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Geralt isn't there when Jaskier dies.
He should be, by all accounts. It's the time of year he usually stops by Lettenhove on his path back towards Kaer Morhen before the snows hit. It's a stupid reason he's late--he'd taken a detour to pick up a bottle of Est Est in Vizima. They hadn't shared any good wine since Jaskier had left his teaching position in Oxenfurt and he'd been...sad...last Geralt had seen him. He'd wanted to do something nice for the man who'd always gone out of his way for him.
Instead of Jaskier meeting him in the yard to greet Roach (a new Roach, not the same mare who had affectionately bit the shit out of Jaskier more times than either of them could count), it's his younger sister, Lyla, and her eldest son. The air reeks of sadness, salt and tears and pain, stale and choking. He can tell immediately that he doesn't want to hear what they have to say.
"Master Geralt--" Lyla starts, stops. She's in the deep black of mourning. They both are. Geralt closes his eyes, breathes deep before dismounting.
"Where is he?"
"You've--um. Just missed the--the services. He's--" she breaks off, a fist pressed to her mouth.
"On the family plot out back, by the big tree," her son finishes, expression tight. He'd be the new viscount now, this boy. Jaskier had, after everything, never married. He's hardly older than Jaskier had been when they'd met. Geralt finds he can't look at him.
"Hm."
"The stableboy will see to Roach if you'd like to--" Lyla tries, but she trails off without finishing her sentence. Her eyes are rimmed in red.
"No need. I won't be staying long." He feels--not enough. He thinks he should feel something, something sharp and painful, looking at what's left of Jaskier's family without him. Instead, he feels only a deep, yawning numbness, something fathomless and vaguely aching.
He ties Roach to the tether in the yard, takes the bottle of wine from his saddlebags. He can feel their eyes, watching him.
"Would you like me to show you, Master Geralt?" the boy asks. Geralt remembers when he was small, no more than a toddler, how Jaskier would settle the boy in his lap during Geralt’s visits and tell him of the hunts he’d been on.
"No," he looks both too much like his uncle and not enough.
He breaks away from their sad little tableau without another word, headed towards the family cemetery and the massive old oak tree Jaskier had been fond of sitting under when he was feeling particularly melancholy.
I'll be buried out here one day, Geralt. Oh, don't make that face, I know you hate to hear it, but I will. I only hope they'll remember them, you know? Your songs.
His chest aches sharply.
He finds the headstone easily enough--it's the newest one out under the tree. Geralt can't help but notice he's buried as far from his parents as possible, wonders if that was deliberate. The headstone is remarkably plain, and that sends a surprising slice of pain through him (finally, something). So quiet, so ordinary. So very much not Jaskier.
Geralt kneels before the headstone, sitting back on his heels. Lyla had at least insisted on the stage name being there--Julian "Jaskier" Alfred Pankratz. Geralt uncorks the bottle, takes a sip. It's too sweet, was always more Jaskier's drink of choice than his own. He pours a generous mouthful over the grave before taking another drink, pulls deep.
He should say words, shouldn't he? Jaskier would have.
Jaskier is gone.
It hits him, all at once, knelt before that chunk of stone. Jaskier is gone. Never to laugh, never to smile, to sing, to dance. His best friend. His only friend.
Geralt hasn't cried since the trials, but his throat feels tight in a way that reminds him of that screaming, those tears, that pain. And this? This is worse.
His hands shake as he tips more wine down his throat. He could sit here and drink every drop and still be mostly sober. He pours a little more out, watches it seep into the dirt.
I love you, he thinks. Even with Jaskier gone, he can't say it. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Above him, the branches creak in the breeze of late autumn. Leaves coat the ground, crunch under heel as someone approaches.
"I'm sorry but--" Lyla "--I didn't want you to slip away before--" she trails off again. Geralt doesn't turn to face her, eyes glued to the tiny chisel marks--Jaskier.
"He didn't say much at the end, but. Um. He wanted you to--to have this." Geralt can feel the displaced air as she holds something out to him. He already knows what it is.
"I can't take that."
"What else will I do with it?" She asks, tears in her voice. Others loved him too, he reminds himself, this grief is not yours alone. He doesn't say anything, just shifts to take the songbook from her, settling it in his lap. "He said--" she stops, and Geralt can smell fresh tears, "He said when you came back--that he--he wanted--"
"Breathe," Geralt reminds her, voice remarkably even. He remembers this woman, laughing and smiling over dinners, at the hearth, watching her brother sing and weave tale after tale. He wasn't aware just how wound up in this family he'd become, until now.
"He wanted you to--to always have a place here. Somewhere where people would care for you. His room. It's yours. As long as the Pankratz family holds these lands, it's yours."
Even in death, Jaskier's biggest worry had been about him. The pain of that is a welcome feeling compared to the numb emptiness still creeping through his chest.
"I can't accept that."
"It'll be kept for you anyway," she says, "for when you're ready to come back. If you're ready." This place isn't a home without Jaskier, he wants to say, but that's just him. This is still her home, still her children's home.
"Hm."
"Did you want the lute?" She asks, voice small, and Geralt's abruptly overwhelmed. He bows his head, focuses past the ache, that toothless void yawning open, the way it sharpens into bright, bright pain. He sets the wine to the side so he doesn't drop it. The lute. He wants to ask if she's sure, if she doesn't want to keep it for herself, her son, but--
"Yes." --he's greedy. The lute, the songbook, they're part of Jaskier the way nothing else ever was. And he wants. Gods does he want.
"I'll have it brought down to your horse. I can't--I can't look at it, myself." The silence is oppressive, painful. "These last few years--" she starts, clears her throat, "--he wasn't quite happy anymore, you know. Unless you were here." There's a smile in her voice, despite how watery it is, "he loved you." It's a statement.
"I know." He wishes she'd leave. He doesn't need to hear this.
"He'd want you to be happy. You and your Yennefer. And Ciri."
He doesn't respond to that, just focuses on breathing--in and out. Jaskier always wanted him happy.
"I know I'm intruding I just--" she takes another breath, "--I wanted you to know he was thinking about you constantly. And he understood why you didn't make it in time. He wasn't upset." But Geralt is. He doesn't know what being here a week, a month earlier would have done, but fuck. He wanted to be here.
"I'll make sure they get the lute for you," she says, and then she's gone as quietly as she came, leaves crunching underfoot. Geralt picks up the wine and upends the rest of it over the grave. It's too sweet anyway.
He should say something, but no one is there except a cold stone and that little chiseled word--"Jaskier.” Geralt rises, takes one last look at the headstone, and goes straight back to Roach. When he gets there, the lute is in its case and tied to his bags. He fingers the cover of the songbook before tucking it in among his things, unopened.
He mounts Roach, turns her around, and doesn't look back.
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He should be headed up north towards Kaer Morhen. Instead, he finds himself headed towards Yennefer's lodgings she still keeps in Vengerberg. Either he gets there and she's there or she's not and the wards will alert her, bring her back. It's a selfish reason he's running to Yen and not home--he knows Yen will contact Ciri when she finds out. Ciri doesn't always come to Kaer Morhen every winter, but she always comes when Yen calls and he wants to see her more than nearly anything (He wants Jaskier, knows that won't happen).
"Geralt?" Yen is here, actually. She meets him at the stable--the wards must have alerted her early. He swings down from Roach's back, silent. "Geralt, shouldn't you be--" she cuts off, expression shuttering. "Oh." Her eyes have caught on the lute, still strapped to the saddle. The silence that follows is so oppressive he wants to hit something.
Instead, he leads Roach inside, unsaddles her, brushes her down. He's careful with the lute case, how he holds it, how he places it. Yennefer watches, eyes sad.
"Geralt," she says, soft, "when did it happen?"
"The week I should have been there. I detoured for wine this year," the words feel raw in his throat. His chest aches, his eyes burn.
"Oh, Geralt." Her voice is so quiet. He closes his eyes, hangs his head. She steps up beside him, tugs him into her arms, gentle. He drops his forehead to her shoulder, lets her hold him up. "Geralt, I'm so sorry."
He doesn't respond, just holds her a little tighter. He is too.
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Ciri's there within the week. When she sees him she bursts into tears, flings her arms around his neck. He holds her, lets her cry. She masters herself, eventually. They talk about little, meaningless things until after dinner. She'll stay until the spring, keep him and Yen company. "Like when I was a girl," she says, smile small, eyes still a little red.
They retreat to Yen's sitting room for a few hours, but Geralt can't keep the thread of the conversation, can't focus. He retires early, back to his room here. On the bed is the lute, still in its case. Geralt can't bring himself to remove it.
He slides into bed, curls himself around it, and lays awake for a long, long time.
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Yen catches him out at the stables a month into their stay, head in his hands. He's been pretty good about keeping himself together for Ciri, but.
She sits down beside him, brushes the hay off the bench. She doesn't say anything, just sits, providing him that silent wall of comfort he wants but doesn't know how to ask for. He wishes he was still blindingly in love with her when she's like this, everything he needs. It was never her that fell short in their relationship, after all.
"Geralt," she prompts. An invitation. He doesn't know how to articulate what he's thinking.
"I can't--" he frowns a little harder at the stall door. Roach is out in the pasture grazing this time of day. "He's--not someone I can replace, Yen. This isn't--this isn't Roach. I can't just--" he sucks in a breath, feeling a little winded even though he's not doing anything but sitting there. It's pouring out of him, like poison from a lanced wound, "I can't just go find another bard and pretend, Yen. It won't be the same. This isn't Roach." He's horrified to find tears pricking his eyes. He still hasn't cried, but he might be about to.
"Geralt." It sounds like fond exasperation and reprimand wrapped in one.
"Yen, I never told him." She leans gently against his shoulder, a solid point of contact. She already knows. "I never told him."
"He knew, Geralt. It's okay."
"It's not," he chokes out, leaning away, "fuck." He swipes ineffectually at his eyes, presses the heels of his palms to them hard until spots dance behind his eyelids, holding back the tears. He won't cry, he won't. (It's dumb. Tears won't change the fact he's gone, won't bring him back. He still won't allow himself to do it--feels like a comfort, a grief he's not entitled to).
"He loved you, and he thought you didn't love him the same, and he loved you anyway. Geralt he wouldn't want you to tear yourself up about this." She's silent for a moment, "he'd have loved the drama though, well done."
Geralt nearly chokes when the next breath tries to be a laugh. "Yeah." When he lifts his head, she's smiling, just a little sad.
"You'll be okay, Geralt." He doesn't know if he believes her, but he doesn't argue.
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The songbook is filled with love poetry. Geralt reads only a page before closing it.
Dear heart, my music travels with you
I am bereft when you leave
and my whole soul sings upon your return
Every year, like clockwork.
He doesn't talk to anyone for a week.
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Yen and Ciri both are concerned when they part, in the spring. Ciri even offers to travel with him.
"Just for a little while? It'll be like old times!"
"Ciri, you've never liked hunting with me." She flushes, shamefaced.
"That's not true!"
"You prefer to hunt with Eskel," Geralt says, deadpan. It's never bothered him--Eskel is an excellent companion on a hunt and always has been.
"...Maybe," she mumbles, "but that doesn't mean I don't want to go with you!"
"You always spend the spring on Skellige."
"I could spend the spring with you, this once," she says, all earnest. Geralt snorts.
"I'll be fine, Ciri."
She scowls at him, one she's learned from Yen, "You'd better!"
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Things are disturbingly the same even though Geralt feels they shouldn't be. The continent should be fundamentally different with Jaskier gone, but there are still drowner contracts, still griffins, and bruxae, and everything else.
He doesn't die the first year without Jaskier, although when the fall approaches he feels like he might.
My love leaves every spring
He takes it away in his saddlebags
and returns it to me every fall
a little warmer, a little brighter
filled with stories and song.
He tries not to look at the songbook, but it makes the worst days a little easier, even when it leaves his chest feeling cracked open. He'd known Jaskier loved him...but not like this. The songbook is full of quiet devotion, the kind of love Geralt could never picture himself deserving, but it's all obviously about him--leaving and coming, traveling and bringing back music and stories and love.
The lute stays tied to his saddlebags, stays close. In a small way, it's like having Jaskier back on the path with him.
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He spends the next winter at Kaer Morhen. He expects at least Lambert to make a tactless remark, but Ciri's beat him here this year. His brothers watch him with wary eyes and don't tease him about the lute or the book, although they notice both.
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It’s Lambert that mentions it, finally, with much more tact than Geralt’s ever given him credit for.
It's just the two of them in the library playing gwent. Lambert's losing badly.
"It's hard," he says apropos of nothing.
"No, it's not, you're just not interested in playing with strategy." Geralt scoffs.
"Not the cards, you idiot. The--" he waves ineffectually, "--everything else. After."
Geralt's silent for a moment. He doesn't mean--
"After, um. After Aiden I wasn't in the best place. You know." He shrugs one shoulder, nonchalant. He's staring at the cards instead of Geralt. "It doesn't go away, really, but it gets easier to focus through."
Geralt doesn't even know what to say. "Lambert--"
"Don't. We're not gonna talk about it. I just. I get it. It's okay." Geralt's never loved his idiot of a brother more.
"Alright," he says, only a little strained.
"Now shut up and start the next round. I'm gonna win." Geralt kicks his ass in that round, too.
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The subsequent years are more of the same. The continent moves on, time refuses to stand still. Geralt still caries the songbook and the lute.
The first time he hears one of Jaskier's songs in a tavern he has to retreat to his room, doesn't wait to hear the bard finish playing. It feels wrong for Jaskier's songs to come from another person, but they're the songs about him. They remember them. He wishes he could tell Jaskier. His chest aches, loud and colorful and bard-shaped.
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He blinks and it's been ten years. Twenty. Geralt had tried to explain to Jaskier at one point that time is different for a witcher. He's nearly two centuries. Ciri is (blessedly, blessedly) still alive. Too much elf blood, too long a life. She may even outlive Geralt. It's the only soothing thought he has, most days. He knows losing Ciri will be the thing that breaks him, as fragile as he is now.
The songbook is starting to wear. He still hasn't touched the lute. He carries both, still. The worst days, it aches the way it did in front of the headstone when he'd realized he was gone, fresh and new.
He walks the path, but he's hollow in a way he'd never realized, before Jaskier.
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He's in a tavern in a little village somewhere in Temeria eating a hot meal and minding his business sitting quietly at a corner table. There's been a few people to come up to his table and place a single coin with timid smiles. Over half a century later and that song is still softening people towards him. He can't think too long about it or he'll spiral. He's been...not good, but better, lately.
"Hi, I couldn't help but notice, um--" there's a man standing at the other side of the table, fidgeting. "And I think I, uh, know you?" He smells like nerves, but under that is pine and sweetgrass, a smell that reminds him of music, boisterous company, unrestrained smiles. It makes something in his chest twinge.
Geralt gives a noncommittal hum. Lots of people think they know him. The White Wolf. It usually proceeds a plea for him to take on a contract.
"No, no, I do," the man says (no more than a boy, really. He sounds young). "Or I feel like I should, you know? Like meeting someone from a dream."
Geralt rolls his eyes, doesn't look up. If this is the boy's idea of a pick-up line, it needs work.
"And you know, I wanted to come over here all suave, but I feel like I should be talking about...bread? I'm sorry, this is weird, isn't it?" And that's so oddly specific, calls to mind such a bright, painful memory--blue eyes, nervous smile, so earnest, so young, so--
The man drags out the chair opposite, sits down. "I'm Julek," he says, "and you're Geralt of Rivia, the mighty witcher." There's a smile in his voice.
Geralt's chest gives a lurch. He both desperately wants to look at this man, and yet terrified of what he might see. Jaskier's gone. But--
The boy across from him is so close, so close to his mental image of Jaskier when they’d met in that tavern in Posada. Blue eyes, the sweep of pretty brown hair, slight, but obviously stronger than he looks. If he’d been wearing a colorful doublet, he’d have been a dead ringer for his bard. He can't breathe.
The boy’s brow pinches with worry. "You okay, Geralt?" And oh, he can't do this actually. He stands abruptly, making as if to step away from the table but the boy is up like a shot. "Oh, please don't go! I'm sorry if I--forget it. I'll just--" and it's too much and it's not enough and it's not Jaskier. It's not. It can't be. Jaskier's been dead almost twenty-five years.
"I'm sorry," the boy repeats, "I just...I feel like..." He trails off, frustrated. It's not Jaskier, Geralt reminds himself, but he looks so close Geralt finds himself softening towards him.
"Sorry," he says, gruff. He sits again, watches the boy take the seat across from him again, more tentative this time. "I'm not used to this. Anymore."
"What," the boy smiles, a small, private thing, "talking?"
"Yes."
His expression does something complicated. "You must talk to people, though." Geralt shrugs. "I can't imagine not talking," he says, and it's such a Jaskier thing to say. His chest aches, bright and fierce.
"Out of practice."
"Well then maybe you need some, hm? Why don't we start with--" he casts his gaze wildly around the room, "--why you're in some little slum tavern in nowhere, Temeria."
"Contract," Geralt grunts. "What about you?" He's dressed plainly--obviously a local. It's the only thing that really sets him apart from the Jaskier in Geralt's memory, helps remind him this boy is not his bard, no matter how much he looks like him.
"I live here," he shrugs. "It must be fascinating to travel the continent. I've always wanted to." Geralt doesn't answer. The boy gives him a calculating look. "Do you believe in destiny, Geralt of Rivia?"
Before Yen and Ciri, that answer was easy. Now? He shrugs.
"I feel my entire life I've been waiting to meet you. That's silly, isn't it? We've only just met and yet--" Geralt stares into blue eyes (so close, so similar) and reminds himself, Jaskier's dead, "--I've dreamt of you, witcher." His words scream 'pick-up line' still, but his gaze says something different.
"What are you saying, boy?"
"I'm saying," he breathes deep, steels himself, "I've dreamt of you since I was a child. And I don't think that's coincidence."
It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything.
"And you've looked at me strangely this whole time."
Gods, it's not fair. He considers not saying anything, but he's apparently lonelier than he'd thought. "You remind me of a...friend. An old friend."
Geralt's not looking at him, but he hears how his tone softens. "Oh. I'm--I'm sorry." He reaches across the gulf of the table, touches the back of his hand, gentle. It hurts. "I didn't mean to hit a nerve. I'll just--" he lets go of Geralt's hand, pushes back from the table. "Sorry again. See you around, Geralt." And oh, that's not fair.
He waits until the boy's out of sight before he retreats to his room. For the first time in a long time, he pulls the lute out, lays it out on the bed to curl around. He falls asleep in the small hours of the morning thinking about blue, blue eyes, arms wrapped around that lute like a lover.
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When Geralt wakes from fitful sleep in the greying dawn, he's still thinking about the boy, Julek. Something was off about him and it still tugs at the heart he pretends not to have. Too much like Jaskier. He’d been...odd. Said things that left Geralt wondering, that he’d had no good answer for how the boy might know.
When Geralt gathers his things, treks downstairs and out into the yard, he's not surprised, exactly, to see the boy loitering by the stables, a traveling bag slung over his shoulder. It twists something painful in his chest.
"Taking on travel partners?" The boy asks, all eager hope, and Geralt looks and sees Jaskier at nineteen--I could be your barker!. It sets him on edge as much as it soothes.
"Not really, no."
The boy makes a quiet, dejected sound. "Knew it was a longshot, but thought I'd try it. Um," he shuffles, thumbs tucked into the strap over his chest, obviously embarrassed. He still follows Geralt into the stables, watches as he saddles Roach. His eyes are wide with longing.
"Why do you want to leave?" Geralt asks, because the boy seemed perfectly happy last night, despite the low-level weirdness.
"I told you last night," he says, cheeks pink, "I feel like I've waited my whole life to meet you. I didn't think I could just...let you leave."
Geralt's chest siezes, but he just hums in response. The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks the boy is likely glamored, definitely enchanted, maybe cursed. The things he seems to bring up are just too specific, just too weird. He thinks back, trying to come up with any mages he might have pissed off lately who would want to hurt him like this. He reminds Geralt too sharply of Jaskier, seems to know too much, to be coincidence.
"Sorry, I'll just--" If the boy's really been cursed or enchanted or something, Geralt should do his best to fix it, right? That would require bringing the boy with him. To see Yen, probably. He doesn't want to see the look of pity on her face, of patient understanding, when he brings Julek in. But if he's really been cursed, if this is Geralt's fault somehow that the boy looks too much like Jaskier, seems to know things he shouldn't--Geralt owes it to him to fix it.
He makes a split-second decision, hopes it's the right one, "you can come." The boy's eyes go wide with surprise before his face breaks into a wide, delighted grin than tugs at Geralt's chest, steals his breath.
"Thank you, Geralt."
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He sets course for Yen's little estate, Julek in tow. Having a traveling companion again is both painful and soothing, like most things that remind him of Jaskier. The boy is loud and boisterous and talks constantly. The noise is a low-level hum of information that makes Geralt want to cry, on the worst days, with how familiar it feels.
"Where are we headed, Geralt?" he asks, finally. They've been traveling almost a week straight with no stops in any of the towns they've passed. Geralt wants whatever's inevitably wrong with the boy seen to as quickly as possible--he already feels changed, knows going back to traveling alone will be difficult, after.
"We're going to see a friend." He doesn't elaborate, and Julek doesn't ask.
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In the gray dawn of morning and the deep black of night, right on the edges of wakefulness and sleep, Geralt feels right. There's a quiet lull on the other side of the fire, the scent of pine and sweetgrass thick in his throat--Jaskier. It's just the boy, he knows, but for a little while, he lets himself have this, lets himself pretend. It doesn't help the ache in his chest, but he feels a little better, regardless.
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The boy has dreams he doesn’t describe. Sometimes Geralt will wake and he’s staring at him, hard. Occassionally, he wakes in tears. He’s more tactile after one of those, wants to touch and be touched--little, incosequential things like brushing shoulders and sitting too close around the fire. Geralt always allows it, even when he knows he shouldn’t. Geralt doesn’t ask about the dreams, and Julek doesn’t ask about the lute or the songbook.
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Yen is just as pitying as he thought she'd be when they arrive.
"Geralt--" She starts, as soon as the boy's out of earshot.
"Yen, I think he's cursed, or enchanted. Something." He cuts her off before she can start in on the gentle lecture he knows is coming. "He knows things he shouldn't."
"Like what?"
"He--talks, sometimes. About. Dreams."
"Really, Geralt? Dreams?" Her tone is incredulous.
"About me, Yen. He won't tell me what about, but--" She's already shaking her head.
"Geralt, this is ridiculous. I know he looks like--"
"Don't say it."
"--him," she gives him a long-suffering look, "but don't you think this is a little much?"
"Just--please, Yen?" He's begging and he's aware he's begging, but it can't be helped. She sighs again.
"I'll take a look, I guess. Julek!" He straightens from where he'd been obviously snooping through her things across the foyer, flushed with surprise.
"I wasn't--"
"Yes, yes," she waves it off as he comes nearer, "you may snoop however you please. But first I'd like to see you in my workroom. Geralt wants to be sure you're of...sound mind." She says, delicately. The boy's eyebrows raise.
"Sound mind?" He slides Geralt a look, at once pitying and irritated. He's so sick of the pity today. "He doesn't think I really want to travel with him, does he?" he sighs, doesn't wait for an answer, "alright."
Yen smiles, all sharp edges and no-nonsense. "This way, boy."
"Why does everyone keep calling me that? I have a name," he huffs, but it's all bluster--he starts to follow Yen from the room, grumbling the whole way. He pauses in the doorway, "Geralt, are you coming?"
"I'm going to check on Roach. Yen will collect me if need be. Be nice." Julek rolls his eyes skyward, mouths "as if," before turning to follow the sorceress to her workroom. Geralt heads out to the stables, tries not to think about what it means if the boy is, or isn't, cursed.
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"Master Geralt? Mistress Yennefer would like to see you in her workroom," the house servant says when he finds him, tucked into Roach's stall and brushing her down for the third time in an hour. He grunts his acknowledgment and doesn't turn to watch the man scurry away back towards the house.
When he leaves the stables, his heart is in his throat.
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He hears them long before he makes it to the workroom, their agitated voices carrying down the halls.
"Yennefer, what the fuck. I can't--" Julek.
"I don't have a better answer for you, bard." Something painful and a little like hope surges in his chest, "This isn't exactly normal for me, either."
"But Geralt--" The reply is cut off prematurely. Silence falls. He opens the door.
Across the room from him, Julek stands unnaturally tense and still, hair wild like he's been running his fingers through it. It's obvious he's been pacing. He isn't looking at Geralt, eyes downturned and focused on the floor. Yennefer leans against her alchemy counter, arms crossed. She looks as frustrated as the boy does.
"You called for me?"
Yennefer sighs, tips her head back to stare at the ceiling. "Yes. It appears we have a situation."
Geralt "hm"s in response. Yen rolls her eyes before meeting his.
"Your boy here isn't cursed or enchanted or glamored." Geralt holds his breath, feels hope squeeze painfully in his chest. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything. "But you're right, he was a little odd, knew some very specific things..." she trails off, eyes flicking back to the boy before settling squarely on Geralt again. "So I did some digging in his memories."
"Yen!"
"He consented first, you absolute mother hen, relax." Geralt scowls at her a little harder, "Anyway, there was something a little off. He's got a reoccurring dream that I found...interesting...but when I pulled at it--" she makes a vague gesture with her hands, "it tugged the rest of the memories loose."
"Memories? Yen, what are you talking about?" He's not in the mood for her "beat around the bush" answers.
"He's not Jaskier," she says, and Geralt flinches reactively at the surge of hurt that rises up, "but he is."
Geralt stares at Yen for a long, impossible minute. She doesn't mean--
"I don't know how it works either, Geralt, don't give me that look. There's not an overwhelming amount of research on reincarnation," she snips, "and I'm certainly not an expert."
His gaze slides, inevitably over to the boy--Julek? Jaskier?--who fidgets, running his fingers through his hair again. He still hasn't met Geralt's eyes. "He's not Jaskier," Geralt says, voice hollow. Because he can't be, can he? He may have unexplainable knowledge about Geralt, but Jaskier put a lot of Geralt in his music, in his writing (the songbook is proof of that). It doesn't mean anything. (He can't let himself hope. He can't.)
The boy flinches, hand dropping to his side, fingertips rubbing restlessly against one another in a very Jaskier gesture. It doesn't mean anything.
Geralt sees the face Yen makes in his peripheral--something pained and vaguely irritated. "Jaskier," she says, patient, "what's something only the two of you would know?"
"Don't call him that," Geralt hisses, horrified to find tears rising to choke him.
"Did you get the songbook?" The boy asks, very, very still. He’s pouring anxiety and upset so thickly it's practically choking Geralt--soured milk and citrus.
"Yes."
"Did you read any of it?"
"Some. The first page." He knows Julek has seen the songbook, knew he had it, but he'd never touched it, never asked. There's no way he'd know any of the poems, the songs it contained. Some are so ruined as to be nearly illegible any longer. Geralt knows them all by heart.
The boy takes a deep, steadying breath, and starts reciting.
"Dear heart, my music travels with you, I am bereft with you leave--"
Geralt's world spins. Jaskier’s voice trembles.
"--and my whole soul sings upon your return, every year, like clockwork."
"Jaskier." Across the room, he peaks up at Geralt from under his lashes, blue eyes catching on gold. Julek, those little differences, are still there, but behind those eyes is Jaskier. Nervous and terrified and a little bewildered.
"It's me," he agrees, holding his arms out in a "here I am" sort of gesture.
"Fuck." Geralt's striding across the room and wrapping him up in his arms before he can say anything else, complete impulse. "Fuck, Jaskier." Jaskier gives a tiny, surprised little laugh.
"Good to see I was missed," he mumbles from where Geralt's got his face tucked against his neck, "thought you'd have found that blessed silence you were always looking for," he teases. It makes Geralt tense. He'd never told him--
"Jaskier," he says, loosening his hold and drawing back so he can meet his eyes again, "I love you. There wasn’t a moment I didn't miss your voice." He says it solemn, even as panic wells up in his chest. Theoretically, he knows Jaskier loved him--a deeper, purer devotion than he'd been completely aware of when he'd been alive--and that there's no reason that should have changed. Even so, he's terrified to lay himself out like he is. He doesn't do this, doesn't do feelings, but for Jaskier? He fucked it up the first time, he won't let a second chance slip away.
"Geralt," Jaskier murmurs, fingers skimming his jaw. His eyes are large and wet, tears threatening to spill. "Geralt, love, I'm so sorry." He loops his arms around Geralt's neck, pulls him in so Geralt's tucked against his neck. "I love you too, darling. I'm so sorry."
Behind them, Yen clears her throat. Neither of them pulls away from each other, but Geralt makes a grunt of acknowledgment.
"As I was saying, this isn't a well-researched phenomenon, but you will be delighted to know everyone who's ever studied it is convinced it's tied to soulmates," She sounds impossibly smug.
"Are you saying--" Jaskier tugs against Geralt's hold, cranes his neck to see over one hulking shoulder, "--Geralt and I are soulmates?" It comes out nearly a squeak.
"And the process," she barrels on, completely ignoring the question while she gestures vaguely at Jaskier, indicating all of him again, "should repeat, so long as one of you outlives the other." She smiles, sharp, "So Geralt doesn't have to do the whole heartbroken pining schtick every time."
"Yen--"
"Whoa, wait, we'll come back to that one. You're saying I'll just...keep coming back?"
Yen shrugs, "that's what happened in the only truly confirmed case I know of. And I'd always thought that was a load of bullshit too, until I'd poked around up there," she says, tapping her own temple, indicating his own. Jaskier makes a tiny, thoughtful sound. Geralt tightens his arms, runs his nose up the curve of Jaskier's throat, breathes in his scent--pine and sweetgrass.
"Sounds like you're not getting rid of me anytime soon, Geralt. After all, I've apparently got a whole heap of lifetimes to chase after you, darling."
Geralt presses his lips to the joint of Jaskier's jaw, listens to the sharp intake of breath, "Good."
Jaskier leans back to stare into his face for a solid minute before he's tipping forward to press their lips together, tiny and chaste. Geralt enjoys it, revels in it, presses kiss after kiss to his lips, like a benediction. Jaskier laughs, small and delighted and it burns through him, warm and joyful. Behind them, Yen makes a disgusted sound, but Geralt knows she’s just as delighted as he is, can smell the sunshine and honey scent of it--Yen and Jaskier had been good friends, towards the end.
Geralt tucks his face back into Jaskier’s throat, presses his lips there, listens to the way Jaskier’s breath stutters out. He love him. He loves him. Jaskier knows, and he’s here, and he’ll keep coming back. Geralt thinks about destiny, about how royally she’s fucked him over in the past. This feels like an apology, like a reward. Jaskier, for as long as he lives, over and over again. Something in Geralt’s chest unwinds, relaxes. Jaskier presses a kiss to his temple, smiling and Geralt, for once in his life, lets himself not just want, but have.