@nk-writes

you're through fucking with me

A (slightly salty) alternative ending to Witcher season 2. Geraskier/Geraskifer, 2k, rated T.

The thing that is not Ciri smiles at them with a mouth full of sharp glass.

“You know what I want,” she says, filling the cold depth of Kaer Morhen’s great hall with her venom. It washes over Geralt and Yen, then Jaskier and Vesemir and the other witchers behind. Geralt feels pins pricking up his spine. "I want your pain."

She cocks her head at Jaskier.

“That one.” Her voice is like nails being driven into a coffin. “I want that one.”

Geralt snorts, dismissive. “That’s just Jaskier. He’s of no interest to you.”

“No?” She turns deep green eyes on Geralt. “But he is so delicious. I can taste his pain from here.”

“He’s just a bard,” Geralt says, disbelieving. “The worst thing that’s happened to him is someone not liking his songs.”

“Gods, Geralt, you really are a fucking wanker sometimes,” Yen snaps, stepping forward in front of Jaskier. As if she wanted to protect him. As if she could, without her Chaos.

The thing wearing Ciri’s skin laughs, high and pointed, like daggers in the night. Then she takes a deep breath, and the room dissolves.

The first thing Geralt is aware of is a smell in the air like roasting meat, but wrong somehow. The next thing is the screaming.

“I don’t know where they are,” a hunched figure says, voice hoarse from pain. “Please. I don’t know anything.”

Then a spark, and a flame, and more screaming.

The room is washed in pale red and sepia light, unnatural and undulating. The roasting smell is human flesh being burned away. The figure hunched in the chair is -

“Jaskier,” Geralt calls, and the name sticks in his throat like a wishbone.

“He can’t hear you,” a voice says from next to him. He turns to see another Jaskier, this one whole and well but with a sickly look on his face. Yen stands next to him, squeezing his elbow in support.

“This is a memory.” Understanding dawns on Geralt. “We’re in your memory.”

Jaskier won’t look him in the eye. “Yeah.”

“They were trying to find Ciri.” Geralt swallows down the bile in his throat. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, cause you didn’t fucking ask,” Jaskier raps back, and beneath the hurt is iron-hard fury.

Not-Ciri’s cackling, cruel laughter reverberates through his skull.

There’s a twist in the air and the sepia image snaps away, replaced by a rank jail cell. Geralt recognises it as the one he took Jaskier from, when he’d been tunnel-vision focused on finding Ciri.

This time he sees more clearly. He sees the yellowing bruises which still mottle Jaskier’s face and neck, and the defiant tilt of the chin which barely conceals cold, dead fear. A sharp intake of breath from Yen tells him she sees it too.

Geralt sees himself enter the cell. Himself as Jaskier sees him: Like marble, like ice, like a force of nature. Like something you can be swept along with or crushed by.

He sees the wobble of Jaskier’s lip when he’s asked for help. He feels the twist of misery deep in his chest as Jaskier pushes his feelings aside and says, simply, “Fine.”

How had he been in this very room and not seen this before? How had he been so blind?

“I’m sorry, Jaskier,” Yen says, “for what you’ve been through.”

“I’d do it again,” Jaskier says to her. “To protect you.”

Yen’s face goes soft and she takes Jaskier’s hand. This new dynamic between them feels like the ground has shifted beneath Geralt’s feet, like they have moved forward and built something beautiful out of ruins and he’s been left behind in the rubble.

Geralt knows he should apologise as well, but words seem hardly enough.

There are no words, Ciri’s voice echoes, but twisted and wrong. You’ll never make it up to them. Because you are unforgivable.

As the scene changes, Geralt feels the biting wind and knows where they are before the darkness even clears. King Niedamir's mountains. The dragon hunt.

It’s not the moment he’s expecting though, the one he’s been dreading. Him sending Jaskier away, calling him a burden. Wishing to be rid of him.

Instead, it’s a quiet moment from the day before. Sat on a rock overlooking the skyline with its jagged peaks and dusting of snow.

“We could head to the coast,” Jaskier says, voice soft and gentle. “Get away for a while.”

Geralt barely remembers that conversation. His head had been full of guilt over Borch and worry over Yen. He’d hardly noticed Jaskier sat next to him.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? He’d hardly seen Jaskier at all, even when he’d been right there by his side.

This time, he sees. The tired set of his eyes. He feels the ache in his chest, the physical toll it takes on him to be kind. Geralt has always assumed that kindness comes as naturally to Jaskier as breathing. It never occurred to him that it was a deliberate and effortful choice.

"I've been a fool," he says, but Jaskier only looks at the floor.

In the background, the hideous laughter of not-Ciri washes over them.

The scenes come thick and fast. Jaskier coughing up blood from the djinn's curse. A punch to the gut, the first time they ever met. The cold, cutting note in his voice every time he says, “We’re not friends.”

Geralt never realised he sounded so cruel.

“Damn it, Jaskier.” The guilt is so thick it could suffocate him. “Why is it whenever you’re in pain, I’m the one dishing it out? The djinn. The mountain. All of it.”

Jaskier looks at him, finally, regarding him with weary resignation. “I made my own choices.”

“Why did you stay?” Geralt can’t help but ask, honestly bewildered. “Why did you keep coming back, when I caused you so much pain?”

Jaskier’s lips twitch into something which is not a smile. His eyes are brimming with unshed tears.

“You know why,” Yen says, an accusing note in her voice. “You must know.”

“I don’t.” He’s getting desperate now. Yen raises a skeptical eyebrow at him. He turns back to Jaskier. “I don’t. Please. Help me understand.”

Jaskier shakes his head minutely, and turns to Yen. She nods, slowly, and the two share some unspoken conversation. It seems to give him strength. He squares up his shoulders and stands up straight. He’s as tall as Geralt when he does that.

"Because I've loved you for as long as I've known you," Jaskier spits, like a curse. "Because I love you even now, even when I wish I didn't. Because you're under my skin and lodged in my heart. Because no matter how far apart we are, I'm carrying you with me all the same.'

The words hit harder than a blow from a basilisk. Geralt staggers back, struggling to stay upright, a thick, sickly feeling filling his gut.

That can’t be right. That can’t be true. He’s not worthy of that, and he never has been. Yen might have been drawn to him by magic, through a wish that she had no choice over. But the idea that Jaskier has cared for him, has loved him, despite all he’s done...

The mist around them thickens, filling his lungs, toxic and corrosive, wrapping itself around his chest and stealing his air.

Not-Ciri flits in and out of his vision, but her voice continues sounding in his ear. As if it wasn’t bad enough to hurt him when you were friends, she hisses, you got to wound him even deeper with your thoughtlessness.

He’s flailing in the darkness, red mist closing in.

He’s a walking wound because of you, she says. I should thank you for providing me with such a feast. Loving you is like grating sandpaper over the soul. You bring nothing but pain, and it tastes so good.

His vision is almost blanked out entirely, the mist opaque around him. There’s nothing he can do, and he has caused this, has been at the heart of all this pain -

“Fuck this!” Yen’s voice calls out, strong like tempered steel, with a stubborn refusal to accept defeat. She is, in this as in all things, extraordinary.

“Jaskier,” she says, voice firm and true. He can’t see her but he feels her nearby. “We’re in your mind. You can control this. You can make a doorway.”

“I can’t.” Jaskier’s voice is mournful. He sounds very far away. “Yen, I can’t.”

“You can. You can get us out and we can banish this bitch from our world. You just have to see the doorway in your mind. You can do this. I believe in you.”

There’s a sound that might be a sob.

Words have never been Geralt’s strength, but he thinks - he hopes - that perhaps words aren’t the important thing here. “I’m here, Jaskier. You’re stronger than you know. All you’ve survived. All the love you carry. You can save us.”

“Okay.” There’s a sound of a deep inhale. “Okay. Showtime, Jask. Let’s go.”

The mist ripples, thinning out slowly, inch by painful inch. Geralt sees them in outline: Jaskier, shaking with the effort, Yen with her hand on his shoulder.

He steps closer, his arm upraised, wanting to touch but unsure -

And then behind him, a portal bursts into life, glimmering brightly, and he can see the hall of Kaer Morhen on the other side.

The thing which is not Ciri screams, and the mist swirls and forms into her body. Her fingers elongate to sharp claws, her face twists into something monstrous. “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” Her voice drips with hatred.

“Go!” Geralt yells, heart pounding desperately fast. He tries to push the two of them toward the portal. “You two go, and I’ll stay here and hold her off.”

“No,” Yen says. “You’re not doing that. You don’t get to throw yourself at danger without us and call that a gift.”

Geralt searches for the words. “But that’s all I have to offer.” Fighting monsters. Taking injuries so that others don’t have to. Sacrificing his life. What else can he give?

“You can live, and learn to do better,” Jaskier says, planting his feet next to Geralt.

“But it’s not enough. You two deserve more. You deserve to be happy, and all I ever do is bring pain and suffering on those around me.”

“It’s not about you!” Jaskier roars, and Geralt has never heard him so angry. “It’s not about what you think is best for everyone else. You don’t get to make that decision for us.”

Geralt feels the white-hot flame of anger burst into life inside his chest, and it's a relief to have something solid to hang onto, even if he knows it will burn everything down. In the back of his head, he hears not-Ciri whispering that’s right, it’ll feel so good, push them away like you always have, you know that what you truly want is to be alone. He opens his mouth to say something, he’s not sure what -

"We're not doing this," Yen says, in a tone which brooks no argument. She stands in front of both of them, radiating power even without her Chaos. "We are not hating each other."

Jaskier crosses his arms over his chest. “And we’re not going anywhere with you.”

The whispering in his head is getting quieter, drowned out by the force of will radiating from the set of Yen’s jaw and the stubborn twist of Jaskier’s lips.

Yennfer steps closer and takes Jaskier's hand in her left, and then, to his utter astonishment, she takes Geralt's hand in her right. "We do this together," she says with that unshakable self belief that Geralt has always loved about her, "Or we die here alone."

The thing in his head shrieks and rages, telling him that you’ll fail again, you’ll bring nothing but pain, you always do, but her voice is wavering now. He feels the firm grip of Yen’s hand in his own, sees the way Jaskier looks at him with a distant hope, buried deep but not so deep as to be unreachable.

The thing that is not Ciri coalesces from the mist and screeches, pure rage and animal violence.

They have a monster to slay. They have their family to protect.

Geralt draws in a breath, breathing in hope and love and empathy. Drawing strength from those still willing to stand by his side, even having seen him at his worst. He wants to do more for them. He wants to be better.

He steels himself, and nods. “Together.”

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writingoutofbed

3 years ago