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antique-traveler · 4 years

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so long we’d become the flowers

Geralt and Jaskier were camped in the woods a few hours from the nearest town. Geralt had successfully slain a kikimora, and Jaskier had insisted that they rest and take the long route to the next town. “Enjoy the serenity and the quiet,” Jaskier had said as he began to prattle on about nothing for the next two hours. Just like any of their adventures, Jaskier spent his free time while Geralt was hunting sticking his fingers in some pies, so to speak. As per usual, multiple parties were upset, and the duo had to leave town in a hurry.

Their bedrolls lay on opposite sides of the small, smoldering campfire as grey dawn began to rise out of the trees on the horizon. Just like every day in the past nineteen years, Geralt was the first to wake. He groaned as he sat up, back to the campfire and to Jaskier. He dug his palms into his eye sockets as he turned around to face his bard and rekindle the fire.

Something was wrong. Either Jaskier had grown three feet wider in the night, or something (or someone) had joined him under that blanket. Geralt was fed up with his foolishness (however endearing it was), and tore the wool blanket off of him.

Apparently neither of his predictions were entirely right. Jaskier lay on his side, his ears now pointed and elongated, his body curled into a crescent moon shape, with massive, dark brown, feathered wings sprouting from his shoulder blades, having torn holes in his blouse. Geralt stepped back in shock. He picked up his silver sword from the ground beside his own bedroll as he nearly shouted “Jaskier!”

The bard grumbled and propped himself up on an elbow, rubbing his eyes as he squinted at Geralt. His eyes widened when he saw the tip of a very long, very sharp sword pointed directly at him.

“Woah, Geralt! Don’t you think it’s a little early for this?”

“Fucking get up.”

“I- I don’t understand what’s going on…”

“I said get up!”

“Okay, okay, I’m coming! Hold your horses.” He began to roll onto the balls of his feet before immediately falling back, his centre of gravity having obviously been meddled with, and crying out in pain as he squashed his wings. He looked over his shoulder before screaming and scrambling to his feet. “What the fuck? Geralt, Geralt, get it off of me! What is this, a fucking drowner?” He spun in frantic circles around himself, trying to get a nonexistent foe off of his back.

“Jaskier, shut the fuck up and look.” Geralt clenched his jaw and squeezed his fingers around the hilt of his sword.

Jaskier spun around a few more times before peeking over his shoulder to finally greet what had been done to him. He slowly raised his hands to his agape mouth as his eyes widened and his eyebrows floated into his hairline. He stumbled back a bit, shock clearly settling in. After a moment, he knit his brow and the wings unfurled and unfolded into what must have been at least an eight-foot span. He lowered his hands and whispered, “Geralt, what happened to me?”

Geralt’s expression softened, along with his grip on his sword. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I- I- I-” He simply stood and stared at his wings, slowly folding and unfolding them one at a time.

“Are you in pain?” Geralt relaxed his fingers and let his sword drop to the soil below with a gentle thup.

“I… no…” Jaskier finally tore his gaze away from his wings and stared straight at Geralt, eyes filled with fear and a need for something that Geralt couldn’t quite divine. It was in moments like this, moments where Jaskier completely let down all of his well-built walls and just asked for help, that Geralt was reminded of what he so often tried to forget. At a passing glance, one would think that Jaskier never held anything back, was an open book. But Geralt had learned that, while Jaskier was honest and vulnerable, he was also incredibly guarded, and was well-practiced in dancing around uncomfortable questions or conversations. And then all of a sudden, he’d be staring at Geralt like this, blue eyes each holding a sky of their own within the lens, willing to bare all his secrets to the world -to Geralt- at the drop of a hat.

Jaskier carefully folded his wings behind his back, “It feels as if I’ve had them my whole life, really.”

Geralt scrubbed a hand across his stubble, thinking. “Did you make anyone particularly angry recently?” Jaskier put his hands on his hips and raised a brow. Geralt sighed, “Are you- are you missing anything?” At that, Jaskier’s face grew solemn as he brought a hand up to his collarbone, grasping for something that wasn’t there. “Yes… yes, I had a- a medallion, my mother gave to me,” his voice shook as he became slowly more panicked, “she gave it to me before she died, I’ve never taken it off since, but it’s gone.” He gracelessly scrambled around their meager camp, looking under bedrolls and packs, obviously thrown akilter by the new weight on his back. He turned his back to Geralt and bent over, turning over stones and clothes. Geralt felt ashamed that his eyes immediately drifted toward the bard’s silk-clad arse, but soon felt grateful for their proclivity to wander when he noticed something… off about the shape of his behind, namely that it was moving.

“Jas- Jaskier.” Geralt cleared his throat and averted his eyes. “You might want to check your… arse.”

“Geralt, I hardly think this is the time for joking-” Jaskier’s eyes widened as he put a hand on his own behind and felt what Geralt was referring to. He reached below the hem of his breeches and pulled out a long brown tail, about the length of his legs and somewhat resembling that of a lion. “Holy shit.”

Jaskier dropped his tail out of his hands and let it swish around his legs a bit, staring at Geralt, asking for answers. “I’d guess there are two possible explanations here: either you’ve been cursed by some poor victim of your exploits, or that medallion was more important than you thought.”

Jaskier stared at him blankly, fully measuring the weight of Geralt’s words. “What are you saying, Geralt?”

“I’m saying that that might have been a glamour.”

Jaskier took a step towards him, eyebrows raised and wings spread. “A what?”

“A glamour. Like a… magical disguise.”

“A magical disguise for being what, a fucking bird?”

“No way to be sure for now, but we’d better find a mage to see if that’s the case.”

Jaskier stared at him in awe, mouth opening and shutting like a fish in a desert, grasping for words to describe the shock coursing through his veins.

Geralt wordlessly stamped out the fire and packed their things, keeping watch on Jaskier out of the corner of his eye. He mostly just stared at the ground, breathing deeply and purposefully. After a few minutes he found a small dagger he kept tucked within his travel pack and cut a small hole in his breeches, which he pulled his tail through with a distant, disbelieving look on his face. Geralt took note of how often he would shift his weight off of one foot and onto the other and the number of times he ran his fingers through his hair or brought a hand up to swipe across his face. He noticed the colour of the wings and tail weren’t quite the same as his hair, but a smidge lighter. He seemed to be twitching his wings the same way he often did his legs when he was nervous, just a gentle bounce or shake to let off his nervous energy, and swayed his tail to and fro. When he was finished loading their packs and bedrolls onto Roach’s saddlebags, Geralt approached Jaskier from behind, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder while he looked far into the distance.

“Are you okay, Jas?” He put quite a lot of effort into sounding gentle and comforting, though he had no real frame of reference for if it came off as genuine or not.

Jaskier quickly blinked away from wherever he was staring and flashed a false smile at Geralt. “Yeah! Tip-top.” His teeth were just a smidge sharper than they had been the night before.

“We should start on the way to the next town if we want to make it there before nightfall.”

“Right. Yes. Of course. Lead the way.” Jaskier scratched the back of his head and pretended to be relaxed, seemingly forgetting that Geralt could smell the fear radiating off of him like a roast turkey.

...

Millgrove was about half a days’ walk from their campsite, and most of it was spent in silence. Geralt tried to make Jaskier comfortable by walking alongside him instead of riding on Roach, but they had to stay further apart because of the wings, only making the situation awkward. Geralt knew Jaskier cried periodically, he could smell the tears and Jaskier made no effort to conceal his sniffles, but the only way he knew to comfort him was the occasional nudge on a wing and a concerned glance at his bard. In the last three hours of their journey, Geralt noticed small protrusions poking their way out of Jaskier’s temples, growing rapidly, though apparently not irritating Jaskier whatsoever, as he seemed to be completely unaware of them, and they shed no blood.

Geralt cleared his throat. “Um, Jaskier,” Jaskier looked at him, eyes red and puffy, ivory horns now at least four inches tall, “you…” he gestured vaguely at his own temples, causing Jaskier to mirror him and touch the horns sprouting from his head. He stopped dead in his tracks and collapsed, sobbing.

“What’s happening to me, Geralt? Why me, why now?” He fell on his knees, head in his hands, as his wings folded themselves around him. Geralt crouched down beside him and rested a hand on the small space between where his wings sprouted. His shoulders gently heaved with his shaky breaths.

“Jaskier, it’ll be alright. We’ll fix this.”

“And if we can’t?” Jaskier snapped his head up and stared straight into Geralt’s eyes, fat tears rolling down his face. Somehow, in their almost two decades of ambiguous companionship, Geralt had never found himself in this position. Despite dressing Jaskier’s wounds and aiding him in sickness countless times, Jaskier never broke down like this before. Geralt thought that the bard’s ability to hide his emotions almost rivalled his own. Almost.

Geralt weighed his words for a moment. “If it’s not something we can fix, then it must not have needed fixing in the first place.”

…

They made it to the edge of Millgrove just before dusk. Geralt instructed Jaskier to stay deep in the woods with Roach so no one saw him and acted without thinking. Millgrove was a small village, only a few cottages and one meager tavern, but Geralt was pointed to the residence of their mage with relative ease.

Enleim was an elderly half-elf living in what was easily the most run-down house in the village, but his old eyes were filled with joy and curiosity and a need to help his neighbors. Putting aside the initial shock of having his doorway darkened by a Witcher, Enleim was eager to help however he could, and was led to where Jaskier had been left in the forest just outside of town.

Enleim slowly circled Jaskier, looking him up and down as if he were a prize sow at auction. “Hmm... and you said you lost a medallion, yes?” He spoke with a thick accent, Rs rolling and words melting together like molasses.

Jaskier tried his best to stay still. “Yes, it was my mother’s. Haven’t taken it off since she died.”

Enleim was silent for a moment, finally coming face-to-face with Jaskier, and staring deeply into his eyes. “How old are you, Jaskier?”

Jaskier seemed confused. “I’m th- thirty-seven.”

He scoffed. “Now, surely you don’t believe that. Nearly forty and yet you still have the face of a babe.” Geralt and Jaskier shared confused glances. “No, I suspect you are much older. Who knows? Maybe even older than your Witcher there.”

Jaskier stepped back from the mage. “I… what are you saying?”

“Well, if my suspicions are correct,- and they usually are- then I don’t think you’re human.” Jaskier paled. “If I were a betting man, I’d say you were a Fae.”

Jaskier was silent, but Geralt spoke up, arms crossed and brows furrowed. “Fae don’t exist anymore. They’re a myth.”

“Well, perhaps they aren’t being born anymore, but they live a long time, as evidenced by your friend.”

Jaskier studied his hands, eyes sparkling with tears and confusion. “I don’t understand. I- I’m just… Jaskier.”

“I’m not denying that by any means,” Enleim crossed his arms and sighed, “but perhaps Jaskier is a different person than you previously thought.”

…

Many tears had been shed that evening, solely from Jaskier, and solely onto Geralt’s unyielding shoulder. Judging by the moon, it had to have been around midnight by the time Jaskier finally spoke something other than confused gibberish. He had stopped crying by then, instead he merely sat in silence and stared at the stars, absentmindedly feeling his tail and his feathers between his fingers.

“Before my mother died, I remember a fire. I must’ve been… three, at most, though who knows how true to reality that is. There were people screaming and running- I think they were family and neighbors- and my mother placed the medallion around my neck. It was a buttercup, encased in this… crystal. And then there were arms around her, and she was pulled away, and she was… screaming…” Jaskier stopped and sniffled. Geralt gazed at him. He figured this was an appropriate time to let down his “Witcher face”, as Jaskier so affectionately called it, and allow himself to look at his friend with pity, love even (though he would never admit to the latter). “It really all makes sense. I- I mean, I know I’m thirty-seven, I met you when I was eighteen and I’ve been with you nineteen years since, and yet, I haven’t changed, have I? Hell, I still have trouble growing a beard.” Tears still stood in his eyes, even as he joked.

There was silence for a moment, and Jaskier’s eyes fell from the stars in the heavens to the leaves and mosses at his feet. “After that I moved in with the Viscount Pankratz and his wife. And-and I know that Enleim said the glamour could affect my memory, but-but I’ve never been anything but human since! I mean, I get hungry, I bleed, I fuck, I cry, I play my lute... and now all of a sudden… I’m not anymore.”

Geralt stared at him as silence hung between them just like the planets in the sky. “Before the Trials I had parents. I’m not sure if they loved me, but I had them. They sent me off to Kaer Morhen, and I… changed. They mutated me, forced me to turn inhuman. After a few years, I returned to Rivia to hunt a bruxae, and my parents didn’t even recognize me until I said my name. They were afraid of me, said Witchers were dirty monsters. After I told them who I was, they didn’t speak to me at all.”

Jaskier leaned his head against Geralt’s shoulder, horns bumping into his head only slightly. Geralt’s massive, slow heart pounded in his chest. This was the most he’d touched anyone in… months, probaby. He indulged in the sensation of Jaskier’s soft hair against his neck and of his warm wings resting just behind them both. He allowed himself to be distracted by the comfort of it all, hardly even noticing when his hand came to rest upon Jaskier’s silk-clad thigh.

Jaskier’s head rose from his resting position and he peered at Geralt, eyes wide and mouth agape. Not a word was spoken other than Geralt’s apologetic stammers before Jaskier was crashing into him, both hands cupping his jaw as Geralt floundered. He eventually settled in, parting his lips and resting his hands on Jaskier’s waist, fingers being tickled by his feathers. Jaskier opened his mouth and Geralt accepted his invitation with reckless abandon. They took in each other’s tastes and scents, memorizing the nooks and crannies of their respective mouths until they had charted a map in each of their heads. Geralt pushed his hands up the back of Jaskier’s shirt as Jaskier knotted his hands in Geralt’s long hair.

Geralt’s heart lurched and pounded in ways it had never done before, in ways it wasn’t supposed to. With every breath Jaskier took, his stomach did a somersault and a chill ran up his spine. This. This was what had been missing for all those years.

Jaskier parted with a sigh, hands still in Geralt’s hair and on his face, staring into him with deep, almost unnaturally blue eyes. “I… I thought you wouldn’t want me because I’m- I was- human. I was too fragile, too emotional for you.”

Geralt, drunk on a day’s worth of surprises, let himself chuckle. “I thought you wouldn’t want me because I’m not human.” They rested their foreheads together (or at least, they tried to, as Jaskier’s horns got in the way of where one’s forehead would normally rest on another’s) and breathed each other in.

“What do you know? We’ve both been proven wrong.” He sucked in a breath, “In more ways than one.” They sat like that for too many moments to count, feeling each other beneath their fingertips, gently caressing hair and feathers and horns. After a while, Jaskier sat up and looked at Geralt, not moving his hands. “This morning, when you saw me like… this,” He swallowed the 'this', pushing it aside for later consideration, “were you… did you think to kill me?”

Geralt’s heart dropped. He couldn’t exactly say ‘no’, after all, Jaskier had woken up to the point of his sword in his face. But had he really planned on going so far as ending his bard’s life? “I realize that you may not have had the... best awakening, but I’ve never wanted to hurt you. To be frank, I was scared.”

Jaskier giggled, “Oh, and all because of little old me?”

…

Two days later, Enleim had crafted a new glamour for Jaskier: a small leather wristband with a single blue bead on it. Jaskier tried his best to hide his tears at returning to a body that was no longer his own, but was soon leaning on Geralt’s shoulder, staining the leather of his armour with saltwater.

After that, Jaskier would learn to live as two people: as the bard whose songs were sung and recognized throughout the Continent, and the orphan Fae, relearning what it meant to be who he was. Whenever they were in private, Jaskier would remove his glamour and relax, horns and fangs and wings and tail and all. Whenever they were in public, Geralt would plant sweet kisses into Jaskier’s hair, and Jaskier would keep a hand resting on his witcher’s waist.

Soon Jaskier remembered more about his real self and his real past. He remembered how to fly, and whenever they were far enough from a village and certain enough that no passersby were near, Geralt would let him soar into the air and stretch his wings. Geralt would marvel at how much Jaskier changed before and after flying; seeming tense and uncomfortable one moment, then free and relaxed and confident ten minutes later. Jaskier recalled more of what it meant to be a Fae, eventually remembering how to make flowers grow in his steps, and how to make the wind and weather more favourable on their journeys. Without his glamour, if he stood in one place for more than a half of an hour, a small ring of mushrooms would sprout, leaving behind remnants of a race no one remembered and of which he could be the sole survivor. He learned the language of cursed beasts, saving Geralt a lot of energy and potions by calming down any hexed wolves or foxes they happened upon. He learned how to make his songs more and more enthralling, convincing townspeople to donate more generously than they might have before. He learned how to whisper the right words in Geralt’s ear to make him drop his aloof disposition and crack a smile, perhaps even lift an eyebrow if he were feeling daring.

After decades, people were still singing the songs about a Witcher and a bard on their adventures, seemingly oblivious to their company in whatever tavern or pub they were gathered in (perhaps thanks to the flick of the wrist from a well-dressed young poet in the corner next to a brawling beast of a man that most were scared to make eye contact with).

And even after that, long after all the monsters were slain and all the damsels were rescued, long after a cottage was built by two men on the coast, people were still singing the songs, never knowing if they were history or myth.

#fic #the witcher #jaskier #creature jaskier #fae jaskier #geralt of rivia #geraskier

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