which, as they kiss, consume

so the others were not really thinking about that, because they were all raised the same, and are varying levels of poorly-adjusted/oblivious about it. vesemir, though, was - and is - very aware of the ways he's failed his boys, how he and all of his fellows failed them when the school was functioning. he's also aware of how he was failed, and how much of his regrets likely echo the generations of witchers before him - that the elder have been hurting the younger for hundreds of years.

that is part of the reason that he takes jaskier to the dungeons, shows him the "memorial" of dead boys' names, explains that generational trauma and how it lives in all of them, and how much he hates himself for it. vesemir was upset, at the reminder of kaer seren's fall, and he knows that one day, kaer morhen will finally fall the same - it's just a matter of time. he could have just shown jaskier the memorial tree, the medallions and the names on that stone. but he didn't; he chose to admit to his wrongs, to how viciously he failed geralt, because he is viciously aware of that failure.

he didn't make the choice to give geralt that sort of ultimatum lightly. he did not want to punish geralt for a lack that was vesemir's and other witchers' fault. however, he recognized that geralt was in a cycle of self-destruction and self-sabotage that wasn't going to be moved without force. so he gives him a wake-up call.

however, note that vesemir does not make himself the arbiter of this ultimatum - he tells geralt that until jaskier forgives him, until jaskier says he's repaired the damage he did, that he won't be welcome back. that, specifically? that's not just vesemir recognizing that the person geralt hurt should be a part of this - it's him saying that jaskier is the only one of them who can say.

because none of the witchers are well-adjusted. all of them are broken and traumatized and have coping mechanisms that border on self-destruction. jaskier isn't some kind of all-knowing benevlont judge of rightness, but he's much better adjusted than his witchers, and they all know that. he has the emotional intelligence to handle this in a way none of them can. vesemir knows that the clearest, with the benefit of having been one to raise a new generation of witchers that he knows he damaged, and the reflecting realization that his elders damaged him.

vesemir didn't want to give geralt an ultimatum, to punish him - but like the story he tells about geralt and eskel as children, he needed to impress the importance of what he was saying, and he doesn't really know any other way to do it.

so, the concept of repentance through suffering, also known as redemptive suffering, is (following paraphrased from wikipedia): ‘the belief that human suffering can remit the just punishment for one’s sins’. it is a fundamentally christian ideal, though some sects have done away with it from a doctrinal perspective. because even secular western culture is christianized (and other cultures as well, due to colonialism and imperialism), this ideal of suffering meaning something important has permeated into every aspect of life, from religion to work to family and on. we glorify suffering, hold it up as proof of something being worthwhile, or proof that we deserve a certain level of respect, admiration, etc., etc., for surviving this suffering.

it’s seen as divinity. and it’s deeply fucking harmful. to put it as lightly and kindly as i can: not my pagan ass, sweetheart. suffering is suffering is suffering, it is pain, it is not a golden ticket to the good things in life (or the afterlife, as it may be). 

how does this relate to km2? well, because there were a lot of people looking for redemptive suffering. and don’t get me wrong, there is some aspect of redemptive suffering in km2 (lambert’s beating and vesemir’s orders, for example), because these characters are human and flawed and there is vindictive pleasure in redemptive suffering. it pleases the animal part of our brains, the lizard brain that says all things must have an equal balance, the part of humans that’s instinctual and demands an eye for an eye.

but, as i said in the notes on this fic: the phrase “an eye for and eye makes the whole world blind” exists for a reason. because if everything was always an eye for an eye, no progress could be made, not really. and in relationships, whether they be romantic, platonic, familial, somewhere in between or elsewhere entirely, that’s doubly true. making someone suffer for their mistakes until you or someone else feel they’ve been redeemed is, out and out, abuse. 

so, when i sat down to write km2, i’ll be entirely honest: i was writing it so i could have the catharsis of lambert beating the hell out of geralt. but as i wrote, it evolved (as it should have). i realized eventually that as much as that scene of lambert and geralt was a necessary catharsis (for me and the characters), there had to be more. i couldn’t stomach just making geralt suffer and suffer and suffer, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that geralt, by the point of km2, has already been suffering. he’s been in pain for months (this will be covered more in the second part). thus, the other scenes were born; eskel, vesemir, coën. 

but it was still wrong. it was still too pain-focused, it was still suffering for the sake of suffering, and suffering is not divine. i couldn’t stomach writing something that implied that. so i didn’t, and i worked really hard to make the build up and wind down of this drama, the fixing, as realistic as i could. i based jaskier and geralt’s interactions, their talk and their feelings, heavily off of my own real-life experiences in having to work to fix a relationship that is worth saving, but hangs by a thread. it’s painful, ugly work, but it’s not suffering for the sake of itself, and it isn’t the pain that makes it worthwhile or effective. 

it’s the communication and vulnerability. the mutual willingness to be openly hurt and vulnerable with someone. that is what fixes these things. i know this from real, lived experience.

redemptive suffering and mutual communication and forgiveness are literally the antithesis of each other. redemptive suffering relies on the continuation of pain to a certain (and usually unreachable) point. mutual communication and forgiveness relies on willingness to be vulnerable, stopping the pain and examining it. 

geralt was suffering, had been suffering, and that pain was on par with – or even worse than – what jaskier was going through. this wasn’t super explicit because jaskier is the narrative character for most of this fic and most of the series as whole. i had hoped, with some of geralt’s pov and the talk, that geralt’s headspace and pain would come through more clearly. i understand that it may not have come across as clearly as i wanted it to, and i do apologize for that, but so that there’s no misunderstanding, the rest of this section will be a deep dive into off-screen events both within and without km2, as well as a view into geralt’s headspace as a whole.

all of these off-screen events happen prior to or during km2, and some are mentioned in passing in the series.

-- yennefer begins to try and puzzle out the wish; she and geralt fight about it, and geralt is deeply hurt by her willingness to work with stregobor in her endeavors. officially, this is the beginning of where geralt begins to truly go downhill in his head. in reality, he has been feeling off and out-of-place for a few years at this point, but he doesn’t have the self-awareness or emotional intelligence to truly understand that. he’s insecure in his relationship with jaskier in a way he hasn’t been in years previous (and also thinks he deserves that), and the sudden, glaring insecurity in his relationship with yennefer – which he already sees as deeply insecure – sends him into the beginnings of a spiral. 

-- because of this spiraling, geralt ends up in a particularly bad headspace regarding his self-esteem; jaskier does not notice this because geralt is actively hiding it, and he actually spends part of the summer away from him, in beauclair with lambert and aiden. geralt is already a character predisposed to self-hatred and self-punishment/self-harm, and so this spiral and the continuation of not dealing with it only exacerbate those issues.

-- geralt’s thought process is hindered by these issues when he makes the decision to join the dragon hunt. His intention is to try and get back into yennefer’s good graces, whatever that takes – even if it goes against his own morals, even if it hurts him, because once again, he is engaging in self-harming/self-punishment behaviors. ultimately, he’s terrified. afraid that he doesn’t deserve yennefer (or jaskier), afraid that he deserves to be abandoned, that he’s the one in the wrong; as jaskier points out during their talk, geralt lashes out when he’s afraid. so, on the mountain, actively in the beginning of crisis and afraid, he lashes out hard. it’s fundamentally an attempt to push everyone away for their sake, and a method of both self-harm and protecting himself, all at once. it’s a trauma response, through and through, and while it does not excuse anything geralt did or said, you need to understand that trauma responses are ugly, and hard to fight. for someone like geralt who has no coping mechanisms for his trauma, the difficulty is tripled. 

-- upon both jaskier and yennefer leaving (both exactly what he wanted and the exact opposite of what he wanted), geralt begins to spiral harder. the months after the dragon hunt and leading up to when he finally arrives at kaer morhen are spent in a haze of dissociative shutdown and self-harm. i did not manage to paint this as clearly as i intended in the fic, but when geralt arrives at kaer morhen, he is half-starved from a mix of refusing to feed himself and throwing himself into any hunt he can find, pay or no pay. the supplies he is able to bring up to the keep with him are not a lot, and he used the last of what money he did have for them. however, when he has not been dissociating or fighting, he has done a lot of thinking, and he’s convinced himself that he’s not afraid or depressed or suffering, he’s angry. it’s a delusion that he’s painted for himself, but a convincing one nonetheless.

-- the second fight is, exactly as geralt spells out, an attempt to escape. he’s hungry, exhausted, emotionally and physically overwhelmed, and terrified. he feels trapped, and wants to run. jaskier is an active block to him running (he was changing and planning to pack to run when jaskier interrupts), and so geralt does the only thing he knows how to do, the thing that worked last time: he lashes out again. when lashing out doesn’t work like he expected, he results to physical force. he does not want to do either of these things, but his rational brain is not, at that moment, in charge. his subconscious is calling the shots, and his lizard brain is convinced that staying means dying.

-- geralt has his first moment of clarity about his own headspace when he listens to lambert talk about his passive suicidal ideation. that is the first time geralt realizes that he’s been doing the same thing, and has the horrifying realization that his brother, someone he loves fiercely, has been doing the same for decades. that, more than the beating, begins to wake geralt up to the reality of his lack of coping mechanisms, and starts the ball rolling so that when jaskier asks to talk a second time, he accepts. eskel and vesemir’s talks further cement this knowledge for him – specifically, vesemir telling him that he can no longer run. 

-- the talk itself, i’m going to break down into a sublist of bullets, a mix of things that happen during the talk that are not covered on-screen and tidbits about geralt’s headspace during.

- the talk takes, from beginning to end, four days. in total, only two of those are covered on screen.

- jaskier and geralt discuss not just the dragon hunt and the recent fight, but also just about every fight they’ve ever had. the fact that the mountain and the resulting drama is the worst fight/issue they’ve had in over twenty years is also discussed.

- they also have an in-depth discussion on geralt’s headspace, including: his fear, inability to name his own emotions, the traumas that led to that, his tendency to self-harm, and his preconceptions about who and what he is and how that affects the people he loves.

- jaskier apologizes for his lack of boundaries and his issues respecting others’ boundaries, and geralt realizes that a large portion of his fear and insecurity about jaskier is borne of his uncertainty that jaskier will take into account geralt’s struggles with his own boundaries. this is touched on a little on-screen, and geralt brushes it off, but it is hashed out later.

- geralt realizes that he’s been actively self-harming and self-sabotaging for years in cycles, and discusses options with jaskier to stop him from continuing to do so.

- together, they begin to work through a lot of geralt’s general fears of abandonment.

-- geralt begins to practice naming his emotions to himself in mundane moments, in the hopes that it will help him do it when he’s in distress. he struggles to do it, but he does try. 

so one of the biggest concerns i saw repeated, though not ever really stated outright except for in one comment was, “sorry doesn’t fix shit. it’s just words.” and, for anyone who was thinking that, as well as the one commenter who spelled it out, you’re right! when it comes to apologies, words without action mean fuck-all.

but here’s the thing about geralt and jaskier: geralt is action-oriented, and jaskier is word-oriented. words don’t mean shit if they’re not followed with action, when it comes to apologies – but when there’s a fundamental disconnect in a relationship where one person really needs to hear the words, and the other really doesn’t like saying them, well, words become really important. and that’s what’s happening here – sure, they won’t mean much if geralt doesn’t follow them up with action (and he does, and he will), but the words need to be said because just action hasn’t worked out yet. there is power and importance to words and the way that someone communicates, and there is no 100% fail-proof, black-and-white solution to anything when it comes to people. i wanted this fic to really mimic real life, the intricacies of a real, long-term relationship, and i used my own personal experiences to do that. from that experience, believe me: words are very, very important, and can mean a lot.

another concern that repeated in a few comments, though yet again only with one that really spelled it out, was that jaskier went into the talking and making up portion of this too quickly. there are a few problems with that line of thinking, but the biggest one is: what is “too quickly” when you want to work through a problem and fix it once and for all?

the thing about km2 is that it takes place over about half a year or more. some sections are cover a longer period and some shorter, but overall, the fic itself spans from the dragon hunt (mid to late summer of 1262) to the late winter/early spring of 1263. even just the chapters leading up to geralt’s arrival at kaer morhen and moving through the subsequent blowup and reconciliation cover several weeks. it’s hard to parse that (for me, even, and i wrote the damn thing), and i can totally understand people missing that, but the fact remains that this story spans quite a bit of time. on top of the fact that this has covered several weeks’ worth of time, all of this is the process of something infected coming to a head; ready to be lanced and drained and finally fixed.

there were readers who felt like jaskier should have spent more time giving geralt the silent treatment, or that he would have been too angry to reconcile, or too hurt to try and speak to geralt. and while all of these scenarios are normal and acceptable reactions to the events that take place in km2, i couldn’t really do that. for two reasons: 

firstly, i had a narrative story to tell. km2 is, all together, just under 85k words. if i had spent much more time on jaskier being angry or hurt, it would have spiralled into a much bigger fic – and it wasn’t even supposed to be more than 50k in the first place. secondly, i had already spent a lot of time in the fic focusing on jaskier’s anger and hurt. he was ready for it to be done – whether that meant he and geralt separated, or fixed it, he just wanted a proper resolution. (again, this spanned several months – at the point of the talk, jaskier had been hurt and angry for at least three months, probably closer to four or five.) when everything came to a head and geralt was forced to come to terms with the fact that this had to be done and done properly, jaskier was past the “too hurt and angry” stage and into the “please can we just get this done with” level. there was already months of hurt and anger, culminating in an even worse blow, and then the spiral down of any big, dramatic event; he was exhausted, and he wanted to be finished.

the last big concern in the comments (at least that wasn’t already laid out end-to-end in the deep-dive of geralt’s headspace) was basically, “why was geralt so willing to abandon his morals for yennefer, and so reluctant to fix things with jaskier?”

one person really spelled it out well, talking about how it felt as if geralt only apologized because of vesemir’s threat, and not because he just needed/wanted to. which is fair, and i get why it read that way.

it’s because i wrote it that way.

see, after the second blowup, jaskier had no intentions of letting anything slide. at first, he had been willing – for his own sake, as well as everyone else’s, but especially ciri’s – to let a lot of things go unsaid and undealt with. after the second fight, though, that changed. but here’s the thing: none of the rest of them knew that. eskel, lambert, vesemir, even coën – they all expected jaskier to let geralt off easy, and so part of that series of beatings geralt received was to make sure he understood that while jaskier might let him off easy, they would not. geralt does apologize because of vesemir’s threat, because prior to that, he had thought his usual method of “apologizing” through actions, and not dealing with  the underlying causes of why these kinds of things happen, would work. now, of course, that would have been dashed the moment jaskier got a hold of him – but the important thing was for geralt to realize for himself that no matter what jaskier did or didn’t do, he would not be allowed to go on as he was, and he had to consider if he could stand to let himself go on as he had been. the answer was no.

as to why geralt didn’t need any of this to go on that dragon hunt in an attempt to apologize to yennefer, well, that’s really simple. he doesn’t see he and yennefer as equal partners quite yet. he hasn’t figured out that when there are issues between he and yennefer, that they should both discuss it – he still thinks he has to grovel and do anything and everything, no matter how he feels about it, to fix it. on the flip side, geralt understands that he and jaskier are equals, and previous to this drama, his method of “apologizing” through actions has worked. jaskier has forgiven him, and he’s refused to look too closely at himself to see that the problem isn’t really fixed – but he knows he doesn’t have to compromise himself for jaskier. he still thinks he does, for yennefer. a lot of this is also related to geralt’s insecurities regarding his relationships.