
Years on the Path had carved certain instincts into him whether he liked it or not.
Fresh blood in the woods was rarely unnoticed for long.
By the time the flames settled into a steady crackle, night had fully overtaken the forest. Cold crept damply through the undergrowth, settling into Jaskier’s boots and stiff fingers while he unpacked the remainder of his supplies.
Half a loaf of bread.
Some dried apples.
A little cheese.
Not much.
He stared at the food for a moment before sighing quietly and setting most of it aside untouched.
The witcher would need it more once he woke.
Assuming he woke.
Jaskier glanced toward him instinctively.
The Cat witcher had not moved from where Jaskier had settled him near the tree, though his breathing sounded steadier now. Firelight flickered across sharp features half-hidden beneath tangled dark hair. Younger than Geralt, perhaps. Or maybe not. Witchers were difficult to judge that way.
One gloved hand still rested dangerously close to the sword at his side even unconscious.
That, oddly enough, reassured Jaskier a little.
It meant instinct remained intact.
Alive enough to defend himself.
Jaskier sat down across from him with a weary groan, stretching his aching legs toward the fire. For the first time since finding him, he allowed himself to breathe properly.
And immediately became aware of how exhausted he truly was.
His shoulders hurt.
His boots were damp.
His throat still burned faintly from trying not to cry earlier that morning when a stableboy had casually asked where his witcher was.
Your witcher.
Funny how quickly people had begun treating Geralt like part of Jaskier rather than the other way around.
Jaskier stared into the fire.
A piece of wood shifted softly in the flames, sending sparks upward through the dark.
“You know,” he said aloud after a long silence, “this is exactly the sort of situation he always warned me about.”
No response came besides the crackling fire.
Jaskier smiled faintly anyway.
“He’d say something deeply irritating like, ‘One day your habit of helping strangers is going to get you killed, bard.’” His voice roughened slightly around the imitation. “Then he’d glare at me for three hours while stitching someone back together himself.”
The witcher remained motionless.
Jaskier’s smile faded slowly.
The witcher remained motionless. Jaskier’s smile faded slowly. A piece of wood shifted in the fire with a soft crack.
It just felt empty.
He lowered his gaze to his hands.
There were still faint bloodstains beneath his fingernails from treating the wounds earlier.
The sight pulled unexpectedly at his chest.
For more than two decades, he had patched torn flesh and monster bites and silver burns without complaint. Held potions steady while Geralt drank them. Boiled water. Kept watch through fevers. Found shelter before storms hit. Remembered where Geralt left things because Geralt himself never did.
Useful in all the small invisible ways no one ever bothered singing about.
And somehow, after all of it, he had still become something easy to leave behind.
Jaskier swallowed hard and leaned forward, rubbing tiredly at his eyes.
“No more of that,” he murmured to himself.
Self-pity would not help.
He knew that.
It certainly would not improve his current situation, which involved one heavily injured Cat School witcher unconscious in the middle of monster-infested woods.
Gods.
Geralt would laugh himself sick if he could see this.
The thought landed wrong enough that Jaskier immediately regretted it.
Before he could spiral further into the miserable direction of his own thoughts, a quiet sound pulled his attention sharply upward.
Cloth shifting.
Jaskier froze.
Across the fire, the witcher had moved.
Only slightly.
But enough.
His head tilted faintly against the tree, brow pulling together with visible effort. One hand flexed near his sword hilt before tightening weakly against the ground instead.
Yellow eyes opened slowly.
For one long moment neither of them spoke.
The witcher’s gaze locked onto him immediately.
Sharp.
Assessing.
Predatory, even half-conscious.
Jaskier lifted both hands slightly away from himself on instinct.
“Easy,” he said carefully. “You’re injured.”
The witcher did not respond.
His eyes moved instead around the camp in quick, practiced sweeps. Fire. Bedroll. Supplies. Trees. Escape paths.
Only after checking everything else did his attention settle fully back onto Jaskier.
There was something unnerving about being observed so intently by someone barely awake.
Jaskier cleared his throat awkwardly.
“You collapsed in the woods,” he explained. “Or were thrown into them. Frankly, the details were unclear. I found you bleeding beside the trail.”
Still nothing.
The witcher’s stare narrowed slightly.
Then his voice emerged rough and low from disuse.
“…Potion.”
Jaskier blinked.
“Yes. I gave you Swallow.”
A pause.
The witcher studied him another moment longer.
“…Correct one.”
“Well, yes,” Jaskier said, mildly offended despite himself. “I wasn’t going to poison you accidentally.”
Something flickered briefly through the witcher’s expression then.
Not amusement exactly.
Surprise, perhaps.
His gaze drifted once toward the uncorked potion vial sitting nearby before returning to Jaskier again with renewed focus.
“You know witcher potions.”
It was not quite a question.
Jaskier hesitated only briefly.
“Occupational hazard.”
The witcher’s eyes narrowed further.
And suddenly Jaskier knew exactly what connection he was making.
His eyes narrowed further.
Human.
Traveling alone.
Knows witcher potions.
Lute.
“…You’re the bard,” the witcher said quietly.