Chapter Text
This
gods-forsaken mountain was going to be the death of him.
Days, they had gone, days wandering about in the middle of nowhere, from one ass-backwards hamlet with little coin and even less tolerance to another, sleeping under the stars, and while Jaskier does enjoy the romance of it, the air of mystery, adventure, there is something to be said for baths.
Oh, how he missed them.
“I could probably compose an ode to a warm tavern bath, right about now. Even a hot spring.” He gives a few experimental plucks at his lute, seeing if he has any of Geralt’s immediate attention. “How the warmth laps gently at our skin, like a lover’s caress, tenderly whisking away the grime of the road, and soothing our aching—"
“Jaskier.”
“—muscles. A torturous embrace, for the knowing that it will end all too soon.” He doesn’t stop at the interruption, far too used to plowing over the complaints of his taciturn best friend. There is a time and place to chat, and a time and place to stop chatting, and they both know that, despite the gruff turn in the Witcher’s voice, Jaskier is far from toeing that line just yet.
“It’s summer. A hot bath would boil you alive.” Geralt looks over from where he had been fiddling with the buckle on Roach’s reins, skeptical, but Jaskier’s gotten rather good at reading the wolf’s expressions, and the side of his companion’s mouth ticks up just a fraction. He tries another progression; it twangs discordantly, and he winces.
“Easy for you to say. I happen to know that I have excellent heat tolerance, thank you very much.” Better than excellent, if he were honest; almost monstrously good. He can’t resist snorting at his own unspoken joke, not even pretending to hide it. Geralt won’t ask and he won’t offer an explanation, anyway.
His fair-haired companion only grunts in response. Eloquent as always.
The path from there turns rocky, leading them out of the foothills proper and into a sort of desert plain. If he tries, he could almost find the exact line where they pass from one ecosystem into another, the grasses becoming longer, more sparse, until they all but disappear entirely. Columns of rock tower here and there, evidence of ants and beetles and other assorted nasties, all building their homes in the inhospitable climate.
“Are you quite sure you know where you’re going? Geralt? Of course, don’t answer, why would you—oh, that is a rattlesnake—you deign to inform me of anything at all, as though my livelihood does not depend on this knowledge?” He’s being dramatic, and he knows it. An act he’s putting on, playing a whiny brat still too soft even after twenty years on and off the Path to handle the challenges it poses. The collar of his doublet chokes him all the same, the heat rising from the parched earth making for quite the assault on his senses. He undoes it a fraction, feigning partiality to the whisper of a breeze on his collarbones, and tries not to smirk when Geralt’s shoulders stiffen.
Keen Witcher senses, but not keen enough. He’s surprised, nonetheless, when he’s brought face-to face with a strong jaw and a curtain of white hair, one gloved hand twisted into the fabric of his doublet.
“You don’t have to come with me, Jaskier.” There’s a pause, like there always is, when Geralt leaves him time to parse out whether he actually means it, underneath all the growling and inability to actually say what he wants to say. Jaskier knows, of course he does, that if Geralt had really wanted him gone, he would have left him behind; left his poor, feeble, very human companion in a tavern somewhere, still sleeping off the effects of the previous night’s ale and revelry. He’d had plenty of opportunities to do so.
‘The last thing I want is someone needing me.’
And yet, here they are.
He raises a hand to the Witcher’s jaw, ignoring the way his companion stiffens further at the contact, and pats him stiffly on the cheeks exactly three times—one, two, three—in as condescending a manner as he can muster (he’s had good practice at being condescending. Probably too much practice. Essi is incredibly, painfully fond of telling him that one day it’s going to bite him in the ass.) and plasters on a bright smile in response to stony silence. Roach snorts at him as he passes her.
Or maybe it’s just her winning personality, he’s never sure.
“If I didn’t have to come with you, darling, then why do you always wait for me at the foot of the Kaedweni mountains in the spring?” He’s far enough ahead that he feels comfortable enough letting the endearment slip out, but it chokes him on the way up, afraid of what he’ll find when he turns around. He does it anyway, because he’s a masochist—or is it sadist? He can never remember the difference. Whichever one it is that enjoys experiencing pain, at any rate—and smiles softly, fragile and careful, letting a whisper of his true feeling slip through the cracks.
Geralt’s eyes have softened into something more companionable, almost gentle, if he’d appreciate the word (which he wouldn’t), as though even after all these years he still cannot fathom what on earth Jaskier’s doing with him.
There’s fear in them, too, even if the man behind the moniker thinks he’s slick enough to hide it: the belief that he’ll lose this vulnerable, squishy human too close to the surface, whether to time or a blade, too sharp, too real.
Something part of our little act I can’t quite give up, Jaskier thinks. He hadn’t been sure, in Posada, whether or not to tell him. Whether or not it had been safe to mention that he maybe-kind-of-sort-of wasn’t all human. Hedge his bets, a bit, just to see how the Butcher of Blaviken, the great White Wolf would react. It hadn’t seemed to matter to him, out there at the edge of the world. Everything was all either monsters or money, trying to figure out where his—their—next meal would come from. It made no difference who was holding the purse strings, so long as there was a purse, and that those strings opened.
And then weeks became months.
Months became years.
Years became…
Became decades.
And somewhere along the way every opportunity he had on their long, meandering travels was never the right one. Too much danger. Not enough danger. His own, swiftly rising star that still dazzled him, even though it shouldn’t. Twenty years is a shallow pool in the ocean of time he’s got, so deep he’s barely dipped below the surface of it.
He doubts Geralt even knows how long they’ve been travelling together. Witchers didn’t age at the same rate as humans—until he’d met Geralt, Jaskier didn’t think they had aged at all, springing fully formed from the bowels of one mountain or another—and he’d gathered more than enough proof that half the time Geralt couldn’t tell you whether it had been one winter or six, couldn’t say how many years it had been since they had seen so-and-so, couldn’t recognize the face of a young girl who was now a grown woman with grandchildren of her own.
Twenty years is a blink.
A new chord, new format, and he falls back into line at Geralt’s shoulder again, bumping him as they walk. He had wanted to tell him in Rinde, so long ago, but then the whole business with Yennefer happened and, well, there had been other things that needed to be taken care of, namely the djinn that had been intent on killing him.
The thought of Yennefer brings something sharp and acrid coiling in his gut, like a bile, and he knows that Geralt will be able to smell it, won’t ask, never does, but he’s as like to say something about it as—
“Can you stick to a mood for longer than five minutes? Or are you as liable to change your mind as the wind changes directions?”
There it is. It brings a smile to his face, knowing that his friend knows him well enough, is so in tune with his changes in scent that he can pinpoint the moment an emotion changes. That’s what surprises him the most, really; that Geralt’s never figured out his little secret. Or that if he has, that he’s never said anything about it.
They wander in silence, after that, too keen on getting to wherever it is that they’re going to do much more than exist in one another’s space.
***
Jaskier smells him before he sees him (and it is some time before he sees him, in truth).
He’s sat on a rock, waiting, as always, for Geralt to finish whatever business he has with the monster of the day, positively boiling out in the heat. For all that he was made to weather it, he hates the desert, prefers the sea and the mountains, when he can. Out here, he’s as liable as not to forget himself, and accidentally start the whole plain on fire.
I’m not sure what would be more embarrassing, he thinks. Clumsily setting something on fire, or having Geralt return to find me sunning myself on a rock like a common lizard.
He plucks idly at a set of chords, fumbles with lyrics, and waits.
Broods, if he were being sincere, though he would never admit it out loud. The ballad he’s working on is too melancholy for his normal repertoire, and while he believes, quite firmly, that Geralt will simply think him a lovelorn fool and make absolutely no connection to himself at all, he still cannot risk much more than the softest whisper of it, just enough to get a feel for the lyrical progression in time with the fretwork. Of all the secrets he has to reveal, this one is his most closely guarded, the most precious.
Roach snorts. The grass rustles. The sickly stench of sweat-fear-human musk wafts on the breeze, and Jaskier wrinkles his nose.
“Excuse you, my good sir, that’s not your horse.” The other man, burly and scarred, has a desperate edge to his shoulders when he turns to face Jaskier, poised for a fight. “You can’t just go around taking other people’s horses.”
He pauses in his idle plucking, one hand on the neck of his lute, prepared to rest it behind him, the other itching towards his belt for the silver dagger that rests there. A fetching, dainty thing, with an ornate mother of pearl handle inset with lapis, which he knows had been either already gifted to his friend or had cost quite a pretty sum. The Witcher had no need for it, had it been a gift, but regardless, it had become a comfortable weight at Jaskier’s side in his travels. The showy, foppish part of him is loath to get it covered in blood.
The deeper, far more menacing beast that lurks just beneath his skin rumbles at the thought, and even more at the vision of Geralt’s face at seeing it.
“And who are you?” The words are all but spit at him as he’s sized up.
He has no doubt there are more bandits, somewhere.
“A friend of the man who owns that horse.”
It happens swiftly, in an almost dreamlike cadence. Roach whinnies, abruptly kicking out one of her rear hooves to send the man sprawling through the dirt, and by the time the dark-haired stranger has collected himself, a sharp whistle cuts through the air. He barely catches it, the sound of metal slicing through pockets of dead heat, but one moment the man is standing before him, the next his head is rolling off into the underbrush.
Two women stand in the dead man’s wake, and Jaskier tries not to betray himself, let them know he knows who they are.
Zerrikanians. Well fuck me sideways.
“Well hello there,” is all he manages to choke out, and then he arrives.
The older man steps into the clearing, calm as a summer breeze, with his hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers. The wind turns, bringing with it brimstone and heat and Chaos. A friend of his father’s—a very old friend.
If he kneels now, it’ll give the game away. Forget lounging on rocks, Geralt is due back out of whatever hole he’s crawled into soon, and it would be Jaskier’s luck that he would arrive just in time to catch it. He settles for an incline of his head, after a moment of deliberation, and the visitor returns it.
“What the fuck is going on.” It isn’t a question so much as a gruff demand for answers, and immediately Jaskier’s whole posture changes. He spins to face his friend, playing the part of wide-eyed, frantic fool, hands waving through the air, fluttering around the edges of Geralt’s bloody, dirty leather armor.
“Geralt! I was just beginning to think my next song was going to be about both of our decidedly unglamorous, unheroic demises, but these lovely women just saved me from a grisly, horrible death, at the hands of—of—of bandits, thieves!” Blank, unimpressed silence. “And Roach, of course. That poor unfortunate sod lying in pieces over there in the dirt attempted to abscond with her. I’m fine. She’s fine. We’re both fine.”
“Thank you.”
Jaskier does manage to suppress a gasp at that, small as the appreciation may be, if only for theatrical effect. Geralt reaches to shake the other man’s hand, and is met halfway.
“Geralt.”
“You may call me Borch. I need your help, Witcher.”
And, oh, here we go.
It’s never going to be that easy, is it.
Geralt only shrugs one shoulder, a breathy chuckle rumbling it’s way out of his throat, and he graces their new companions with a wary sort of smile, half resigned already to his fate. He’s already covered in monster guts, why not add more to his list?
“They always do.”
It’s a silent walk to the tavern at the base of the mountains, the only sounds the clipping of Roach’s hooves on the loose stone beneath her, and the crunching of gravel under their boots. He doesn’t have the heart to take out his lute, not with the threat of discovery looming over him whenever Borch sends him a knowing look when he thinks Geralt isn’t paying attention.
He won’t pretend that he had been doing anything other than waiting to get caught. All those missed opportunities, the bald-faced lies he’s told, come at him in full force with each step. It would be so much easier if, somewhere along the way, Geralt had just figured it out. The Witcher wasn’t an idiot; if anything, he was too smart for his own good. It wouldn’t have taken much—a marvel at how quickly a fire started; how he never seemed to need even the barest whisper of an igni to keep the bathwater hot; Jaskier’s propensity for shiny things and hoarding reams and reams worth of books in their saddlebags; or his curious ability to endure the long days on the road, the longer nights, and perilous quests with only mild complaining—for the question to be broached. Jaskier’s become complacent, bordering on desperate, to just rip the bandage off. To wake with the tip of Geralt’s sword at his throat. To have one of them say something.
But Geralt never does, and so he doesn’t, either.
Night begins to fall, and with it they gravitate back into the trees, towards the base of the mountain again. The foliage is lush here, once more, and he breathes a sigh of relief, but he still speaks little, and makes eye contact with Geralt even less. If his friend thinks there’s something amiss, he hasn’t brought it up yet.
The dread creeps up on him the closer they get to the tavern at the mountain base.
“The king is offering a reward for services done by the most valiant of individuals.” Borch has taken to attempting coercion. Geralt snorts.
“Valiant, sure.” They plod through the undergrowth, tired and hungry.
He wants a bath, more than anything. One that he could sink right down into until it brushes over the top of his head, whisking away all of these pesky emotions threatening to throttle him. He hears his father’s voice, severe and cold, in the back of his mind.
The world of men is no place for you, boy. They hunt things like us.
Darkness slinks around them like a lover’s caress, and he slips into form, following closely behind Geralt so that he doesn’t have to pretend to know where he’s going in the dark. Borch eyes him curiously, but says nothing. They cut through the trees as the last bit of light fades from the sky, and not for the first time he wonders what Borch wants with them. Whatever it is, it can’t be good.
Better to put away your foolish notions, your childish wish to traipse among them, and settle down. Take up the mantle, when you’re ready.
He remembers arguing with his father, snorting and snarling, remembers seeing smoke puff from the old man’s nose the angrier he became, nearly spitting fire in human form when Jaskier had approached him in the throne room, lute strung across his back, what he could carry and all his worldly possessions fastened to a horse in the stables.
Julian, stop with this nonsense.
It had been a close thing, walking out of his father’s lands with little more than the clothes on his back and enough coin to get him through to Oxenfurt, but from there—he would confess only on pain of death—to having been naive. A hundred years was nothing to them, marked him as little more than a child, barely hatched, but he had wanted to see the world.
He wanted to know.
He’s pulled abruptly from his thoughts as he slams into Geralt’s back, the other man stopping without warning. Roach is handed off to a stablehand to be fed and watered, and Borch and the ladies head inside. He makes to follow.
Geralt puts a hand on his elbow, gently, so light that he shouldn’t have been able to feel it, and his world slows to a crawl.
“What.”
He looks at Geralt with, what he is sure, is some strange mixture of confusion and pleasant surprise on his face, trying desperately to parse the meaning behind his friend’s words.
“What?”
“I asked you first.” As much as he wants to play the child, the fool, and wrench his elbow away, a selfish, instinctual part of him likes being this close, being handled carefully, offered tentative touches. He hoards them, treasures them right along with the smell of sweat and leather and horse he can glean off of Geralt in this moment, barely enough musk to cover the scent of trepidation and lingering anxiety. It smells sour, like a grapefruit gone just on the wrong side of ripe. He doesn’t like it.
“No, you demanded what. That was hardly a question, my friend.” Geralt hangs his head before him, white hair curtaining his face for a moment before he brings it back up, standing square with Jaskier. They’re almost nose to nose, like this.
“You know what I mean. I can smell it on you. What’s going on?” Yellow-gold eyes searching his face, and he knows that Geralt believes himself at advantage: keen Witcher senses, poking around at the edges of his scent. It truly is a wonder the man hasn’t smelled all the Chaos.
“Nothing, it’s nothing, Geralt, really.” One singular, pale brow arches high. “Okay, so I don’t like not knowing what Borch has planned, or why he dragged us so far out of the way to this gods-forsaken tavern, and I really do believe we are both long overdue for a nice, long, hot bath, do not look at me like that, I know you enjoy them.”
A puff of warm air ghosts over his face as Geralt chuckles, caught. He’s graced with a rare, indulgent smile.
“The sooner we go inside, the sooner we can get this over with.” A beat. “And then we can find you a proper bath. Because you smell.”
“I—excuse you, wow, that’s rich, coming from you!” But Geralt is already halfway inside the tavern, long gone, and he’s left shouting in the makeshift dirt road like the fool everyone believes he is.
So he follows, like he always does, and goes inside, sits down, waits.
Borch’s women are intimidating, more so now that he’s sitting across from them than they ever were in the plains, or even out in the dark. Ebony, unreadable skin and harsh eyes. He can’t get a read on what they think of anyone around them other than Borch, and it unnerves him.
“King Niedavir has offered a reward for the completion of a quest. You see, there is a beast, living in the mountains, terrorizing his people, and cutting off supply roads. They will starve, come winter, if it is not taken care of.”
Geralt hums into his ale, and Jaskier tries to make himself look busy forcing down what passes for stew. It’s warm, at least, if poorly spiced, and he chars it a little in his mouth as he chews to bring out what little flavour there is in the meat.
“And that’s where I come in, I’m sure?” Geralt gestures with his ale at the busy tavern, packed so thickly with an assortment of people that he can barely make out one scent from the other.
“I want you on my team. Help me get to the top of the mountain, help me fight all of these other miscreants, and I will share the bounty with you.”
His friend takes a long, steady sip from his tankard, thinking. They could use the reward money, of that he is sure. He swallows the chunk of meat in his mouth.
“Come on, Geralt, I see no harm in trying,” Borch makes a face over the rim of his cup, and Jaskier knows he is on thin ice. Whatever the true purpose of this mission is, there is more at stake than what he is telling in his tale. “After all, the White Wolf of Rivia, on a daring quest to—what exactly are we doing, Borch?”
“Slay a dragon.” If there had been something in Jaskier’s mouth, he would have choked on it. Slay a dragon? He couldn’t have possible heard that correctly.
“A dragon? We’re going to—”
“—Dragon’s don’t exist—"
“—Slay a dragon?” He tries to make some sort of eye contact with Borch, to see if he had really meant what he had said, but the older man is fixed in a staring match with Geralt, and refuses to notice him in any way.
“No.”
For once, he is in little mood to argue with Geralt’s ability to quickly and intensely shut down a conversation, letting the pair of them hash it out. Absolutely not, we are not going to go slay a dragon. He wants to vomit, fighting to keep the bile from inching its way up the tender column of his throat. His stomach roils, and every instinct he has tells him to run. That it isn’t safe. The remains of his stew are pushed around the bowl, listless, but he can’t bring himself to pay attention to the conversation. Suddenly the tavern is too loud, too threatening, and he is—
He is hiding in plain sight, having placed his back to the room.
“Help me with this, Geralt, and you would be serving a far nobler cause than you could imagine.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” Another sip of ale. “And besides, I don’t hunt monsters that haven’t done anyone any harm. Doesn’t sound like this one has, or intends to, aside from squatting up there in the hills.”
The words rattle around in his skull. Geralt wouldn’t kill him, he hasn’t done anything wrong, he’s not a threat, he hasn’t hurt anyone.
But you’ve hurt him, hisses the voice that sounds too much like his father.
I haven’t, he whines back. I’ve never purposely hurt him.
You’ve lied to him, Julian. You’ve lied to him all this time.
“Come now, be reasonable—”
He’d have ever right to kill you.
The door of the tavern opens, and his world comes crashing down around him.
And so would she.
“On second thought…” Geralt register’s Yennifer’s presence at the same time as Jaskier does, and this time Jaskier does groan, his bowl sliding away from him as he sinks down on the bench to bang his head off of the table.
***
He can’t believe he’s doing this. Cannot, for the life of him, fathom how Geralt allowed himself to get talked into a dragon hunt, simply by catching a glimpse of unnaturally violet eyes and a prickly temper. The very thought of it makes him sick to his stomach, and as it is he’s having trouble keeping down the stew from last night. He had forced something into his stomach other than weak tea, only at Borch’s insistence, but the roiling in his gut made him regret it almost immediately.
He wished it had just been the tea.
Wished he could drop the front, tell Geralt this was ridiculous, and that they could run away, go back to the Path, be somewhere else. An edge of desperation has crept into his scent, he knows it, he can smell it on himself, even, but not once has his companion noticed.
“Sorceress.” She inclines her head at him, only barely.
“Bard.” Yennefer smiles up at him, saccharine as anything, and he thinks for a moment that she might have been hit on the head, to be looking at him like that. He knows that a part of her Chaos can sense him, coils itself around him in the dark like a shadow, but he doesn’t think she knows what he is, not really. Only a vague sense that he isn’t telling the whole truth, not that it’s any of her business.
The affair in Rinde, though, weighs on his mind, because she might, and while she has always enjoyed having a hold over other people, she’s never ceased to torment him.
“The crows-feet are new.” The fight goes out of him in a rush and he staggers, caught by surprise at the tension leaving him.
“Yeah, well, your jokes are… old.” It falls flat, a lame finish to what should have been a delightful barb. He wonders if, in another life, they might have been friends, had they not been brought to each other’s throats by the same desperate longing.
At each other’s throats is stretching things, he thinks. It’s not exactly as though he’s much competition for Geralt’s affections.
It goes like this:
They leave their horses at the base of the mountain, the path too steep and dangerous for mounts, and they split off into groups. The reavers go one way; he and Borch, Geralt, the witch and her knight, and a group of dwarves go the other, staggering up the mountain towards what should be a secret tunnel that will lead them to the top faster than the normal route.
He ambles along, playing the fool, avoiding the keen eyes of Borch and Yennefer, and Geralt ignores him, when he isn’t dragging him by the scruff of the neck out of the bush. He tries to keep things as normal as possible, tries not to let his bleeding, bruised heart get in the way, shuffles off to bed before he goes too long watching Geralt and Yennefer make eyes at each other. It tugs in his chest, seeing them together, bubbles up from the acid in his stomach like some sort of illness, turning his mood sour. He broods, for all he teases Geralt about doing so, and keeps his distance.
Doesn’t know what to think about, really, because if he isn’t thinking about how he’s gone so long at someone’s side only to be cast off for the least emotionally available person on the continent, about how he’s all but worn his heart on his sleeve and the only thing he hasn’t done is told Geralt explicitly how he feels, how he doesn’t have to worry about losing him. If he isn’t thinking about that, his stubborn brain and traitorous heart get tripped up in knowing that they’re hunting a dragon—a beast Geralt still refuses, staunchly, to believe exists, which stings more than it should—and then he wants to be ill all over again.
It turns his mouth sour, and he can taste it at the back of his mouth, smoky and hot, and knows it’s worked the long way around, through the pit, and come out the other side almost molten.
Geralt doesn’t notice.
Borch does.
The old man pulls him aside, after the others have gone to bed, the embers of the campfire smoldering between them.
“You don’t have to do this, lad. You still have time to turn back.” His eyes wander through the dark to wherever Geralt stumbled off to, earlier, and he doesn’t have time, not really.
“Why?”
It’s the only question he has left, the only one that might ease his anxiety.
“There are certain people we would do anything for. But I think you know that already.”
“Villen—” it’s a final plea, and a desperate one, to try calling on his proper name. Borch leaves him then, in the dark, with a hand on his shoulder as he stands, to ponder his words over the fire.
“Cryptic as all fuck,” he mumbles into the dark, angry and choking on his own sadness as it threatens to bubble over, but he knows the other man is right.
The old dragon dies the next day, when the cliff gives way underneath him and he tumbles into the abyss, Geralt reaching a hand for him and shouting, and then suddenly Geralt is reaching for him, tugging him close, keeping him safe, and it’s almost like everything is back to normal, except it isn’t, not really.
He should have seen it coming, knowing that Borch’s final words couldn’t have been anything less than preparation, because to him the whole mountain still reeks of brimstone and ash, and something primal at the back of his brain tells him he’s intruding.
They keep going, against all odds.
There’s an egg, and suitable proof for Geralt that dragons do exist, and Borch is giving him a look, in that way of his, the same as he did when he would sneak through the halls at night, when he was supposed to have been in bed, trying to listen in on the private meetings his father held.
He pretends he had been left at camp, missed the whole fight on the note that he had been left behind on purpose, but he hadn’t. Instinct, something deep and ingrained in him, had woken him just as quickly, whether from his heritage or so many years on the road with Geralt, but he heard the others mustering in the dark, and he feigned sleep a little longer.
It goes like this:
They save the dragon egg, and win the day, and Geralt and Yennefer are hurling angry, bitter words at each other on a windy cliffside. Something about parenting, or such like, and he scoffs at the notion that the deranged witch could play a successful hand at motherhood.
“I just want to be important to someone.”
The words ring around in his head, unbidden and annoying, like a fly. He hates it, hates her, except he doesn’t, not really, because he’s gone this long pretending whatever toxic, chaotic relationship she and Geralt have doesn’t bother him, so long as it makes Geralt happy. So he lets the breeze flow through his hair and he pretends he is flying, like he hasn’t done since he was a child, since before he left Lettenhove, and tries to summon some of the same feeling he had when he wandered into that tavern in Posada for the first time.
It doesn’t come.
He stands on the edge, waiting, holding his breath. Geralt joins him, accidentally or on purpose, he isn’t sure, but the copper tang of rage is pouring off the man so thickly that he can hardly smell the bitter-citrus hurt underneath it, even though he knows it’s there.
“I’m sorry, Geralt”
He doesn’t know why he says it, when he knows through trial and error that saying much of anything right now is liable to set his friend off again, and it does. He bites his tongue through it, or tries to. Geralt is saying something, yelling, but he can hardly hear it over the roaring blood in his ears.
“Why is it that whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days, it’s always you, shoveling it?”
Anger bubbles up, molten hot, white and scalding, and from the flash in Geralt’s eyes he knows he smells it. He doesn’t stop. They’re nearly chest to chest, breathing one another’s anger, creating a feedback loop of their own because he knows—he knows—that if he can smell it so can Geralt, and the pair of them are like dogs, sometimes, snarling and snapping and never willing to be the first one to show his neck. Against his better judgement, he punctuates his next words with a pointed jab of his index finger into Geralt’s chest.
“That’s not fair, and you know it—”
“—Cintra, the child surprise, the djinn—”
“—you great brute, if maybe you pulled your head from your ass—”
“—if life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands!”
A long, pregnant pause lingers between them, wherein a small eternity passes before him in a handful of seconds. There’s a wrench in his chest, where his heart should be, shattering to pieces. He might choke on it, the blood he knows should be slicking his throat and suffocating him. All very poetic, he decides, and fitting, for the end. Geralt is still looking at him, snarling, tension rolling off him in waves.
The mountain air blows between them as he stands there, all but teetering on the edge of the cliff, and he makes his decision.
“Have it your way then, Geralt.”
It’s three steps, no more than a yard or so, between himself and the edge of the cliff face, and he takes them slowly, deliberately, arms wide as if to say witness this, this is on you.
Geralt lunges, a fraction of a second too late.
Yellow eyes, furious and, if he lets himself indulge, afraid, are the last thing he sees before he takes the final step back to the edge and then he’s falling, falling, and then there is nothing but blue sky and fog and the silhouettes of the mountain peaks around him.
He waits until he is just out of sight to shift, just as Borch had done, letting the transformation rock through him with the burn of working unused muscles, just long enough that the human—human enough—side of his brain begins to contemplate letting himself fall the rest of the way.
He beats his wings once, twice, three times to slow his descent into the valley, circling around until he finds a decent place to hole up. He isn’t sure how long he’ll be here, or how long he’ll need to wait before he can travel again, with several people assured of his untimely and rather grisly demise, and he knows that should they hear he’s alive they will come look for him.
A cave catches his eye, part way down from the nearest peak, and he glides towards it.
It feels good to stretch his wings again, to fly. Like the first unaided steps after having broken a bone: tender and stuttering and careful, but all the sweeter for the fact the bone has mended.
Maybe if he stays this way long enough, this beast of ash and fire and hard, protective scale, his heart will mend itself again, as well.