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Jaskier is a chasm of rage and pain when he walks down the mountain. He’s trying to lean into the former, but the latter keeps poking its unwanted head in, threatening to leave him gasping with what he’s lost. He kicks every rock and pinecone in his path in an attempt to stoke the anger. It works brilliantly (and inadvertently) when he stubs his toe against a rock that doesn’t budge when he kicks it, and the annoyance of the pain carries him, clearing his mind enough to stomp down the rest of the way. The moon is full and riding high on his own emotions and a sense of recklessness, he walks through the night. His eyes are gritty and stinging from lack of sleep among other things by the next day, but it’s enough. He gets off the damn mountain.
He collects his things from Roach’s saddlebags and presses his face to the warmth of her neck, shoring up his strength against the familiar bulk of her. It’s the first time he’s been still, and the weight of his world crashing apart weighs on him so suddenly he feels like he might be crushed to the earth. She must sense the storm inside of him because she allows him to lean his weight against her, even turning her head towards him and snuffling gently at his side. He turns to face her and runs one hand gently over the velvet of her nose, bringing his other arm up to scrub angrily at the tears that refuse to stop.
“He doesn’t want me, girl.” He’s trying out the words by confessing them to Roach, and they stab as deeply as he expected they would. He repeats it. He needs this pain. He needs this pain to walk away when he wants so badly to stay. “He doesn’t want me.”
Roach moves to follow him when he departs, his bag slung over his shoulder. She expects him to lead her back to Geralt, clearly. He stops her and makes sure her tether is tied tightly. She nickers at him in confusion when he leaves without her, and his hand shoots up to his mouth to catch the sob that wants to escape. He toys briefly with the idea of stealing her as a parting fuck you to Geralt but dismisses it. Geralt’s angry enough. Jaskier has made him angry enough, apparently.
He simmers on this thought as he walks, turning it over and over in his mind until the sorrow has been smoothed away, leaving only a core of hurt that he can refinish with anger. It will be so much easier to carry this grief if he can cover it with rage.
By the time he makes it to the next town, he’s managed it. He’s ready to hiss and spit like a wet cat when he passes over coin to secure a room for the night. The impotent anger simmering in his eyes is enough that he barely has to negotiate, the innkeep recognizing someone spoiling for a fight. He orders food and wine sent up to his room and decides not to perform. Fuck it. He deserves a night off to get righteously drunk. It’s the least he deserves at the end of all of this.
An hour and a half into his determined drinking, he’s managed to drive himself right into the dizzy part of drunk, the room spinning and spinning. He thinks vaguely that maybe he should stop, but when he flops back, he automatically moves over in the bed to make room for a large, muscled body that will never be sharing a bed with him again and decides he’d better have another half a bottle for good measure. He fades into unconsciousness more than he falls asleep, and he thinks with a vindictive little curl of pleasure that Geralt would be furious that he’s gotten so drunk when he’s alone in a place he’s never been before. Fuck him is the last thought Jaskier has before he finally passes out into blissful blackness.
He wakes the next morning more hungover than he’s ever been in his life and gets a pathetic little “Ger-” out before he remembers. There is no witcher to grumble disapprovingly while handing him water and a potion for his headache. There will never be one again.
The thought makes Jaskier curl up tighter, pressing his face into the pillow and trying to will back the tears. If he dissolves into sobbing right now like he wants to, his head will actually split open. He can feel it. He presses the cloth against his face until he needs to move away to breathe and allows himself to indulge in more wallowing before he forces himself up.
Two hours later and three trips to the privy to bring up every bit of food he’s ever eaten, and he’s recovered enough to drain a skin of water and pick at some bread from his pack. By the evening he’s still slightly dizzy but ready enough to perform. The performance is nothing spectacular, certainly not his finest work, but it’s enough to put some coin in his pocket. The audience, recognizing him for who he is, requests “Toss a Coin.” Jaskier grits his teeth but complies if only to silence the chanting that beats against his residual headache like a drum. He’d like to change the verse to “toss a coin at your witcher” but resists. Geralt isn’t worth defiling one of Jaskier’s most famous songs with petty lyric changes. (This is the answer his anger gives him. His bruised, battered heart whispers It’s because you would still never want him hurt , but he resolutely ignores it, drowning it ruthlessly with a few mugs of ale sent his way and a nip of something that burns all the way down his throat from a generously passed flask). (His heart has only ever caused him pain, after all. His foolish, loyal heart).
He finds a woman who has set her cap at him from the start of the night to take up to his room. She’s comely and soft and wanting, but he finds himself shamefully uninterested despite his best efforts. He attempts to kiss her with some more passion to inspire something in himself, but he opens his eyes to see his hand buried in chestnut hair when he wants it to be silvery white, and the self-loathing that thought prompts is enough to cool his ardor completely. He sends the woman off with apologies, begging exhaustion and too much alcohol. To her credit, she accepts the excuses with grace and departs, but his face flames nonetheless. Jaskier the bard, incorrigible and amorous lover to all and sundry, cock-blocked by his own emotions. There’s a bawdy drinking song in there somewhere. Jaskier files it away to tease out later and flops into bed.
He tosses and turns, restless, before turning on his side and huffing out a breath. He hates this. He hates sleeping alone. He never sleeps well without the warmth of another body in bed with him. Desperate, he finally stuffs a pillow behind his back to simulate the bulk of another person and wraps his own arms around his torso, ashamed even with no witnesses as he tries to soothe himself to sleep by pretending there is someone with him, and that it’s their arms instead of his. It’s a poor facsimile of what he really wants, but it’s enough for him to drift off eventually.
He takes his leave of the town the next morning, waving off entreaties for him to stay. One too many people has asked him where the White Wolf is, and his throat is sore from swallowing around the lump that springs up each time he’s asked. I don’t fucking know, he thinks viciously, I’m not his keeper. I was just a nuisance that followed him around for decades and devoted my life to him even though he can’t stand me, apparently. He gives them meaningless words about contracts and monsters where bards shouldn’t go because the confession he gave to Roach isn’t something he’s ready to give to another person. He’s determined to hold onto his anger and so many questions about Geralt are making it slip back to sorrow. Time to leave.
Anger, true anger, is an emotion he’s unpracticed at staying in. Annoyance, sure. Playful ribbing, absolutely. Even grudges are easy enough when he only needs to pick them back up occasionally. But this cold, sharp thing in his stomach? This feeling that makes him want to grind his teeth and hit something with the intent to really do harm? It’s new.
It’s good that he’s always been a fast learner.
Three weeks on the road is enough for him to master this feeling. His rage comes to him easily now, sharpened to perfection. He uses it to dice any passing grief to shreds. Fuck Geralt , he tells himself firmly. Fuck Geralt and all witchers for good measure . He holds his peace among others, unwilling to undo the work he spent the majority of his life accomplishing, but he keeps the anger close to his heart, nurturing it steadily and resolving to avoid witchers like the plague to avoid losing his careful hold on it.
Naturally, he crosses paths with another witcher.
Because that’s just his fucking luck.
He’d heard word of a griffin at the edge of town and the witcher who had been hired to deal with it. The description he gets of the witcher is enough to tell him that it’s not Geralt, and Jaskier tries not to think about how he feels about that. There’s concern, apparently, that the witcher has been gone for so long. Some people expect the worst. Jaskier should ignore this.
He should ignore this and move on. He’s done with witchers. He’s done.
Jaskier goes looking for the witcher.
He finds him in a ditch, half-buried under the weight of a griffin. Jaskier puts his hands on his hips and huffs out a frustrated breath. He can see the blood on the witchers side where a slash of claws had managed to get beneath the edge of his chestplate. Cursing himself for a soft-hearted fool, he picks his way down the side of the ditch and manages to tug the witcher free. The witcher rouses at the movement and automatically tries to shove Jaskier away. It’s a hard angle for him to get much leverage, however, and Jaskier just growls “Do not ” and continues tugging until the witcher is free.
He takes a quick break, sweating slightly. This witcher is slightly smaller than Geralt, but he’s still fucking heavy. Jaskier has the vindictive thought that witchers must be heavy just to be contrary. Harder to help them that way. Having regained his breath, he heaves the witcher up. The other man stumbles immediately upon getting upright, almost sending Jaskier sprawling. He grunts and gets his feet more firmly under him.
“Can do…myself” the witcher slurs.
“Oh, can you?” Jaskier bites out, rolling his eyes. Why is he doing this? What happened to his resolve about not getting involved? This witcher doesn’t even want him here. “Because the lying insensate under a griffin doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of confidence.” The witcher staggers and the movement makes his medallion swing slightly. Jaskier catches the familiar etching of a wolf. Of course. Of fucking course he found another Wolf. His life is one big fucking joke.
The witcher maintains his slurred protests, and Jaskier maintains his biting rebuttals all the way back to the road. Blessedly, a farmer is making his way into town, and Jaskier manages to gain them a ride in his cart.
The farmer drops them off right at the inn, and Jaskier thanks him profusely before leveraging the witcher to his feet to haul him inside. Blood has soaked the side of the witcher’s armor, making it slick and hard to get a hold on. Jaskier wraps both arms around him and makes his halting way upstairs, cursing himself as a fool with every step. He broke his resolve of avoiding witchers and now his outfit is ruined with all of this blood. Perfect. Fucking perfect.
They finally make it back to Jaskier’s room, and he lowers the witcher to his bed.
“Stay,” he orders tersely, and darts out of the room. He knows from gossip earlier that the witcher had been staying here. A passing maid gives him directions to his room, apparently cowed by the amount of blood on him and the slight mania in his eyes. He resigns himself to picking the lock before she hands him a master key with a slightly trembling hand and makes her escape.
Jaskier enters the room like a hurricane, slinging bags over his shoulder and making his way back to his room. The witcher has not moved in his absence. The man tries to stop him when Jaskier begins unstrapping the armor around his chest. The witcher attempts to push him away with a hand that Jaskier slaps like a naughty child’s. The witcher jerks with surprise.
“I have to get the armor off to stop the bleeding.” Jaskier tells him, deftly removing the rest. He’s helped remove enough armor that it’s second nature at this point. Job done, he moves the pieces out of the way and goes in search of supplies once the wound is visible. It’s a nasty gash, wrapping around the witcher’s torso in two lines. With the pressure of the armor off, the wounds begin bleeding even more. He starts rifling through the witcher’s bags with increasing carelessness for his belongings as he fails to turn up any bandages to apply pressure with.
“Where are your bandages?” He asks finally. The witcher looks at him with glassy eyes. “Your bandages,” Jaskier repeats, “where are they?”
“Ran out,” the witcher tells him. “Bad contract last week. Haven’t…got more.”
“Of course you don’t have any fucking bandages,” Jaskier says waspishly, mostly to himself instead of the witcher eyeing him dizzily from the bed. “Of fucking course. ‘Oh, I’m a big bad fucking witcher,’” he doesn’t think about who he’s imitating when he does a deep, gravelly impression, “‘I don’t need human things like bandages . I’m so fucking tough.’” He tosses his hands up with frustration and ignores how the witcher flinches instinctively at the movement, stomping over to his own bags and digging out bandages because he at least knows how to travel properly.
He finds the rolls of cloth and stomps back over to the bed.
Lambert, for his part, thinks he might be dying.
It’s possible he’s already dead, but he’d hope at least death wouldn’t have this much pain.
In either case, he must be out of his fucking head because there is no other explanation for this human fussing over him with the angriest caretaking Lambert’s ever been subjected to. The man instructs Lambert to keep pressure on the wound with brusque authority, and he obeys, more than slightly meek in the face of this stranger he can’t get a read on. The man turns to Lambert’s bags and begins rifling through them again. Lambert makes a noise of protest at someone going through his belongings but is stopped by the force of the blue eyes that turn on him to glare him into quiet compliance. Lambert swallows and obeys the silent order to stay put. He soothes his pride by saying it’s just so he won’t make the damage worse. It’s not that the force of disapproval in that look would make even Vesemir nod with respect. It’s not .
The human finally finds what he’s looking for, still grumbling under his breath about witchers and their fucking inability to label bottles for people who don’t have super special noses , and returns to the bedside, tipping a bottle to Lambert’s lips. He dodges automatically, batting the human’s hand away. No fucking way is he drinking anything from this stranger. No fucking way.
“Drink it,” the human growls, one hand grabbing Lambert’s face to turn his head back while the other tries again with the potion.
“Fuck off,” Lambert snarls in response, pushing the human back with enough force to send him sprawling on his ass. He notes with grudging respect that the man manages to not drop the potion. Still. “I don’t know you, and you clearly have an issue with me for some fucking reason to judge from the attitude. I’m not drinking anything from you.”
Jaskier rises to his feet again, seething. Yet another witcher thinking he knows better when he absolutely fucking does not . Jaskier makes his way back to the bed and straddles the witcher, who is apparently too shocked at the maneuver to protest. Jaskier pushes one hand down over the bandages where the pressure has dropped away and uses his knees to press the witcher’s hands down.
“I did not haul your heavy ass all the way up here for you to die. I know what the fuck I’m doing. Sniff it if you don’t believe me.” He wafts the potion at Lambert’s face, who blinks at him blankly for a moment before his mind catches up, and he gets a whiff. “Satisfied?” Jaskier asks, derisively. Lambert scowls at him and jerks his hands free, ignoring the pain from his wound with a grunt when the movement makes the bard tip forward and press harder for balance. He snatches the healing potion from his hand and lifts his head to swallow it. He only gets halfway through before he drops his head back down, too weak to hold his head up for the time it would take to finish the bottle.
Jaskier rolls his eyes slightly, but his hand is gentle when he slips it beneath Lambert’s head, helping him to sit up enough to finish the whole thing. Lambert glares at him through it but accepts the help.
“There, I drank it. Will you get the fuck off of me now?”
“Will you keep pressure on the fucking hole in your side now?” Jaskier snarks back. Lambert growls but moves a hand down to resume pressing against the now-soaked cloth, using the other to shove at the man on top of him. Jaskier, petulant and making a point, sinks down to rest all of his weight on the witcher for a moment before getting off.
“You can go now,” Lambert tells him when he’s off the bed, apparently forgetting that this is not his room. “I can handle it from here.”
“Oh, I’m so sure,” Jaskier returns, giving up on finding supplies in the witcher’s bags and snagging his own suture kit. “I’m sure your hands are totally steady right now and perfectly able to stitch.” Lambert narrows his eyes.
“I can handle it,” he repeats. The remark garners an eye roll and another muttered fucking witchers while Jaskier threads his needle. Lambert feels his temper flare hotter. “Why the fuck are you even helping me if you can’t stand witchers so much?” he spits. Jaskier glances at him briefly, and Lambert thinks he must be hallucinating more because a swirl of pain makes its way into the anger he’s smelled on the other man.
“What’s the alternative?” Jaskier says, plucking at Lambert’s hand to remove it from the wound, peeling the cloth away with a gentleness entirely at odds with the derision in his voice. “Leave you to bleed out in a ditch and go on my merry way?”
“You clearly don’t like me,” Lambert points out. “Or anyone like me. Unless fucking witchers has a different meaning I haven’t found out about yet.” He grunts when Jaskier pours a stinging liquid over the wound to clean away any debris.
“I still can’t leave you to die,” Jaskier says, almost under his breath. His tone makes Lambert frown. He sounds almost like he’s judging…himself? Lambert decides he’s lost more blood than he even realized.
“Other people would,” Lambert says, his voice gruff. It’s true. There are people who would rejoice at the death of a witcher.
“Maybe I’m not other people,” the man responds as he begins careful, even stitches, sewing the torn flesh back together. His eyes flick up briefly to Lambert’s before darting back down to his work. Lambert pants slightly against the pain, gripping the bedsheets in a fist, and his suffering apparently shifts something in the man, who pauses briefly and exhales. “I’m sorry. It’s not even you I’m mad at. It’s just easier to be mad at all of you as a blanket policy.”
Lambert frowns. “All of you”? He flinches slightly at the spark of pain when the man presses skin together on the second gash to begin sewing it up. He searches for a distraction. With the anger in his scent fading, the man’s natural smell is discernible. Lambert focuses on it as a distraction. He inhales as deeply as he can, and his brow furrows. This man smells…familiar.
Lambert’s eyes widen when it clicks. He knows this scent. He’s smelled it on his brother every winter for years.
“You’re the bard. Geralt’s bard.” The words make Jaskier’s jaw clench tight, and his response is given through gritted teeth.
“I’m not Geralt’s anything ,” he says. “Never again.”
“Since when?” Lambert says, incredulous. He knows from stilted anecdotes from Geralt that the man has traveled happily enough with his brother for years. He feels a frisson of fear, suddenly. Geralt cares for this bard. From the stories and songs, he knows the bard cares for his brother. Lambert knows this. The pain in Jaskier’s scent takes on a terrifying slant. “My brother. He’s…is he-” Lambert cuts himself off. He can’t do it. He can’t ask the question. He can’t ask if Geralt is dead. Jaskier looks up and reads the cold dread in Lambert’s face. He huffs out a breath, his eyes softening.
“Geralt’s fine.” The two words are enough to let Lambert take a full breath again. “He’s shoved his head so far up his own ass I’m not sure he’ll ever get it out again, but he’s fine. Relatively speaking.” Still riding on the high of relief, it makes Lambert huff a small laugh, careful of his injury.
“What has he done now?” He asks, curious. The pain in Jaskier’s scent swells, mingling with grief, acrid and overpowering. Lambert thinks to rescind the question, but the bard responds, his voice clearly attempting ambivalence he doesn’t quite achieve.
“He made it very plain that he’s had more than enough of my company. Apparently decades of loyalty mean fuck all when I’ve been such an imposition in his life.”
“You’re not,” Lambert says. He’s not good at comforting people, but the scent of Jaskier’s pain is enough to make him almost gag, so he needs to try his best. “Geralt can be an ass with the emotional range of a rock, but he wouldn’t have stayed with you so long if he didn’t care.” It garners a derisive snort from Jaskier as the man finishes his stitches and tugs at Lambert gently to get him up enough to wrap bandages around his torso. He lets the witcher lean against him to remain upright, and Lambert is surprised by the muscle he can feel. With all of those bright colors and puffed sleeves, the man is deceptively strong.
“It doesn’t matter now, anyway. He’s made it clear how he feels, and I’ve had enough. He wanted me gone, so I’m gone. It’s done. We’ll both be better off this way.” Lambert, guided by Jaskier, lays back down gingerly. He studies the bard while the man putters around, putting the room to rights and storing supplies away neatly.
Lambert protests when Jaskier lays his bedroll out.
“This is your room. You should have the bed.” Jaskier smiles slightly, and Lambert thinks idly that it looks much more natural on him than his earlier scowls.
“Given how much blood you just lost, you can have it. Consider it a favor.” Lambert puts up another token protest, but his eyes are already closing. Jaskier laughs. “I think you’d be more convincing at being healthy and hale if you could keep your eyes open.” Lambert hmms slightly in response, drifting off.
The next morning, Jaskier ventures downstairs to bring up breakfast for them both. Lambert sits up, already much recovered from the potion and the rest. Jaskier sits cross-legged beside him on the bed. He can’t admit it to himself yet, but even sleeping in the same room as another person meant he rested better than he has since before the mountain. He’ll be sorry to lose the company.
In a pause between bites, he asks Lambert about one of the scars on his arms and is soon shaking with laughter at Lambert’s animated tale of the time he and some of his brothers had had the bright idea to try and sneak out of Kaer Morhen one night purely for the rebellion of doing something explicitly forbidden. They hadn’t considered the slipperiness of the snow against the roof when they had crept out of the window and had all slid down to land hard on the dirt below, one after the other.
“And of course,” Lambert says, smiling both at the memory and at Jaskier’s laughter, “I landed on the one fucking boy who had grabbed a dagger before we set out. I may have kneed him in the balls, but he cut my arm open, so I think we’re even on that score.”
“How’d you get back in after?” Jaskier asks, still grinning. Lambert grimaces theatrically, which prompts another laugh out of Jaskier.
“We didn’t. We thought we’d play it off as getting up early to train, but a dozen boys scuffling in a yard after falling off of a roof makes a hell of a lot of noise. Vesemir caught us and ran us through drills from dawn to dusk for the next month. Said we were obviously not training enough if we had the energy to be stupid in the middle of the night.” Lambert rolls his eyes in a remembered sense of injustice.
“Rain isn’t much better for sneaking out,” Jaskier tells him. “I tried sneaking into the bedroom of a particularly winsome daughter of an earl once, and rose trellises are not as easy to climb as you might expect.”
“Oh I have to hear this,” Lambert says, and settles back against the headboard to listen while Jaskier launches into a grand tale of a failed attempt at a roll in the sheets that ended with him bare assed in a fountain in an attempt to lose a pack of hounds.
They trade stories back and forth for the rest of the morning before the innkeep knocks on the door, asking if they’re going to stay for another night. Lambert tests his range of motion and finds that it’s enough for him to move on. He gets antsy, staying in one place more than a couple of nights, too wary of wearing out his welcome.
“I should move on,” he tells Jaskier, disappointed suddenly that this will mean the loss of such good company. He rises from the bed, stretching and turning back to face the bard.
“Me, too. I should figure something out now that I’m not-” Jaskier cuts himself off, but Lambert can hear the rest. That sparks an idea.
“Where will you go now?” Lambert asks, trying for nonchalance and landing at barely controlled excitement. Geralt might have fucked things up with the bard, but maybe his brother’s loss will be his gain.
“Don’t know,” Jaskier responds, rolling his shoulders slightly to relieve the tension he can feel building there. He doesn’t have much in the way of plans these days now that “Follow Geralt” is so firmly off the table.
“Well,” Lambert drawls, shifting his weight from one foot to the other nervously. He wonders distantly how Geralt managed this. “If you’re willing to give witcherkind another shot…how would you like to travel with me?”
Jaskier looks at him with an expression that Lambert can’t read, and it makes him nervous. The bard studies him for a moment. Jaskier tests the anticipation that swells in him at the question, the relief at the idea of another companion. He still feels the trepidation of being left again, but well…at the end of the day, he’s an optimist. And it’s a relief, the idea of shucking off resentment like the ill-fitting garment it is.
“I’d love to.”