Chapter Text
Roach nickers to him from the shoreline, and Geralt raises a hand to her in farewell, before seizing the oars and beginning to row.
The moon is a silver sliver overhead, the stars a canopy of bright lights, and he doesn’t need to use much of his night vision to see—but the water beneath him is an inky void reflecting the sky back at him, and it sets his teeth on edge.
The skiff makes steady progress, gliding across the mirror-flat lake gracefully, despite the witcher having little proficiency in rowing: ordinarily when he needs to cross water, he swims the distance or hires passage on a boat to ferry him. He rarely has need of rowing himself. This time, however, he is retrieving something, and he doesn’t know whether he will be able to swim back to shore with it once he has located it; thus: the boat.
So, to go with his unusual transport: an unusual contract.
A lord of a small holding believes himself to be the inheritor of a box, filled with unknown yet presumably lovely treasure, that was thrown to the bottom of this lake some few decades ago, and upon his betrothal to the daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants this side of Temeria he has decided he’d like to finally solve the mystery of his inheritance.
Geralt had originally been dismissive—he’s a monster hunter, for the love of Melitele, and this doesn’t have anything remotely to do with monster hunting, but then the lord named a rather extortionate price for what is essentially a rather easy retrieval, and Geralt had taken it without second thought.
The lake is still and calm and peaceful.
There are few tales of monsters in this lake, which is odd, because peasants are a superstitious and excitable lot and this lake is, all things considered… rather creepy. The trees that grace the shoreline are oddly pale and, in the face of autumn, have shed their leaves in favour of bare, bone-white branches. Yesterday when Geralt came down to scout the area the water was blanketed in a thick fog, eery and strangely silent. Wolves prowl the forests nearby.
Yes; this lake, by all rights, ought have at least one or two local legends of creatures crawling out of the depths and terrorising the villagers nearby, but Geralt had been unable to learn of any myths surrounding the area.
He makes quick work of rowing to what is approximately the middle of the lake, and takes the free end of the rope, the other end of which is secured firmly to the seat in the middle of the boat.
He ties it around his ankle, checks that the knot is secure, and dives into the water.
Geralt quickly finds that the lake is deeper than he initially thought. Below the surface, trailing black foliage wrap slimy limbs around him as he tries to dive further down, brushing against his skin like so many fingers. Any light the moon reflects is lost as the water quickly becomes black before his eyes, and even adjusting his pupils as much as he can to let in as much light as possible, he can barely see his hands in front of him.
The water is icy cold. He is at the lake bottom now, running his fingers through the silt, when he hears—something.
Something odd. A blow of bubbles that shouldn’t have been, perhaps, or a scrape of something off against the lake floor, and he whips his head up and strains his ears, trying to listen.
He needs to find this box.
He has at least several minutes of air left yet, and isn’t worried about drowning—rather, he doesn’t have his sword with him and he isn’t wearing armour—or clothes, at all. He has a knife he strapped to his thigh in precaution, but he doesn’t know what is out there and thus doesn’t know whether it is enough.
He goes back to digging.
There is—he feels something beneath his fingers, and he has almost slid his fingertips around the edge of it, carefully prying it from the dirt, when something grabs the rope that is tied to his leg and yanks.
There was never a chance for him.
The creature, he finds, is a kelpie, but in the water it looks less like a horse or a man and more like a serpent, trailing black fins and looking at him through white eyes and baring horribly sharp fangs as it roars at him, and even as Geralt struggles not to heave in a gasp, even as the monster snaps its jaws at him, he is enthralled.
The creature sings as it screams at him and all he wants to do is reach forward and grab its forelock and crawl aboard, and let it take him where it may.
But he won’t, because he is a witcher and he isn’t to be taken by the likes of this beast, so he unsheathes his dagger and swipes it, air escaping from his mouth in a furious bellow.
This proves to be a mistake.
The kelpie keeps clear of his knife, but instead goes again for the rope, snapping it from its connection to the boat and grabbing it in its mouth. Geralt can’t swim upwards, can’t swim away, and he accepts, here and now, that he is probably going to drown.
This kelpie is going to kill him. Vesemir would laugh.
He lunges for the kelpie again, slashing his dagger, but the creature dives beneath him, faster and more graceful than Geralt could ever be in the water, and comes up again behind him, kicking out with one of its leg-fin-limbs and striking him in the lower back.
He turns, furious, and drives himself at the creature, right into the range of its teeth and claws and hooves and grasping, horrible fingers, and it catches him easily and takes him into its jaws, inches long, serrated teeth dug deep into his torso, and his blood plumes around him in black clouds.
He still can’t see, and the blood makes the water thick and hot and taste of salted metal, and he can’t see.
His dagger nearly slips from his hand, but he manages to take a better grip of it and plunges it deep into the creature’s eye. The kelpie does not budge.
He hacks at the beast, slashing and swiping and sawing at the monster’s throat, before he realises that the kelpie is dead, he killed it when he first stuck his blade into the creature’s head, only it has such a tight grip around him that, even in death, they are entwined. Its teeth are sunk in deep and its weight is dragging him down, and Geralt is running out of air.
This is it, he thinks faintly, and the blackness of the water is replaced with blackness of an entirely different nature.
~~~
He awakes to hands at his throat and reacts on instinct.
“Ow! Fuck, what was that for?” a voice exclaims, sounding slightly hoarse from where Geralt has punched him in the throat. There is a tremendous splash. He forces his eyes open and glares at said voice-owner.
“Oh, you’re pretty,” the man—creature—person says, and Geralt blinks across at him. Strange response to being punched in the throat, but he’s met odder people.
“What—happened?” he chokes out, his throat raw and his mouth tasting unpleasantly of fish.
The sky is still black, but the moon casts light enough for Geralt to see whom he is talking to. Pale skin, and black hair, and stunningly blue eyes matching stunningly blue scales that scatter his neck and shoulders places. Gills at his throat, and small fins at his arms where they rest atop the embankment where Geralt has been unceremoniously dropped, and from what Geralt can see there is one long one down his back. A merman—siren, Geralt thinks sourly, resting easily half out of the lake. Tempestuous and stubborn, for the most part, and nearly always impossible to reason with.
“You and that kelpie were nearly the end of each other. Well, you killed it, but I’ll forgive you because he was a right greedy bastard—always stealing all the fish—and it nearly killed you—would have if I hadn’t grabbed you and brought you to the surface. And then you bled all over me, which, rude, so I fixed you up with a potion from that there pack of yours that smelt like it would do the trick—hope you don’t mind, which you shouldn’t, because I saved your life, but—”
“Stop,” Geralt interrupts the creature before he can go any further. “Sirens—sirens don’t save people,” he grits out, “they eat them. And you’re meant to have wings. What—why—”
“Oh, wow, way to encourage stereotypes! Only nixa have wings, thank you very much, and I heard all witchers had fangs and devil’s horns, but—”
“I had them filed down,” Geralt hisses at the creature, struggling to sit up, and the siren hastens to prevent him.
“Look—stop, just stop, alright? Your skin hasn’t knitted back together yet and you’re only going to hurt yourself if you try to—”
“I have to get back to my horse,” he interrupts the siren before he can build up too much momentum.
“Yes, she’s here, along with all your possessions and, I might add, that box thing you seemed to be diving for which, by the way, if it’s not yours then I can go and put it back—”
“You got the box?” Geralt manages to rasp out, stopping the siren short.
“Yes. Why—is it important?” the siren looks suddenly—mischievous, is the only word Geralt can put to it, and he scowls at the creature.
“I need it,” he answers evasively, causing the creature to look even more intrigued. He tilts his head and flashes sharp fangs at the witcher in a grin.
“Well, I suppose you can have it—for a price,” the siren tells him. “I’m Jaskier, by the way, if you were wondering—”
“—I wasn’t—”
“—and I think I know who you are—oh, fun: white hair, big old loner, two very—very scary looking swords—I know who you are. You’re the witcher, Geralt of Rivia!” The siren—Jaskier—looks so very pleased with himself, and Geralt narrows his eyes at the siren even further.
Geralt looks about. “Where the fuck are my clothes?”
“They’re—there, look. I laid them on that rock to dry. You’re welcome,” the siren tells him, his voice oddly musical as Geralt begins to pull on and lace up his breeches. Geralt flinches; sirens sing men and women to their deaths, and he refuses to be murdered by this—glittering, boyish merman.
The bank he has been dragged on to drops sharply away over the lake, and Jaskier is in the water still, resting his arms on the ledge and his head atop them. He looks—not like most sirens Geralt has encountered, in that he isn’t baring a mouth full of knife-like fangs and his eyes aren’t slitted in fury as they do their best to murder him.
“How did you learn to talk?” Geralt asks him, his voice a low growl, then immediately regrets it—he wants to get his box and go, not incite more conversation.
“Oh, well, since you ask—I was, well.” The siren suddenly looks distinctly uncomfortable. “I spent some time among humans, singing songs for them, and I’d listen to them talking and learn their words and their meanings.”
“What songs did you sing, if you didn’t know human words?” Geralt can’t help himself asking, looking around for his other boot. The rest of his belongings seem to still be in the saddlebags tied onto Roach—they don’t look nor smell to be tampered with—and his boot must be around here somewhere, if Jaskier had brought the rest of his clothes over.
“They taught me the sounds, before—before I was… presented,” Jaskier hedges, and Geralt wonders what the siren isn’t telling him, in the gaps between his words. “Anyway, I sang their songs and played their instruments and learnt their words, and now here I am.”
“Bit of an intermission there, siren,” Geralt tells him wryly, and the creature looks affronted.
“My name is Jaskier, thank you very much, if it doesn’t gall you to maybe use it. And—I saved your life, I don’t owe you anything! In fact, you owe me, if I recall, both for not letting you drown and also for very helpfully retrieving this box for you, witcher, so how about you start being nice to me?” Jaskier tells him haughtily, and Geralt grunts.
Then the siren is heaving himself out of the lake, and Geralt sees the beginning of his long, cobalt tail before the scales begin to shift and writhe and bubble, and turn into—
Into legs.
The siren is now walking. As a man. Geralt is tempted to question this further, but it’s been a strange day all round and he’s seen stranger, frankly. Shapeshifting sirens, then. What else is new?
He’s a rather naked man, Geralt notes, eyeing his package, but Jaskier doesn’t seem to notice as he retrieves Geralt’s wayward boot from near to where Roach is grazing, and throws it over to him.
Jaskier meets his gaze squarely and clenches his jaw.
“I know I’m a monster, but I won’t let you kill me—” and that is the furthest thing from Geralt’s mind right now, so he interrupts the siren to set the record straight.
“I’m not going to kill you, Jaskier,” he tells him, and the siren’s shoulders slump almost imperceptibly in relief. “I need to get that box back to the lord of the nearby town.”
“It’s safe,” Jaskier tells him, “and it will remain where it is until I have your word that you will give me what I want.”
“And what is that?” Geralt asks, warily.
“I want to come with you.”
“You—what?” an unusual request for anyone; usually people can’t get away from Geralt fast enough. It’s even more uncommon for them to want to go somewhere with him.
Jaskier looks determined. “I want to come with you, and not—I just. I don’t have to explain myself to you, witcher.”
Geralt looks at him. Considers it. And then sighs—he needs this box, and he supposes it won’t be too much of a hardship—the siren will probably come with him to the town, get spooked by the crowds, and return home as fast as his legs (legs?) can carry him.
“Alright,” Geralt agrees, and Jaskier brightens, like the sun bursting out from the clouds.
“Great! Great—I’ll, um, just go get my things. And the box.” And then the siren is diving back into the water, shifting gracefully into his streamlined mer form, and Geralt wonders what, precisely, he has gotten himself into.
~~~
Music. Ceaseless, fucking, music, is what he has gotten himself into.
The siren has a lute. Where he got is, Geralt doesn’t know, but he strums it and sings as they walk and it’s driving Geralt just a little bit insane.
Roach seems to like it, the traitor—her ears flick back continuously to listen to the siren, and she arches her neck and steps out a bit more every time he hits the chorus.
Maybe she’s sick. Or maybe she ate something funny this morning that’s given her a bit more energy than she usually has. Or maybe she’s in heat and can smell stallions on the air, and it’s making her act less normal. Or maybe it’s the siren’s innate magic—charming sailors and then dragging them to their doom, as the stories go, and Geralt assumes that his magic isn’t working on him because he’s a witcher, and that Roach, as a horse, is more perceptible.
Probably.
The siren also talks. A lot. He talks about the court he had apparently sang to, and all of the people he had known, and who was sleeping with whom and gossip that is an indeterminate number of years old, and wonders where the lot of them are and what they are doing now.
The siren also has, Geralt notices, the peculiar habit of talking ceaselessly without particularly saying anything about himself, and he wonders at it.
He wonders, too, at this court life Jaskier describes. The way he tells it, it was wonderful and exciting and filled with incredible people—but his shoulders are tense and his eyes are just a little bit wild as he talks, and Geralt is sure that there is more to the story that Jaskier isn’t telling him. Or maybe it’s just that sirens are feral creatures, no matter how human Jaskier seems, and so there will always be a little bit of wildness about him.
Not that Geralt cares, of course. He’s been strong-armed into bringing the siren along, and the creature’s problems are his own. There’s nothing that Geralt can do about them.
The forest around them is wild and untamed and occasionally a wolf’s hunting cry will pierce the heady silence that blankets them, and each and every time, rather than shrink back, Jaskier will look alert and curious and, once, as though he is about to sing back—before casting Geralt a furtive look, and choosing to strum a jaunty tune instead.
Geralt has never spent much time in the company of a siren, and he finds himself… amused, at the creature’s antics.
~~~
They camp that night beneath an enormous twisted oak, and Jaskier trails his fingers over the bark with something akin to wonder scrawled on his face.
“How old do you think this tree is?” he asks of Geralt while the witcher builds their fire, his eyes alight with awe.
“Don’t know,” Geralt grunts.
“Ancient, I bet. I wonder what this forest looked like when it was just a sapling. I wonder what the stars looked like when it was just a sapling,” Jaskier continues, and he sits down and tips his head back and stares at the sky with such—emotion, such longing in his gaze, that Geralt almost begins to wonder who the siren is thinking about, before he shakes the thoughts away.
Not friends, he tells himself firmly.
“Thank you for catching dinner, witcher,” Jaskier says politely as they sit to a dinner of roasted hare.
“Hm.”
“Not very talkative, are you? Though you’re a witcher, I suppose you spend more time out in the wilds, like this, talking to—your horse. Not much opportunity to brush up on your social skills,” Jaskier notes, pulling the meat off the hare with his fingers and inspecting it thoroughly before putting it into his mouth and chewing, cautiously. He looks like he doesn’t know what to expect, and his face goes through a myriad of emotions while eating before he apparently decides he likes the taste, and takes another bite.
“Geralt,” said witcher grunts at him, and Jaskier looks confused. “My name. Call me Geralt,” he tells the siren, and Jaskier looks far more delighted than he really should, having only been given a name.
“Oh, Geralt, that’s wonderful, Geralt, thank you so much, Geralt—”
“Don’t overdo it,” he is quick to admonish the siren, but Jaskier only grins sharply at him.
In his human form, clad in silks and soft boots and a boyish countenance, his teeth are entirely normal, but Geralt remembers what he had looked like with a mouth full of blades. He wonders, idly, why this siren is so different from every other he has encountered.
Not friends, he reminds himself.
“You should sleep. Long day tomorrow,” he tells Jaskier, who looks suddenly alarmed.
“There’s no one—I mean, there’s nothing… you’re not expecting anybody, are you? Only my kind have something of a bad reputation, and—”
“Sleep, siren. I’ll keep watch,” Geralt tells Jaskier before he can spiral further, and he looks somewhat relieved.
“Good. I’ll—um, just… thank you, Geralt. I’ll…” Jaskier trails off when Geralt doesn’t respond, looking around him instead. Geralt watches him, bemused, as Jaskier apparently comes to some sort of decision—his emotions writ across his face plain as day—and resigns himself to curling up by the fire just as he is, resting his head on the blanket of leaves that cover the forest floor.
“Here,” Geralt takes pity on him, throwing him a blanket he’d taken from Roach’s saddlebags, and Jaskier looks so grateful that Geralt has to look away from him for a moment.
The forest is a silent sentinel to them that night, watching over the sleeping siren and the witcher keeping watch.
~~~
It had taken Geralt half a day, trotting and cantering Roach, to reach Jaskier’s lake from the town.
At a walk, with a curious siren by his side taking an interest in anything and everything they come across—including, but not limited to: a rabbit; a collection of butterflies alighting on a thicket of wildflowers, which Jaskier waxes poetic about for ages before Geralt tells him gruffly to knock it off; a yellow flower growing in the middle of a crop of red flowers, which Jaskier insists on very carefully removing, roots and all, and replanting among a copse of buttercups, “so that it doesn’t feel sad because of its differences,” Jaskier tells him serenely; a carving set out in a tree that bears no meaning for Geralt but which Jaskier feels determined to solve.
It is, by all accounts, not a particularly industrious journey.
They reach the town late the next evening, so that Geralt is obliged to find a room in a tavern before seeing the lord about his payment. He buys a room with two beds and has their meal sent up, hurrying Jaskier to some privacy before he can reveal himself as anything less than human, and he spends the night preventing the siren from clambering out of the window to go explore the town—instead trying to encourage him to sleep.
“I’ve never slept in an inn before,” Jaskier tells him excitedly from his side of the room.
“Hm,” Geralt responds. He is curled under his own blankets, hoping Jaskier will take the hint.
“It’s all very exciting, isn’t it? Knowing that somebody we’ve never met and probably never will was in here just last night, and that somebody entirely different will be here tomorrow. It’s funny, how humans live so closely together and entirely separately, all at the same time.”
“Hm,” Geralt agrees.
“And—”
“Sleep, Jaskier.”
Thankfully, thankfully, this seems to get through to the siren, who rustles loudly as he burrows down beneath the covers, and Geralt waits until he hears the siren’s breathing deepen and ease out before allowing himself the same luxury.
~~~
Try as he might, Geralt wakes after the siren, though thankfully the creature hasn’t up and decided to go get himself killed trying something stupid.
“I’m hungry,” Jaskier tells him, and Geralt only sighs before packing their things up and dragging him downstairs.
“Two hots. And water,” he tells the bleary-eyed girl standing by the bar, and she nods before shuffling into the kitchen. Jaskier and he are among the first up, and Geralt hopes to be gone before the bulk of the patrons make their way down for breakfast.
“Geralt,” Jaskier whispers, managing to sound rather inconspicuous, once their plates are set down in front of them.
“Jaskier.”
“What is this?”
Geralt pauses. The food is simple fare: eggs, sausage, toast, a jug of water.
“I—could have phrased that better. I mean…” Jaskier drums his fingers on the table, obviously thinking hard, and Geralt wonders where he picked up such a tic. “Where and what do we do now?”
Geralt chews, thinking. “We’ll go find the lord, give him his box. Take the coin and be on our way.”
“And then what?”
“Then I find another town, another contract, and do it all again.”
Jaskier doesn’t look satisfied with his explanation. “Surely there’s more,” he presses, and Geralt shakes his head.
“There’s just this. I’m a witcher, Jaskier. I hunt and kill monsters for a living, and then I move on and do it again, and again.”
“But what about—about friends? Or family? Don’t you have one?”
Geralt sets down his fork. “Don’t you?” he growls, and Jaskier looks abashed.
“Sorry,” he mutters. “I don’t mean to pry, just—”
“Just nothing. This is it. This is what you wanted to see. Sorry if it isn’t enough for you,” Geralt hisses, and Jaskier hunches down further, and Geralt feels—bad. He feels bad.
He didn’t mean to snap at the siren. Only, the creature should really have considered what it was he wanted before asking it of Geralt; if he isn’t happy with traipsing around backwater towns, killing monsters for minor lords and living a largely unremarkable life, then he ought go back to his lake while he still can.
They finish their food in silence, and Jaskier remains quiet by Geralt’s side when he goes and hunts down the lord, and quieter still—silent, in fact, when Geralt hands the box over with a grimace. Everything about him is tense, and he only relaxes minutely once they are out of the lord’s presence.
Geralt takes the coin, a heavy weight at his hip that will see him through several weeks of hot meals and decent feed for Roach—even with Jaskier apparently tagging along—and doesn’t stay to see what’s in the blasted thing. He finds he doesn’t care either way.
“Don’t like lords?” Geralt grumbles to the siren as they make their way back to Roach, eyeing everyone who passes them as would-be thieves and mercenaries looking to sell a witcher pelt for a pretty price.
“Not… particularly,” is the only answer Jaskier gives, and Geralt shrugs and decides he doesn’t care enough to pry.
~~~
Nightfall finds them camping again, with Jaskier strumming his lute and composing.
Geralt has been braced, all this time, for the siren to begin Singing—but he hasn’t. An ordinary voice—as ordinary as Jaskier’s voice can be described, because even Geralt has to begrudgingly admit that his voice is, in fact, rather lovely—accompanies his music, singing of kings and courts and fishmongers’ daughters, and Geralt wonders at it.
Distantly, of course, in a manner that cannot be confused as growing to like him—oh, no, it is entirely professional curiosity with which he thinks of Jaskier and a siren’s song in his mouth.
“You like your singing, then,” Geralt cannot help but observe, and the siren breaks off his playing to look at the witcher curiously.
“Well, yes. It’s what sirens do.”
Geralt shakes his head. “Sirens sing people to their deaths. You like singing just for—singing,” he finishes awkwardly, under Jaskier’s careful scrutiny.
“Back home, we’d sing to each other all the time. Usually not human songs, of course, but we’d play games where you started a song and somebody had to jump in and take over, and keep the story the same but sing in an entirely different tune. Or—” he breaks off then, looking horribly maudlin. Enough so that Geralt almost feels the beginnings of sympathy stirring in his gut. He dismisses such twinges as off meat, nothing more.
“Alright?” he deigns to ask the siren, figuring he might as well.
“Um. Yes. Just—I miss it. Home, I mean,” the siren explains sadly, throwing his heart out for anybody to catch, and Geralt frowns. Both at the confession, and the easy way Jaskier opens up about some things and not others.
“Why’d you come with me, then?” he asks, and squints at him.
“That—the lake, you mean?” at Geralt’s nod, he sighs. “That wasn’t my home. That was just somewhere I could survive, away from humans, after I es—after I left the court,” he corrects himself hastily, and Geralt pretends not to have noticed, filing away the slip for later consideration.
He finds himself increasingly invested in Jaskier, and he’s inclined, for now, to see where this takes him. There certainly isn’t any harm in it.
“You should sleep,” Geralt tells him firmly when the siren goes to pick his lute up again. Overhead, a cloud cover has hidden the moon and stars, casting the land in blacker shadow than usual, and morning is still hours away.
Jaskier looks at him, before apparently conceding—he puts down the instrument and curls up by the fire, and Geralt sighs.
They need to get the siren a bedroll of his own, if he’s to be staying.
He grabs a blanket from one of Roach’s bags, and sets himself down on the ground, back to back with the siren, feeling the creature’s clammy coldness seeping through his back. Jaskier naturally runs cold, but seems to prefer the heat, Geralt has noticed, so he lets the siren relax into his warmth as he throws the blanket over the both of them.
Jaskier falls asleep quickly, but Geralt stays awake for a good long while after, thinking.