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hello-galad · 15 days

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No one asked for this but here i am shoving my Cid age-related headcanons down y’all’s throat.

This all started because I saw @renegadeem ‘s comment on a post about Valenwind and Cid’s age and the Curious Case of Square Enix Not Giving Us Characters That Are Canonically Over 40 (then you take a look at some of them and you know in your heart they are 62, twice divorced and currently screaming at some kids to get off their lawn).

Alright, buckle up. I’m about to monologue, ladies, gents, non-binary peeps and everybody else in between:

Note: Have in mind I headcanon Shera to be two years younger than Cid and to have also been part of the Shinra Youth Science Program but at different years. Note note: this might change in the future because I’m like a sponge and i absorb hcs.

At 16 years-old Cid Highwind Gets into the Shinra Youth Science Program at Midgar.

I’m sure Shinra has programs like these to catch brilliant minds that help them build their empires (labor force that already know how to do the job you want them to) like most transnational companies do in our world.

There, all students must take military training, they even share some classes with the Cadets for SOLDIER.

On a side note, given his stats in the game and his weapon of choice I say he comes from a family of dragoons and Heidegger takes an interest in him but Cid is focused on becoming an engineer and that is more useful to Shinra.

There is a fic i really love that sorta touches the topic of Cid’s family as dragoons by one of my favorite authors Vinvalen right here (Valenwind: Crusader rain) .

At 20 years-old Cid graduates top of his class as Mechanical engineer. He starts working on building aircraft and flight hardware for Shinra as he starts his career to become an Aerospace Engineer.

At 24 years-old he graduates top of his class as Aerospace Engineer at Shinra.

At 26 years-old Cid gets his pilot’s license with more than 500 hours of flight. Starts the prototype for what he started calling THE SHINRA I. He would later develop the blueprints further to build what will be THE HIGHWIND.

At 28 years of age Cid and Shera present the initiative for the Space Program to Shinra with the initial project and blueprints for a rocket and satellite. The Satellite should have been deployed first and left to circle around The Planet in the upper orbit a year before the rocket launch.

Shinra approves of the project eight months later and Cid Highwind becomes Chief Engineer of it with Shera as his second in command. The base is settled in a small town outside Midgard that will later be known as Rocket Town.

At 32 years old, Shera (30) and Cid get married. They never really dated, but they spent so much time together that they both decided “why not?”.

Evidently, everything goes downhill from there because tHAT IS NOT HOW HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS ARE BUILT.

When Cid is 33 years old the first satellite gets deployed earlier, the mission is a complete success and Shinra has plans to put a couple more in orbit except instead of using them for research, Scarlet and Heidegger wish to weaponize them with Mako Canons. Cid is against this at first but understands that he can’t really say no to Shinra when they are the ones funding the Space Program.

Him and Shera don’t really talk to each other outside of work. They are more roommates than a couple to this point.

When Cid is 36 years old Shera almost dies and Cid stops the launch to save her.

Cid is downgraded from Chief engineer and one year later, Shinra cancels the Space Program taking away every single blueprint and infrastructure project Cid ever created when working for Shinra and they basically try to alienate him when Cid tries to fight back. Shera keeps working for them in charge of space communications. Cid is devastated.

As a side project, Cid starts the blueprint and building of the BRONCO I (Later known as the Tiny Bronco. Later known as a) the plane Cloud almost broke and b) The “ARE WE SERIOUSLY USING MY FUCKIN PLANE AS A BOAT DAMMIT FINE WHATEVER IT TAKES TO FUCK SHINRA OVER”).

When Cid is 37 years old, him and Shera get divorced, the divorce documentation was initiated by Shera. Despite the fact that they haven’t even slept together in the same room in literal years, Cid was willing to live unhappily for her sake. She decides to stop that, but her mental health is still not the best and she has developed an attachment to him so she stays in Rocket Town “Taking care of him” as Cid goes in what Shera is afraid is a sort of self-destruction path.

Cid works on personal projects and fixing and building things for other people. Shinra sends a Turk sometimes to spy on what he’s doing to make sure that whatever he’s building isn’t something that goes against Shinra. After all, they know he’s capable of building a ship with the right tools and Cid is quite crafty.

At 38 years old Cid is angry at Shinra, Shera, the planet, everyone really, and specially himself. He loathes Rocket Town but can’t bring himself to actually leave. He thinks he has to deal with what he thinks was the failure of his lifetime (“To atone for his sins” in a way *cough cough*). He starts flying people around and killing the Mako infected beasts that attack Rocket Town occasionally. He’s kept himself in shape all this time because habits are hard to break and he’s mildly paranoid of Turks (with good reason) and other shit he knows Shinra has been developing.

In the spring of the year he will reach 40 years of age he meets a group of eco-terrorist weirdos that seem to travel with the daughter of Ilfana, a scientist he once had the hots for back at Shinra.

Said group is made of a rogue traumatized SOLDIER, a girl who could kick his ass with her fists, Ilfana’s daughter who is actually a part of a now extinct ancient human race, what appears to be a talking lion, a robot cat that rides a mog, a teenage ninja girl that gets a kick out of calling him old, a mother hen in the shape of a very ripped man with a gun for an arm and a gunslinger vampire.

Then Cid Highwind goes to space, Vincent is next to him on the Rocket, Shera is Chief Mission Control working along with his old team who also decided to say “fuck you” to Shinra and have taken over a building. This is the start of a new chapter for him, finally.

By this point Cid had been telling himself he is not in love with Vincent for almost a year, you know, like a liar. He has never loved anyone like he loves Vincent. He used to love Shera, of course, but not like this. He still cares for her, but when he married Shera they were both 30 and it seemed like the right next thing they had to do. He never bothered to learn about Shera’s favorite books outside the ones related to their work or which desserts would make her close her eyes in delight. They would fuck when they were horny and sleep on the same bed but never did Cid whispered bad poetry against her collarbone and slept better when he could feel her hair against his shoulder.

When Sephiroth is defeated, Meteor is stopped by Holy and everyone goes home for a while to rest, him and Vincent talk and Vincent knows that he wants to stay with Cid but he is still so scared. Years of torture and trauma are slow to heal, sometimes they don’t heal ever, and Cid is okay with that. Whatever Vincent needs, Cid will give him. Vincent loves Cid so much he is willing to try.

Shera and Cid talk and she stays at the house for one more year before she finally decides to go over everything that happened and starts living her own life for herself.

When Cid is 41 years of age, him and Shera create HIGHWIND Corp as co-owners with Shera as CEO and Cid as Chief engineer. They work alongside the WRO to rebuilt the planet using sustainable energy and building sustainable hardware and software. Cid knows Shinra is involved, with Rufus re-building Shinra with an eco-perspective now. This time though, HIGHWIND Corp is negotiating through the WRO and Cid and Shera are not afraid to say “fuck you, no”.

Vincent comes and goes from Rocket Town. Cid buys some land almost in the middle of nowhere and stablishes his house, hangar and workshop there, Vincent follows. He has his own room at the house even if Cid and him sleep in the same bed most of the time and Vincent spends a lot of time perched somewhere on a crate looming over Cid at the workshop, usually reading and listening to Cid work.

Yuffie is also a common guest and she has her own room there as well.

Vincent receives a call from Reeve, there’s been a couple of disappearances and an organization that calls itself “the underground” seem to be responsible. Cid flies Vincent around on his mission to destroy the underground and happily blows some shit up.

After literal decades, Vincent finally faces the fact that he was a victim, that Lucretia was just as guilty as Hojo. He discovers what happened to Grimoire, visits his mother’s grave and is finally on the path to believing that he was not responsible for the awful things done to him.

Turns out that Vincent’s past demons are worst than his actual very real demons. He gets into common ground with them and they recognize him not only as their host but as their link to the Planet and are willing to fight for him.

Chaos decides to go against their nature as a demigod of death and destruction and they defeat Omega.

Chaos doesn’t go back to the planet, he stays with Vincent, although their relationship changes from “I was trapped inside in this vessel against my will and I’m angry” to “you are my host and we take care of the host, thank you for being our link to The Planet”.

The others agree. Vincent receives them not because he has to, but because he wants to.

[Vincent goes to Lucretia’s cave after that and he tells her about what he found in her and Hojo’s archives, tells her that he’s sorry he couldn’t protect her and that he knows and remembers what she did to him. For the first time he is not seeing her as perfect, just as she was: a scientist who wanted results, a human who was moved by the power of knowledge, imperfect, responsible for some of the scars on his body and his mind. She was not responsible for the perfect imagine of her he made up in his head. For his own unresolved trauma that lead him to believe he had to love her and she could have loved him.

Vincent tells her that Grimoire’s death was not her fault. He tells her what he knows now of Chaos, how they are more than just a creature, more than just rare materia.

Then, Vincent tells Lucretia about Cid. About how he loves him and the way he loudly snores. About how Cid loves going star-watching. About how he’s been painting, The Planet and Vincent being his favorite subjects.

Vincent tells her about how he was so scared of falling in love again but then in those moments after defeating Omega and realizing he might die for real this time, he was more scared of Cid not knowing he loved him.

He tells her about how, when he fell to the ground, Chaos in distress inside of him, Vincent too tired, too many bones broken and internal bleeding to move, the realization that he was not healing settling in; he thought about his life, about his parents and Veld, about his new friends and Aerith, who he knew was watching over them from the livestream, about the letter Tifa would carry with her everywhere, the beautiful strokes of Aerith’s handwriting unmistakeable, even when a couple of years ago, tears had soaked the paper. About Cloud crying every night after he managed to remember who he was before he was experimented on by Hojo, about him carefully cradling the dog tags Tseng gave him after Meteor was gone, the same name on them that Cloud used to whisper on those long nights when he thought everyone in the party was already asleep: “Zack”.

He thought about Sephiroth believing Jenova was his mother instead of knowing of Lucretia, of having his own father treat him like an experiment. He thought of that young SOLDIER, Genesis, half broken and willing to sleep forever, just like Vincent once did, until he was reminded there’s more to live for.

He thought of Marlene and a distressed Barret wondering if his daughter was still alive, of Nanaki, still young and a guardian now. He thought of Shera and her husband and how their daughter liked frogs and helping Uncle Cid build rockets made of cardboard.

Thought of her, Lucretia, and how Vincent’s love for her sprouted out of a promise to Grimoire to keep her safe before he disappeared mixed with the guilt that he couldn’t keep his promise. Thought of dumbapple pie from the dumbapple tree that randomly started growing in Cid’s land, about spring and Cid and Vincent building their garden.

He thought about home.

Finally in what would become the moment Vincent begins to let go he thanks her, forgives her. Then, the Planet finally lets Lucretia go, the cristal she was trapped in atoning for her own sins breaks and she finally joins the Lifestream. ]

When Cid turns 43 years old, AVALANCHE celebrates at the Seventh Heaven, there are old and new faces alike, almost all of them familiar. Shera and her husband and kid are there along with an older man with a scar on his face that Vincent calls “partner”. The Turks had the nerve to turn up but Cid stops giving them the evil eye when Tseng walks straight to Vincent’s “Partner”, eyes red and upper lip trembling and hugs him. All this in seconds before the Turk is back to his serene almost stoic face.

Rufus Shinra sends a present with them, of fucking course. Reeve takes it from Cid’s hands before he rips it apart. Funnily enough, its a bottle of his favorite whiskey and an actual damn letter reading “My gift to you is not having to see my face for the whole day, you are welcome. No, the whiskey is not poisoned. Stop being so paranoid Captain Highwind” in it. “Yah, I’ll stop being paranoid of damn Shinra when that fuckin’ brat stops wearin’ suits with more belts than the ones that’re supposed to keep yer pants up and yer gun in place, dammit!”

When Cid is 50 years of age, him and Vincent attend Yuffie’s wedding (they are like her parents. She didnt imprint on them, they imprinted on her. Vincent still calls her to reminds her to eat enough vegetables every week even when she’s over 30, Cid still calls her ‘mah kid’).

Vincent wears a suit, Cerberus rests in its holster on his right thigh and if he appears behind Cid with an actual shovel, eyes glowing Mako red and Chaos golden as Cid’s having a “friendly talk” with the groom…thats between him, Cid and the poor bastard. Cid wears his Captain uniform. Both look hot as hell. Both rail each other after the reception. Life is good.

(Check out @mamoru-chiba-ua ‘s art for the reference of Cid and Vincent at Yuffie’s wedding)

#ages might change since now I’m thinking about making Cid older out of both spite and because i can #I’m sorry if I’m making any mistakes with the official timeline for ffvii but rebirth shook everything up and i dig it.#headcanons #excuse me if i missed something or something was already stablished as canon.#truth is i haven’t played all versions and I’m new in the ffvii fandom :)#if only i could write the fics i have in my wips as fast as this #just rambling and putting my ideas in order ahaaaa #valenwind #cid highwind #vincent valentine #with a sprinkle of #zakkura #and #aerti #aerith x tifa #ffvii #ff7 #my hcs

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jaskiercommabard · 9 months

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Hey! It's moonykins from AO3! You asked for a prompt so here's one: Jaskier getting hurt on a hunt he was perhaps not supposed to be on and Geralt feeling guilty because Jaskier could have died. Geralt can take care of Jaskier and bandage him up and Jaskier probably survived because of his own dumb luck. Feelings can come out? I really suck with ideas but I wanted to give you something <3

Thank you ANGEL for this prompt, this was interesting and fun to write. Thank you also for your very thoughtful and encouraging words.

This one got away from me again, probably to no one's surprise. I hope it's alright!

Read on AO3 (4k)

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“No!”

“Yes.”

“No! You’re telling me they aren’t related to mermaids at all?”

Geralt nods sagely and knocks back the last of his ale, then hails the barkeep to refill their cups as Jaskier hides a smile. It’s a balmy spring night, late enough in the season that the hearth in the Drunken Gull remains unlit - a treat, this far north, one that has both their shirts unbuttoned - and he’s caught Geralt in the rare, talkative mood that only strikes him when he’s been paid up front for an easy contract.

“But the songs-”

“Lies.”

“The stories!” Jaskier flaps a hand above his head, gesturing vaguely to stars that - he presumes, despite being in the midst of a revelation - still hang in the sky above the roof of the tavern. “The constellation! The Seven Sirens, Geralt!”

“In Zerrikania, they call those stars the Seven Goats,” he deadpans, amusement sparking in his rolling eyes. "Goats aren't relatives of mermaids either. Write that down."

Geralt taps the songbook laid open on the table, flicks Jaskier's nose when he tries to shut the witcher’s finger in it.

“You're a menace, you know. Terrible. I thought they were just…just..” Jaskier’s hand flutters in the air again. “Ornery, flying mermaids!”

“Mm. Common misconception. Sirens aren’t sentient - not like merpeople or humans, anyway. More like…sharks. Or wasps.”

“But they look like-”

Geralt slaps his broad palm down on the bartop. “But they look like women!”

Jaskier can’t help his startled laugh, and Geralt huffs easily back at him. His mouth is twisted up at the corner, amber eyes expectant, and it’s…something. It’s something.

“Go on then, witcher, tell me. Why do they look like women?”

Jaskier leans in close like he's asking for a secret. Geralt leans in close like he's telling one.

“It’s not a mutation. It’s an adaptation,” he says. His breath smells like honey and hops and the flagon of vodka Jaskier’s goaded him into drinking.

"Brilliant," the bard says.

"Effective," the witcher concedes. "Up close, once you get them riled, they change. It’s…”

His voice drops off, eyes shuttering slightly.

“Ugly?” Jaskier provides.

“Ugly,” he confirms, but he’s still frowning. His fingers tap the bar restlessly, disturbing the beads of condensation gathered below their mugs, and Jaskier's eyes get caught on the motion.

On nights like this - nights when they’ve been laughing - something ancient always comes to settle itself heavily over Geralt. He knows better than to try and lift it.

Jaskier clears his throat, pulling them both from their separate thoughts. When he grins at Geralt, his companion hums agreeably enough in return, and it's as close to a goodnight as they'll get.

Jaskier claps him on the shoulder anyway, squeezing to pull himself up. He's just on the right edge of drunk, perilously close to giving himself a wicked hangover if he doesn't quit - that won't do, now that he has plans for the morning.

“Thank you for indulging me, my friend.”

Geralt shrugs easily, lifting his palms as Jaskier gathers up his untouched quill and empty songbook.

"On my own head be it."

So really, all things considered, it's not even Jaskier's fault that he ends up trailing Geralt to the shore the following morning, not with an invitation like that.

After no small amount of charm laid on the baker’s daughter and the stablehand's father, Jaskier finds himself with a honey-soaked bun in one hand and a crudely drawn trail map in the other. Trail might be overselling it, really - it’s little more than a footpath of tamped-down grass, with dense sagebrush and gently drooping ferns encroaching so heavily from both sides that it disappears altogether in some places. A layer of oppressive fog, so thick it hides most of the formidable Koviri mountain range in its haze, doesn’t ease the way either, but Jaskier is a coastal boy. He follows the call of seabirds and takes his time licking the honey from his fingers as he picks his way toward the ocean.

Eventually, the dense forest starts to give way to the coast and the hard-packed dirt beneath Jaskier’s boots becomes slippery with silt. Younger trees take the place of the massive ones, bending out from the soil at impossible angles where the ocean has washed it away to expose their roots. When the trail finally disappears completely, he finds himself on a high, rocky outcropping above the sea. It occurs to him that the view must be astonishing on a clear day, but as it is, the fog sits so thick above the turbulent sea that he could almost pluck it from the sky like spun sugar.

Spotting Geralt is easier than he thought it might be, even in this weather. He's built - and outfitted - to blend into the night, black armor standing out against the morning sky and greyish bark of the cypress tree he's climbed into, but that won't stop him getting a job done.

Not for the first time, Jaskier is fascinated by the stillness Geralt possesses - even as he settles into his hiding spot behind one of the larger boulders dotting the cliffside, he’s tapping out a rhythm with his fingers, chewing on the inside of his cheek, shaking hair out of his eyes. The witcher doesn’t move any more than a boulder would, doesn’t bend to the wind any more than a tree would. He simply waits, crossbow upraised, until the first siren emerges from the fog.

From where Jaskier crouches, the adaptation is indeed an effective one - to his human eyes, it looks like Geralt has shot an angel from the sky. He’s struck by the grace of it falling, leathery wings cradling her, blowing like great sails as she tumbles down into the horizon. It could almost be a song, but when she splatters on the rocky outcrop below, Jaskier loses the melody.

Several things happen at once, after that. A shriek rises from the fog, just one at first before more join in an eerie, skull-splitting chorus. Jaskier’s ears are roaring with it as Geralt starts picking them out of the sky with impossible precision. He’s thinning them out, but not enough, it can’t possibly be enough. Geralt drops from his perch and lands easily on his feet - Jaskier can almost hear the curse he lets out from where he watches the remaining sirens swarm around the clifftop, banking hard to swoop and dive at the witcher. The crossbow is thrown down in favor of a silver sword - Jaskier sucks a breath in as it slices through the air in a wide, red arc, and then he’s gone.

Geralt has disappeared in the fluttering swarm, invisible until a blast of magic explodes from the center, knocking some of them back into the air and sending a few of the others to their deaths in the churning water below. Jaskier waits. He does wait for Geralt, but the hand that had cast the sign simply crumples to the ground beside the odd angles of his fallen body.

So, objectively, it is not his fault, with Geralt unconscious in a slowly growing pool of blood at his feet, that he finds himself in the thick of a hunt he promised not to join, defending them both.

“Hand-and-a-half, my arse, Geralt.” His shoulders are screaming as he lifts the witcher’s silver sword, which certainly should be called three-or-four-hands-at-least, but he plants his feet on either side of his friend’s body and raises it anyway. He can’t swing it, really, the thing is far too heavy for him to wield with any precision, but it keeps the few remaining sirens at bay long enough for him to dig the heel of his boot into Geralt’s side. It earns him a promising groan and he takes a steadying breath. He can do this, he can keep them back until the professional is on his feet again. Ornery mermaids, he tells himself, they're just ornery mermaids.

The weight of the blade wrenches his wrists as he jabs it toward the two closest creatures, making them hiss and scream. It’s horrific, bone-jarring, hitting his head like twin daggers. The shrieks send him to his knees until he’s crouched over Geralt, the blood dripping from his own ears and nose mingling with the already gory trenches in the witcher's armor. Gritting his teeth, Jaskier lurches forward and buries the blade in the belly of the monster that had carved bloody grooves into Geralt’s chest while Jaskier had watched, horrified, too far away and too weak to stop it.

Geralt was right - they are ugly up close, ugly enough to staunch some of the guilt rolling in Jaskier’s gut, anyway. Gone are the fair faces they use to lure fishermen to their nests - those plush lips stretched thin around dripping, needle-like teeth, flowing hair gone wild and tangled like sea moss. Their talons rip into the earth, close enough that the sharp tips are stained by the widening pool of blood that surrounds them.

When the creature at the end of Geralt’s sword crumples, its sisters fall back, rising into the air with great flaps of their wings that send sand flying into Jaskier’s eyes.

“That’s right,” he shouts triumphantly, jabbing his weapon into the air. “And stay out, you ugly-”

Ah, fuck.

She rises from the fog like a shipwreck, raising herself above the cliffedge with concussive beats of her ancient wings, so impossibly large that the tattered ends of them blur into the edges of Jaskier’s vision. They’re ragged and torn in places, littered with scars so deep Jaskier can see the sunlight shining through them, yet still they keep her aloft. She’s two, maybe three times the size of the other sirens, easily. Ekhidna.

“Geralt, get up,” he shouts as the creature’s reflective, fish-like eyes settle on them. It's worse than any storm Jaskier's ever been in, the wind and water from her wingbeats tearing at them like a hurricane.

"I need you," he shouts frantically, shaking one of Geralt's armored shoulders. Fear grips him for the first time since he rushed out to help the witcher, perhaps for the first time in his very short life - that's what it feels like, anyway, as the ekhidna's tail begins to coil in the sky above them. "Come on. I can't- I can't do this, I need you."

She's flipping in the air like an acrobat, diving at them with deadly grace, and Geralt’s eyes are still closed. Jaskier twists, curls himself over the other man’s body to shelter him as best he can, his own useless fear choking him as the ekhidna's shriek grows louder, closer, until-

Until it doesn't. Until the air goes still and silent around them with a pressurized pop. Jaskier's eyes open - when had they closed? - to find Geralt already struggling to his feet, hand outstretched to hold the golden shield around them.

It bursts like a soap bubble when the beast hits it, scattering in a shower of orange-gold sparks, but it's enough to knock her back. Enough for Geralt to get his feet under him and yank his sword from Jaskier's trembling grasp.

The witcher is unrelenting, brutal, graceful as he beats her back, wielding his weapon with no more strain than it takes Jaskier to wield a quill. She swipes at him with her great claws, bares her gory teeth, and still he lunges. He has her balanced on the edge of the outcropping, ready to take flight, when he buries his sword in her chest. He pulls it back with a grunt of effort, green-black liquid spouting from the wound, and launches a boot into her gut to topple her over the precipice.

He wastes no time rounding on Jaskier, stomping back until he's looming over the bard still kneeling in the bloody dirt.

"What the fuck were you thinking?" he demands. Oh, he's furious.

"I was thinking you were bleeding out and covered in monsters, and that you needed my help!"

Geralt scoffs, teeth bared, and it hits Jaskier like a bolt.

"It would have been helpful for you to stay at the inn, like I told you to."

"If I had stayed at the inn, you would be fish food right now, not henpecking me for saving your life."

"Idiot," the witcher hisses.

"Prick," the bard bites back. They both deflate after a tense moment, the frenzy burned out of them, and Jaskier hauls himself up with Geralt's offered hand.

“Ah, very good," he says, taking a few steps back to dust off his trousers. He's shaking like a leaf in a storm and his clothing is covered in witcher blood and siren guts and gods only know what else, likely a total loss.

He must look a sight, which explains why Geralt is looking at him like he's grown a second head.

"Well done, witcher. Well done, bard-”

“Jaskier, get back from the edge.”

“I don’t know about you, but I am swearing off fish forever, in fact-”

“Jaskier.”

“-maybe women, too, for good measure. At least scary ones with needle teeth and-”

“Jaskier, get back-”

He has the length of a single heartbeat to meet Geralt’s eyes, to watch him lunge forward with his hand outstretched, before the sky tips and Jaskier is falling through it. He barely has time to register the hot slice of talons ripping through his leg or the brain-rattling pain of the ekhidna’s final shriek before they plunge into blackness together.

Jaskier knows the sea, but not this one - it’s dark, made darker still by the clouds hanging in the sky he’d fallen out of, and so impossibly cold that it sucks the air from his lungs. Those massive wings must have broken their fall enough to keep him conscious, but now he’s caught in them like a net, already half-full of seawater and sinking far too quickly. They’re not leathery, like he thought, but fishbelly-slick, making it impossible to find purchase in the ever-darkening water.

When he kicks himself free, he’s buffeted and turned by the current, unsure of which way he should be swimming to get back to the surface.

He can’t even see past the tiny bubbles already starting to escape his nose, but he knows he’s losing too much air as his lungs begin to burn. It’s all turning white at the edges by the time his chest starts to tighten, and still he pushes through the water.

Julian Pankratz came into the world with a song to sing. That's what his mother tells him, anyway, when she reminds him that she labored for a full two days just for him to greet her screaming. The servants and townsfolk had gathered behind the manor to throw flowers into the sea while she brought him into the world - buttercup and blowball, daffodil and coneflower, sprays of roses the color of noontime sun - an offering to the Goddess, a plea for her mercy.

Did he look like a flower, tumbling through the air? Was it a song?

Julian is six years old. It’s his birthday, and his father is showing him how to cast a net into the mudflats behind the manor to catch alewife and perch. The sight of the netting makes him sick, all bloated with wriggling silver skin and dotted with eyes that bulge out into nothing. He spends the rest of the afternoon alone, hunting seashells, lining them up on the shore until the sun spreads like fire on the horizon. He dips his ears below the water when his mother calls him in, letting it swallow his name. Julian, Julian -

“Jaskier!”

Someone is shaking him, slapping his face. A great weight meets his chest, socking him like a sledgehammer - it might steal the breath from him, if he had any.

He’s twelve, all knocking knees and long-limbed shyness, showing the porter’s son how to coax little crabs out from the tidepools. Their clay-stained knuckles brush in the silty water and his face grows hot, hotter still when Janus hooks their little fingers together. Julian runs, then - runs until his lungs feel as though they’ll burst. He doesn’t play with the servants’ children again after that.

He’s retching, the salt-bitter water burning his throat as it comes up. There’s no room for air, no time to breathe before more spouts forth from his mouth and nose. He’s twisted onto his side, fingers clawing through the sand like bloody talons.

Eighteen, and he holds Julian beneath the waves until Jaskier emerges. The world is stretched out before him and he’s hungry for it, starving, holding it in his teeth like a first breath. Posada is as far inland as he's ever been, far enough that his clothes have just stopped smelling of brine. He crests and falls like a wave that afternoon, crashing against his own heart, dissolving into foam and rising again. Three words or less.

The first breath hits him like fire, colliding sharply with the water still left in his lungs, but it comes. He takes another, chokes up more foam, and then he must be back in the water because he’s rocking, rocking. There’s a shh-shh in his ear, like the inside of a seashell, a secret thing. It’s warm against his temple, his forehead, his eyelids.

Twenty. Drowning in Rinde. Heat, salt, copper, bubbling up in his throat, stealing all the spaces air should be. Geralt is holding him, until he isn’t - until he’s holding her. Hope washes out like a tide.

Consciousness returns to Jaskier in fits and starts - the crackle of a fire and the distant, scratchy hum of early cicadas comes first, then the cool breeze ruffling the dry hair across his forehead. Everything else is warm, soft enough at the edges to let him float just below the surface of awareness for a while, just beyond the grasp of pain.

When he does manage to drag his eyes open, they settle on a familiar shape - Geralt, outlined by the glow of a fire, folded into a meditative stance beside the bed. His chest is bare, starkly pale against the gashes that are already healing - not quite closed, but already turning a healthy pink at the edges.

His hands are closed around one of Jaskier’s, rough and warm. Something about that is peculiar, but it slips from his mind, silverfish-quick.

He turns instinctively into that warmth but doesn’t have a chance to examine it further before his body ignites in pain. It feels as though he’s been wrenched apart and put back at odd angles, his insides not quite where he left them. He gasps, a mistake that sets him heaving, hacking around shards of ice as the shadow beside him startles and shifts.

“Easy, Jaskier. Small breaths,” Geralt’s voice is rough in his ear as he tilts Jaskier to one side, just in time for him to retch into a waiting basin. The ringing is back in his ears, his mouth full of brine and blood, when he’s hauled back up. The room spins.

“What,” he tries to ask, but it comes out as a wordless croak.

Geralt's hand sparks weakly in the corner of his vision, and then the rough edge of a mug brushes his cracked lower lip. Hot tea, something vaguely medicinal but sticky-sweet with honey, soothes his dry mouth but scratches his throat. It’s taken away too soon when his chest spasms again, forcing what little air he has out in burning gasps until his vision starts to blur.

He's gulping, hiccuping, his body crying out for air, but there seems to be no room for it.

He registers, distantly, the bed dipping under Geralt’s weight as his fingers are gently unwound from where Jaskier is clawing into his arms, and then their hands are tangled together.

One hand pressed flat to Geralt’s chest, the other against his own, their discordant heartbeats keep time beneath his palms as Geralt takes slow, shallow breaths. Jaskier matches them in time, regaining some control.

“What happened?” he rasps.

“What do you remember?” Geralt asks in return. His eyes are shadowed, searching Jaskier’s face in the dim light as he wades through his muddled memory. Images bubble to the surface, disjointed, curling in his stomach like he’s falling again.

“The water, and- oh, ow, fuck- my leg.”

Geralt winces, nods as Jaskier reaches down to clutch at his thigh above the neatly bandaged wound that had, until now, escaped his awareness. The movement tugs at the other set of bandages, snug around his ribs. When he looks at Geralt for an answer, his golden eyes flick away, pupils narrowing as he stares into the fire. It looks like a door closing.

“You weren’t breathing.”

Of course. Jaskier had seen it once at Oxenfurt - a ghastly demonstration on a corpse, no match for the brutal reality of it that had come years later when they spent a season in Skellige. Jaskier had been held back with some difficulty, thinking one of the villagers was beating a man who had washed up along the shore to death. The sick snap of a rib cracks in his memory.

"Broken, then." It's not a question - not a hopeful one, anyway, but Geralt shakes his head.

"No, but badly bruised." His voice cracks like it chokes him, like it's weighing him down, and Jaskier can’t bear it.

"Ah, good news. We'll be back on the Path in no time, then-"

"You will stay here and rest," Geralt interrupts.

"Geralt, enough." Jaskier swats the witcher's hands away where they fuss at the edge of his bandages and attempts to push himself upright with trembling arms. "I am not some fragile-"

"You are fragile, Jaskier," he growls, snatching the bard's wrist in his hand to still him, grip just tight enough to make him wince. Geralt drops it like a hot brand. "You're human."

Jaskier's heart falls into his stomach. It's churning, tempestuous, stealing the breath from him. Just human, always just human. He feels small, insignificant as he drops his hands into his lap.

"Geralt, I don't-" Jaskier swallows thickly, struggling to keep hold of his shallow breath. "I don't feel well, could you-"

"What is it?"

“Could you just…yell at me in the morning?”

“I won’t yell at you in the morning.” Something peculiar dances at the edge of Geralt's voice, and Jaskier knows better than to think this is the end of it.

“What, then?”

“In the morning, we will find the healer, and then I am going to make sure this never happens again.”

A cold spike of fear, of grief, jumps into Jaskier’s throat, a fresh wave of saltwater already stinging behind his eyes as he nods his understanding.

“You’re going to leave me.”

Geralt shifts, his expression tightening in a way Jaskier is sure will hurt to remember later.

“I should.” And then, impossibly, “But I… I would not like to be without you, Jaskier.”

Jaskier stares at him, unreadable as always, before he decides to throw himself from another edge.

“I would not like to be without you, either,” he whispers, carefully metering out his precious air with each word as his foolish heart slams in his chest. Surely, Geralt can hear it. “Do you understand?”

Geralt laughs, the wretch. It’s a wet, breathless thing that he throws into the ceiling, like he’s praying to one of those gods he doesn’t believe in. The palm of one broad, warm hand slides up Jaskier’s arm, along his shoulder, against his neck, soothing the chill from his skin. Geralt tips into him slowly, slowly, until their foreheads press together.

“I do,” Geralt breathes, so close that Jaskier feels the words on his own lips. “Now, I do.”

Two fingers hook beneath his chin, tilting his face up. Geralt’s eyes have gone round and soft and fond, the agelessness slipping from them for a moment. He gathers Jaskier’s hand against his chest again and he can feel the witcher’s tempered heartbeat flipping beneath his fingertips.

Surely, Jaskier must be at the bottom of the ocean. Surely, the sweet brush of lips at the corner of his own is merely a pleasant hallucination. It's probably a crab eating his face.

"Wait, no," he squeaks. That wonderful pressure disappears immediately. "I mean, yes, I mean, Geralt!"

The witcher in question only watches him, merciless amusement arching his brow.

"I've just thrown up half of the North Sea," he says seriously. Geralt grins, unseriously, as Jaskier tugs on his wrist to get him closer anyway.

"Don't care," he mutters against Jaskier's cheek.

“You smell like a grave hag.”

"I've smelled worse, and you wanted to kiss me then, too."

"You're disgusting," Jaskier protests, tipping his face into Geralt's anyway. "And a bastard. I hate you."

"You don't," he accuses.

"I don't," Jaskier agrees, and grants Geralt his kiss, dry and chaste and sweet against his salt-chapped smile. Their noses are in the way, the angle is wrong. It’s nothing like he had imagined - and gods, he had imagined this - and nothing, nothing, has ever been more perfect.

The fog has lifted, dawn curling her golden fingers toward them through the mountain peaks in the distance by the time Jaskier wakes again. He's startled from a dream, something about flowers falling from the sky, but it floats away from him like mist when he finds Geralt’s hand settled carefully around his hip. He smells like saltwater and cypress, leather and horse - like an old home, and a new one.

“Geralt?” he asks, softly, just in case his witcher has found sleep. A gravelly hmm slips into his ear anyway. “You'll stay?”

"I won't leave you," he answers. "Go back to sleep."

“Good," Jaskier mumbles, somewhere just on the softer edge of wakefulness. "I won’t leave you either."

In this light, with the morning sun washing them in gold, with Geralt's heart beating free and steady under his open palm, it could almost be true.

#Brought to you by the writer having pneumonia #I hope you like this!! I shook your prompt and 4200 words fell out #Thank you so so much #I'm unhappy with this one but I can't poke it any more than I already have #Geralt x jaskier #geralt x jaskier fanfiction #the witcher fanfiction #geraskier #geraskier fic #I'm so bad at tagging #the witcher #geralt of Rivia #jaskier

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