welcome to my table, bring your hunger

—

“You stay away from the lake now, children.”

Jaskier stopped strumming his lute and leaned in Yennefer’s ear amused. “Aren’t you older than her or something?” It earned him an elbow on his ribs and he yelped.

Yennefer held back her delight and kindly smiled at the elderly woman sitting on the table across them, face deeply carved with wrinkles. “I must say I do not understand your suggestion. If there is a curse as you claim to be, I might as well be able to lift it.”

It’s not that she gained any pleasure from lifting curses at the present, nor did she want to disturb her afternoon with risky encounters instead of stretching her legs in a garden and listening to whatever foolishness the bard would ramble about next. But they’d been staying in that inn for no more than two days and had already witnessed the disappearance of three people, with their unsuspecting partners running into the town from the forest in a frenzy. 

Sometimes she wished she actually was as indifferent as she pretended to be.

Yet the woman was hearing none of it. “Claim! This is no claim! I would only tell you the truth. Aye, there is a curse older than myself even.” Yennefer abruptly silenced the strings of the lute with her hand and Jaskier pouted at her theatrically. “A wraith is wandering on that shore, whiter than a sheet, skin decayed by the water.” The woman lowered her voice as it quivered. “And she, she drags both of you into the lake, and eats whoever she finds tastier, and the other, she spits it back out. She searches for rest, they say, after she was drowned by her lover and took him down with her. She searches for one who will welcome such death, so that she may follow. But, of course, no one does.”

Jaskier was silent for some moments, staring at her agape. A smile was playing on his lips as he glanced sideways at the sorceress. “Now that would make a masterpiece of a song!”

The woman scoffed. “You young lovers and poets! You dedicate your life to love and beauty until death is on your doorstep.” She leaned over the table and squinted at him. “Have you ever loved so deeply that you would lay your life down for the other? Or do you only hide behind pretty words?”

A shiver ran down Yennefer’s spine and almost unwillingly, she turned to look at the bard. This time, he wasn’t smiling. He just swallowed, breath slightly shaky, and nodded gravely as though he understood. Did he really understand? He, who valued life like a pearl in his hands?

But then again did she herself understand? Perhaps not. No one had ever made her understand after all.

She heaved a sigh and cleared her throat. “We’ll just take a look from afar. No need to worry.”

The old woman deflated in defeat and walked away from the table, silently whispering under her breath what sounded like a prayer.

—

The water is numbing cold.

Put away that goddamned lute. And stay silent. Do not get us killed.

How dare you imply I would ever willingly put us in danger?

Filling her mouth, her lungs, breath struggling to swim as she slips into the darkness, limbs frozen as though against their will. Choking. Drowning. Burning. She screams but it only echoes in the void. A hand inside hers, already terrifyingly limp.

Imply? No, I think I was perfectly clear that, probably foolishly, you would.

There is a voice. A wail, something close to a long drawn out sob, or a bloody laughter. An ages-long lament for a love that never existed, and a life whose shadow wraps around their bodies like seaweed snakes and pulls them deeper and deeper, until there is no light over the surface, until there is no surface. Until her body spasms with the current of the lake, agonizing to get free.

As though in a dream, she catches a pair of blue eyes staring at her, blown wide and soulless on pale skin, like two crystals on the snow, reflecting foreign light.

—

“Have you ever, really?”

He turns to her surprised. “Have I ever what?"

The fallen leaves crunch under their steps and he looks different like that, wind trapped in his hair and gaze lost in their momentary silence, smile absent. He looks more real.

“Have you ever loved so deeply?”

He thinks for a moment, then huffs. “Oh, I wouldn’t know. Not until the time to face it comes.” Then, he gives her a strange look that makes her chest ache, and simply shrugs. “But it always comes.”

—

“You are looking for answers, Yennefer of Vengerberg.”

Water buzzing in her ears. She looks around, breathless. In the distance, blurry through the fog, two figures running in the night.

Alfred, please, I can’t go any longer.

We can’t let them reach us. We will get away, I promised.

What if I don’t want–

There, a lake. You hide here.

Alfred!

The woman falls in the lake. She doesn’t surface again. A wail, low and drawn out. “Quite tragic, isn’t it?”

Yennefer blinks and shakes her head, but the haziness remains. Her words are slurred. “It’s a tale. Love stories are like that.

Morning. The man walks alongside the shore, calling a name. She cannot discern the words. The voice is bitter. “Pity then, that this is not a love story.” A scream. A figure emerging from the lake, dripping and bony, pale. Slim fingers wrapped around the man’s neck. “Sometimes I wish I loved him as much as he wanted me to, so that I would die in peace. But there is no rest for me. I will never get away.”

The figure drags the man inside the lake, and disappears under the rippling water.

Yennefer feels her fingers wrapped around a cold surface and looks at her hand. A knife. Something tightens in her chest.

A touch of warm, familiar lips on her temple.

“Mine is not a love story. I can only hope yours is.”

She flinches and opens her eyes.

—

The morning sun painted the warmest blush on Yennefer’s cheeks as it entered the window and Jaskier couldn't help but smile.

It’s a blessing, he thought sometimes, a favour granted every time he got to wake up first in the morning, though not as often. Yet he was far more used to it after all these crisp mornings he was awakened by Geralt before the dew had even settled, and he wouldn’t ever think of denying Yennefer the small indulgence of sleeping in. Or any other indulgence, as a matter of fact.

And how could he? When he got to stare at her like now, count her breaths and the flutters of her eyelids, ghost his fingers over her shoulder as though to make sure she was real. 

She always was. She never left, not once the morning had nuzzled into every corner of the bedroom, not after the afternoon sun had painted the bed sheets red. Never, even though she could, even though nothing had been spoken and confessed, no promise or lie, only the soft touch of lips on each other’s bodies. And yet, she stayed content in silence. In the abstract. Maybe to reassure him or maybe to feel the sweet vindication once she opened her eyes and he was still here, despite all. Either way, he won.

There was a blur falling over his thoughts, and he blinked.

Real. Her hair felt silky between his fingers and the curve of her brow more heavenly than ever for his lips to rest. Real. Foggy.

He leaned to press a kiss on her temple, and it tasted wrong.

It must be the long sleep. The late hour.

Yennefer flinched ever so slightly, as though dragged through a last dream, and her eyelids fluttered open.

His smile became wider than before as he met her stare. He couldn’t help it. “Hello,” he whispered, only to see her lips twitch in return and her eyes soften, as he knew they would. Familiarly warm, almost unreal. “I think I can wake up beside you every day.”

The words slipped from his tongue before he thought about uttering them and he basked at the realization that he got to say aloud what he must have thought millions of times. 

But Yennefer didn’t smile, as he knew she would. This time, Yennefer parted her lips to speak, staring at him with a faint confusion in her eyes, but faltered. Swallowed. “Jaskier.” 

Her voice quivered low as though with a warning and at once he shivered. It sounded wrong. The sheets were too soft. It was wrong and so unbearably right. “Yes?” he said and he didn’t expect this, it’s not like the other mornings. A fog.

Quiet, low. Almost afraid. Yennefer’s eyes were huge as she stared at him. “You said the same thing yesterday morning.”

A breath, shaky. The fog. “What?”

Yesterday morning but oh, wasn’t that so far away? Far, blurry, almost unreal and yet, yes, he had said the same thing because he meant it, just like he did today. He felt like floating as he looked at her remaining frozen, except for the faint line deepening between her brows. 

She shook her head, voice now barely a breath. “Jaskier…” Her look fled over his shoulder then and he heard her breath hitch, and her eyes widened in horror. “The flowers. I threw these flowers away yesterday.”

Slowly, she sat up and Jaskier turned around, looking at the vase of wilted flowers waiting on the windowsill. Unwillingly, he laughed. “What do you mean yesterday? And why…”

“Shh.” He looked at Yennefer again as she shushed him, and stilled. Watched as her hand creeped under the pillow, almost hesitantly, almost afraid of what it would find, until it freezed and, once more, she held her breath.

As she retracted her hand, her fingers were shaking, wrapped around a silver dagger with an amethyst stone on its handle. He had bought her that just yesterday. A small smile. “Didn’t you have that when we went to…”

“The lake.”

The fog. The morning, soft and warm and too settled and a voice whispering inside his head, Jaskier, can you hear me, Jaskier , and the waters, and suddenly he is drenched, water filling his mouth and choking, suddenly he can’t open his eyes and he is drowning, drowning, drowning.

“Jaskier!”

He gasped.

Violet eyes. The morning sun, peeking behind her back. He was kneeling on the floor.

Another gasp, and he breathed, deep as though emerging over the water after what feels like days.

Yennefer was kneeled in front of him, holding his head between her hands. Her voice was urgent, scared. “Are you with me? Talk to me.”

He swallowed, heaved a trembling sigh. The hands were warm on his face, and he slumped. “Remember that request,” he said with a faint smile, and it only felt out of place. “I will use it against you.”

The sun was peeking behind her and Yennefer shook her head, lips quivering in a smile she couldn’t form, not now, no matter how much she wanted to. Only, she looked at him, and her voice sounded nearly helpless.

“We’re trapped.”

—

“ Fuck!”

The knife is thrown bloodied on the white sheets and a pair of blue eyes stares at her wide and pained. She doesn’t know if it’s the physical pain or the million questions spilling from their betrayed look, but she has no time to think.

Choking, Jaskier lets the lute slip from his hands on the floor and falls on the bed, eyes rolling on the back of his head. No, no this is not right.

Yennefer shuffles close to him and slips a hand behind his nape, keeping his head steady as his body convulses. Chaos already glows in her fingers as they fight to gather the blood back inside the wound she’s at once healing desperately, as though if she is quick enough he won’t remember it later. Her eyes are burning. 

Oh, she has no time for this.

The blood stains look like they’re seeping into snow and he is still staring at her, pale as sheet, gurgling blood as it flows down his lips, hands wildly searching for a grip he finally finds on her forearm as she summons all the chaos she has ever felt flowing in her veins. There are tears in his eyes. She doesn’t look.

His look is glazed over and her heart flutters violently. “No, no, no, don’t close your eyes,” breathless, terrified more than she ever thought she would be. “Please, please stay awake.”

It’s absurd. Because there is no chance of escaping now, and he will still despise her, and they will never get away. But she will be damned if she ever brings herself to kill him. Not him, not like this. She prefers to be trapped forever and her heart wails, protests at the thought but the sight of him grunting in panic, life fighting to slip from his eyes that have forever lost the warm gaze they gifted her, this she cannot bear to relive.

Not the agony, not the dread. Why, why, why. His lips are moving and it seems like he wants to utter her name but he has no voice, and the wound is deeper than she intended it to be. Is this how he would take care to die, then? With her name on his lips, like a prayer.

No. Not again. It would bring her to her knees.

She does have a way with relationships. Until some nights ago, they were only sleeping together. Now his lips will only taste like blood.

It’s quite another level that they achieved.

At last, at last the wound closes. He is trembling and sobbing, mouth agape in shock, still more silent than ever, and there is a look in his eyes she can’t quite understand. For it is burning, but it is no rage, or hatred. And it’s too much, it’s too heavy to decipher now.

Her hands are drenched in blood. She swallows, pleads. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Jaskier.” The tears are finally flowing down her face, and he almost seems to forgive her. But her mind is deceitful in its need.

She brings her shaking hand on his forehead, and whispers a spell. At once, he eases, eyelids heavy with sleep, and maybe it’s easier like that. Slowly, she leans and presses a kiss on his temple. She doesn’t bother cleaning the blood. Only, she lays her head on his chest, doubting there will ever be another time she does, and closes her eyes.

Thus, she condemns them both.

—

“So close. So close to failing.”

She is burning, seething with rage, searching around in the darkness. “ Why me?” she screams, but it echoes like a plea, why, why, why. A sob ripping her throat. “Why did you put the knife in my hand?”

It could be worse. She could wake up, free of the loop, and he would still be dead. She could have failed. But the blood still settles in the lines of her hands.

The voice laughs and it’s so gentle it could be human, once. “You know why.” The smell of smoke tingles her nose, the ache of heartbreak. A thorny caress. “You are so used to destroying, aren’t you? It’s what you are.”

Her nails dig into her palms, heart longing to crawl out of her skin. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Come now, you are in denial. I know how you crave not to prove the one person who dared to love you wrong.”

Destruction. The terror herself. That’s it, then. Maybe that is right. And now that Jaskier knows what she is, he will regret even the little company he sought in her. Not love, it was never love. It cannot have been. And now it’s too late for her to make it right. 

It is no wonder she cannot understand a love so deep.

She wants to scream, but her voice dies in her throat.

—

“I think I can wake up beside you every day."

“Oh, you think this is so fucking funny, don’t you?”

Jaskier did, in fact, think it was funny because his lips were pressed into a thin line and his shoulders struggled not to shake with laughter. Yennefer, on the other hand, had just woken up beside him again, and again she was enraged.

The bard raised his hands in defense. “What? This is already terrible, can’t we just lighten up a bit?”

Her fingers flexed around the dagger in her hand, still hidden under the pillow. Oh, she couldn’t lighten up. She rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh and stood up, as though walking around the room for the hundredth time in three days would grant her any ideas. 

When it actually didn’t, she just sighed again and stood by the window, staring outside.

She heard Jaskier scoffing and deciding at last to stand up. “Oh, this is great. Now you brood exactly like–”

“Don’t.” She raised a finger at him, and by the look on his face realized she had fallen in his trap. Of course. Of course he wanted attention. But she, too, wouldn’t let this pass. She shook her head. “Don’t continue that phrase of yours. I’m not into the dramatic martyrdom stuff Geralt is. I’m just trying to think.”

She poked the finger on his chest, because he looked annoyable.

To her delight, he whined.

Yennefer swallowed and turned her look outside again. It was the same, as always. A fat cat trailed lazily down the street outside the inn’s tavern. A man pushed a barrow full of apples beside a counter filled with even more apples, probably around thirty two. Jaskier had counted them the day before. In a few minutes, a laughing girl would pass running, wearing a huge brown coat, and her father would chase her from behind in just a shirt. And Yennefer would smile.

Behind her, Jaskier sighed. “Alright, listen.” She looked at him and immediately regretted it. She wanted to ignore him a bit longer. Still, the sun hit his eyes in a strange angle, and she found herself staring as they shone. “This is a time loop.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Really, you genius?”

“Most probably,” he went on pretending not to hear her, “it will be very simple. We will figure something out about ourselves, we will do a different thing and boom, we’ll be free.” She stared, unsurprised, and he was so annoyed. “This is what happens, Yennefer! I know the stories, I’m the one who tells them.”

Yes, he knew the stories. But this time, he was part of one, and not the one telling it. And she hoped he would get to tell it. She so hoped he would, but she was afraid time would be up before he was able to.

No, not like this. Never like this.

She shook her head. “We can’t wait with arms crossed. We need to do something soon.” Then, as if to convince herself rather than him, she said, “I don’t know how this loop works. It could drive us mad day by day.”

A laugh. “It will anyway.” Seeing her questioning frown, Jaskier dropped the argument. His shoulders suddenly slumped. “Listen, all I’m saying is, we still have some time. We could–” He stopped, as though reconsidering what he was about to say. Cleared his throat. “I don’t know, maybe we could take advantage of this! Just spend a whole day in bed or something.”

“Not the bed.”

Jaskier raised his brows in surprise. “What?”

“Nothing.” Yennefer averted her look, cursing under her breath. She stared at the bed, at the soft sheets they had left rumpled, and at once her chest warmed up at the idea and she forgot how she might regret it afterwards. 

A hand slipped into hers, hesitant, as though afraid to feel it. She met his eyes. “Maybe if we don’t agonize over it, we will figure it out faster.” There was a plea in his voice that didn’t resemble a wish for pragmatism but something that dug just a little deeper. His fingers shook in her hand ever so slightly, as though ready to pull away.

They didn’t. Instead, she tightened her grip, and nodded silently. A prompt for him to guide her to bed. Just for today.

Maybe. Maybe meeting his lips in the middle would ease at least some of her trouble. Maybe the way he breathed on her skin and laid kisses on her neck like an honest lover and not just a lovesick bard would make her forget about the dreams, about the knife, about the blood, and his hand lying warm between her shoulder blades would be enough.

Maybe, maybe she could have soft things, just for once.

—

It was just for once.

Because every day she woke up with Jaskier beside her, and the knife held tighter in her hand. Because that same voice was torturing her dreams, its desperate need to break free concealed over the wailing laughter, and the bloody request. Because she was so weary of the wilted flowers, of the girl’s laughter, of the creaky floorboards, and she didn’t want to admit it, but she wished she would open her eyes and Jaskier would be gone, for it could mean that perhaps they were free. 

And Jaskier, he made her heart ache. Because after a few days he could not even pretend to smile, and every time he sang, the tone was helpless. And she couldn’t afford this. Not from him too.

Maybe it would be a mercy, then, before they tore their hair out. Her skin prickled at the thought, as though with the touch of a ghost.

She couldn’t ask this of him. She couldn’t, because he would say no, and then the wound wouldn’t count and she would wake up the next day unloved once more, with blood on her hands and him, by her side again, only dead.

And if he agreed.

Oh, well if he agreed she wouldn’t bring herself to do it. Kill the one person who loves her so absurdly deep and risk to lose him forever, what she waited for so long, for wraiths are traitorous creatures. And she wouldn’t ever let him do this, she wouldn’t let him guide her own hand, oh, no it would be impossible. She can’t bear it, the love. No.

This is a game. And she was never one to play fair.

She would find another way.

—

“And what about you?”

He is walking closer now, and his voice is light.

She turns at him. “What about me?”

His eyes are piercing through. “Have you ever been loved so deeply?”

His presence is warm beside her, and she shakes her head with a huff, mostly to ease the ache in her chest. “I would’ve known if I had.”

—

She opens her eyes before she remembers she is afraid to do so.

At once, her heart skips a beat and her limbs numb, fingers loose around the dagger. It’s unfair, because she didn’t expect anything else. It is unfair, because she knew. 

The space on the bed beside her is empty. 

But, oh, the sheets are white. The sheets are white, and clean and empty and once she demands that her heartbeat slows down, she hears the sound of faint breathing inside the room. Not hers. The space on the bed beside her is empty, and white, and she prefers it that way.

That is, until she sits up in quiet guilt, and looks at him. And Jaskier stares back.

It’s a relief, in a way. Because he is there, sitting on the table right beside the window with the wilted flowers and he is alive, and he is calm and his shirt is clean and embroidered, of course it is. And his eyes are solemn and piercing and make her skin burn everywhere their look touches, but they are not hazy, they are not dead. He is not dead.

And she almost killed him nonetheless. And, for once, she can’t bear the damn silence.

She needs his anger. She needs him to stand tall and shout, so that she can shout back, explain herself, explain her own rage, because she knows how to answer that. But he is not angry. He is only sitting in the corner, weary and painfully soft, looking at her as though she was the one to get hurt, and waiting. It’s too much.

She almost killed him, and she needs him to be angry.

Instead. “How are you?”

His voice is quivering, low.

She wants to scream.

Her lips are trembling, chest seething as she speaks. “What the fuck are you talking about?” 

As though unsurprised, Jaskier huffs and lowers his eyes. Still, silent. She watches as his fists clench and unclench, and realizes she too is gripping the sheets. His shoulders are drawn downwards, tense, shaking with every deep breath.

Suddenly, he inhales deeply and raises his head again. “I don’t know, Yennefer,” he says and smiles sharply, and Yennefer hates it. “I don’t know what I am talking about and I thought perhaps you would tell me.” The fool. The human. He shakes his head. “I didn’t ask why, or how, or anything. I just want to know if you are alright, and I will figure out the rest.” His stare is insistent, begging. “Is that too much to ask?”

Yennefer laughs at herself. Oh, it is too much. Love, it is always too much.

But at once she finds herself admitting its burden, maybe more than she had ever before, because there is nothing else left to do, because instead of raging once more, she is only able to weep. Lips pressed together, keeping back everything she has spilled time and time again in her dreams, she lets the tears fall, and her voice is calm.

“I have to kill you,” she says, and it's a simple thing, a story, and he doesn’t even flinch. She chuckles, wet. “In order to get out of this, I need to kill you and you have to die.” She doesn’t dare continue further. 

She doesn’t have to. 

Jaskier knows. “For you,” he whispers and of course he knows, he knew from the start. And she just couldn't bring herself to accept it. “I have to die for you.”

She bites her lips and nods, voice strained. “Right. Are you satisfied now?”

“Where is it?”

He doesn’t for a second break eye contact, and Yennefer laughs. With shaking fingers, she reaches under her pillow, pulls the knife out and presents it to him, as though she is presenting her heart bleeding on the sheets, waiting for him to take it.

But oh, she can’t force him, can she?

Jaskier shivers at the sight of the blade, hand instinctively flying to his neck. To the wound she carved, and then healed. Still, he hums as though conversationally. “Very well. I will do it.”

Immediately, Yennefer scoffs and wipes at her cheeks. “Don’t be ridiculous, it doesn’t work like that–”

“No, you don’t understand,” he interrupts and it makes her flinch, because of course she doesn’t. But Jaskier stares at her steadily and his voice is loud again, just like it was the first day. “If it is for you to get away from this hell, I will do it, and not out of despair or selfishness, but because I love you.” His voice is suddenly choked and Yennefer stops breathing, and shakes her head.

“Jaskier–”

Unbothered, he only continues, words ripping her apart. “Some kinds of love you need to bleed for in order to feel them. And if your love is like this, I’m fine with it.” A smile. “Maybe I even need it.”

A knot loosens in her throat and brings forth a flood of tears that well her eyes once more, and she refuses to let them fall. “Jaskier," she begs, whispers, "that’s too much.”

Jaskier only nods, eyes glistening to mirror hers. “That’s too much.” And that’s it.

And, gods, if he can bear it, she can too.

Somehow keeping his smile, he stands up and walks up to her, uncaring of the knife that slips from her fingers. He reaches out for her hand, and she gives it to him, and stands up. Stands before him. His hand is still in hers, and she notices he is shaking.

It resembles a battle. Yennefer clears her throat, and squares her shoulders, and lifts her chin to him. There is mirth in his gaze, at last. A smirk plays on his lips. “Then again, you could throw me off the window.”

She laughs. “Ah, that wouldn’t work.”

Jaskier grunts in disappointment. “At least something to make less of a mess! How about you strangle me?”

“Nope, as much as I want to right now, and believe me, I want it a lot .”

“Hm. Magic?”

“No way.”

His smile widens. “Oh, I know! You could suffocate me between your thighs!”

“ Jaskier .”

“At least then I would die a happy man!”

Before he utters another foolishness she rolls her eyes and throws her arms around him, pulling him close to her, cheeks hurting from smiling and crying all the same. He doesn’t pull away. Gods, he doesn’t pull away, and at once her fear dissolves and she hides her face in his chest like she thought she never would again, and she feels him smiling too more than she sees him as he hugs her back and holds her tight, so tight on him, burying his nose in her hair, shoulders shaking.

They stay like that, until the girl’s laughter echoes outside, and the sun shifts inside their small room.

As he whispers in her ear, she feels it more like a caress. “I tell stories, Yennefer, and I look from afar. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you are the bard.” He looks at her, his expression relaxed and his voice simple. “But when the story is so close it stabs you in the heart,” he huffs, bittersweet, “well, you can only stay and bear the wound.”

Yennefer swallows and nods with a smile pretending not to hold back a million laments. “I hate you when you talk like you have thoughts in there.”

Jaskier laughs and presses his lips on hers, more tender than he has ever been, and she lets him, and kisses back, because she knows he is right. She knows it doesn’t matter. The moment he stopped breathing inside the lake, the moment they entered the loop, he was already dead. And she is kissing a ghost, and the kiss is soft as a feather.

But for all that’s worth, she keeps him close, and when he makes to slip away, she holds him still. “Not now. Not yet.” Not so soon. She rests her hand on his cheek and it makes his gaze melt. “We still have some time.”

They do. Just for another day.

They do, and after they lie on the floor at night, they keep their eyes open for as long as they can.

—

Jaskier takes hold of her wrist, and places the knife inside her palm.

The sheets are so soft where they sit.

The hilt burns, eats her from the inside and she stares at it. She can’t help but smile bitterly. “She was right then. Maybe that’s all there is.” Her voice is close to cracking as she looks up at him and shakes her head, helpless. “Destruction, and pain. Maybe that’s all I am.”

There is a peculiar hurt in Jaskier’s eyes, as though she’d just given the blow a first try. “Oh, don’t,” he whispers and he seems more afraid for her than for himself. “Don’t say that. You know it’s not true.”

She thought she did. But, gods, she herself has been proven wrong so many times. “What if it is?” She hates to see a damned ghost winning. She hates to give up. 

But for the first time in her whole life, knowing the blue eyes staring at her like a spring to drink from will be but mere mirrors for the foreign sunlight in a few minutes, she is so close to doing so.

And Jaskier can only pull her hair back from her face and make her look at him better, in hope of seeing herself clearer in his eyes. “No, darling. You made yourself a terror in order to survive, but you are so much more than that.” There is a deep, peculiar grief in his voice. Not for him. He smiles. “I love you. All of you.” Again, again, a stab as though in her own heart. Slowly, he closes her fingers around the dagger, and his hand lingers. Honest, warm. “And if it’s the terror I must love too, I will welcome it with open arms.”

Look at him, all fearless in his trembling. His eyes are begging, please, please, I need to feel this. I need to feel you. Yours are the only hands I trust to yield this knife, this love. Please, if there is no other way for us to make it real.

Oh, well, she thinks. The wound must love the knife, for it wouldn’t part for it to pass otherwise.

For her. She is asking him to love her and he, oh, he is asking for her to be loved.

He breathes, shaking. “Come.” A childish laugh. “I’ll do it better this time round.

“Jaskier.”

“Yes?”

Oh, the bastard. There are tears in her eyes, her voice broken, and she grips the knife tight. “I love you too.”

She lets out a sob, and buries the knife in his heart.

Laughter, outside. Pain contorts his face and it is better now that he is looking at her, but she can’t let him scream, so she leans and keeps his lips shut with a kiss. And the knife sinks deeper as she reaches to the depths of his heart, and lets the love flood bloody in her mouth, and keeps it all for herself. A loving hand on her hair. 

The kiss is sweet.

Then, as though hit by lightning, she pulls the knife out and the blood stains the sheets as he falls, breath weak. She lets her hands hang limp on her sides, and watches, numb. He is crying. “I think I know now, Yen.” A bloodied smile. “I hope you know too."

She shakes her head, trembling like a frail leaf. “You better come back to me, bardling,” she whispers. “Or I will drag you out of whatever hell you’re in myself.”

He looks at her, and stays silent.

Only, he looks at her.

A ray of sun enters the window and falls on the bloodied knife. She whimpers, burning. “Jaskier?” Laughing. “Jask…” She’s laughing. Gasping for air. Shoulders shaking, she looks at the blood on her hands, then at his open eyes. Loving, loving. Dead.

She hides her face in her stained hands as her body slowly bends in half and shattered, from the depths of her heart, she screams.

—

The water is cold, and a voice is weeping. Grateful.

Human.

“I felt it,” it says, “the love. It was all there. Thank you.”

Yennefer can’t breathe, but it doesn’t matter anymore. A light engulfs the body sinking beside her in a foreign form of a woman. Then, it gathers around over the heart, and fades.

A hand in hers. Breathless. She tightens the grip.

—

The earth is soft underneath her, like a tender mattress lulling her to endless sleep. She stares at the foliage above her, her head heavy.

Distantly, she registers she is wet and trembling, and the ground is damp. But she doesn’t immediately move. Her body feels as though waking from a lethargy little by little, struggling to catch up with her mind. There is a hint of sun peeking behind the thick, yellow leaves and beside her the sound of rippling water, so faint like the last breaths of a dying man.

She swallows, blinks. A trail of water runs down her lips and as though on instinct, she flexes her fingers around thin air, only burying them in wet leaves and mud. Empty. Like the space beside her.

At once, she jolts up.

There is a name on her lips but she has no voice yet to utter it, only she looks around in sudden cold dread, vision almost blurry in the numbness of her body. The faintest whisper escapes her lips. Jaskier. Jaskier .

A bundle lies beside the shore in the distance, dirty shirt on shivering back, turned to her. She can’t stand up. She can’t walk. Breathless, desperate not to lose sight once more and slip into darkness as her head throbs with the previous lack of oxygen, she crawls.

Dragging herself across the shore, mud trapped under her fingernails and tangled in her hair, leaves sticking on her arms. Even now, even half-conscious, she is grateful no one is to lay eyes on her like that. In the chill of autumn, she is freezing.

Her voice breaks clear as she calls him again. “Jaskier!” Almost there, almost touching his shoulder. The shirt is stuck on his back, and as she reaches, she feels a shudder under her hand. Warm. Despite being soaked, he is still warm. Without thinking, she laughs, shakes his shoulder. Oh, he is alive. “Jaskier,” she says and rolls him over and, gods, he is pale like a ghost. “Look at me, Jaskier, we did it.” 

It’s no wonder he may not hear her, for her voice is no louder than the breeze, but she is growing desperate and she holds his head between her hands, calls his name, again, again. Water is running down his lips as they’re parted, and she shakes her head, wipes the mud and the leaves off his face. “Come on now,” she pleads because it seems so long, so long since she saw his eyes. “Look at me.”

A huge, red stain spreads on his shirt as she lowers her look, and at once her heart clutches. No, no, there must be nothing. There must be no memory. That was the deal.

With trembling fingers she pulls, almost rips the shirt aside, and at once she gasps in relief. “ Fuck !” Nothing. Only, kindly, the accusing stain that remained.

Almost afraid, she lays her hand over the healed skin, such that only the faintest scar is visible, there above his heart, and as though her shoulders are freed of the heaviest stone, she sighs and slumps, laying her head on his chest exhausted.

It feels fitting to cry, although she doesn’t register the tears at first.

A hand on hers, still cupping his face.

She doesn’t even have the strength to let the relief, the joy seep in, and his grip is so, so weak. But as she raises her head now he is looking at her, under heavy eyelids and bloodshot blue eyes. She can’t help but smile.

He smiles back, tired, and as he speaks his voice is faint. “I think I can wake up beside you every day.”

Slowly, he turns and places a kiss on the inside of her palm, tender as ever. Oh, he thinks he is clever. Yennefer rolls her eyes and, fighting back a grin, pulls him from the nape and presses their lips together, wet and drained as they are, but not bloody, not this time. This time it’s soft as he kisses back, the kind of softness she had only ever craved, the kind of softness she wouldn’t expect from the one she had killed. And yet.

Jaskier sits upright and pulls her closer and she can only wrap her arms around him and kiss him deeper, and then pull back and hide her face in his shoulder. They are both shaking, and they can’t tell if it’s the chill, or their hearts fighting to beat harder against each other.

She hears him laughing, and laughs along. There is nothing left to do now. “Maybe you’ll have to portal us back to the inn,” he says and the old tease returns to his voice. “I wouldn’t entertain the sight of us walking filthy through the town.”

Yennefer hums and closes her eyes. “I will portal you directly to a bathhouse. You stink.” She buries her face deeper in his neck.

“You wicked witch,” Jaskier huffs and places a kiss on her hair, and lingers. Then, lower. “Yennefer?”

“Hm?”

“I love you.”

Yennefer smiles wide against his skin and knows he feels it, because he holds her tighter. “I know.”

Despite the blood, despite the pain, despite the knife, or because of it, there, clutching, skin against cold skin, in the unbearable softness of scar tissue and open, loving arms. There, for the first time. Here.