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If asked, Geralt would be hard pressed to pick one specific lecture of Vesemir’s that sticks out to him. To say “Vesemir loves lecturing his students” is a gross understatement. Of the things he loves to impress upon the younger witchers, though, only a few stick out in this moment.
The thing is that while one is always learning, it’s best to avoid mistakes when possible, and to never make the same mistake twice. Life is a learning process, and each mistake is one of two things: a learning experience, or a death sentence. No one is too old to make mistakes, to fuck up, but one should never become complacent because of it. Age, experience, they mean fuck-all if you can’t adapt. If a witcher is too set in his ways, he will find himself outmatched by a situation that he couldn’t adapt to.
Obviously, this was meant in regards to fighting monsters, but Geralt has found that it works for a hell of a lot more than that.
When Jaskier had come into his life he was already so used to being alone that he’d done everything he could to push the other man away. When that didn’t work, he started to get comfortable, started to like having him around, but was too much of a stubborn bastard to admit it. He got used to being a dick to the bard, because he was used to being prickly and keeping people away from him.
It ended up really fucking him over in the end, when he snapped after the dragon hunt. Jaskier was just trying to help, he knows that. And he knows that he shouldn’t have said things he didn’t mean just because he knew they would hurt. He doesn’t have an excuse for acting like a toddler when he’s nearly a century old.
By time he’d calmed down enough to apologise, Jaskier had already left, and Geralt couldn’t quite keep his trail from going cold. It was like he was covering his tracks so Geralt couldn’t find him, which… hurt, yes, but was also reasonable. And if Jaskier didn’t want to see him, if he’d finally driven him away, well... he’d brought it upon himself. No need to force his company on someone who doesn’t want it, he’s long since learned that.
It’s been nearly a year since he’s seen the bard and he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about him. The Continent isn’t safe, with the war brewing, and the worse it gets, the more he finds his thoughts drawn to that lovely, frustrating man who’d seen a person where everyone else just saw a mutant.
He isn’t expecting to see Jaskier again, because he knows better than to expect anything but danger. He can’t help but hope, just a little, even if he won’t quite admit it.
Honestly, he isn’t sure under what circumstances they’ll meet again, if at all. He’s hoping that they’ll pass one another on the road, maybe, so Jaskier can get it all out, yell at him without making a scene. To be fair, he probably should have taken “be careful what you wish for” to heart, with his track record. He does meet Jaskier again on the road, and there is a lot of yelling. It’s just not what he’d expected, as tends to happen when Jaskier is involved.
At first, he just hears voices in the distance, and he pays them no mind. After all, he knows better than to get involved in things that don’t concern him. The voices turn to shouts, and he’s about to continue onward, but… one of those voices is Jaskier’s, he’s sure of it. There’s the scent of the bard in the air, of rosemary and cedar, before it’s drowned out almost entirely by the scent of blood. It’s an overwhelming, cloying scent, so sudden and strong that he almost can’t believe it’s real.
Without a second thought, he’s running towards the source of the commotion, sword drawn. He’s under no illusions that he can save Jaskier, but at the very least he can avenge him, can give him a proper burial. Even when the screaming quiets, he doesn’t slow his pace, and comes barrelling into the clearing where the scent of blood is strongest.
It’s carnage. The whole scene before him is so much that a normal man wouldn’t be able to handle it. There are pieces of bandits, but none of them are whole. They’ve been massacred, torn apart so badly that he can’t even tell how many there were with just a cursory glance. A few of the more intact corpses are entirely desiccated. And in the middle of it all is Jaskier.
Or… something very Jaskier-like. It’s an unsettling thing, almost entirely Jaskier but for the sharp differences. And he means ‘sharp’ in both a literal and figurative sense. His usually perfectly manicured nails are long talons, his white teeth sharpened and elongated into deadly fangs. Where usually, he tries to avoid getting any sort of filth on him, the bard is covered in viscera. If Geralt had that much blood on him, Jaskier would have forced him into the nearest body of water immediately, but currently he’s licking it off of his own hands like it’s a bit of spilt mead.
“Jaskier?” he asks in disbelief.
“Ah, Geralt,” is the answer, superficially friendly. “How have you been?”
“I’m— Jaskier, what the fuck?”
The bard raises one eyebrow. “They started it.”
Which, really, is not the point. “You’re a vampire?” seems to be a bit more pressing, in Geralt’s opinion.
“Well, I rarely indulge in the baser desires of my kind. Leave that to our lesser cousins, eh?” Jaskier jokes. “Look at you, come rushing in, sword in hand and all. Really, a bit dramatic, wouldn’t you say?”
“What the fuck else am I supposed to do, when I come across a fucking slaughter like this?” Geralt growls.
The joking tone and light expression the bard had previously had shifts into something hurt and angry very quickly. “Honestly, what, you think us all mindless beasts?” snaps the bard, crossing his arms. “Think me some kind of monster with no sense of self-control?”
“You didn’t have to eat them,” the witcher points out, though it comes out as more of a snarl than he’d intended.
“Well, forgive me for taking advantage of the situation!” Jaskier throws his hands up in the air, looking the exact definition of indignant and exasperated. “I may rarely indulge, but that’s only because I don’t go out of my way to hurt others — unlike some people.”
Okay, Geralt will admit that that hurt. Badly. And even though his usual response to emotional pain is either getting angry or shutting down entirely, he knows that neither of those things are going to help him right now, especially not the former. After all, that’s what got him into this situation in the first place.
“I never should have said any of it,” he says instead of giving in to the urge to be an asshole. “I shouldn’t have tried to push you away. I should have treated you better. I was afraid of losing you, thought it would be easier if… I thought that if you left you’d be safe, and I would get over it because I’d know that wherever you went you’d be okay. In some court somewhere, maybe, or teaching your music lectures. I thought you were human, and I— I was stealing your life from you. Keeping you from what you could have had. What you should have had. So I kept trying to push you away, so you’d go be safe and happy, and I wouldn’t have to… watch you get old. Or worse, watch something happen because I— because I put you in danger, because a human can’t be safe with a witcher.
“And then,” he continues, finding himself unable to stop, “on the mountain… I was hurt. And I didn’t think. I didn’t want to be hurt anymore, and I thought that if I lost you both at the same time, I would only have to hurt the once. And I knew I was going to lose you — if not then, it would be later, and putting off the inevitable didn’t make any sense. So I blamed you for everything because I knew it would hurt. I knew it would make you leave. I didn’t mean it. That’s not an excuse. I just. I shouldn’t have said it. I shouldn’t have hurt you, even though I thought… in a fucked up way, I thought it was the right thing to do.”
He isn’t expecting a response, honestly. He knows that he fucked up, and he knows that he’s hurt his friend — his best friend, though he’d been too much of an asshole and a coward to admit it. The least he can do is apologise, say how he really feels, give Jaskier that closure before resigning himself to being alone again.
“You’re a fool. A moron. An unequivocal idiot. Words cannot express in any language, known or unknown, how truly and incomprehensibly stupid you are,” seethes the bard.
“That’s fair,” murmurs Geralt, because it really, really is. He deserves this.
“I can’t believe you thought you could just decide what was best for me!” Wait, what? “After how poorly it went when you did the same to Yennefer? I’m a grown man, Geralt — I may not look it, but I daresay I’m older than you, even. Do you really think I don’t know what I want by now? What’s best for me? What pleases me?”
“I didn’t know,” Geralt starts, but Jaskier silences him with what can only be described as a strangled yelp of rage.
“You didn’t— Geralt, what I am is not the point here!” he all but shouts. “Even if I were human, so what? The course of my life is still not your decision to make! I make poor decisions, but they are my poor decisions and at the end of the day I am the only one to blame for the outcome. You can’t stop me from acting reckless and foolish because you do not get to decide the way that I act! If I jumped off of a cliff and died, it would not be your fault for not pinning me down or some other nonsense, it would be my fault for taking the leap!
“People make decisions and often it leads them to doing things that we do not like,” Jaskier continues, clearly trying to calm himself down. “In the end, we do not control the actions of others. We cannot control the decisions that others make. We control how we act and react, and nothing else. So when I get into a fight with someone for insulting you, it is not your fault for being a witcher, it is their fault for being a piece of shit, and it is my fault for making the decision to break that lout’s nose. They need to face the consequences of their actions — a broken nose; and I need to face the consequences of mine — fleeing the town, or being thrown in some shitty little dungeon; and you need to face the consequences of yours — usually, breaking me out of said dungeon. Just because our actions affect others, does not mean our actions are anyone else’s responsibility but ours. Do you understand that?”
He takes a moment to think about it. “Yeah,” he answers, because he does. He’s used to taking the blame for anything and everything because that’s just the way it’s always been. When people die, it’s because he couldn’t save them. When a creature kills, it’s because he didn’t kill it in time. When he’s run from a town, it’s because of what he is, what he’s done. Perhaps, long ago, he hadn’t believed it was true. The thing is, though, when one is blamed for everything consistently, one starts to internalise that blame. Enough farmers had blamed him for their loved ones’ deaths that he’d started to believe it really was his fault. Enough innkeepers had refused a room to a monster that he’d started to believe that that’s what he is.
It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of time and thought, but he manages to convey that to the bard, whose expression softens the more Geralt haltingly explains.
“Geralt, darling, you’re tragically dense when it comes to your own worth,” Jaskier murmurs. “I’ve always known that, but… it’s not easy to hear the way you talk about yourself. I know what others say, but when you told me to ignore it, I thought… I suppose I thought that it was because you knew they were wrong, not because you believed them.”
Geralt honestly doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s hard not to believe. If the whole world says you’re a monster, are you not one?
“The world says a lot of things. What of elves and mages? Just because something is vilified, doesn’t mean it’s actually villainous. Humans always need something to hate, and if it wasn’t witchers, it would be something else. You do them a service, so they look down on you. You are different, so they do not trust you. You are stronger than them, so they resent you. As far as I’m concerned, you aren’t the monster in this equation.”
“Why do you try?” asks the witcher. “Why bother? I’ve never made it easy on you.”
Jaskier laughs, still covered in blood and surrounded by corpses and somehow unfairly beautiful in spite of it all. “I’ve loved you for decades now,” he answers. He says it like it’s simple, like that’s just how things are, like he’s discussing whether it might rain. There’s no expectation, no judgment, just a statement of fact. It’s like he doesn’t realise he’s just turned Geralt’s world on its head. Apparently, though, he seems to realise it based on the way the witcher looks at him. “Did you not know?”
“I never thought you could.” This, too, is a statement of fact, though with an undercurrent of bitterness. How could he deserve Jaskier’s love? How could a human love something like him? Why would someone like Jaskier condemn himself to life on the Path with something like Geralt?
But Jaskier is not human, and does not see it as a condemnation. To him, Geralt is a someone, not a something.
The bard trills out a surprised little laugh. “Dear heart, I thought you knew,” he says, looking gobsmacked. “I thought Yennefer… you were rejecting me without the embarrassment of acknowledging it.”
“I was settling,” he says. It’s something he’d realised long ago, but never admitted. Yennefer is… a good friend. She is strong, and intelligent, and being with Geralt would not consume her life the way it would a human’s. However, that is not the best basis for a relationship, and it had taken a little too long for Geralt to figure that out for himself. And perhaps he wouldn’t have tried so hard to be with her if not for his wish, but it felt like the djinn was pushing them together. For a while, it just hadn’t felt like he’d had another option.
“I’ve loved you too,” Geralt continues, voicing his own revelation in real time. “For a while. I didn’t want to do that to you, so I tried… anything else.”
They don’t kiss, not just yet. Geralt has learned by now that a relationship takes effort, time. He needs to make up for the things he’d said, the way he acted for all those years, but especially at the end. He needs to earn Jaskier’s trust again, needs to learn to listen to the kind words more than the cruel. They need to have a long talk, and then another, and still more after that. Before anything, Jaskier needs a fucking bath.
He isn’t worried, though. The most important thing in a relationship is the work that’s put into it, and they are both more than willing. They may have known one another for decades, but this is only the beginning.