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Since he had started travelling with Geralt, Jaskier's ears had become finely tuned to any mention of a witcher; any murmur of a rumour of a hunch in any town they passed through. Before, on his father's estate, and later as he whiled away his days at Oxenfurt, he had listened curiously to the witcher tales because they made for excellent inspiration. Ness would click disbelievingly at him whenever he pointed this out to her, but she was much better at holding her tongue than him and never said a word about it.
After meeting Geralt, of course, he had little need for the old stories. A real witcher was inspiration enough; the tales he'd managed to squeeze from Geralt, while hardly detailed, were plenty to keep a bard's mind composing and his feet falling into step behind Geralt and Roach. He'd learned quickly which of the foul mutterings that followed them were utter horseshit, and which actually had some merit - not a lot, mind you, but some. But old habits were difficult to break, and after a years on the road, Jaskier still found his ears tuned to the rumours that flew in Geralt's wake.
Some of them weren't too bad - some were even true, or if not true, then so close as to appear it. That a witcher was stronger, and faster, and more skilled with a blade than a squadron of soldiers; that a witcher could see and hear a man coming from a half mile on a still, moonless night, and smell him from further than that; that a witcher would take any contract, no matter how dangerous, if offered enough coin.
Jaskier mostly left those be. Geralt's strength and reflexes far surpassed any natural human - what did he care by how much? It made for a good song, a thrilling tale by the hearthside. And he had never known Geralt to refuse a contract based on the risk to his own life; though whether that was rooted in an unshakeable confidence in his own abilities, a sense of duty, or a simple disregard for his life and limb, Jaskier wasn't yet sure.
But then there were the other stories, the ones Jaskier remembered his nanny whispering to him on dark nights in the hope that it would scare him sensible. She had sat, her daemon's head resting heavily on her lap, and told him that witchers could creep through the shadows of a house as large as theirs, right under the beds of children who wouldn't go to sleep, ready to snatch them away if they got up in the night. He had played games with the servants’ children, where they would take turns to be the witcher, roaring through the grounds because witchers were too mutated to speak any human tongue. Though his primary interest at Oxenfurt had been the study of classics - art, songs, tales, poems, languages, as many as he could get his hands on - he had still found himself seeking out the few treatises on the subject of witchers in the vast library, and though they didn’t agree on much, every book, every paper he found stated without a doubt that witchers were devoid of all human emotions and virtue.
Knowing Geralt as he did, it was all laughable. True enough, the man was hardly verbose - he spoke infrequently with clipped words and eloquent glares, except to Roach and sometimes now Jaskier and Ness when he felt particularly companionable. And yes, he certainly could creep through the shadows of a house, but he had a soft spot for children that frankly astounded Jaskier, who had always thought them a nice enough concept as long as they didn’t have to come within ten feet of him.
And as for the idea that witchers - that Geralt had no emotions, well. Anyone who spent more than ten consecutive minutes with the man found themselves, if nothing else, subject to his appallingly dry sense of humour, and often an irritable frown or two. Anyone who spent more than ten consecutive hours with him could see that he felt as deep and as true as any so-called natural human, no matter how well he concealed it.
All of these things, though, all of these stories and rumours and gossip, Jaskier felt he needed to know about. It made it easy, as he composed, to slip in a line about the tender way Geralt had carried a pair of siblings too exhausted to walk after a night of hiding in the woods from a supposed barghest back to their parents. To casually mention his startled laughter at one of Jaskier’s tales of youthful indiscretion, or throw in a bawdy wink as he sung about disappointment on the faces of young women that tried to entreat Geralt to stay an evening longer. He never sang about Geralt's refusal to take coin from the poorest of families that had scraped and saved for months on end to take out a contract with a Witcher, or the extra help he was willing to offer free of charge, but that was mostly selfishness on his part. It wouldn't do to have people believe they could tug on the witcher's heartstrings and haggle down the price, especially now that they shared all of their earnings.
It would be slow going, he thought, to change the minds of an entire continent; but Jaskier and Ness had never been ones to shy from a challenge. Already people were far more willing to offer the chance at a contract when they arrived in a new place, and Jaskier was pleased to note that far fewer tried to run Geralt out of town without payment as soon as the job was done. It had been a long time since he had heard anyone refer to him as the Butcher of Blaviken , at least to their faces; instead everyone was all too eager to swap stories about the White Wolf of Rivia.
But there were other rumours, older and more persistent, that Jaskier hadn't been able to make a dent in.
Witchers don't have souls. Witchers are no better than beasts. How could they be civilised, intelligent, compassionate, human, when they don't even have daemons.
What was Jaskier supposed to do about that?
There was a man sat in the corner, completely alone.
At first, Jaskier's gaze had slipped over him; he had bigger concerns, of course, mainly making sure he didn't step in any puddles of something that he sincerely hoped was ale as he spun and kicked his heels. Ness perched on his shoulder, bobbing her head in time with his thumping feet and the rise and fall of his song, but she didn't add her voice to the music. Instead, she had fixed her eyes on the man in the corner, and when Jaskier finished collecting the rolls tossed haphazardly at him - payment in food was better than no payment at all, even if they were hard enough to chip a tooth - she tugged at his hair to get his attention.
When that didn't work, she bit his ear.
"Ow! Darling Ness, what, what in the world could be important enough for you to - oh!"
He was tucked well away into the nearest thing to shadows the inn had to offer, and appeared to be deliberately avoiding all eye contact and notice. But there was no mistaking the white hair, or the swords stacked so carefully beside him. And there was definitely no mistaking the fact that he was sat alone.
Completely alone. On his shoulder, a shiver passed through Ness.
The man’s eyes were closed, but the stiff way he held his shoulders was enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that he might be sleeping. Those eyes didn’t open as Jaskier pulled out the chair across from him with a screech against the wooden floors, but his mouth did twist down at the corners.
Not that Jaskier had ever been one to let a little something like that stop him.
“I love the way you just sit in the corner and brood,” he said cheerfully. Ness hopped down to the table and ruffled her feathers as the man opened his eyes. His gaze moved from Jaskier, down to Ness, and back up again.
Jaskier glanced around to check for a daemon, just in case - it was common courtesy for people and their daemons to introduce themselves together, after all, and if he was wrong and the man did have a small daemon tucked away in his patchwork leathers, or hidden somewhere under the table, this would be the time for them to make themselves known. But there was nothing - no movement, no rustle of clothing. Just a man turning his face towards the window with a curled lip as he grumbled, almost to himself,
“I’m here to drink alone.”
“Then we should leave you to it,” Ness tried to say; Jaskier spoke over her, which he knew would earn him a sharp beak to the sensitive spot beneath his ribs later. It would be worth it, he thought.
Ness must’ve agreed, or she wouldn’t have let him cut her off like that, no matter how much she liked to pretend she was above such things.
“Good, yeah, good. Y’know, no-one else hesitated to comment on the quality of our performance,” he said, and pointed a finger towards the man’s chest. The way he eyed it made Jaskier think he was perhaps lucky it hadn’t been bitten off. “Except for you! C’ mon, you don’t want to keep a man with…”
He hesitated, and gulped a little, but he’d already committed. He had to see it through even if he would have to live with Ness’ mockery for weeks to come.
“...bread in his pants waiting. You must have some review for us; three words or less.”
He sat, and leant eagerly forward. Ness cocked her head so that she could watch the man with one beady, black eye; but other than that she held her tongue. She’d always been much more discerning than him. The man heaved a breath out through his nose with an expression that suggested he wanted to snarl at them, and possibly chase them away with one of the frankly terrifying swords by his side, except that would require too much effort. Something about the sloping line of his shoulders and the deep purple smudges beneath his eyes made Jaskier think that it had been a long time since he’d managed a decent night’s rest.
“They don’t exist,” he said after a moment, meeting Jaskier’s eyes and holding them. His head tilted back and forth slightly as he spoke; like he was sizing Jaskier up from every angle. Ness pressed close to Jaskier’s arm, but he found he couldn’t break away from the hold of that stare to look at her.
“What don’t exist?” She asked boldly. The man turned his face down towards her, his eyes the last thing to move, lingering a moment longer on Jaskier's face. But he looked at her as he spoke to her, something Jaskier hadn’t expected.
“The creatures in your songs,” he said. Her feathers ruffled again, this time indignantly, and she stalked forward a couple of steps, faltering only when the man didn't twitch. Even a witcher would know better than to touch another man's daemon, Jaskier was sure, but he certainly didn't have any problem calling her bluff.
"And how would you know?" Ness asked.
The look the man shot her was blank with quiet incredulity; his jaw twitched like it was a physical effort to keep himself from telling them to fuck off and mind their own business. When he moved to upend his coin purse - and Jaskier scrunched his nose sympathetically when a single ducat rolled along the table - his every motion was slow, smooth, and clearly projected to give Ness enough time to hop back into the cradle of Jaskier's arms. The man sat back warily, and drained the last of his tankard; in front of him, the empty plate looked pathetically small for a child, never mind a full grown man.
Never mind a witcher.
"Oh, fun," Jaskier enthused, made bold by the lack of response. "Let's see; white hair, big old loner -" he didn't think he imagined the flash of a scowl that crossed his face at that "- two very, very scary looking swords. You're the witcher, Geralt of Rivia, aren't you?"
He found himself calling after Geralt - and really, it couldn't be anyone else - as he swept past. Again, the unsettled feeling curled through his gut at the sight of man without a daemon padding by his side, or curled over his shoulders, or fluttering around his head, or, or -
Ness was quick to distract him with chiding claws in the meat of his shoulder where she settled. Jaskier threw himself to his feet to follow the witcher, shouting a bright called it! as he disappeared from view.
They'd always travelled light, him and Ness, but recently even lighter after an unfortunate run in on the road to Posada. It was lucky that they were barely a day's walk from the town at the time - that had been nearly a week ago, and they had quickly fallen out of favour with the locals, which left Jaskier in a difficult position of desperately needing to leave town, but having neither the coin nor provisions necessary to do so. Geralt may not have had coin before, but he did have a lifetime of tales, and now a hundred and fifty ducat. Jaskier hoisted his lute over his back and scurried after Geralt, Ness clinging to the strap by her claws.
By the time he’d settled up with the innkeeper, offering up the last of his coin in exchange for the room they’d been staying in, the witcher had already disappeared onto one of the mountain trails towards Dol Blathanna. Ness flapped anxiously around his head, lifting as high as she could before they both started to feel the warning tug that she was too far from him. But she could see the road Geralt had chosen, and Jaskier found himself jogging after him in the ungodly heat and cursing the fact that the path was so steep for the first half mile.
“Come on, come on!” Ness called, hovering as the very limit of their separation as he bent double over his knees, panting. She swooped down to pull at his hair, his ear, his collar, and he flapped a hand at her, too tired already to be truly irritable.
“Come on yourself, Ongalness,” he muttered, but straightened himself up and carried on up the road.
By the time he caught up to the witcher, he had recovered enough to hold a conversation without wheezing at least, though it was still cut short by a fist to his gut. Ness squawked in sympathetic pain; the witcher's eyes flicked to her, and something that Jaskier might have labelled remorse were he a more generous man passed across his features. But then, Jaskier was most likely wrong, as Geralt turned his back on them with a muttered word to his horse, and carried on up the path.
From a young age, Jaskier had been completely incapable of quitting while he was ahead. As soon as his wind returned to him, he was up again and after Geralt.
"Reading between the lines and the gut-punches, chum," he said, announcing their presence, although if a witcher's hearing was even a fraction as good as the stories said, Geralt would have heard him coming the moment he stood up. The witcher growled - a true growl! - in an effort to deter him from speaking further. And while Jaskier did keep a wary eye on the scabbard at his side, as well as carefully positioning himself out of easy kicking range, he didn't let it quiet him. " You have got yourself a bit of an image problem. Were we to join you on this feat to defeat the devil of Dol Blathanna, I could relieve you of that title! All of the north would be singing the tales of Geralt of Rivia, the, the - White Wolf, or something."
Geralt hardly spared him a glance. From her place perched on the horses rump, Ness shot him a cautioning look.
"Butcher is right," Geralt muttered. He didn't sound as offended by that as Jaskier might have expected, given his reaction to it before, but neither did he sound proud, or gloating as one might have expected given the tales that followed him across the continent like a foul stench.
Jaskier hummed thoughtfully up at him, before turning his attention back to Ness. She settled down even further on the saddlecloth, looking entirely too smug with her position.
"D'you mind if I hop up there with you, it's just I'm not really wearing the right sort of footwear -"
"Don't touch Roach."
He'd taken a stumbling couple of steps back even before he'd really registered what Geralt said, just from the whip-fast sound of his voice. Bizarrely, he felt stung; chastised like a child trying to lift tarts from the kitchen on a summer morning. Like the first - though certainly not the last - time he could remember his nanny shouting at him.
He had wanted to touch her daemon - because he was too young to know better, because he liked big dogs, because the fur at his ears looked silky-smooth, because Ness didn't like being a dog and he wanted to try and convince her. Nanny had given him a bollocking the likes of which was still burned vividly in his memory to this day; though to her credit, he'd never tried it again. Not that this was the same situation at all. The horse (Roach, had Geralt called her? The poor thing) wasn't a daemon, of that he was certain. For a start, Ness would have known, would have recognised her as such and found a way to tell him, preferably without making a fuss in front of the Witcher - but also, no daemon would debase themself by wearing a bridle and bit, even if they were even-tempered enough to allow a saddle and bags.
"Right, yep," he said, glaring narrow-eyed at Ness, who seemed very pleased with herself. The nerve.
That night, Jaskier struggled to sleep, beating back his racing thoughts and running soothing fingers over Ness' head. His new lute was a solid comfort at his back, and from the other side of the fire, he thought he could just about make out the soft puffs of Geralt's breath, slow and even. At least one of them could manage to get some rest, he thought bitterly. Nearby, Roach had her head buried contentedly in the small leather sack of grain that Filavandrel had given Geralt before they left, when the witcher refused a gift for himself but apparently couldn't turn down the opportunity to spoil his horse.
Jaskier knew there were certain things no audience would want to hear in a song; and, more importantly, he knew there were certain things no elf would want him to include in a song. A rousing tale of a witcher locked in battle with a horde of elves and the devil they served would suit his purposes well enough, and mask just how weakened the elves truly were - something that enterprising knights and thugs would be quick to take advantage of.
Toruviel's daemon had stayed pressed against her side, shaped first like a hunting hound that bared wicked teeth at them, and then a lizard that scurried up to her shoulders to hiss at Geralt as she hunched, wheezing on the floor of the cave. Never, in all of his time reading of the Great Cleansing, had Jaskier seen any mention that an elven daemon could continue to change long after an elf was full grown. Nor had he realised what it was he could see shimmering in the light surrounding them, until Filavandrel spat about the way chaos had changed, the way Dust had changed since the conjoining of the spheres. Toruviel's daemon shed Dust like a plant shed pollen in the spring - at the time, he hadn't allowed himself to wonder what that meant for them.
He pulled Ness a little closer, and she grumbled sleepily but offered no protest. Even the thought of seeing her like that, drifting apart, piece by miniscule piece, was enough to make him sick to his stomach. What would happen, he wondered, when there was nothing of the daemon left? Would Toruviel die too? Would they begin to recover, if they moved far from the lands tainted by humans; or was Filavandrel right, and there was something wrong for the elves within the very fabric of the world? Jaskier didn't know, and there was a part of him that hoped he'd never find out.
But still, he couldn't get the image out of his head. He had never seen Dust before - it wasn't something he had been terribly interested in studying at Oxenfurt, beyond the ways it has influenced culture and politics between the races. He knew something of it, of course - mages, druids, scientists, philosophers; people had been studying the stuff for years. Anyone with even the most basic education knew something of Dust. Anyone with even the most basic education knew that Dust couldn't be seen without extensive specialised equipment. Or magic. Something that the elves lived and breathed like air, even if it was poisoned now.
It was beautiful. It was the most terrifying thing he had ever seen, and given the day he had had, he really felt that said something.
"Go to sleep," Ness murmured, beak clacking fussily over him. Jaskier hummed and rolled on his side, catching the barest glimpse of amber eyes watching them both, before his own slid shut and he was gone.
Sometimes, Jaskier would wake before dawn, as light just started to crawl its way laboriously over the horizon, to find his daemon perched beside the witcher, deep in quiet conversation. They must have both known he was awake - Geralt from the changes in his heart and breathing, Ness because he could never fool her for an instant - but they all pretended not to. Jaskier watched them through his eyelashes, and Geralt bent his head consideringly towards Ness, his mouth curled into the edges of a smile. His voice, when she gave him the opportunity to talk, was soft, careful. Respectful, almost.
And Jaskier would smile, curl deeper into the furs Geralt always pretended he didn’t pull over Jaskier in the night (who else would it be, Geralt, Roach? ) and go back to sleep.
It took a while for his song and his stories to make it ahead of them as they travelled, despite Jaskier's best efforts. Even after a month if travel, and the rousing success of his ballads of the White Wolf in the inns where they stayed, it was still all too common to arrive in a town only to be driven out again mere hours later. It led to Jaskier spending a great deal more time sleeping on the ground in all winds and weathers than he was accustomed to - or prepared for. The first time, Geralt had turned to him with stiff shoulders and carefully said that he would meet Jaskier the next morning - the villagers did not seem to bear him any sort of grudge as a witcher's companion, and would take his coin as happily as they would any other traveller. Jaskier hadn't been quick enough to protest, still angry beyond belief - beyond words - at the utter hatred that greeted Geralt as soon as he pulled down his hood.
Except that wasn't it. He'd known the way the majority of the population viewed witchers, it wasn't any sort of surprise; what had really thrown him was the resignation on Geralt's face. The way he hadn't argued, hadn't pleaded his case, or even seemed frustrated. The way his mouth twisted - just barely, but enough for Jaskier, who had made a game of studying the minute expressions the Witcher didn't seem able to control. As though he hadn't expected any better. He'd turned and left, Roach at his heels, before Jaskier had time to do more than gape at him. Ness tugged at his ear from her spot on his shoulder, and Jaskier had been too stunned to even protest.
Around Geralt, the crowd peeled back, shoving at one another to put as much distance between themselves and the witcher as possible - Jaskier watched in horror as they clutched their daemons close, pushed them back, tried to form a solid barrier. It was an old superstition; that witchers would steal a human's daemon to attempt to force the connection that they had lacked for so long, or that they might demand a daemon as payment if they weren't offered enough coin for a contract to feed their immortality. None of the old wives' tales could ever seen to agree exactly what a witcher would want with someone else's daemon, or even how they would manage to successfully take them, and Jaskier had never met anyone that believed such things anymore.
"Breathe, Julian," Ness muttered.
"I am breathing, Ongalness," he said between gritted teeth, but still he found himself sucking in a deep, calming breath. They were alright - he could manage to spend a day in this shit little hamlet without losing his mind. Even if the locals did keep shooting glances at him and Ness that ranged from fearful to pitying.
Geralt had come to town with a list of supplies he was running low on, and although some of them would have to wait until they found themselves in a city, or at least a decently sized market town, he had hoped to pick up a few essentials here. It was lucky that Geralt tolerated Ness' questions better than he did Jaskier's, and that he had listened to the two of them discuss Geralt's rapidly dwindling coin and food stores. He had a rough idea of what they would need to replace before they made it to the next town, and with any luck he would be able to supplement their coin purse a little while he was at it.
So he played his way through the town, accepting the few coins hastily thrust at him by people who wouldn’t meet his eyes and carefully, deliberately ignoring the stares that followed them. Ness warbled comfortingly in his ear as he paid almost double the worth of some cured goat and hard cheese that would last them a week on the road if Geralt supplemented it with fresh meat, a new wineskin, and some leather to patch their bags; he didn’t feel guilty in the slightest when she kicked up a loud enough fuss that he managed to swipe a couple of whetstones without being noticed.
Ness looked extremely pleased with herself as they ambled away from the cluster of houses. She danced from foot to foot and preened happily at her feathers from her perch on Jaskier’s shoulder.
“What has you so cheerful, song of my heart?” He asked drily. She clacked her beak at him, and it was only when he glanced over that he spotted the glint of silver in her claws.
“Ness? My dear, what did you take?” His voice, despite all of his best efforts, was delighted.
“Well, I’m not entirely sure,” she said, as coy as he had ever heard her. “It’s a key to something , but you know, in the confusion, I didn’t think to ask what it might open. It did belong to the priest, though - you recall, the one that was quite insistent that Geralt is a soulless affront to mankind, who is either cursed or forsaken by the gods, except he couldn’t seem to make up his mind which. But you know, really I’m doing him a favour. It’s foolish to keep all of his keys in one place that’s so easily accessed, especially when they are bright, and pretty, and there are magpies with keen eyes about. I only took one, so maybe he’ll learn something from this.”
“Learn something?” Jaskier asked through his laughter. “And what lessons would you have him learn, you crafty thing?”
“He might learn not to call us a witcher’s godless whores,” she sniffed haughtily. Jaskier hadn’t heard him say that, which was probably just as well. He’d have been significantly more physical in his retaliation than Ness. “He seemed to think that - well, frankly, I’m not sure what he thought Geralt is doing with us, but he seemed very disapproving.”
“How dull,” Jaskier complained. “He could’ve at least had the decency to be creative in his insults, such as they are. I can think of worse things to be than a witcher’s godless whore.”
“Fuck’s sake.”
Despite his exasperated cadence, Geralt’s expression as they stumbled upon his camp was wary; furrowed brow and mouth pressed thin as he watched them approach, before it settled into what Jaskier would have once assumed was impassivity, but was in instead realisation. He flicked a knife small enough to be concealed in his palm around his fingers, seemingly absent-mindedly. Jaskier was sure witchers weren’t permitted to be absent-minded, but he did a good enough job of pretending.
“Ah, Geralt, how good of you to join us!” Jaskier flooded his voice with false cheer, as though Geralt hadn’t heard a word of their conversation, as though he couldn’t still hear the furious thrumming of his heart.
“You were run out of town already,” Geralt grunted at them, and it should have been a question, he should at least have enough faith in them to make it a question.
It was not a question.
“We left,” Ness said pointedly, hopping from her place on Jaskier’s shoulder down to the arm he held out, waiting, and then pushed off into flight. Jaskier hated it when she thwacked his head with her wing. “They were rude to us.”
“They were rude to me,” Geralt said flatly. “They were willing to let you stay in a real bed.”
Ignoring Jaskier’s grumbles of for three times the amount of coin in our purse, Ness landed solidly on Geralt’s knee, and Jaskier imagined that it was only the fact that Geralt was immediately so tense he couldn’t physically move that saved her from being dumped straight away in the mulch. His face didn’t change enough to truly convey the panic that lit his eyes, but Jaskier couldn’t help but notice the cautious way he withdrew his hands, tucking them in tight against his chest.
“I got you something,” she said. “It’s silver. I think.”
“Thank. You.” Geralt said tightly, his chest hardly moving as he breathed. He appeared to be trying to lean back, as slowly and subtly as possible, as though Ness would be hurt by his efforts not to touch her. Geralt swallowed heavily, and glanced at Jaskier for the briefest moment. Jaskier fought to control the smile he could feel overtaking his face - but then, something in Geralt softened. He relaxed by inches, until he held out a hand for Ness to drop the key in. He lifted it up to the light, looking it over critically; Jaskier settled himself beside them to watch. Geralt caught Jaskier’s eyes once again - the delight in them must have been plain to see, even to Geralt, and the witcher fumbled for a moment with the clasp of his medallion, leaning forward infinitesimally so as to avoid brushing against Ness. The key chimed softly each time it struck the medallion - so softly that Jaskier could barely notice it, even as close as he was.
To Geralt, it must have sounded like bells.
“Silver indeed. You do have a keen eye, honourable Ongalness,” Geralt said finally, with a touch of humour in his voice. He seemed a great deal more relaxed now, with Jaskier sat so close to them.
It occured to Jaskier then, for the first time - though it wouldn’t be the last - that Geralt had been watching for his reaction. Waiting for the moment Jaskier called Ness back to him, for the time Geralt came too close, was too familiar, forgot himself and addressed her too candidly. Jaskier had never known him to be anything but meticulously careful with daemons; he’d never seen anything like it before, even as a child moving in the sort of social circles that demanded the strictest etiquette. It was rare to solely address another person’s daemon; rarer still to do so with the sort of respect Geralt displayed. But despite their late night talks, Geralt rarely allowed himself to get close to Ness - common courtesy demanded a certain distance be kept from another’s daemon, but neither Jaskier nor Ness had ever cared much for such things.
He wondered when Geralt had first encountered a daemon - if he had been taught about them by older witchers as part of his training, if he knew how he was expected to behave around them. If he knew what people would say when they saw him without one.
Even those who didn’t believe that Geralt could snatch away a daemon in the night often found themselves putting distance between the witcher and their daemon. Perhaps it was instinctive - an attempt to protect such a vulnerable part of themselves from someone so clearly dangerous, regardless of whether he was a threat to them or not.
Perhaps it wasn’t. Jaskier wasn’t inclined to be generous.
“And what gifts have you brought for me, honourable Ongalness?” Jaskier asked, because it would do him no good to think of that now, when there was nothing he could do about it. He leant forward on his elbows, grinning.
“I’ve brought you exactly as much as you’ve earnt, which is nothing,” she said; Geralt laughed once; a short, harsh bark of sound. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m a witcher’s godless whore, now, you’ll have to try harder if you want to win me back from his foul magics.”
Geralt had gone very still again, but Jaskier couldn’t manage to worry about it when he was trying to smother a grin. He bumped a careful shoulder against Geralt’s arm - and wow, that, that really was quite firm, wasn’t it? He shook himself off before his thoughts could stray too far and dry his mouth.
“Ah, well I suppose in that case I can only concede defeat. Please excuse me, noble White Wolf and his rude little daemon, while I take my leave, to drown my sorrows and then possibly myself.”
He stood and walked a few paces away from them, before Ness’s indignant yelp dragged him back to them, long before he’d felt the warning tug deep within his ribcage. With a chuckle, he reclaimed his seat next to Geralt, and started pulling out the spoils of their trip to show the witcher. Geralt’s hm s were quietly pleased, Jaskier thought, and even appreciative when he handed over the whetstones - as though he was surprised that Jaskier had noticed that the last one ended up at the bottom of a lake after a surprise run-in with a drowner. Maybe he was. Jaskier noticed many things, few of them of a practical nature. Right then, for instance, he was noticing how much he enjoyed the thought of Geralt being pleased with him, of continuing to surprise him with all of the details that Jaskier hoarded. He also noticed the way Geralt relaxed as he ran a thumb thoughtlessly over the key where it sat against his chest. Ness remained settled on Geralt’s knee, unbothered by her sustained proximity to the witcher’s bare hands.
It wasn’t until hours later that she finally moved, and that was only to allow Geralt to check the snares he had set first thing. She sat herself on Jaskier’s bent knee, peering into his songbook and offering up the occasional scathing criticism. Very deliberately, she didn’t look at him as she said,
“You do truly care for him, don’t you?”
Jaskier snorted with good-natured irritability.
“You know the answer to that as well as I do, dearest,” he said, not glancing up from his notes. “As though you don’t get cosy at every possible opportunity. People will talk if you keep that up, and not just superstitious priests in backwater hamlets.”
“Oh good,” she said. “I always rather liked the idea of infamy.”