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Julian was three years old when he first realized music was magical.

He felt it in the way his mom’s lullabies turned off his incessantly inquisitive mind at night, like spells that cast sleep over his body and sent him away to other worlds entirely.

He felt it in the way his dad’s humming could calm him down during a storm, as if his comforting voice could quiet the howling wind and rain too.

He heard it in the way that just a few sung words could transform a sour mood after an argument between his parents into amused exasperation and laughed apologies as they joined together to sing their favorite songs.

He saw it in the way that visiting musicians could bring their audiences to laughter or to tears, could commemorate joy or consecrate grief, with just the right notes. Their instruments, hunks of silent wood and metal, suddenly transfigured into the most powerful weapons in the world under their fingers, producing sound out of thin air.

There was no explanation for it other than magic, in his young mind.

It was a magic he so deeply wanted to be a part of.

It was a magic he swore he felt living in his heart.

Even as a baby, he would spend hours babbling wordless songs to himself in his crib, or to his mom as she carried him around on her hip. His gummy lips would pop with the same notes over and over again, enjoying the soothing rhythmic ‘ba’ sound he could make, his chubby fists clumsily clapping along.

As he grew, he would hum the lullabies he was familiar with, eventually learning to calm himself down during storms and after nightmares. He sang to himself as he picked flowers in the field behind their estate, blowing dandelion wishes into the breeze and hoping that one day he’d bring joy to people with music too.

Long before he ever touched a lute, he learned to turn spoons into instruments, plates and bowls into drums, his lips and blades of grass into whistles. He figured out how to cup his hands and blow into them the right way to mimic different birdsong. When his mother brushed his hair, he’d pick up the fallen strands and hold them taut between his fingers, plucking one like a string, enjoying the twanging sound it made.

Once at a holiday banquet, his mother caught him tugging the puffy pant-leg of a visiting bard. He’d been planning to ask if he could touch the lute, wanting to see if he could feel the magic thrumming under his fingertips.

She picked him up with apologies to the musician. “Would you like to learn music properly, little Julian?” She asked as the bard bowed and walked away. He nodded so hard he thought his head would fall off.

And so he learned to carry a note before he could speak full sentences, and he learned to read and write music before he could read and write Common.

After-dinner nightcaps were soon accompanied by whatever new song he’d learned or created that day, his mother clapping along with delight and his father chuckling.

His music tutors all told his parents he had a gift.

They didn’t know just how right they were.

Almost a century before, their childhoods miles apart, Geralt had held no such notions about music or magic.

After the first few months of staying at the freezing Keep, any memory of the lullabies that the mother who abandoned him nameless and on the side of the road might have once sung to him had long since faded.

It was replaced instead by screams and wails that echoed through the halls at night, the occasional sound of a shovel pushing dirt.

He overheard an older boy, Eskel, hum a lullaby to the younger boys to get them to sleep. He’d explained he remembered it from his own mother, and Geralt let himself feel a pang of jealousy before he shoved it aside. It was kind of sweet, the longer he thought about it.

Geralt never made it obvious that he was listening along too, pretending to already be asleep.

After their Trial of Choice which marked him and Eskel as part of the same incoming class of witchers, he considers telling Eskel he likes his singing. He stops himself, afraid the boy won’t make it—or that he won’t—and not wanting to interact with anyone more than he has to. Especially if what the instructors say about witchers not being able to form emotional attachments and having dulled emotions—he figures it best to start practicing now. It would hurt less in the long run.

After the Trial of the Grasses, their class having dwindled down to just him, Eskel, and another boy named Lambert, Eskel doesn’t sing anymore. Geralt strains to hear any signs of it with his newly, almost painfully sensitive hearing, but the Keep is absent of any music. Instead, his ears pick up on muffled sniffles and crying, the mages whispering something about him between one another, and the squeaks of mice skittering in a wall several halls over.

Geralt regrets not telling him he liked it, wishes he hadn’t pretended not to listen. He knows then that what his instructors said about emotions is a bunch of horseshit.

He learns to fall asleep to whatever noise is around him, but he misses the gentle humming of Eskel’s voice.

Especially so after Geralt’s third Trial enhanced his senses and strength even further, the magic burning and twisting in his bones and muscle and skin, turning his hair white and eyes gold.

Especially so after the pogroms, when the Keep’s constant noise was replaced by a painful, hushed silence.

It takes decades before he hears Eskel sing again, but it’s not the lullaby of their youth.

One winter, plied by white gull and wine and ale, Eskel’s low voice joins in on one of Lambert’s bawdy drinking songs. Remus bangs a beat out on the table with his fists, and the empty hall echoes with the three of them singing, Geralt reluctantly clapping along when Eskel catches his eye.

One winter his brother comes home a little broken from the still-open wounds on his face. A few weeks in of Eskel sleeping in fits in the lab after Vesemir fixed his stitches, Geralt sneaks in to sit by his bedside. He takes a breath and lets the fuzzy memory of the lullaby grit past his throat, making Eskel turn to look at him in surprise and then softness.

He sings his brother to sleep, and it worked better than a well-cast Somne; his sleep quiet and uninterrupted for the first time since arriving at the Keep. A favor for a favor, returned after so many years.

When he heals, and he’s able to talk without re-opening the wounds curling around his lip, his first words to them are: “Maybe leave the singing to me, Pretty Boy,” and they laugh.

That evening, Geralt lets his voice join the others as Lambert introduces them to a drinking song he’d allegedly learned from a Cat that year.

It’s not magic, and none of them are particularly great at it, but Geralt thinks there might be some merit to music after all.

Julian was thirteen when he first realized that music was magical, in a far more literal sense than he’d meant when he was three. That music (and magic) was a double-edged sword, the power to save and end lives on either side of the blade. That he had not just a musical gift, but a musical Gift—or curse, depending on how he looked at it.

The thing about being a nobleman’s only son is that all nobility comes with a degree of risk.
Holding any kind of power meant always being aware that there would be others willing to try to take it.

He’d known this, peripherally, but Lettenhove was so unobtrusive and small and relatively quiet compared to the rest of the Continent that it was easy to forget.

In fact, Lettenhove was a bit boring to him compared to what he’d read about in his books. He craved travel and adventure, felt wanderlust deep in his bones. He wanted to travel the world and bring music to others, bringing them joy like the troubadours he’d seen growing up. But he didn’t just want to play to the courts, he wanted to play to the common people.

He was so wrapped up in this dream and lull and sense of security, that when a pair of armored men came round the field he used to pick flowers in and read on sunny afternoons, smelling of adventure–or was that sweat?–he didn’t think anything of it.

One approached. “You Julian Pankratz, the Count’s son?”

He’d smiled and stood, bowing and holding out his hand to shake like he’d been taught. “Julian Alfred Pankratz, at your service!”

He realized his mistake immediately when they shoved a rag in his mouth and a bag over his head, tying his limbs together so he couldn’t do anything to fight back.

He blacked out.

When he came to, he was in what looked like a prison cell. He had no idea how long he’d been there or what was going on.

“He-hello?” He called hesitantly. He heard muffled voices down the hallway, unable to see much past the dim torch outside his cell. One of the men who’d grabbed him came into view.

“Well, looks like the princess is finally awake.”

“I’m a viscount, actually—well not yet, my duties don’t come into play until I’m older and actually it’s more of an honorary title for me anyway—“

“Shut up. Do you know why you’re here, what your purpose is?”

Julian shook his head.

He leaned forward, rancid breath clouding the air in front of him as he sneered.

“You’re blackmail, a bargaining chit. If the Count wants you back alive and in one piece, he’ll give us the money we want."

Julian blanches. As much as his father loves him, he doesn’t tend to bargain with scoundrels. To bend would be showing weakness, marking Julian and their family forever as a viable target.

“You’re going to be disappointed,” Julian warns meekly.

“We’ll see,” the man says, and walks off.

Sure enough, the men start to get angry when it becomes apparent that Count Pankratz won’t bargain with them.

One of the men, who Julian had taken to calling ‘Stinky’ in his head because of his gnarly breath, stalks outside the bars of his cell.

“We’re going to get paid one way or another,” he threatens. “Your father has until the end of the week, or it’s your ass.”

The other man creepily leers at him before they leave.

Julian isn’t solidly sure what day it is, as hard as he’d tried to keep track of how long he’d been there based on when they bothered to pass water and bread through the bars, but he feels a wash of cold fear in his gut all the same.

He hopes ‘the end of the week’ is later rather than sooner.

To comfort himself, he relies on the songs his mom used to sing to him, singing to the mice in his cell that started to approach him curiously at night, seeking his warmth (or flesh, he wasn’t sure. They seemed as hungry as he was, so he saved some of the bread crusts for them).

The closer the end of the week seems to approach, the more his lullabies morph and stutter into something new, a song he creates on the fly about being trapped and scared, about wanting to be free.

His voice grows hoarse with all the singing and lack of sufficient water so he switches to humming, feeling the notes rise up from his very bones into his throat.

One night he hums the same new song a few times over, the reverberations in his chest calming him down. He reaches out to pet the mice goodnight when he realizes how still they are.

He stops humming and sits up, squinting in the torchlight. Only one mouse is still weakly breathing, the rest growing cold and stiff. He picks up the live one, cradling it to his chest and petting it, tears in his eyes as he tries to soothe it. The bread crusts must have not been enough for them.

He doesn’t want to be alone with these brutes. He doesn’t want to face what comes next.

He tells the mouse as such. But he doesn’t think it fair for the mouse to die too, so he lets it have the last bit of water they’d given him, and sets it free through the bars of his cell, watching it scurry to freedom.

He goes to sleep knowing at least one of them made it out.

He’s startled awake by a clank as the cell door is opened, Creepy coming over to grab him.

“Wha–”

“It’s the end of the week. Your Pa hasn’t paid, but we’re getting something out of this one way or another.” He says, dragging him out of the cell and down the hall into another room.

Julian squints in the darkness until his vision clears.

There’s nothing in there but a bed.

“I told you, it would be your ass.” Stinky says, kicking the door shut behind him and unbuttoning his shirt.

Creepy grins as he watches the understanding come over him.

Julian struggles, but he’s weak from however many days of little food and water.
“No, no, no, no, wait—” he begs.

Creepy pushes him backwards onto the bed and holds his arms above his head by the wrist with one hand, straddling him to stop his thrashing.

Julian begs and pleads for them to change their minds but it just seems to make them more eager.

His mind white with fear, Julian does the only thing he can do to protect himself: he squeezes his eyes shut and he hums the new song he’d sang to the mice in his cell, trying to mentally take himself away from the moment.

“That’s right birdie, sing to us–” he thinks he hears Stinky taunt, his voice far away. Julian keeps singing, ignoring the sound of Creepy’s trousers coming off, when suddenly the hands let go of him. He hears a thud as he reaches the end of the song.

The room is silent.

Julian dares to crack open his eyes, letting out a horrified shriek at the sight before him.

Creepy and Stinky are both fallen on the floor, their eyes glazed, bodies still.

Dead.

Like the mice after he’d sang to them, he realizes.

Julian swallows against the rising nausea, his heart beating wildly. He feels guilty about apparently having killed two people, but grateful that it meant the men didn’t get what they wanted from him or his family.

He lets adrenaline fuel him as he runs out the room and down the hall, blindly fumbling for an exit. He finally finds a door that leads outside, greeting the sight of the moon with a shout of relief.

He tears off running toward the nearest road. He’s not sure how far he makes it before he’s stopped by a man wearing the Pankratz estate insignia.

He’d run into his own search party.

He sobs once, falling on his knees as his father comes up to catch him.

He gets checked over by a doctor, answering with half-truths about his capture and escape.

“They grabbed me behind the field and I was kept in a cell. They led me to another room at some point but left the door unlocked, so I ran. I don’t know where I was or how long I was gone.”

He doesn’t tell them about the song.

He half thinks he may have imagined it.

If he tells anyone the truth about what happened, unless he can prove it, they’ll think him mad. Or worse, they’ll believe him, and then they’ll either keep him locked away for good or they’ll try to use the song for their own gain.

Holding power of any kind always meant that there would be someone willing to try to take it.

He eats a proper meal while his mother lauds him for how brave he was, his father clapping him on the back and thanking him for understanding why they couldn’t—wouldn’t—pay the ransom.

“You’ve saved our family, son, and quite possibly the future of Lettenhove,” he says.

Julian feels more like he just saved his own ass. Literally.

He excuses himself and soaks in a warm bath, washing away a fortnight’s worth of dirt and sweat, vigorously scrubbing the feeling of Creepy and Stinky’s hands off him.

As he sinks into his own bed later that night, he lets himself reflect upon The Incident.

When he thinks about it, the mice hadn’t been in the cell when he first woke up. He’d thought that they’d been attracted to the smell of food, but he’d had food that first day and no mice came. It was only after he’d started singing his songs, feeling lonely in that cold dark cell, that the mice started coming.

Calling animals to him like a storybook princess, he realizes with a bit of irony. His kidnappers had called him a princess, and none of them had known that he apparently possessed a princess’ fabled abilities.

He thinks about the song that had saved his life and ended two others—more, if he counts the mice.

That song wasn’t like the others he’d come up with since learning to write his own.

It was something deeper, more primal and instinctual. Something buried in the marrow of his bones and stirred up by the music he swore lived in his heart.

He vows never to sing that particular song again.

Half a continent away, Geralt faces a very different twist on a storybook princess with Renfri.

Torn between two evils, he’s reminded of the ugliness of humanity and the awfulness of magic when he’s forced to kill Renfri and her street gang, Stregobor coming out after to poke the wounds as men hurl rocks at him the whole way out of Blaviken.

Being hated and having things thrown at him isn’t new. Such was the life of a witcher, as Vesemir had reminded the remaining four of them after the pogroms.

Knowing doesn’t mean it hurts less.

He’d dreamt of becoming a knight when he was young, like from the stories he’d read.

Although the road ahead was promised to be painful, and there was a very real chance he wouldn’t survive the Trial of the Grasses, he hadn’t been scared like some of the other boys when presented with the Choice.

He took the medallion from Vesemir’s hand without hesitation, for becoming a witcher was the closest thing he’d get to becoming a knight in his mind: wearing armor and carrying swords, slaying the dragons of the world and rescuing people. He’d even tried picking a knight-like name, tacking on ‘Roger Eric du Haute-Bellegarde’ to the end of the name Vesemir bestowed upon him, before his mentor told him it was too pretentious. He switched it to something more humble, picking Rivia as his fabled kingdom. Knights should be humble, he thought.

The dream was slowly chipped away over the years.

A piece broke off after his third trial, when his features were transformed into something more monstrous. He’d looked at himself in the mirror as soon as he was able to, studying his unnaturally pale skin and the loss of his curly brown hair. Knights were always described as handsome under their helmets, but his new features made even some of the other witchers give him a wide berth.

Another piece of the dream fell away after the second sacking, reminding him that humans, mages, and other witcher schools alike all hated them.

(There was a very small part of him, a part that shared in Lambert’s anger toward the nature of witcher-hood, that was glad that the destruction of the Keep took with it the mutagens and instructions for turning people into witchers. The memory of the smell of the mutagens haunted him, making him nauseated, and he was glad the Keep was rid of it. He was glad that no one would have to go through the pain of transformation again, risking their life in the process.

Of course, that tiny part of him that was glad was overshadowed by the loss of all their remaining instructors and brothers, and the knowledge that this is all that there would ever be of them. The very large brethren that had replaced his mother as family had been culled down to a handful of them, and he shared in the pain and weariness evident in Vesemir’s eyes as he surveyed the ruins. )

Any remnants of the dream he once had was shattered entirely his first year on the Path. His first monster wasn’t a monster, but a human, reminding him of the ugliness of humans and how his features terrified others, demonstrating how his rescue attempts would always be met with terror at best and hatred at worst. He continued to walk the Path, gaining a new scar to further mangle the appeal of his body with each contract he took, making barely enough coin to feed both him and Roach.

He returned to the Keep that winter, greeting his brothers with relief.

He would be no knight, but he vowed he would walk the Path in order to protect and hold on tightly to this family and home he had left.

Jaskier was eighteen, just starting out at Oxenfurt, when he realized music could be considered magical in a very specific kind of way.

Whether it was his own work or more common songs, it didn’t matter, it all had the same effect: eyes, mostly of women but of handsome men too, would be drawn to him, tracking him as he danced around the practice venue.

The music spilling from his lips like water to dying men, like honey drizzled on cake, they licked their lips and drank in the sight of him, eating up every note.

He’d always been a bit of a flirt, but he realized with the right tweak of lyrics–a change of pronouns if needed, changing the name the song was addressed to when applicable–he could sing the pants off almost any man or woman he liked, using his song to lure them away from a crowd and right into his bed and under the covers.

(Priscilla and Essi liked to tease him and call him the pied piper of fucking— exchange the flute for his lute and he’d lure all the desirable people away with him).

Indeed, he felt more like a siren when singing to someone like this.

Instead of actual death, he lured men to their little deaths, and the recipients were always appreciative–even if their spouses or parents or children weren’t.

There were few who were immune to his charms–Valdo, for example–, and there were those who tried to copy him–also Valdo–, but none of his peers had quite the grasp on song seduction like Jaskier had.

There was a joke among Oxenfurt students that it was secretly an eighth liberal art.

Jaskier had it mastered by the time he graduated.

It was a bit of a disappointment to find that this type of magic seemed to fade the further away from Oxenfurt he traveled.

The lesser known he was and the older the crowd, the more his original songs tended to fall on unappreciative ears. Eyes still followed him, but they were glaring more often than not.

He knew he just had to find that right note, the right key, the right combination of words, the right inspiration for it all, and he’d fall into the public’s graces again.

It felt like fate when he met the Butcher, the White Wolf, the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia.
The moment he laid eyes on him he knew he’d found his muse–or rather, his muse had found him.

Even though Geralt seemed to be immune to his charms, alongside every other ingrate in that bar in Posada, he felt something about the man that was still so alluring to him. Like he’d met his own siren call.

He smelled like death, destiny, heroics and heartbreak, and more than that he smelled of adventure.

It felt like fate, like magic, when within less than a day of meeting him he’d been kidnapped for the second time in his life, had his entire worldview and perception of elves turned upside down, and had his beloved lute smashed and subsequently replaced by an even better one of elvencraft.

As they walked in the valley after Filavandrel let them go, he fell into the familiar motions of testing out different words and rhyming schemes, plucking the new strings beneath his fingers and enjoying the twanging sound they made. Carefully thinking his intentions over while he did.

He felt a new song buzzing on his tongue.

Toss A Coin would be a siren song, not for his own gain, but for the witcher’s: a song calling for respect, for coin, for ale, for a semblance of gratitude.

The song spread like wildfire.

Geralt will never tell him, but for weeks after the bard finally parted from him that year, the lyrics to that annoyingly catchy song about him stayed stuck in his head.

It wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

What was more annoying was that the lilts and crooning verses of the first song he’d sung, the one riddled with ridiculous notions about monsters, was also stuck in his head.

He half wished he knew how the rest of that song went.

After years of going to sleep to the sounds of screams and then the sounds of silence at the Keep; of going to sleep to the sounds of nothing but Roach’s breathing and the woods around him, occasionally broken up by a stay at a brothel, the change that Jaskier brings to his life is an unspoken and unexpected relief.

When Jaskier is with him, he fills the night air with humming and lute plucking, the scratch of pencil against paper, the turning of pages, and the crackle of a fire.

He had never felt the need to start a fire when it was just him, because as a witcher he could survive without the warmth.

But Jaskier is human, and the nights are cold, and he brings warmth with him in more ways than one.

When he’s finally ready to go to sleep, he does so to the sighs of relief as Jaskier’s back hits his bedroll, a mumbled “Goodnight, Geralt,” and his light snores peppering the breeze.

It’s not a lullaby, but it’s close enough. He sleeps more and sleeps better around Jaskier than he has in years alone on the Path. And when they’re apart, he falls asleep to the echoes of his songs and memories of those sounds in his head.

Almost a decade after he started following Geralt, his songs gained Jaskier enough renown for him to be invited to play at a betrothal banquet by Queen Calanthe.

He had many flings in Cintra in the past, so he knows that at a feast that large a confrontation with a scorned spouse is inevitable. He invites his best friend along for protection, plying him with the promise of food, women, and wine.

He plies him further with a warm bath, taking the opportunity to rub chamomile on his lovely, firm (and knotted, he carried so much stress around) bottom, brushing out his even lovelier and even more knotted hair after.

He likes playing to the common people, playing in inns and bars and taverns—even to a brothel, on one memorable occasion, which annoyed the hell out of Geralt because he had been the one to stop there in the first place—but it’s the first time in a while that he’s had the chance to play to a real court.

He likes slowly fulfilling his wish of bringing joy to people the Continent over (except for Nilfgaard, fuck that place), and that includes playing to the upper crust of society.
He enjoys turning sniffles and crying into laughs and shy smiles, bringing rooms of people to tears of happiness, just like he’d wanted to growing up.

It’s the most potent and mundane magic of music, something any bard worth their salt can do.

In between Geralt saving him from an angry lord and the first few jigs that he plays at Calanthe’s request (“Save that maudlin nonsense for my funeral!” She ordered, not wanting her court to be full of teary eyed drunks. It seemed she knew how music could affect emotion too), Jaskier notices that Pavetta seems upset.

It’s her betrothal after all, and a bride should be happy. He wants to cheer her up, to bring her the joy he knows music can bring.

So he sings the most ridiculous, raunchy song he can think of, one that never fails to bring laughs out of a crowd. It works, the whole room clapping and singing along as he lopes around the dance floor, but he notices it didn’t work on her. He’s bowing to the claps of the crowd, trying to think of what other song he has in his catalog that might help lift her spirits, when the banquet is crashed.

After some yelling from Calanthe, the room erupts into a fight, Geralt jumping into action, swords clashing, the joy that had brought everyone together splitting apart violently.

Pavetta shocks everyone by splitting it apart even further with a preternatural, howling scream that rips from her throat. People and furniture are thrown, a whirlwind filling the air, her chants levitating her and her cursed lover.

Even as he crouches in a corner and shields the maiden next to him, fearful they might get struck by stray debris, he feels some awe and hope at the revelation that he’s not the only one with the power of magic resting on their vocal chords.

Jaskier had figured out long ago that music is magic, that magic is just concentrated intent, and therefore songs could be like wishes. When worked over by the right person—him, and up until then he’d found it was only him, otherwise every bard on the Continent would be a weapon—music had all the powers he had known it held as a kid.

But he’d never imagined raw power quite like this. Pavetta herself seems unable to tame it, nor Geralt or the court mage Mousesack, at least at first. The both of them working together, Geralt manages to break through and stun Pavetta out of her chanting, the room quieting as the whirlwind disappears.

It’s only after the blessing that Calanthe bestows upon their love, the kiss they share, and the breaking of Duny’s curse, that finally he sees the Lioness smile for the first time that night.

His heart warms.

It seemed that while for Jaskier, music could influence emotion, for Pavetta, emotion influenced her sound.

The power of love and Destiny, bringing a banquet hall to their knees.

He thinks the events will provide the start of his most beautiful ballad yet.

Geralt slashes his way through a selkiemore and stumbles his way back to an inn full of people singing the bloody Coin song, still popular after all these years. At least it encouraged full payment.

Jaskier cleans him up, begging him to come with him to some betrothal banquet in Cintra in order to protect him from one of many scorned lords.

Geralt growls, even as his muscles relax under the warm water and Jaskier’s ministrations.
He hates courts, the farcity of it all, the rigid and stuffy judgmental nature. Humans won’t throw rocks at him there, it’s too uncivilized, but they’ll hurl veiled insults instead, which is almost worse.

He hates that Jaskier needs him, that he brings back those old stirrings of wanting to be a knight whenever he plays the part of damsel.
Geralt realizes he doesn’t have much of a choice when his clothes had been whisked away, replaced by a muted outfit that Jaskier lets him borrow. He tries not to focus on the buttercups embroidered on the dark doublet as he puts it on, the flowers marking it—and him—as Jaskier’s. The pattern is almost invisible to anyone else but so very visible to Geralt’s keen eyes.

The ‘disguise’ doesn’t matter much when his hair and eyes make it obvious to everyone who he is.

He does his job, saving Jaskier the embarrassment of dropping his trousers in public when he lies and tells the lord that the bard is a eunuch, hiding a smile when Jaskier plays along. After the lord leaves, he’s unable to continue hiding his smile as he tells him to take care of himself until dawn.

He ends up enjoying himself, in his own way. Although he doesn’t pick a physical fight with Crach and the idiot lordlings over the inaccuracies of manticore stings at the behest of Jaskier’s silent plea, he does instead take the opportunity to quash the lies that were spread with Toss a Coin, admitting Filavandrel let them go.

He’s either still flying a bit high and feeling bold from having saved Jaskier in such a gentle and nonviolent manner earlier, or the Cintran ale is really strong. He doesn’t usually talk this much to strangers.

Calanthe invites him to sit next to her, but it’s not really an invitation in a court like this. As he begrudgingly talks to her, finding a few things to relate to her with as they do, he watches Jaskier bounce across the room as he sings, fitting in so easily among these noblemen.

Although he likes seeing the joy on the bard’s face, the easy way he draws joy out of almost everyone else in the room, he hates the emptiness of these kinds of songs. It’s popular raunchy nonsense that the crowd eats up as much as they feast on the gross abundance of food on their tables. It twists sour in his own gut. He prefers the honest songs he hears Jaskler sing when they’re alone.

A real knight crashes the banquet, piquing his interest when Calanthe derogatorily remarks that he’s of no renown and that he refuses to show his face–especially so when the helmet is knocked off revealing a head even more monstrous than his own. He feels an instant, strange kinship with the man, and ignoring Calanthe’s demand that he kill him, he fights a room full of people off without being sure of what his end goal is.

Pavetta decides for him when she screams and sets the room swirling.

He stuns her out of her chants with a cast of Aard.

Geralt watches with something that might be akin to hope when the monstrous knight is so openly loved and kissed by Pavetta. He dares let himself wonder what that would be like.

Geralt watches with a bit of disappointment when the curse is broken with Calanthe’s blessing and the man’s face twists back to his classically handsome features.

When Duny asks what he wants for payment, refusing to take ‘nothing’ for an answer, he gives in and jokingly claims the Law of Surprise. There was a poetic irony there that he’s sure Jaskier appreciates.

He’d half been expecting to receive something like a goat, if he received anything, like the one Eskel brought home the previous winter. He’d brought it home tucked inside his gambeson like a babe, keeping it inside against Vesemir’s wishes (“Lil Bleater is a good girl,” Eskel insisted, even as he cleaned up after her) and making him laugh when the goat seemed to have it out for Lambert, chewing his shirts and ramming into his legs at every possible moment.

He regrets his decision the second later when Pavetta throws up, revealing she’s pregnant.

He’s reminded of Renfri’s murmurs of someone being his Destiny, of Eskel’s experience with Deidre, of how he and Lambert both were witchers because of the Law of Surprise (most witchers were). There’s no more mutagens to make witchers anymore, but he still doesn’t want to subject anyone to this life of hatred and pain. He doesn’t want anyone else needing him, not like that.

And so he walks away from so-called Destiny.

Some time after the banquet (he’s stopped being able to keep such a solid track of time these days, it all tended to blend together–what was time, anyways? He knows it should be easy, if he marked the years by holidays and feasts like everyone else did, or if he marked the years by the long absences apart from his witcher every winter. But he doesn’t like dwelling on the absences. It hurts a little too much. He always finds someone to bury his sorrows in instead), a little drunk and a little heartbroken, Jaskier’s feet led him straight to where Geralt had been fishing for a djinn.

Jaskier is excited by the prospect of such visceral magic, of such instant wishes granted.

Of course, he’d seen visceral magic with Pavetta, and had seen it countless times before whenever Geralt’s medallion would start to vibrate when they encountered certain monsters (in stray moments he wondered how the vibrations would feel against his own skin, if it could ever be manipulated for playtime) and had seen the magic inherent in him whenever he threw signs.

He knew he could probably sing his wishes into fruition with enough time and work, but this is too good to ignore.

Especially after Geralt’s jab about his singing being empty—how wrong he was.
He left his songs devoid of the magic they could hold on purpose, for the safety of others.

(The Countess of Stael had realized the songs he was singing to her weren’t originally meant for her—they’d been about Geralt and he just sang in veiled terms like always. But one of the things he liked about Catrina is that she wasn’t an idiot. She’d talk to him about poetry and the state of the world and the future, and her own wordsmithing and ability to read Julian like a book meant she’d seen right through him. She’d heard the emptiness of the love songs he sang to her, and she left in response.)

So he starts to make his wishes, unsure why it’s so easy to wish death upon Valdo when he’d sworn as a teen he would never use his killing song. Maybe it’s because something else would do the killing, rather than him directly.

It’s like the djinn knows the power within him, and it attacks his throat before he can make the last wish. As he wheezes and coughs up blood, a fear almost worse than the night of The Incident overcomes him.

He can’t imagine a life with his ability to sing gone, his magic gone, his songs, his love, his livelihood. His whole reason for living.

He regrets the wishes. He’d vowed to never use his song, his words like that for a reason.

Geralt rushes him to an elf-healer. Jaskier is too in pain and full of worry to marvel at the fact that he’s riding Roach for the first time or that he’s so close to Geralt or that Geralt is carrying him.

Chireadan explains since it’s a magical malady he needs a magical cure, and he’s afraid that whoever Geralt takes him to will see right through him too.

(Even though Geralt doesn’t kill innocent people or creatures, he’s always been a teeny tiny bit afraid that is Geralt ever found out about his abilities and their extent, that he would either part from him and never return, or kill him for killing those two men when he was a teen, to prevent him from doing it again. He’s not sure which idea hurts him more.)

Geralt takes him to a very sexy and very scary sorceress, and as he’s in his healing sleep he thinks he overhears Geralt and Yennefer talking about how magic is about balance, and therefore magic has a price.

After the ordeal with Yennefer and the amphora and yet another building blowing up in a whirlwind around him, after checking with relief that Geralt is still alive, Jaskier once again reflects on That Night.

What had been the price? Where was the balance? He’d been a bit scarred mentally after, sure, and he’d been more careful in his songs as a result.

He’s wiping the blood off his face in the reflection of an unbroken window when he stops to think—he hasn’t really aged as much as another person in his position would have.

The last time he’d seen Valdo, he’d noted with a bit of glee that his hairline was starting to recede and that he was sporting a bit of gray around the edges. But Jaskier’s hair is as boyish as ever, and he doesn’t look much older than when he’d first met Geralt.

He wonders, if magic is about balance, that if by accidentally singing two men to death he took the years that they had meant to live and tacked them onto his own life, slowing his aging process the way it did with witchers and witches.

It’s an equally scary and relieving thought—he’ll outlive the humans he loves, but he’ll have more time with Geralt. It’s a scary temptation too. Were he a worse man he’d use that knowledge to his advantage.

But as he’d been reminded with Yennefer, holding any kind of power just meant there would always be someone ready to take it.

Throat still a bit sore, he vows again to never use his words to harm.

Geralt hasn’t been able to sleep properly since Cintra.

He tosses and turns at night, wrestling with the thought of his Child Surprise.

He wasn’t a father, he wasn’t fit to be a parent. There was a reason beyond the mutagens that witchers didn’t have children—what was he going to do, subject an innocent baby to the childhood he had? Let Roach be their crib and a training sword be their toy? Sing them grating lullabies when his face gave them nightmares?

No.

He won’t subject a child to the Path, especially if their parents are still alive. Destiny can fuck itself.

He thinks as much when his desperation drives him in search of a djinn.

Jaskier appears behind him, a relief and irritation all at once. In the back of his mind he angrily thinks maybe he wouldn’t have been having such a hard time sleeping if Jaskier had been around.

He wasn’t sure why, but hearing that Jaskier had been apart from him because he had been spending his time with some noblewoman irritated him further, and he ran his mouth in response.

Talking about filling-less pie.

(When he thought of Jaskier’s singing, he always remembered that first song in Posada. How the man had practically sang his way into Geralt’s lap, his life. How his true song was the chatter and noises he brought with him, like birdsong. The songs he lied in and sang to crowds, sang to seduce men and women, those were facades; enticing on the outside but hollow inside. The real music was when Jaskier sang to him in private, the hums he heard under his breath when they spotted a storm on the horizon, the song he would sing to Roach when it thundered.)

Wishing for blessed silence and damn peace.

(Truly, he hadn’t meant that— he would never wish Jaskier’s noises out of his life, not when they put him to sleep better than Eskel’s lullaby or a tankard of ale, not when they brought him such secret joy).

The djinn hears him.

He plays knight to Jaskier’s damsel once again, feeling guilty about his words as takes Jaskier to an elf healer, and then a sorceress.

Yennefer thrums with Chaos like no one he’d met before. Her beauty is undeniable, and he finds it strangely easy to talk to her. He falls into bed with her, sleeping as easily as he does around Jaskier.

Destiny fucks him further by adding yet another person to his web when he uses his last wish to save her.

His words only ever seem to do harm.

Jaskier has been traveling with Geralt for almost fifteen years when he reflects that his music has the power to help heal, too.

He’d figured, with the way Toss a Coin restored Geralt’s reputation post-Blaviken and seemed to bring better treatment to witchers the Continent over.

But this was different.

He’d known, from years of watching Geralt come back from a hunt with gaping wounds and broken bones, from watching Geralt toss back toxic potions, that witchers healed better and faster than humans did.

That witchers didn’t get sick—looking on in horror the first time he witnessed Geralt eat raw deer, Geralt shrugging and explaining he couldn’t get food poisoning in response, and then again when Geralt cooked it at Jaskier’s insistence but didn’t even add oil or seasoning or anything to make it pleasurable—and that they lived far longer than anyone else.

It didn’t stop him from gently helping Geralt out of his armor, from bathing the blood and guts and grime out of his hair, from patching Geralt up with nimble fingers so that the scars wouldn’t be as bad, humming softly to him all the while.

When Geralt stumbled back to their campsite one evening, nerves frayed and in pain from potion toxicity, he’d felt a bit of alarm when he realized they were out of White Honey.

Jaskier stoked the fire and reduced Geralt’s world to the sensation of his hands warming his ice-cold skin and the sounds of his quiet humming. He did this until the black faded from his veins and Geralt’s breathing evened out.

For everything Geralt did for him, he could do this for Geralt.

He knows the witcher could recover well enough on his own, but Jaskier likes to help speed things up all the same, singing him songs of protection and painlessness as he sleeps.

He thinks it atonement for the men and mice he killed long ago, for the harm he’s ever let his words carry, every time he can ease the pain of someone else’s life.

Geralt is loath to admit it, but the bard makes the Path feel easier.

It’s more than just how he gets paid fully now, able to upgrade his armor, and how he no longer has to fight to find lodging. It’s more than in the way he’d been able to shed the Butcher moniker and carry the title of White Wolf instead. It’s more than in the way people no longer hurled slurs or rocks at him.

It’s in the little ways too: the fires he makes, his insistence on Geralt having seasoned cooked food, even treats–he normally views them as superfluous, but now that there’s coin to spare, Jaskier often stops at bakeries to buy them pastries to share (never pies though, he thinks with a pang of guilt).

It’s in the way that Jaskier not only helps him gather potion ingredients when he spots the appropriate herbs in the wild, but in how Jaskier picks flowers too, braiding them into Roach’s mane and teaching him how to braid when asked because his horse seems to like it and he knows Roach will huff at him all winter if he can’t do it himself.

How Jaskier massages him, washes him gently, brushes his hair and calls it gorgeous. How he knows he has a safe place to retreat to when he’s done with a contract.

It’s undeniable, Jaskier makes his life easier.

It makes something uncomfortable twitch in his slow-beating chest.

He hates being needed, but more than that he has no idea how to deal with the feeling of being wanted. He already has two people tied to him. He doesn’t need to add a third.

Even more than that, he hates the feeling of wanting him back. He doesn’t know what to do with it.

Human lives are short compared to the lives of witchers and witches, and he doesn’t want himself to become accustomed to all the comfort and feelings that Jaskier brings when fate is just going to rip him away one day.

He tries to remain amicable while distancing himself from the bard, burying himself in Yennefer instead because even if their relationship is based on a wish, at least she makes sense.

They go like that for years, their three paths intertwining and parting and coming together again.

The opportunity for a dragon hunt comes along, and having already planned on agreeing because a real dragon hunt is something torn from his half-remembered childhood books, Yennefer’s arrival seals the deal.

Like everything else in his life, the dragon hunt isn’t at all like he’d imagined or hoped it would be like as a child.

He watches Yenn’s knight trip over himself in his eagerness to please her (stupidly not realizing that Yenn would never be a damsel in need of rescuing. Even the day he saved her, she’d been a powerhouse, and wanting more power still) and shit himself to death like men are prone to do.

He watches Borch and Téa and Véa fall to their deaths, feeling that ever so familiar feeling when humans around him die. Feeling responsible.

Jaskier sidles up to him, asking what he wants yet again.

He knows what he wants, but having been met by so much disappointment and hurt and pain, he doesn’t dare to hope or speak it out loud, lest the horseshit of life taint that too.

He doesn’t not agree to go to the coast with him after everything is over, though.

The next day all hopes fall apart when Borch reveals he’s alive and had been using Geralt to save his egg, and the nature of his wish—his want—was revealed to Yennefer and she storms out of his life.

He’s so tired of loss.

He remembers Visenna, and all the hurts in his life, and decides to use the anger of this moment to cut ties with Jaskier. He’d be better off. They both would, he thinks, as he roars at Jaskier for the pettiest things he can think of, blaming him for the worst things that have happened to him since the man came into his life.

He turns around, unable to face the hurt on Jaskier’s face, knowing he’s just said goodbye to the lullaby his chatter brought and the easement he brought to him. He closes his eyes and grits his jaw to keep any more words from spilling past his teeth.

“See you around, Geralt,” Jaskier says, and it stings like an open wound.

After getting the details from Téa and Véa–who are shockingly still alive–and the others, Jaskier writes a song about the hunt as he stumbles down the mountain. It’s as empty as a lot of his others, and it’s not his best work. He doesn’t see the point in trying when his favorite muse had forsaken him.

On his way to Oxenfurt, as Nilfgaard starts razing hell throughout the Continent, Jaskier witnesses the slaughter of elves in Bloebheris. He’s horrified, frozen, before he remembers that he could do something about it if he wished.

Except he’d only ever used the killing song during The Incident, and from his short experience, the song unfortunately didn’t discriminate–he remembers the family of mice that had fallen, the biggest one surviving only because he stopped singing and let it go.

If he were to sing that song in the streets, he’d have as much innocent blood on his hands as the people doing the slaughtering.

He escapes, hearing of Cintra’s fall and the battle at Sodden, and despite it all, he hopes that Geralt and Ciri, even Yennefer, are still alive.

He drinks the heartbreak and horror away as he devises a way to help the elves safely.

He can’t reveal himself to have abilities like he does to the public. He’s Other too, he knows. If anyone found out about his magic ability, he’d either be executed, or they’d use it against him, using it for their own gain–and worse, would make him use it against those he still loved and cared about.

Because holding power meant there would always be someone willing to try to take it.

He doesn’t know exactly why he’s able to make things happen with his music when other bards can’t, still not knowing anyone other than Pavetta who could make magic happen with their vocal chords.

(With a pang, he thinks of her, and how he’d heard of her death a few years back. He mentioned it to Geralt, but he’d just grunted in the way that suggested he didn’t want to talk about it. “She has Calanthe,” he had said, and left it at that).

As a secret homage to his piper song, he adopts the moniker of Sandpiper and uses his songs to distract the dock guards while he leads elves to safety out of Oxenfurt. At the same time, fueled by grief in more ways than one, he pours his anger into a breakup song of sorts, trying to put some distance between him and Geralt.

Burn Butcher Burn is like his other songs: the words he sings a cathartic release but barely a few lines of real truth in it.

He’s glad Geralt is alive, and utterly heartbroken that Geralt turned his back on him after twenty years. He dreams of Geralt’s stupid hair, wondering if he’ll ever again feel how silky it can be under his care. He still wants to know what Geralt wants out of life, because he knows he wants and deserves something better than what life throws at him. Despite it all.

He doesn’t want Geralt to burn literally, he wants Geralt to see how much he’s hurt him, to hurt as much as he does despite his vow to never use words for harm again. He wants Geralt to regret his own words and to come back and apologize for shitting on twenty years of companionship.

Yennefer of all people comes seeking his help. When she hugs him, it settles the ache in his chest for a moment. They drink and bond a bit over their shared experiences of being scorned by the same big idiot. They bond over their shared love for him, and talk about the state of the world and the nature of Chaos and muses and their life’s purpose before he sends her off to safety.

In that talk, he’s reminded that music and magic have a price, and the hypothetical burning he sang of comes to bite him in the ass—or rather, the fingers—when Rience catches him.

He’s kidnapped and tied up for the third time in his life. It’s as terrifying as the first time, but like the first time, he has his family in mind, and refuses to give Rience anything he can use.

Jaskier knows ‘musician’ is often synonymous with ‘magician’. He tells Rience so, though not in so many words, explaining how he transforms Geralt’s grunts into grand stories.

Rience doesn’t believe him, or doesn’t care—and burns his fingers, reiterating that magic is about balance, a give and take, and explaining how he’d let the fire he wielded consume his soul.

It’s the second time in his life that he’d had part of his livelihood injured because of Geralt. It’s as painful as the first time, and like the first time, Yennefer saves him.

Although she lacks her own Chaos, she reminds him that what makes her powerful wasn’t her magic but her wit.

She makes it out of Oxenfurt.

He's thrown in a prison cell filled with mice for the second time in his life.

It’s nothing like the first time.

There’s sunlight and proper food, the mice had already been there, and he knows more now than he had when he was thirteen.

He doesn’t need his lute, for he learned to play spoons before he ever touched a string.

Despite the pain in his fingers, he smiles as he literally annoys the shit out of the guard. His song is interrupted by noise outside the cell, and when he looks up he finds Geralt at the door.

The hurt is still there, and so is the anger, but so is the love and care: burning inside him brighter than the sun, the music living inside his heart stirring at the sight of him.

He rushes forward for a hug, and Geralt’s arms around him are a better balm for all his aches than any alcohol or healing salve.

After sending both people he cares about away with one fell swoop on that accursed mountain, Geralt makes his way down in time to watch Cintra fall, feeling a responsibility to go in that direction when he hears rumblings of Nilfgaard’s advances.

After running into the mother who’d abandoned him, he stumbles through the aftermath of Sodden on a bum knee, when Ciri finally finds him. She’s parentless and unmoored and looks like hell, having been running for her life and looking for the one person she knows would protect her.

He still doesn’t believe in Destiny. It’s a made-up force humans created to make sense of all the horseshit life threw at them. He refuses to bow down to a force he doesn’t believe in.

He does, however, as he’d told Calanthe about twelve years prior, believe in a promise kept.

He’d vowed long ago that he’d protect his tiny family. Influenced by Destiny or not, he faces the music and accepts that his family also includes Ciri (and Yennefer and Jaskier, if he’s admitting everything to himself).

He can’t be a knight, but he knows he can save this one princess.

So he hugs her tight and takes her to his childhood home, finding shelter among his brothers and Vesemir.

When she wakes up at night from nightmares, sometimes threatening to shake the walls down with her scream by accident, he and Eskel sit by her side and sing the lullaby of their youth.

Sometimes, Geralt lets Jaskier’s old songs grit past his throat (his cheeks would burn if they could), lulling her to sleep. Eskel gives him a knowing look, recognizing some of the songs that ease their path.

He looks away.

He seeks out Yennefer, apologizing and asking her for help in taming the Chaos in Ciri’s throat.

He knows that if there were anyone else who could also help Ciri learn to control her vocal chords it would be Jaskier. More than anything he’s missed Jaskier’s presence in his life since the mountain, regretting the words as soon as they’d left his mouth. He yearns to find the bard, to apologize and bring him back into his life.

Yenn mentions running into him in Oxenfurt, talking of a fire mage, how she’d been the knight in his stead.

He leaves Ciri and Yenn in the care of his brothers, and follows his heart for once.

He can’t stop himself from letting a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth when he hears Jaskier singing, accompanying himself with spoons of all things, annoying the guard meant to be watching him.

Hugging Jaskier and saying he’s sorry feels easy in a way he didn’t expect.

As Jaskier washed up in a nearby stream, Geralt trying and failing not to ogle the swaths of muscle Jaskier packed under his skin, he explains that he’d finally claimed Ciri and that they were training her in Kaer Morhen with Yennefer’s help. More importantly, how he wants Jaskier with him too, not just for his help but because he’s missed him.

While his shirt dries, Geralt sits them down and gently takes his hand in his, rubbing salve and wrapping bandages over the burns on his hand. He doesn’t hum like Jaskier does for him when he patches him up, but he lets his gentle touch and words be music enough. A favor for the many favors he’d been given, returned after so many years.

He doesn’t let go of Jaskier’s hand after he’s done bandaging it.

He looks down as he rubs his thumb over the soft skin of Jaskier’s inner wrist.

“Geralt?” Jaskier’s voice is a thread.

He’d spent so many years trying to spare Jaskier the pain of being attached to a witcher, not realizing that he’d been the one hurting him in the process.

“You’re important to me, Jaskier. You’re my best friend. I… Hmm.” The words get stuck in his throat. He’s tired of his words doing harm. He’s tired of loss.

He imagines Eskel giving him that knowing look he gave him when he’d sung Jaskier’s songs to Ciri to help her sleep. It was the same look he gave him winters ago when he’d first started mentioning the bard to them.

He imagines the stern ‘get your head out of your ass and say something’ look that Vesemir would probably give him, like a disappointed father.

He imagines the way Lambert would probably just slap him upside the head and tell him to stop being an idiot.

Even Lambert had admitted his own love for the Cat he hung out with and started bringing Aiden home with him a few winters ago.

It takes him a few stops and starts, before the words start to fall out of him as easily as they do around Roach, or Yennefer, or his brothers.

He so desperately wants Jaskier to be part of his little family, once and for all.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Geralt,” Jaskier says brightly, but it’s in a tone that Geralt knows means he’s just being diplomatic.

“No, Jaskier. I love you.” He looks up into his eyes, his mutated gold eyes boring into Jaskier’s grey-blue ones, seeing his pupils dilate in response.

“Oh.” Jaskier whispers, mouth open.

Geralt starts to pull back. “I understand if you don’t want someone like me loving you, if I’ve ruined us beyond repair, I understand–”

Jaskier’s free hand cups the side of Geralt’s face and turns it back toward him.

“You silly, stubborn, idiotic witcher.” Geralt’s heart thumps. “I fell in love with you the moment I first laid eyes on you.”

“Oh.”

“What brought all this on? Did you just miss me that much?” Jaskier can’t let go of his joking tone. Geralt grabs both his hands now, holding them in his. Serious.

“Yes, partially. But I regretted what I said on that mountain the moment I said it, Jaskier. I was… an idiot, like you said. I’ve always thought you’d be safer and better off without me, and tried to keep distance between us. Human lives are short and I thought you should spend your life doing something better with your time than following someone like me around,” he explains, something he can’t make out twisting on Jaskier’s face.

“You deserved better than me. So I used that moment to try to turn you away for good. But I didn’t mean a word of it.

You’re one of the greatest blessings life has dared to give me. Every moment you’re by my side is better than the moments without.” Geralt inhales, feeling his grip growing tighter around Jaskier’s wrists.

“I… Hmm.” His voice fades, looking away.

How does he explain how Jaskier makes him feel like the white knight he’d always wanted to be, how well he sleeps when Jaskier is around, how every noise Jaskier makes is music to his soul?

How does he explain how it feels when someone like Jaskier expresses want for someone like him?

Jaskier coos. “Oh, dear witcher. My white knight, my white wolf, Geralt of Rivia. Look at me.”

He does, seeing nothing but acceptance and understanding and love in those eyes, his face soft and open.

“I learned to interpret the language of your grunting long ago. You don’t have to say more if you can’t right now.”

The lump in Geralt’s throat relaxes, and he’s able to breathe.

That night, Geralt sleeps better than he has in a while. Jaskier’s presence was the only lullaby he’d ever needed.

Halfway through the journey back to Kaer Morhen, they’re intercepted by Nilfgaardian soldiers hell-bent on finding Ciri. Geralt fights off as many as he can, downing the few potions he’d brought, swinging his sword and taking hit after hit, from all sides.

Night fell over them as quickly as the soldiers had descended.

Geralt is injured badly, out of potions and bleeding and weak, panting and groaning as he spots a second wave of guards marching up to them in the distance. There’s too many men to fight off on his own, and a hit to the old injury in his leg had made him fall to the ground.

He’s about ready to tell Jaskier to take Roach and go, to leave him and save himself, to let Roach lead him to the Kaer so he can help Ciri the way she needs, when he stops himself at the look of fury and determination burning on Jaskier’s face.

Jaskier moves quickly.

He ushers Roach away toward a treeline in the opposite direction, slapping her rear the way he’d seen Geralt do on hunts so many times before to get her to run away from impending danger.

He drags Geralt to sit against a nearby tree, shucking off his jacket and loosening the arms of it off. He kneels, making a brace for Geralt’s knee with the body of the jacket, stemming the bleeding on his arm where his armor hadn’t covered him with one of the sleeves.

He begs, “Please trust me,” before tying the other sleeve tightly around Geralt’s ears.

He stands and prays to Melitele and the gods and Destiny, to anyone and anything who will listen, that it’ll be enough to protect Geralt from the sting of his song. That this will be enough to protect him and Geralt and Ciri, and all the other people they care about.

He moves forward a few paces to stand in front of the line of approaching soldiers.

When they reach him, he’s ready.

Jaskier doesn’t need a sword to fight. He doesn’t even need his lute. Or his fingers, or spoons, or words.

He knows the song of their salvation deep in his bones.

He’d vowed to never use it again, but he’ll do it to protect his loved ones in a heartbeat.

He sings the song low in his throat, as fresh as it was almost thirty years before.

It’s awful, because of course it is, but it works.

After emptying his stomach he crawls over to Geralt, tears pouring out at what he just did, at the fact that he’d revealed himself to Geralt, at relief that Geralt was unaffected by the song.

Geralt reassures him, weak as he is, and rises up to press a kiss to his lips.

It feels like the culmination of his life’s wishes coming to fruition.

Music, joy, safety, protection, freedom, love, healing, their history together, their yearning for each other, all blooming between them.

Jaskier deepens it, before kissing Geralt over and over—on his lips, nose, cheekbones, eyelids, brows, forehead, hairline, and back again. He kisses him to affirm that he’s still alive, that they both are, that this is real, that Geralt accepts him as he is. Salt from his tears wet Geralt’s chapped lips as he does so. Geralt wipes them away with a gentle thumb.

No longer in hiding, Jaskier openly uses his songs to heal Geralt and his own injuries leftover from Rience.

He uses the last of his energy to make a fire to keep them warm, using his songs to call some animals forward to take the bodies away.

When the last body is dragged away into the depths of the forest, he collapses back and curls up with Geralt on a bed of leaves, covered by a blanket of stars.

Even though the night breeze cuts through his chemise and the ground bites his back, it’s the best sleep he’s had in years.

When they wake up, they make their way back home, safe and sound, together.

The extra mutagens that Geralt so hated made it possible for him to hear through the bindings around his head, the world muffled but still quite audible through the fabric.

He was a bit confused at Jaskier’s motions, but when he’d whispered to trust him, Geralt conceded. He wasn’t able to do much anyway from where he was propped up against a tree, his leg throbbing in time with his heartbeat.

Jaskier waits for the soldiers to approach, and greets them with a song of all things.

It’s a haunting melody he’s never heard Jaskier or anyone play before, not even when it was just the two of them.

It’s a melody that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up, makes his medallion start to vibrate, one that silences the birds and wind and animal chatter in the forest, that makes their attackers stop dead in their tracks the moment they hear the first few notes.

When he starts singing in earnest, the soldiers are entranced at first, all determination seeming to dissipate as they’re soothed by the song, lowering their weapons as their bodies melted in contentment.

Jaskier holds a note low in his throat, and their half-lidded eyes blow wide with fright. A few of the men start to tremble with the crescendo of Jaskier’s music, others screaming as though they’re being torn apart, as if they’re witnessing the worst horror that the wild has to offer, releasing terrible guttural wails reminiscent of a banshee into the air.

Illuminated by moonlight, the soldiers raise their weapons again, aiming them at each other, putting each other out of their misery or violently ripping into each other with swords and teeth, spattering blood over Jaskier. Some of them simply fall over dead.

Geralt watches this happen from the sidelines, playing the awed damsel to Jaskier’s unlikely knight.

The last body drops with a thud as Jaskier hums the last note.

Jaskier heaves, retching in the grass as he falls to his hands and knees. He quickly turns to Geralt, wiping his face as he crawls over to him to check that he’s okay and wasn’t affected by the song.

He’s crying, pressing his forehead to Geralt’s in both relief and at what he’s had to do.

Geralt is shocked and confused and bewildered, but more than anything he’s glad that they’re both safe, in endless awe of whatever it was that Jaskier just did.

He yearns to comfort Jaskier and hold him close, weak as he still is.

He raises a hand and brushes Jaskier’s long sweat-damp hair away from his face from where it had fallen as he leaned over him.

“Hey, Jaskier– I’m okay, we’re both okay. You. You saved us. It’s okay.”

Jaskier nods, sniffing and hiccuping a laugh. “I wasn’t sure if that would work, I’d never done it to that many–I hoped to gods that it wouldn’t work on you. I–.” He bites a whimper, shaking his head. “I swore to never do that again.”

He sobs another laugh, resting his head against Geralt’s chest. Geralt raises his hand to cup it, stroking his hair. “Whelp, I’m definitely not going to die of natural causes anytime soon,” he says.

Geralt realizes Jaskier has done this before, and Jaskier gets a faraway look on his face when asked about it. “Once. When I was thirteen. To save my livelihood. I didn’t know what I was doing or the full extent of the consequences then.”

“Hmm.”

He observes with interest as Jaskier sings to them both, healing them without potions or stitches. And again as Jaskier’s singing draws the animals out of the forest and they drag the bodies away.

Jaskier’s face is pale when he’s done, and it’s obvious he’s exhausted, his limbs shaking as the adrenaline leaves him.

He holds a hand out to Jaskier, hearing Roach trot back after he starts a fire.

“Rest with me, Jaskier.”

Jaskier collapses next to him, his body providing more warmth than a fire ever had. Geralt falls asleep to the weight of him pressed against his side, tucked under his arm.

He fit so well there, like it was where he belonged.

Jaskier fits in with his brothers and Vesemir and Ciri better than he ever did among nobility.

Geralt is even surprised to see Yennefer greet him with a hug when they arrive at the Keep, easily exchanging banter with a much gentler tone than they had in the past.

She raises an eyebrow at Jaskier’s miraculously healed hand.

“Yeah, about that—I’ve got this thing that I’ve never told anyone about and I was hoping you would know something about it?”

The two of them explain together to the rest of them as they sit in the Great Hall, how Jaskier felled a Nilfgaardian army with just a song.

Jaskier explains how his abilities don’t apply to only that song, that he can use his music to heal wounds and lure animals to him.
He starts going on about something about the inherent magic of music, and how any bard (or person, really) could use it for simple things like seducing people or lifting spirits, how metaphorical magic was found in the simplest songs–

“Like a lullaby,” Eskel and Geralt say at the same time, understanding what he meant.

“Exactly!” Jaskier agrees. “My mom’s lullabies were the first form of magic that I encountered. Or, thought I had encountered, as a kid.”

Yennefer laughs, shaking her head as she examines Jaskier’s hand. “Magic is about organizing Chaos, about balance and control. I don’t think you’re a conduit for Chaos in the traditional sense, but I suppose if words and music notes are a form of intangible chaos, then you were able to organize it whenever you wrote a song.”

“What about the balance part?” Aiden asks curiously from his perch on top of the table.

“And why does it only work with certain songs?” Eskel leans forward, thumbing his scars.

“Why are you able to bring literal magic forth when you sing, and no one else can?” Vesemir inquisits.

“I don’t know where balance comes into play with my other songs, but with that song in particular, I think maybe that it… gives me the years that the other people were supposed to have lived?” Jaskier says sheepishly. “I’m over forty, but I haven’t aged like other humans.”

Yennefer hums. “And here I was, thinking you just had a good skincare routine. You know I made that joke about crow’s feet because I thought it was odd you didn’t have any.”

“I figured.”

“Why does it only work with some of his songs?” Geralt repeats Eskel’s question, brows furrowed. “Fishmonger’s Daughter didn’t exactly make the whole room… well.” He drifts, looking at Ciri. She didn’t need to hear a song like that just yet.

“I think intention has something to do with it. When I sang that song, my intention wasn’t to make what happened in the song happen literally, it was to make people happy.” Jaskier thinks of Pavetta, and Valdo, and the inn in Posada, of all the numerous people he’s come across who were immune to his charms, the ones who greeted him with insults instead of compliments.

“It doesn’t always work, even with the intention. I think maybe the people have to be receptive to it also? I’m not sure.” He recalls all his shoddy empty works, all his songs that were just songs for the sake of being songs, with no intention behind them other than to bring people entertainment.

“And there were definitely times where I left my songs normal, for lack of a better term, on purpose. The intention has to be really concentrated. Sometimes the songs only worked after I’d sung them several times, or if I’d been thinking about them for a really long time. Most of my music is mundane.” He explains.

“Why didn’t you use that song to save yourself from Rience?” Yenn breaks off his explanations.

Jaskier shakes his head. His voice grows quiet.

“I’d only ever done it the one time, when I was a teen. On some mice by accident and then on two men who’d kidnapped and tried to… tried to rape me.”

Geralt clenches a fist.

“I swore to myself I’d never do it again, not if I can help it. I don’t like being able to wield that kind of power–

“But magic is both dark and light, and if you hold one form you’re bound to hold the capacity for the other,” Yennefer nods along, catching Jaskier’s drift.

“So I try to focus on the lighter side of things. And I’d never tried that song on a mage before, who knows if it would’ve worked. I also… Yenn, you know what they did to the elves. What they’re doing to anyone Other.”

“No artist is safe,” she says in understanding.

Geralt feels like the two of them are having a whole other conversation within the one they’re all having.

“Right. So I didn’t dare. I didn’t want anyone to overhear me, either–what if you’d walked in and I was singing that song? I don’t know how to make it selective. I don’t want to know.”

“Geralt survived. So did Roach. And the animals surrounding you, it sounds like.”

“I covered Geralt’s ears, and I made Roach run away from the site. I’m not sure about the other animals, I don’t know if there’s like a radius of influence of sorts for this kind of thing–”

“I could still hear you,” Geralt interjects.

Jaskier turns to him, face white. “What.”

“Through the jacket, I could still hear you. It was… haunting, but it didn’t do anything to me or make me want to do anything to myself. I’m still alive, Jask.”

Jaskier stares at the floor in shock.

“Perhaps over the years you’d honed your ability to put intention behind your songs, so when the time came you were able to turn your killing song into a culling song,” Yennefer posits.

“I could’ve killed you,” he whispers to Geralt.

“But you didn’t. You’re more skilled than that.”

Jaskier stands up, thinking of the slaughter in Bloebheris. Tears come to his eyes as he runs a hand through his hair. “So I could’ve—fuck,” he cries.

“What?”

He turns to Geralt. “I was there, at Bloebheris. I briefly thought about using it but I didn’t know I could make it selective, so I didn’t. I could’ve done something all along?!”

“Hey, you did, Jaskier. Maybe not in the moment, but you didn’t know you could. Think of all the elves you saved in Oxenfurt, including me. That’s not nothing, Sandpiper. And now they know where to find safe passage.” Yennefer asserts, rising to put a hand on his shoulder.

Jaskier scoffs, angrily wiping away a tear.

Ciri speaks up. “Did you ever meet an elf named Dara?” She asks softly.

Jaskier sniffs in surprise. “Yes, actually. I remember him, helped him get out of Oxenfurt to Xin’trea.”

“You saved a friend of mine, then,” She says firmly. “That’s not nothing.”

They’re all silent for a moment.

“Music as a Source, who would have thought,” Yenn muses. Her eyes flick back and forth between Ciri and Jaskier. Like she’s making the connections between Pavetta and Jaskier that he had made at the banquet.

“Have you considered you might have something magical in your blood?” She asks.

Jaskier shakes his head. “No, I mean as far as I know there’s no fae or elves in my family, and I assumed not because Geralt’s medallion was always still around me. I certainly don’t have Elder Blood, if that’s what you’re thinking. In truth, I have no idea why or how I’m able to do all this.”

“We can test your blood, if you like. There’s no guarantee of answers there, but there’s always the library. It hasn’t been sorted through in some time, but you might find some information there," Vesemir offers. Jaskier shrugs one shoulder, considering.

“If it’ll help Ciri, and help me figure out more ways to help you all, I’ll be glad to.”

Over the next few weeks, with Jaskier sing-songing around her like a bird as they scour the library looking for answers behind both his and Ciri’s magic, Yennefer notices that her Chaos starts coming back to her faster than it would have without him around.

Jaskier had always been afraid that others knowing of his power meant they would try to take it, but here he is giving it freely, pouring his magic into the people he loves with ease.

Magic was a give and take, after all, and Jaskier has always been more of a giver anyway. With all the years he’s stolen from evil men with his culling song, Jaskier is happy to give some of his power to others. That’s his balance, he decides.

When Yenn is strong enough, together they help Ciri learn to tame the Chaos within her and practice signs in between her lessons about beasts and combat. The signs don’t come easy to her like they do a traditional witcher, but with persistence she makes it work.

When Ciri wakes up from a nightmare (and those moments are happening less and less these days), she has a whole chorus of people ready to help her back to sleep. Whoever wakes first—be it Geralt, or Eskel, or Jaskier, even Yennefer— goes to her room and sits by her side until she falls back asleep.

One evening, away from everyone else, in the privacy of Geralt’s childhood room, Jaskier sings Geralt a song that only Geralt will ever have the privilege to hear.

It’s a song that Jaskier swore lived in his heart, that had been born the moment he laid eyes on the other man.

It’s a song he felt buried in the marrow of his bones.

It’s the song he started composing in his mind every time he accompanied Geralt on a contract, the one that he worked on every time Geralt went on a hunt too dangerous for him to follow.

It was a song he felt swelling in his lungs when he saw Geralt after a long winter apart, and he was finally able to take a deep breath, his body sighing in relief.

It was the warmth he felt curl low in his belly every time he saw Geralt bare, the twist in his stomach every time Geralt got injured, the warmth in his chest whenever he got to take care of him, the gentle movements of his fingers as he washed his hair and bathed him and stitched him up.

It was the peace he found late at night in the woods when it was just the two of them by a campfire.

It was a song about all the things he felt for Geralt, and for all the things he wished for the two of them; for all the lightness and easiness that might be possible for a witcher and his bard and their loved ones on a shared Path.

It was a heartsong. A soulsong.
A love song.

They’re both surprised when Geralt’s medallion starts humming in tune, its vibrations moving at the same frequency of Jaskier’s music.

Jaskier laughs. It seemed as though he’d get to try out how the vibrations of the medallion could be pleasurable in bed after all.

Geralt shakes his head with amusement and listens to the rest of the song, not shy in asking if Jaskier can sing it again when he’s done.

Jaskier places his hand to his chest in mock surprise. “Geralt of Rivia, asking me to sing?”

He leans close, kissing him on the cheek. “Of course, dear heart,” he says. “I will sing of you and to you until the end of my days,” he promises, and begins again.

Geralt grins, and feels his own heart stirring happily as he lets himself revel in the feeling of being wanted and wanting back, of loving and letting himself be loved.

The next time Jaskier calls him gorgeous, and he sees himself reflected in Jaskier’s eyes, he can believe it.

When Yennefer’s Chaos comes back fully, she conjures a new lute for Jaskier.

“It’s technically elvencraft,” she jokes, presenting it to him with a wry smile.

He takes it with gratitude.

That night at dinner, a group of witchers eagerly leaned forward to hear the song that has eased their path for over two decades, from the lips of the man the myth the legend himself.

Another few tankards in, and they sing it in a round.

Lambert and Aiden share their drinking songs with Jaskier, Ciri smiling and laughing and clapping along (sharing apple juice with Yenn since Geralt had frowned at Lambert trying to sneak her sips of ale).

The halls of the Keep, having once echoed with screams, having been silent for so long, now echo with music and laughter instead.

Every evening, Geralt uses his extra sensitive hearing to pick out the sounds of the Keep as he lay in bed.

If Yennefer is still awake, she’s often accompanied by the sounds of turning pages and the scratch of quill against parchment, or glass clinking together as she tinkers with something in the lab, murmuring to herself as she works.

The lullaby Eskel sang to the younger boys graces his lips once again as he sings it to Ciri every night.

Sometimes he hears Lambert and Aiden going at it in their room (his cheeks would burn if they could), Coen banging on the wall next to them telling them to pipe down. Lambert just laughs and the two of them exaggerate their grunts in response.

Occasionally, he’ll hear Lil Bleater (who is not so little anymore) bleat and ram Lambert’s door, her own version of telling them to pipe down, and Eskel runs to scoop her up before Lambert threatens to use her as forktail bait next Spring.

He hears Roach and Scorpion and the other horses in the stables outside his window, chortling and huffing as they settle into their hay.

He hears the crackle of the fire in the Great Hall, where Vesemir enjoys the closest thing to retirement that a witcher can reach, contently reading and sipping his tea, the porcelain cup hitting the saucer in between page flips.

Closest and loudest and most comforting of all is the sound of Jaskier’s soft puffs of breath against his neck and the sleep-slow beating of his music-filled heart.

He falls asleep to the sounds of his family all around him.

It’s better than any lullaby in the world.