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Fuck.
It’s a pretty common occurrence that, when given a contract, Geralt is not given all of the details. Half of the job at least is figuring out just what he’s going to be hunting in the first place. Sometimes, villagers will try to obfuscate the truth, hide important details in the hopes that maybe he and the monster will just kill each other and there will be two less inhuman beasts in the world by day’s end. Usually, Geralt can see through them pretty easily, and even if he can’t he’s able to come out on top with a healthy mix of investigation and overpreparing.
Somehow, it did not work out that way this time. He’d always hoped that when he dies, it won’t be due to some stupid mistake of his, but it looks like it’s going to be that way.
The contract had been for an alp. Just one. And he had been wary, of course, but based on his own observations and the evidence he’d gathered, it really had appeared that there was just the one alp.
What he hadn’t expected was her boyfriend.
Apparently this alp had been dating a garkain, and he is pissed that Geralt took his girlfriend’s head off. Which, yeah, that is fair, except for the fact that she’d been preying on village children. Geralt has always firmly believed that witchers kill violent monsters so the thinking ones can live in peace, but sometimes the violent ones have friends who don’t quite agree with him.
The garkain is large for its kind, and stronger than most, and it had the element of surprise, which it had used to take a huge swipe at him. All of that ended up with Geralt where he is now: slumped against a cave wall, ears ringing, room spinning. Yeah, he’s pretty damn sure he’s got a concussion.
He’s sure the beast is going to be able to claw him open before he can even get his feet under him, disoriented as he is, but before he can even prepare for his inevitable death the garkain stops, looks off towards the cave’s entrance, and recoils. Geralt can hear a voice, but he can’t quite make out what it’s saying. It takes a moment, but he realises who the voice belongs to.
**
“Stop,” Jaskier commands, threading as much of his power into his voice as he can without making Geralt’s ears bleed.
He’s gotten better at staying put when Geralt tells him to — really, he has! But this time, he’s damn glad he hadn’t. He wasn’t really sure why, but there was just something about this job that rubbed him wrong from the beginning. While Geralt investigated his quarry, Jaskier had spent that time trying to figure out just what was bothering him about it.
As soon as he’d realised it, he’d rushed to follow the witcher without a second thought.
Admittedly, he isn’t very active in the vampire world, socially. Those who pretend to be human tend to avoid the things that might out them for what they are. He does have a few friends amongst his own kind that he keeps in contact with, in Oxenfurt and Novigrad, and because of that he’s privy to certain rumours.
A lot of his kind have been talking lately about a garkain named Petyr. Apparently he’s an alright sort, loyal as all hell, but not very smart. It’s a dangerous combination that’s easy for someone to take advantage of. Unfortunately, someone had — an alp with the very unfortunate, but well-earned nickname “Kid-Killer Karyn”. Folks have been lamenting that poor Petyr had fallen in with her sort, and what would his sire think? Rumour has it that she keeps her pedicidal predilections a secret from him, because he would never abide by that sort of thing, but he won’t listen when anyone tries to convince him of her guilt, so everyone has stopped trying and started talking.
The point is that when Jaskier sees a large garkain hovering over a dazed witcher, about to land a killing blow, he doesn’t even take a moment to think before putting a stop to this nonsense immediately.
“It killed my Karyn!” Petyr wails in the Vampire language. Garkain mouths are not very well-suited to Common. Jaskier’s is, though, and Common is what he plans to stick with.
“Your Karyn has a contract on her from the neighbouring village,” Jaskier says, arms crossed.
“Humans—”
“You listen to me!” snaps the bard, waggling one finger at the hulking idiot. “If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a ploughing duck! I’ve spoken to countless parents who’ve lost their children to her. Are you really so weak that a pretty face is enough to make you defend a child-killer?”
“She’s not!” Petyr insists, though he sounds a little less sure. “She wasn’t! They only said that because they were jealous!”
Jaskier snorts in undisguised derision. “Who told you that? Your Karyn? She lied to you, used you, played you like a cheap lute! And you know what? Even if she hadn’t, you are not going to lay a single talon on this witcher, do you understand? He is mine.”
The garkain hesitates, barely keeping himself from trembling under the force of the higher vampire’s power. “I… I didn’t know…”
“No, I don’t expect you did. Now you do, and let me repeat myself, just the once: you are not going to touch my witcher. You are going to march your leathery arse out of this cave and I don’t give a fuck what you do afterwards. Just know that if I ever hear that you are causing trouble, I will put an end to it. Personally. Is that understood?”
“Y-yes sir,” mumbles Petyr.
“Good. Now go. You’ve caused quite enough trouble, I should think.”
Steadfastly looking at anything but Jaskier’s glare, the garkain nods and ambles away.
**
Geralt knows he’s really taken a beating because he can’t focus. It’s like his thoughts are falling leaves being blown away from his grasping fingers at the last moment. He watches the exchange between Jaskier and the garkain, but he can’t quite pay attention to what’s being said.
He knows that he’s more afraid than he’s been in literal decades — not for himself, of course, but for Jaskier. The man has no self-preservation instinct whatsoever, and this is painfully clear by the way he starts lecturing the hulking creature that was just about to kill a witcher. What’s peculiar is the way that it actually stops and listens. It tries to argue, but in the end, it just… leaves.
“Oh, yes, that’s definitely a concussion,” Jaskier tuts, tilting Geralt’s head this way and that. “Where are your potions, dear? A bit of that White Raffard stuff, and some rest, and you’ll be right as rain.”
“Jaskier, what the fuck?”
“Hush,” the bard murmurs soothingly, as one might with a child. “Let’s get you patched up, and you can yell at me for saving your life later, alright darling?”
And honestly, Geralt wants to argue, but he knows Jaskier is right. That winter, he’ll go to Kaer Morhen and tell Vesemir how Jaskier is so charismatic, he can talk a garkain down; he’ll muse that an air of authority and a lack of fear are enough to convince anyone of anything, apparently. Vesemir will stare at him in disbelief, and Geralt will assure him that it’s a true story, never realising that the older witcher is actually just floored by the concept that Geralt doesn’t realise what Jaskier is after all that.
Of course, that’s a story for another time.