Chapter Text
“You don’t sing anymore.”
Jaskier looked at him from across the fire, the flames casting his face into a maelstrom of flickering colors, distracting from the surprise written plainly there. The bard had paused with his flask halfway up to his lips, stock still like a deer in the woods awaiting the pack that’s come to chase it down.
And Geralt certainly intended to do just that. He couldn’t handle the silence anymore - constant and insufferable. No. That wasn’t not quite right. It wasn’t silent. Jaskier still babbled like he wanted to use every word he could before the grave, but he didn’t sing anymore, and Geralt had never realized how much of Jaskier’s very being was song. Their travels turned into quiet, meandering conversations that the witcher didn’t know how to navigate. It required opinions, words - none of which he had.
Jaskier’s singing had served as a bridge in their companionship. Something to keep Jaskier’s mouth busy, an outlet for the bard’s energy - and while Geralt would never admit it, it had been a pleasant way to pass the time. Even now, he didn’t know why he had ever wished it away… Perhaps because he had been unused to it.
And change was a frightening thing.
“Thought you didn’t like my flavor of pie?” Jaskier asked pointedly before taking a swig. The liquor makes his voice rough. Geralt didn’t quite know why that incited a protective flare in him; a desire to spare the bard’s voice lest it break and weaken. Never the same.
He grunted because aye, he had said that. He knew that well enough. Dreamed of it. Just one more stone picked away from the mountainside, one more trigger to the rockslide of tragedy that was his constant companion in life. He rubbed at his face and searched for the words. Even after days of having decided that this conversation needed to happen, he found the message elusive. Jaskier plucked narratives and flowery diction from the air as easily as Geralt could find flies on Roach’s ass - it felt oddly unfair to feel so inadequate by comparison when it counted most.
Perhaps it was a muscle… Muscles required practice… He would have to think on that later.
“Why did you stop?” Geralt asked.
“Because you wished for me to,” Jaskier murmured, a touch sour beneath his usual bardly enthusiasm, the edge of his voice made sharp by the booze and by the hurt Geralt had been too slow to realize had burrowed into the man’s skin like puss in a wound. Infected and aching, unable to heal.
“I also wished to sleep,” Geralt mumbled defensively, “I’m not exactly a good problem solver.”
“But that’s exactly what you are though, Geralt!” Jaskier said, hands exploding out, “What do you mean? People literally hire you to solve their problems!”
“Their problems,” Geralt said, “Not mine.”
That quieted the bard, the merry crackle of the fire rising to soothe them both in the silence. Out of the corner of his eye, Geralt saw Jaskier work his jaw. He felt a little pang of pleasure to have rendered the man speechless - albeit not exactly under admirable circumstances.
“And what was your problem, Geralt?” Jaskier finally asked, hushed and somber - and more and more, Geralt came to recognize this man as Julian. The man behind Jaskier. The human, not the entertainer. “Is my company truly so burdensome? Why did you allow me to tag along then? You could’ve run Roach at any time, I wouldn’t exactly have been able to keep up on foot before I got Daisy.”
Geralt blew out a breath. This was uncomfortable. Incredibly so. The words he needed felt so far away - fine and hard to hold, like sand slipping through his fingers. The more he struggled to gather them, the more time passed. Finally, Julian snorted - his mask as an easy-going entertainer enclosing around him again - and Geralt knew his window was closing. A window that may not open again.
He knew firsthand the weight of a good mask, afterall. How hard it was to remove it. How dreadful, to reveal one’s face. Let alone to have that trust go to waste. He knew. It just took the witcher far too long to realize he himself had been wearing one as well.
“The Path is lonely. I can count on less than the fingers of one hand how many people would be willing to travel with a witcher. Less so, to happily agree to it. I allowed it, because you… truly appeared to want to travel with me.”
Julian’s gaze was piercing, expressionless and guarded, yet strangely patient across the flicker of the fire.
“And my singing?”
The witcher’s gaze darted meekly to the fire even as it hurt his eyes to stare. It felt like penance.
“I… I didn’t wish for you to stop singing. I wished for peace. I used to think peace was what I had before. Before you… I just didn’t know that what I had then hadn’t gone by ‘peace’ at all. It was loneliness, and I was merely too used to it to know better.”
His eyes darted up to Julian’s. Caught hold of those cornflower blue eyes and held them in case this was the last time. There was something subtle behind the man’s gaze. Something surprised; as though Geralt was a road he had traveled many times, a path he thought by heart, and yet had found something new.
But the bard didn’t speak, didn’t move, so Geralt continued.
“And I think, well… Few ever agree to travel with a witcher. Even less stay. I thought perhaps… if it were on my terms… it wouldn’t hurt so badly… That if I could just go back to that sense of ‘peace’, I wouldn’t ever have to miss you,” he sucked in a breath, hitched and broken, and admitted softly, “And yet I’ve missed you ever since.”
Julian watched him for a long time. Geralt awaited his response. Expected his meager words to be blown away by the bard’s counter. Instead Jaskier simply stood, and Geralt looked away, his stomach cold as it sank inside him. The bard was leaving. It was finally done. There was nothing left to fix. He had shattered it all, doing what witchers did best: destroy.
He startled when he found two boots come to stand in front of him instead.
“You’re right,” the bard said, astonished, “You are a terrible problem solver. How you’ve maintained such a successful career in the art of it is quite frankly astonishing to me now.”
Geralt looked up, eyes wide, to find Julian still staring down at him. Smiling - the hurt not gone, but not so piercing anymore. Like light coming in through cracked stained glass, filtering not as planned, yet ever more beautiful because of it.
“You’re right. I can’t promise I won’t be gone one day. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about love, it’s that you can’t have it without pain… I’m mortal. There’s a bit of a looming expiration date on our relationship. One of these days, I’m going to be too old to follow you. Or I’ll be called away for a gig. Or to teach. Or maybe I’ll die, like men do… But I’m not going to just disappear without reason if you don’t make me. We’ll make plans. We’ve got decades to figure it out. Gods above, I can’t even begin to form the words to tell you how utterly mad it is to drive someone away because you’re afraid that they’ll leave. That’s a self-foreseeing prophecy, my dear witcher, and here I thought you hated Fate and any word associated with it.”
Julian smiled. Brought a hand down to brush a white lock back from Geralt’s stunned eyes and tuck it behind his ear.
“What would you like for me to sing?” He asked.
“Anything,” Geralt whispered.
“Alright,” The bard smiled, taking the spot beside him to curl himself into Geralt’s every crevice. As though he were a being made of water rather than man, made to fill any container, if only one offered him the opportunity to do so. Waiting for it, Geralt realized.
Waiting to come home.
“I’ll sing,” Julian said, leaning into him, “But only because you asked nicely.”
After that, their days were filled with songs; melodious and carrying.