Chapter Text
He doesn’t sing again. That prickly part of Geralt that’s been traveling alone for most of his life gruffly thought he’d enjoy that result. After all, he did his level best to have the issue resolved. It wasn’t his fault that the bard got involved. He hadn’t invited him along – he had just wanted to fucking sleep for fucking once in his life, damn it. It had been his wish though, however unintentional, that brought the bard into this new life, this silent existence. A world without Jaskier’s singing.
It is like biting into a pie only to find it has no filling.
Those words haunt him in the lingering silence of Jaskier’s presence. They hang between him and the bard as heavily as any wraith might – leeching him just as much as actual conversations exhausted him. Jaskier, like the birds of the woods, was born to sing and talk and fill the world with the litany of his voice and his perspective and his life; and Geralt had taken part in shattering him.
Yennefer had, in her way, tried to heal him. They had released the Djinn – much to the mage’s dismay – and that should have been the end of it. Jaskier’s swelling went down, his bleeding stopped.
But when he opened his mouth to greet Geralt when finally he woke, nothing more than a wheeze passed his lips. In that moment, the witcher watched a part of Jaskier die. He saw it in the bard’s eyes – a small bit of the light that constantly filled him fading away like a cloud passing over the sun.
Jaskier stayed with him. Geralt doesn’t understand why. It was his fault, his words, his hasty and ill thought out wish that had crushed the bard’s vocal cords to dust. Jaskier should hate him, and yet he stayed. Geralt thought pragmatically that it was because alone, Jaskier would struggle. He was a man who had independently crafted a life and a career for himself off his voice, and now that was gone. He had his fingers, his lute, of course – but drunken pub-goers relished the bard’s songs, his lyrics, and with nothing to sing along to, it left Jaskier’s lute playing, while lovely, pale and hollow by comparison to what patrons expected to hear when they recognized who he was.
Geralt did that to him. So it was the least he could do to keep Jaskier by his side. To provide a safe place for the bard to sleep, coin for him to eat. And that must be why he stayed, he reasoned. Why else?
As they passed through villages, he asked for healers, for mages – anyone who might have insight into the bard’s situation. He even began to direct their travels in the direction of famous herbalists or sorcerers (or sometimes even creatures), all without ever making it plain, just in case they might stumble upon someone who might have a cure.
‘Sorry’ hung heavy on his heart, weighing it down between his ribs, pressing in on his lungs, strangling him. He spent his nights, already so prone to sleeplessness, on his back and staring up at the sky as though the stars might suddenly align and spell out the answers he sought. His eyes drifted to Jaskier, curled by the fire. Small and quiet. So fucking quiet.
Geralt was really beginning to fucking detest the quiet.
It made him admire Jaskier’s penchant for conjuring a conversation seemingly out of nowhere; particularly when he began to try and solve this problem of too much fucking quiet by doing what Jaskier could not: talking.
“Pleasant day,” he growled one morning, eyes on the meal he stoked above the fire as Jaskier silently worked on lacing up his clothing. Blue eyes sought him out over the fire. He could feel the weight of them, the surprise. But what else was there to say? His words had been efficient. The day was pleasant. What should he say next? Describe the color of the sky? Foolish.
He grit his teeth, hating himself for his blatant inability to provide even so much comfort as this. But he keeps trying. He practices. Only because when he does, Jaskier’s gaze falls to him – keen in a way those blue eyes had not been in some time since the silence started – and for a moment he feels as though his bard has returned again.
Jaskier, for his part, does not simply melt back into the stone of a garden wall like a shrinking violet. His voice was not what made him so lively, so vibrant; it was a side effect of all the life and sunlight and existence that the gods had seen fight to cram into a body as lithe as Jaskier. He learned how to speak with his hands and Geralt, a man who had only spoken through body language for so long, found it easy to listen. It was an act of communication that drew no end of curious looks when they went to villages. How could two men speak so silently? Some even began to suspect Jaskier was a familiar of Geralt’s – which made the bard wheeze silently, laughing.
Geralt couldn’t even be annoyed by that. It was good to see the bard laugh.
Jaskier’s hands grew more and more fluent as they travelled until he learned how to fill the silence in an entirely new way. And if Geralt’s attention were distracted, his eyes not on the bard, Jaskier found ways to grab his attention. A pebble to the shoulder, if annoyed. A hand to his side, to the small of his back, to his bicep if not.
But still, Geralt looked for a cure. He did not ask for forgiveness. He didn’t deserve it – not while Jaskier was still unable to say the words to pardon him for his wish. Wishes. How Geralt hated them, hated the word. His wish had driven Yennefer away. His wish had bound Jaskier to a life in which he could not do what he loved. Geralt didn’t deserve forgiveness. So he did not ask.
And then came the contract about the witches of the bog.
Ancient hags. Magical ladies. So old that Geralt wasn’t even sure if the word ‘witch’ truly befitted them anymore. He didn’t even know what to call them, what to research in his bestiary. Three witches of the bog. Complicated and powerful, hand in hand. Some of the village worshipped them. They kept the forest rich with game. They protected birthing mothers. They warded off those from foreign lands that might colonize their home, change it, urbanize it. It left the area like a capsule from another time; perfectly preserved.
Others hated them. Virgins tended to disappear now and then. Children too. Livestock would die, men would suddenly fall dead. Believers called it penance, divine and unknowable justice for deeds the public might never see or fathom. Nonbelievers called it terrorism at the hands of monsters. Geralt found himself stuck in the middle.
He insisted Jaskier stay in the village. This was beyond even his expertise. Even with normal monsters there was always the chance that he might fail, not protect Jaskier, however slim. Now? He would not tell Jaskier that he had a healthy fear for what laid ahead, but he made it known that for no reason should the bard follow him this time.
He approached the bog with his swords on his back but his hands nowhere near their hilts. Women as old as these, there was a chance he might be able to reason with them. Negotiate.
There was just as big as chance that he might offend them by trying.
His heart thumped in his chest as he kneeled in a dry spot in the bog. He set out the offerings the believers told him would attract the witches to him. He rested his hands on his thighs. Closed his eyes.
“Bog women,” he said, calling to them in a hushed, croaking voice, “Ladies of the North, Winter Women… I have no request but to parlay with you. I humble myself, I kneel, knowing I don’t deserve an audience. Would you speak with me?”
At first there was nothing. He wondered if the believers had lied, if the nonbelievers were far more stable by comparison. He was just about to stand, to leave, when a wind brushed the faint hairs not held back by his hair tie to wisp about his face. The willows around him swirled and sang a sorrowful tune. The fine hairs on the back of his neck and on his arms rose.
“What is a boy’s name?” A witch sung to him. A boy. Despite his years, he felt very much like a boy kneeling at the feet of those women.
He nearly responded. Nearly. But there was power in a name for folk such as them.
“You may call me witcher,” he said instead, careful in his wording. Another witch laughed, delighted.
“Clever witcher-boy,” the laughing witch chirped, stepping out of the fog. She was lovely. Her red hair hung down to her bottom. Her face was round like a peach, her cheeks pink like one too. She wore a gown unlike one he had ever seen before. She looked kind, her smile pleasant, but her eyes – if he looked too long, he could see the predatory glint in those eyes. Her glamor blurred around the edges and if he peered too closely, he could almost see—
His pupils dilated, huge and blown out as he tried to make sense of what he saw. Limbs, so many limbs. A body distorted with tumors; or what he thought might be tumors, but perhaps just did not know the right word for them. Too many mouths, eyes, faces. The punishing visage of those warped by black magic or simply the form of a god not meant to be seen or understood by mortal men? He didn’t know, but he did register something wet beneath his nose. Hot and dripping. His heart thundered. He wondered if it might burst when finally another woman came up behind him, bent over him, and gently rested a hand over his eyes.
“A strong boy with keen eyes,” the woman behind him hummed, “Few have seen past our glamor. Fewer still remained sane enough to tell the tale.”
The first witch cackled, having appeared from the fog as well, and sneered, “You steal our fun,” then said a name that made Geralt’s lashes flutter sickly. The name sounded more like the mad tumble of rocks down a mountain side that any human word. His stomach lurched. He was so fucked. “I wished to see how far a witcher-boy’s mind might bend.”
“A boy came to us in good faith,” the witch whose name sounded like falling rocks said. Her voice sounded like the voice of many women, but also, one woman. His mother. He wondered if that was part of the glamor as well. If that magic was seeping into his mind, collecting fragments and details that might sooth him, lure him into a false sense of security.
Too bad it was the voice of the woman who had abandoned him. It only served to wake him up.
He decided to call that woman Earth Mother. The name pinged something familiar in the far recesses of his mind.
“Laws of matronhood,” said the second to the first, naming her as well. He gritted his teeth against the sound of it – glass shattering, wolves howling. It made his muscles tense, ready to flee the jaws of a wolf. When the feeling passed, a human name appeared in his mind seemingly from nowhere: Beast Mother.
“Aye, I know the laws,” said the Beast Mother, then a final name. Geralt’s stomach dropped sickly like missing a step on a staircase. This name sounded like the wind – both tame as the first warmth of spring thaws the fields, and wild like the storm that punishes a village. Sky Mother, his mind supplied.
Geralt bowed his head as those final, hind-brain instincts washed over him and eventually dulled. He felt suddenly exhausted. Word thin by the mere presence of these women.
“What does a witcher-boy call to women such as we for?” Asked the Sky Mother.
“Does a witcher-boy come to kill us?” Laughed the Beast Mother cruelly, and even with the third woman’s hand over his eyes – cool and soothing and dark – Geralt knew the Beast Mother was grinning with too many predatory teeth. More teeth than any human mouth should have. Teeth and teeth and teeth—
“The village placed a contract on you,” Geralt forced himself to say. “But I’m quickly realizing this is no monster hunt.”
He was in the presence of gods, or at least as close to gods as reality might ever get. Every story, every religion, stemmed from something after all. These land spirits, these witches, these women – they were so much more than a contract to be hunted. They owned the land, the wood, the swamp, and all inside it. Fuck.
“If you know this, then why come?” The Earth Mother asked gently.
“Some of the villagers are suffering,” Geralt explained, “I’m here to help. To parlay.”
“Life is to suffer,” laughed the Beast Mother cruelly.
The Sky Mother said instead, “And what can a witcher-boy offer us? How can a witcher-boy help?”
The Earth Mother was against his back, matronly and kind. He felt like a boy hiding behind a mother’s skirts – or more accurately Vesemir’s legs. It felt both nostalgic and sickening at the same time, his mind peeled apart like an onion so easily in their presence.
“I am nothing and no one to you Mothers,” Geralt acknowledged, “But I cannot turn my back on suffering. If I do so here, I have no right to my namesake.”
“A witcher-boy wanted to be a hero,” cackled the Beast Mother, fangs gleaming in his mind’s eyes, pearly and wet with hungry spittle.
“A witcher-boy is kind,” whispered the Mother blinding him with her mercy, her hand.
“A witcher-boy is doomed,” offered the Sky Mother clinically, but not dispassionately.
“What did the village ask?” The Beast Mother spat, “Did they whine about their lost babes? Their disappeared virgins? Their dead men? Their cows?”
“The milk had spoiled in their udders, so we killed them,” the Sky Mother said simply.
“The men had raped and stolen and marred the virtue of our lands, so we removed them from the grace of our hospitality,” the Beast Mother growled.
“The virgins sought escape from abusive homes, sought freedom and peace, so we guided them to happier places,” the Earth Mother hummed.
“And the babes would have died a painful death from winter, from illness, from genetic deficiencies – so we lured them to that better place in peace instead,” the Sky Mother finished.
“Life is cruel,” the Beast Mother growled like the sound of hooves on earth, pounding in chase after the fox, “But we are not. A witcher-boy cannot fathom our motives, so we pardon him once, but question our intentions again and a witcher-boy will understand punishment for himself.”
Geralt bowed his head intentionally this time, hands in tight, humbled fists on his knees.
“Apologies, Mothers, I knew not what to expect.”
“As we said, a witcher-boy is pardoned,” the Sky Mother said simply.
“We know a witcher-boy,” the Earth Mother sang behind him, her voice the laughter of a babe’s first smile, the song of a mother kneading dough in the morning. “A witcher-boy withholds his name, but we know him.”
“White. Wolf.” The Beast Mother is grinning with too many hungry teeth again. Geralt shivered.
“You helped a Godling not far from here,” says one.
“Spared a group of trolls in the eastern mountains,” says another.
“Helped a succubus escape the fires of the cities and the purge of daft men who put their faith in nonsense,” says the last.
“The list is long,” the Earth Mother says, her other hand stroking through his hair now. She’s untied it, let it fall loose around his ears. She tsks and says, “At least a witcher-boy tried to bathe for us. You need fine oils for hair such as this.”
He feels disoriented, exposed. Unsure of his footing.
“I will explain to the village—” he begins, but clicks his jaw shut audibly when the Beast Mother howls, “We were not done, witcher-boy!”
He swallows dryly. His very bones shiver. The Earth Mother shushes his fears and continues to pet him like a dumb, beloved dog warming her feet. It feels… nice. He has to shake his mind awake not to fall for that glamor, that lulling sense of safety. There is no safety. Safe is an illusion.
“Clever witcher-boy,” the Earth Mother says proudly, fondly.
“You’ve helped people and creature alike on our land,” the Sky Mother said.
“But you’ve also taken justice into your hands, as if we were not suitable to maintain it,” snarled the Beast Mother.
“What are three Mothers to do with their witcher-boy, their kind hearted wolf, their man of stone?”
They might kill him. They were not wrong, he had taken their affairs into his own hands unknowingly when fulfilling contracts in these lands. If their territory extended as far as he thought it did, he had only done so twice perhaps. Maybe thrice. A werewolf that had gone mad, slaughter their family. A cockatrice that had been spoiling the hunt for another township, killing the best of their providers. A wraith left behind by a widow spurned.
“We would have gotten to them in our own time,” the Beast Mother said, answering his unspoken question of why, if they protected these lands, had they not handled it?
“Or perhaps we did handle it in our own right,” the Earth Mother offered with a chuckle. Working through him, he realized. A pawn in their ways just as he was a pawn to fate. He shuddered helplessly, a little flame of offense rising in his gut as it always did at the concept of ‘fate’. She brushed his hair back in apology, stroked his cheek. “You need a shave.”
Disoriented didn’t begin to cover it.
“Spoil sport,” the Beast Mother snorted. So that had been it, then. He had acted as unwitting representative for them and their will.
“You are a trustworthy wolf,” the Sky Mother said, “Good in intention, civil in mercy.”
“You will go to the village,” the Earth Mother continued. “You will explain the way of things. Those who cannot abide by those ways can flee freely or be dealt with accordingly… They will not pay you, witcher-boy. Their hearts are selfish and easy to see reason why they should keep their coin despite your bravery, despite how you put yourself between we women and their cowardly souls.”
“For this, for the works you’ve already done unintentionally in our name and for the works you will later do intentionally in our name, we women shall pay you instead.”
He stiffened. Every bone locked in his body like rusted hinges on a door, painful and tight. That was a dangerous offer. He could not deny it and live. But one wrong word would spell a world of pain unending. He swallowed.
“You are too kind to someone as undeserving as me,” he managed to croak.
The Beast Mother laughed cruel and amused, high like a harpy’s screech and low like a bear’s roar. He shuddered visibly. The Earth Mother smoothed down the hackles that rose on the back of his neck like a master calming a spooked dog.
“Correct, we are too kind. Wise of you to notice,” the Beast Mother said.
“What does a witcher-boy want?” The Sky Mother asked.
Geralt clenched his jaw, feeling more like a mouse caught between a cat’s paws than a witcher. It was an uncomfortable, greasy feeling, and he hated it.
“I require nothing –”
“—Ha! A man says he requires nothing from gods!” The Beast Mother howled like a pack of wolves.
“You would spit in our eye and refuse our gift?” The Sky Mother asked diplomatically.
“Do not let them frighten you, witcher-boy,” the Earth Mother hummed, stroking his hair again. “We Mothers are unused to debt.”
He could ask for a token from them; small enough so as not to ask too much, but enough to appease their debt. He could ask for some tidbit of knowledge; the location of a cache in their lands, perhaps. He could ask for hospitality in their woods; safety and peace whenever he visited. But as their champion, which he was quickly coming to find that he was unknowingly, he inherently knew he need not ask for any of this. They had always provided for him, had always shown him the way. He never went hungry or thirsty in these woods. The birds called when anything deigned attack him, warning him. He slept here. To ask for what they already provided would be turning a blind eye onto their gifts – a dangerous thing.
He should find something else – something small, something humble. And yet…
“My friend… what would it cost for you to heal him?” Geralt finally asked.
“Aaah,” the Beast Mother crooned, “A witcher-boy does not love silence after all.”
“A witcher-boy did not know what he had until it was gone,” the Earth Mother said, her voice if possible even more fond.
“Witcher-boys tend to be clever, and yet dumb as rock trolls,” the Sky Mother said blandly.
“Please,” Geralt said, leaning into the cradle of the Earth Mother’s hand which blinded him, protected him. She hummed soothingly behind him.
“We women are powerful and old. We saw the mountains form and the rivers fill. We were there for the first storm, the first wind that graced the ground, the first sprig of grass, the birth of the first land beast,” said the Sky Mother.
“But alas, this boon you ask for is not as simple as you think,” the Earth Mother said sadly.
He nearly asked ‘so you can’t help’ before he caught his tongue. What a stupid way to die, offending gods. The Beast Mother cackled. She knew what he had almost asked.
“It is not that we are not capable. You ask for something more than what we owe,” the Beast Mother said, fangs glinting, her words the framework of a hungry maw in his mind’s eye, waiting for an excuse to eat him. A merry chase, a dangerous game. It thrilled her to chase him like a rabbit through their laws and customs and loopholes, waiting for him to trip and yet hoping he might not so the game would continue. “And you cannot afford a cure outright.”
“What is the cost of an outright cure?” He asked. He had to know. Maybe he could—
“Souls. Innocent souls. Blood. Flesh. Creation and death. You request to overwrite a Djinn’s will, witcher-boy. That sort of magic by human means, by the means in which you could pay us, would change you fundamentally. You’d no longer be worthy as champion of our will. We have no intention of warping a witcher-boy and losing a pawn such as yourself. Too dull, too boring. Too simple. A witcher-boy offends.”
He hung his head again. His debt to his friend was more expensive than his morality, the makeup of his being, than his use to the world and to these witches, these gods. His stomach became a stone inside him. There was no outright cure…
His head rose a little.
“What cost for his voice?” He asked. Not a cure. A voice. The Earth Mother stroked him approvingly. The Beast Mother smiled with impressed fangs. The Sky Mother considered him.
“A steep price,” the Sky Mother said, like spring rain.
“A generous price,” snorted the Beast Mother, like boars stomping in the brush.
“A fair price,” hummed the Earth Mother, like the sound of a gentle hands guiding a plant into fresh soil.
“Name it,” Geralt said, something unidentifiable to his knowledge of himself in the edges of the words, though he recognized it in others. Pleading.
They named it.
He agreed.
“But first,” said the women with too many voices, “What is a witcher-boy’s name?”
They already knew it. Geralt knew that they did. But he hadn’t given it to them. There was power in giving a name.
Geralt paid.
--
He returned to town feeling exhausted, hollowed out and reed-thin, and yet he held the light of dawn in his chest, weightless and hopeful. He carried it with him over the hall and down the path that led to the village, leaving behind him his Ladies and the offerings he had placed on their humble altar.
He followed their instructions precisely.
He went first to the village alderman – a believer – and the man who had posted the notice – a nonbeliever. He explained that this village was not in fact their home, but the home of the women, and it was by their mercy that their crops flourished and their lives went by in relative peace. When the nonbeliever questioned him, cheeks red with rage that Geralt had not done as he was tasked, Geralt merely offered precisely what the women had told him to say.
“If you do not like living in the lands of the Ladies, you are free to relocate somewhere with no matronage. But if you stay and presume to keep calling the lands your own, and living outside the laws of matron and guest, there’s nothing I can do to spare you from them. This was their land first. They’ve upheld every law, provided every mercy. Live by their terms, live somewhere else, or find out for yourself why men have disappeared from among you by becoming another face on a flier.”
They had bid him not over explain. There was no faith to be had otherwise, no trust, and the Ladies asked for little more than that from their guests. To explain would be to condemn these villages to eviction. So he left the nonbelievers’ fate to themselves. Heed, flee or perish.
They didn’t pay him, just as the women had warned. The nonbelievers accused him of solving nothing. They called him a charlatan and a cheat. The believers claimed that they had not asked for help in the first place – and honestly, that was fair.
He didn’t need their payment anyways, not now. He would not go hungry or thirsty while in their wood. They’d tide him over until he left their lands in pursuit of his next contract. That was more than enough.
He brushed off their accusations, their thanklessness, like kicking dirt from his shoes. He wondered if that was what endeared him to the Ladies, or at least part of it – for both he and the god women understood thanklessness despite service.
He went to the inn, carried himself up to the room he had left Jaskier in. He could hear his lute from halfway up the stairs. It was a pleasing sound, something cheerful to wake to – it’d have to be, not to received complaints from other patrons also guesting at the inn.
The moment he walked in, he found Jaskier seated on the window sill, face to the early morning sun like a plant soaking in daylight as he played with mindlessly fluent fingers. Geralt leaned against the doorframe and enjoyed watching the dance of those fingers over the strings, plucking, always searching for the next note. He let himself bask in that moment, in the portrait of his bard in peaceful domesticity. Then, knowing the Ladies would not wait forever, rapped two knuckles against the doorframe, drawing Jaskier’s attention.
The bard let his song lull to a stop, his face lighting up at the sight of him returned unharmed. There was relief there, plain and naked as Jaskier was in most ways; unabashed and quick to feel, to express. He set his lute aside with the same sort of care that Geralt might give one of his swords and immediately his hands went into action, his whole body speaking to Geralt as easily as he once did with words.
Well, what happened, don’t keep me waiting? Were they in fact witches or something more nefarious? Well? Come on, Geralt, these stories don’t write themselves!
He smiled. There was a weight in his chest he hadn’t realized he had been carrying until now as it slowly lifted, so close to resolution as he was. He stepped forward without a word, amber eyes locked on his bard, his traveling companion, his friend, his partner. It drew Jaskier’s hand to a stuttering motion not unlike ‘um’ or ‘uh’ or ‘what’s going on?’.
“Months ago, I stole your voice from you,” Geralt finally said, standing in front of the bard, close enough to touch him – but not yet. A puzzled look spread across Jaskier’s face.
I don’t understand.
“I wished for peace not knowing I already had something better. Already had peace in my hands. I was just to blind to comfort, to kindness, to know that I had it.”
Jaskier gave him a baffled look that both said ‘well aren’t you chatty today?’ and ‘who are you and what did you do with my witcher?’
Geralt did not know this language, this new tongue he was trying to learn: intimacy, apology, love. He reached to cup Jaskier’s jaw and paused nearly there feeling foolish, blushing, because words and intimate touches had never been a language of his. It felt foreign. Like a crude imitation, rusty and weak for what he was trying to convey. But Jaskier just watched him patiently, brows drawn into a curious frown as he met him halfway and nestled his jaw into his calloused hand.
‘Geralt?’
He brushed a thumb over Jaskier’s smooth jaw, freshly shaven and smelling of sweet oil. Memorized the lines of Jaskier’s face, the soundless paragraphs of his expression, and tucked it away in his mind for later.
“I am sorry knowing me left you silent,” he finally said, croaked, hushed, admitted.
Jaskier’s brows drew tight, his mouth a strange line. He shook his head.
“I understand if you cannot forgive me,” Geralt looked away. “I should have apologized the morning you first could not speak, but it felt wrong to ask when you could not answer. But now… Do you trust me, Jaskier?”
There was still that expression – anger, grief, confusion, all deserved. He’d leave him after this, no doubt. Geralt had pushed too far, presumed too much. But he pressed on. He had to see this through. Then he’d let Jaskier return to his normal life. Let him make his choice. Set him free.
He thought he heard a womanly sigh.
Jaskier’s hand came up to cradle Geralt’s on his jaw. In his touch and in his face, Geralt heard him: Of course I trust you, you daft excuse for a witcher.
Do or die.
He leaned down. Watched as Jaskier’s eyes widened. Watched until he was too close to see anymore. Got closer until their lips brushed – his so chapped against the bard’s meticulously cared for lips, soft and pleasant. The bard felt like a canary in his hands, all fluttering energy; fragile with hollow bones, more melody than flesh. He pressed, then swiped a tongue across trembling lips to ask permission.
Jaskier let him in. He sealed their lips together. Let his hand move from the man’s jaw to cup the back of his neck, crush him close without actually crushing him. Then he felt it. It began in his throat, behind his Adam’s Apple, and slowly crawled up – warm, not unpleasant but certainly not normal. It rose. When it met his tongue it tasted of night and bestiaries; earthy and deep. His voice. It passed by his teeth, slipped through their lips, then felt Jaskier jump in his hands. He leapt as though stung, or perhaps shocked like walking with socked feet and touching a door knob – surprising, sharp and fleeting. Then settled in his hands.
Geralt pulled away to mumble three words against Jaskier’s slack mouth, his own stomach twisting when no words actually bloomed despite his tongue and mouth doing what needed to be done to make words. He was mute. It had worked. The price had been paid.
He should have said it before he lost the chance to, and yet, there was a pathetic sort of comfort in murmuring the words soundlessly against Jaskier’s lips instead – like hiding behind a mask, bold because he could do so secretly.
Jaskier pulled away, speaking on instinct out of shock, “Geralt, what’s wrong with you—” then he stilled, eyes owlish. His hands shot to his throat. Patted and fluttered and searched for something that might give away what was going on.
Geralt smiled. His throat vibrated as it would if he had chuckled, but no sound followed.
“My voice,” Jaskier croaked, pale from shock and relief and all manner of emotions he wore as plainly on his face as he did his clothes. “How?”
Geralt felt relief bloom in his own belly: that weight lifting fully now that he had made amends, had fixed his wrongs. Relief that Jaskier’s voice was his own and not Geralt’s because that was a level of weird even the witcher couldn’t handle. He tapped his own throat with his fingers and looked at Jaskier pointedly.
Color leeched from the bard’s skin.
“You gave me yours?”
Geralt nodded, then blinked – confused – when Jaskier suddenly sprung to his feet, all pent-up nervous energy, and slapped faintly at Geralt’s chest with a sharp, “Take it back!”
Geralt’s brows drew tight, his lips pursed, utterly baffled.
“You lummox! Don’t you give me that look! You can’t—I can’t—this is too much!”
Geralt shook his head.
‘I had to make it right’ he said, using his hands, with his face, with his body; a pale imitation of Jaskier’s fluency.
“It wasn’t yours to make right! The Djinn did it, not you!”
‘My wish—’
“Was an accident! You thought the Djinn was under my control anyhow, it hadn’t been intentional. I honestly don’t recall if you even wished for it or said ‘I just want some damn peace!’ – you had warned me it was dangerous! If I had just listened—”
Wait. Wait.
Geralt shook his head. How had this spun away from him so quickly?
‘This wasn’t your fault.’
“It was no more yours than mine or mine than yours!” Jaskier pointed out, as if that had been his intention all along. He threw his hands out to his sides, pacing quietly – quiet, he hadn’t expected that, as if it had become a habit. He watched as the bard fluttered nimble fingers against his lips, eyes darting to Geralt distractedly, and mumbled, “Lovely kiss, by the way,” and when Geralt smirked he continued haughtily, “Which we will further discuss later, you oaf!”
Geralt chuckled without chuckling.
“You are,” Jaskier said slowly, finally stopping his pacing, “Insufferable. Your hero complex will see you into the ground one day, I swear, and no one will even know now because you can’t talk.”
Geralt gave him an obvious, deadpanned look. This? This felt right. Natural. Things had always been this way. Jaskier just hadn’t realized that yet.
‘You have always been my words.’
Jaskier stilled. In the lines of his body Geralt saw the quiet sway of wind through a garden well cared for; buzzing with bees, home to all manner of flowers, beautiful and soothing to its guests. So alive, so open. Jaskier was a garden. Geralt had merely returned the birds that had lost their way.
He waited. Waited for the inevitable. He had taken Jaskier’s voice, then made parlay for it without his permission. Surely the bard would leave him. He no longer needed the witcher, after all, and in his silent days had seen more than enough journeys to sing about for the rest of his life. Geralt waited.
“You bloody imbecile,” Jaskier breathed, his face going slack with subdued outrage and realization. “You daft man, you uncommunicative bastard!”
Geralt looked away. He didn’t need his voice. It was better suited in the bard. He didn’t need Jaskier. He had been on the road alone for years before him, and he could do it again.
But there was something in his chest – heavy, prickly and unfamiliar. Want.
He swallowed. He didn’t approach him, but also did not shy away when Jaskier stomped forward and reached for his face. He waited for the slap, for the slam of a door.
Jaskier guided his gaze back down to him.
“Don’t belittle my affections by presuming I stayed because you were convenient. I do not need my voice to live a comfortable or enjoyable life. I need you.”
He felt like shattered glass in a repair man’s palms, all his broken edges grinding together in wrong ways.
“What’s done is done,” Jaskier finally said, his hand reaching back to cup the back of Geralt’s neck as he had done to him not long ago. “And… you’re right. We’ve never needed words to speak and they have never been a tool you enjoyed using. I shall be your words. I’ve been with you long enough to know how to explain your creatures to townsfolk and gods above know I am a better haggler than you – you let that bastard swindle you into this contract for 250 crowns, for gods sake, Geralt! I was dying – ahh,” he shook his head, refocusing, “Nevermind. Point is, we’ve always made it work. We’ll make this work too. But for the record, I wasn’t broken, Geralt. Not with you.”
He pressed a chaste kiss to the witcher’s mouth, smiling and soft at the sight of Geralt’s baffled look, his inability to collect himself to react in the face of such an unexpected confession. Jaskier was the one to whisper into his lips this time between kisses, “Not that I don’t appreciate your sacrifice. The songs I’ll sing about the gift you’ve given me, Geralt – gods above, I’ve missed singing.”
‘I’ve missed it too,’ Geralt thought, perhaps said with his touch and the way he leaned into every peck Jaskier gave him, every breath against his lips.
“Fucking knew it,” Jaskier said, grinning against his mouth, “Filling-less pie, you emotionally constipated dog. And don’t think for one moment I didn’t hear you. We’ve been talking without talking for too long for me to have missed it, you know.”
Geralt felt heat rush to his cheeks and crawl up his neck, making a home in the tips of his ears. He turned away to hide it as Jaskier pulled back, but it was too late. The bard chuckled fondly and when Geralt finally chanced looking back at him, he grumbled embarrassedly – silently.
“It’s not the first time you’ve said you love me, Geralt,” Jaskier said, smiling with all his teeth, skin aglow like dawn breaking the night. “You’ve been saying it for ages.”
Jaskier drew his face back to him when Geralt tried once more to look away, bristly and unsure of himself and self-conscious that all this time he hadn’t been half as secretive – or aware himself – as he thought.
Jaskier took his time looking him over. Memorizing his face, Geralt realized, as he had memorized the bard’s when he found him on the windowsill. He felt exposed as he had at the Mothers’ feet. Known.
He leaned into Jaskier’s hand. Enjoyed the brush of a thumb over a sore scar on his cheekbone.
“I don’t need words,” Jaskier said gently, “But I am grateful to have them. Thank you, Geralt. I’ll use your voice wisely.”
The witcher leaned in, loose like a puppet with his strings cut now that it was finally done, and pressed his forehead to the bard’s. Power thrummed between them, the magic of being known and kept.
Silently, love spoke for them.