Chapter Text
It’s a dreary day in a dreadful town that’s tucked away in a derelict part of Temeria when a powerful sorceress with violet eyes steps through a portal just outside the town borders. She’s not sure what brings her here, or really even where here is, but there was a spike in the chaos that surrounds her and binds her to the earth two weeks ago and she decided to follow it when she finally had the time. A cold drizzle falls from a slate gray sky, dampening the dirt road into a mud and slush that would be difficult to traverse by horse or wagon. This road reeks of shit and the nearby scents of civilization, the sorceress’s nose wrinkling in distaste as she looks around at the scraggly trees that make up the thin forest around her, the soil bare and lacking in enough nutrients to sustain enough foliage to grow much more than weeds and spindly branches.
Yennefer takes a breath, wincing again at the foul smells around her, and lets her chaos wander across the land. She left the warm and dry halls of Kaer Morhen where she was training her magical protege for this, so it better be something good. She feels the lives of the inhabitants of the town, huddled in their homes and the tavern against the rain, and the beating hearts of the wildlife that exists in these woods, but there’s no signs of any unusual chaos. She’s about to let it go and return to the Witcher keep with an air of frustration at her wasted time when she senses it, just at the very edge of what she was feeling, a small human heartbeat in the middle of the woods and just the faintest lick of chaos accompanying it.
With her target in mind, Yennefer turns and sets off towards the singular human, her dark skirts sweeping over the mud and brush without snagging or dirtying like the world bends to her and jumps out of her way. The feeling of the chaos grows as she nears and she can hear a high voice singing amongst the trees, a thwacking sound accompanying the slightly off key warbling. Yennefer ensures that her approach is silent as she nears a small clearing with a stream crossing through the center of it. Sparse grasses fill the clearing and a few measly flowers struggle to grow along the water where small fish swim and provide just enough byproducts to feed some life.
A young boy, maybe seven or eight, is crossing the stream over a felled log with a branch brandished in his hand, his arms outstretched to hold his balance as he sings a nursery rhyme to himself in the rain. His dark brown hair is wet and plastered to his forehead and his eyes downcast as he watches the placement of his bare feet on the rough bark of the log. He’s dressed in what could have been court finery for a noble child, but is now little more than filthy rags that hang loosely on the child’s emaciated skeleton. Yennefer tilts her head slightly as she watches the boy and the chaos surrounding him.
“ Tom-a-lin and his wife and his wife’s mother, / they went over a bridge all three together. / The bridge was broken and they fell in; / ‘The devil go with all,’ said Tom-a-lin, ” the boy hops off of the log as he reaches the other side, watching the water splash up around his muddied ankles and jumping up and down in the puddle with glee as he repeats the nursery rhyme. He then jumps out of the puddle and looks at the branch in his hand for a moment before turning to a nearby tree and brandishing the stick menacingly.
“Begone with you, foul fiend!” He shouts and waves the branch at the tree, “I will beat you in battle, as my father did before me! Um…” he pauses and the stick lowers slightly as he thinks, “What’s the word… uh... “ he huffs in annoyance before shaking his head and bringing his weapon back up, “Give in to me or face a terrible fate!” The boy changes the pitch of his reedy voice to a lower one, tucking his chin to make his voice deeper, “Listen here, you little shit, quit shoveling it and get lost!” He raises his chin again and scowls at the tree, “You asked for it, arsehole!” Yennefer’s lips curl in amusement as the boy begins to whack the tree trunk with his branch, the child making sound effects of a great battle and clashing swords. He thrusts his branch forward and makes the tree gurgle in death before crowing victoriously and throwing his hands in the air, “The great Sir Julian has won, yet again! Ju-li-an! Ju-li-an! Ju-li-an!”
He spins around as he pretends adoring fans are chanting his name and catches sight of Yennefer then, his bright blue eyes widening in startled surprise as he yelps and scurries away, ducking behind a boulder for coverage, “Who are you?” He demands, peering over the edge of the rock and brandishing his stick threateningly, “What do you want?”
She steps forward into the clearing and clasps her hands in front of her as she tries to smile at him reassuringly, “My name is Yennefer of Vengerburg, I just came to talk to you. Can I ask you a few questions?” Something about his blue eyes are oddly familiar but Yennefer can’t put her finger on what just yet.
His eyes narrow at her suspiciously before he nods, “I guess so, what kinda questions? I’m not gonna answer if I don’t wanna.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” she shakes her head, keeping her voice calm to try and soothe the ruffled feathers of the child, “Would you mind if I set up my tent so that we can be dry while we talk?” His eyes look her up and down, clearly searching for her traveling pack or where she would be carrying a tent on her person, and she smiles more, “I don’t carry a bag, child, I’m a sorceress.”
His head pops up in surprise, wide eyes staring at her, “Father says we’re not supposed to trust magic users.”
“That’s very wise of him,” she takes a step towards him but he doesn’t move further away, “All mages should have to earn your trust. Now, may I set up my tent in your camp?” The boy watches her as he thinks for a while before nodding and coming out from behind the boulder.
“I suppose that’s alright. Come on, it’s this way,” he waves for her to follow him and starts walking through the trees, deeper into the woods. Yennefer follows him with concealed curiosity and listens as he hums under his breath to himself as they travel, hitting the trunks of passing trees with his stick as children tend to do. He stops occasionally to crouch down and observe anything particularly interesting he sees and while the sorceress would ordinarily find this behavior extremely annoying in a man, it’s very entertaining in a child. It takes them half of an hour to reach another clearing, this one filled with signs of someone having lived here.
There’s a meager fire ring and pile of sticks beside it as well as some branches leaned against a large rock at the base of a pile of boulders to make a shelter. There’s some fish bones left here and there, picked clean of any possible meat, and translucent scales strewn across the damp ground. A small knife is stuck into the earth near the fire and there’s piles of random assortments of things strewn about, one of pieces of colorful glass, another of pebbles and stones. There’s a small pile of colorful fabrics that’s weighed down by a rock so the cloth doesn’t blow away and there are some vials tucked along the inside of the makeshift shelter that Yennefer instantly recognizes, the colorful potions extremely unsafe for human consumption. She frowns slightly and looks back at the boy who is silently staring up at her, the tip of his stick resting on the ground.
“Those potions, in your bed, have you drunk any?” Yennefer asks cautiously.
His cheeks color and he crosses his arms over his chest defensively as he shakes his head, “No, but they’re mine, you can’t have them.”
“You can’t drink them, child, they’re not safe for humans.”
“I know that, you still can’t have them though.”
The sorceress levels him with a stern look that he returns defiantly, keeping his chin raised and his eyes trained on hers. It hits her then, who this child reminds her so thoroughly of, and she feels a wave of exasperation followed by giddy glee at the fate that befell the bard before her. If her hunch is correct, then the child is none other than the Master Bard Jaskier. Over the two years since they went on that fated dragon hunt, she and Jaskier had put aside their differences and become rather good friends, brought together by their mutual heartbreak and finding they had more in common than previously thought. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t revel in his misfortunes from time to time still, especially when they’re as titillating as this.
“Alright,” she acquiesces and conjures a tent in an open space in the clearing, “I will not take your potions. May I ask how you acquired them, though?”
“I don’t wanna answer that,” he sniffs and turns his nose up haughtily. The effect is ruined by the amount of grime coating his small body and Yennefer fights the grin that threatens to take over.
“Then you don’t have to. Come, let us warm ourselves in my tent,” she turns and holds open the flap of her tent for him and he cautiously approaches, peering inside with surprise.
“It’s bigger on the inside!” He eagerly rushes in to investigate, his curiosity outweighing his caution as he roams around. Yennefer watches for a moment as he pokes through her cabinets and peers under the bed before she gathers some clean clothes for him, a simple chemise and pants as well as socks and boots, and sets them on the table beside the bowl of fruit.
“Would you like a bath, child?” She asks, drifting over to the tub in the corner and waving her hand so it fills with hot water.
He slinks over to watch and glances up at her, “You don’t have to call me that. My name is Julian.”
She raises her eyebrows and kneels down so she’s the same height as him, “Julian, huh?”
He nods and then gives her a courtly bow, simple and official and with none of the flourishes she got so used to Jaskier adding, “Julian Alfred Pankratz, son of the Viscount de Lettenhove.”
“And where are your parents, Julian?” Yennefer asks gently as he starts to unbutton his shirt. He shrugs his thin shoulders and makes a dismissive noise.
“I dunno, I haven’t seen them in a long time,” he takes his filthy shirt off and looks around before placing it on a chair nearby and removing his pants and small clothes, “I asked somebody how to get to Lettenhove and he asked me why I wanted to go and I said it’s cuz that’s where my mother and father are and I need to go home and he asked who my mother and father were and I told him the Viscount and he laughed and said that there is no more Viscount.” Julian speaks matter-of-factly as he gets into the bath, wincing at the heat but not complaining about it.
Yennefer feels no small amount of distress at the way his spine juts out and his ribs ridge his torso as he bends over to dunk his face and head under the water. This is assuredly Jaskier, as Yennefer knows his true identity, and the glee she felt before is starting to wane as she wonders who placed an aging curse on her friend. Extremely tricky and difficult to break, aging curses can last a lifetime and drive the accursed insane from the mixture of memories and experiences that will slowly leak into their consciousness as they relive their entire life.
“Hm, well if there is no more Viscount then I suppose you can come with me,” she picks up the soap to help him wash but he plucks it out of her hand and begins to wash himself. She arches an eyebrow curiously, wouldn’t Jaskier, now Julian, have had servants to wash him at this age? He wouldn’t have known how to care for himself. The signs of the fish in the campsite and the makeshift shelter also point to the boy being self-sufficient despite his noble upbringing. How very unusual.
“Why?” Julian asks, immediately on high alert as he glares at her suspiciously again. As the dirt and mud sluices off of him in the water of the bath pink scars start to become visible on his pale skin, lines along his knuckles and back and the odd burn mark here and there. Yennefer’s glee is completely gone now, replaced by rage at the signs of abuse on Julian’s small body.
“Because I want to keep you safe, Julian,” she says calmly, meeting his gaze and not looking away, “I would like to take you to a safe place.”
He tears his eyes away from hers and slowly resumes washing himself, “Where?”
Her shoulders relax slightly in relief that his curiosity most likely means he’ll come with her, and besides, he has nothing holding him here. Yennefer smiles and rests her arms on the edge of the tub in a comforting gesture, “Kaer Morhen, home of the Witchers.”