wolf

An aged Geralt, retired principal dancer of the Teatr Wielki, and possibly the greatest dancer across the continent, stood alone on the stage. He'd often stood alone here, in his prime. Stood, rehearsed, wept, even slept in the wings on nights he wished to feel less lonely.

Even with the adoring audience asleep in their warm beds, their ghosts of cheers made him feel whole again. Though they were not the only ghosts to have once brought him joy, to grace his appropriate company.

The Opera Ghost, as it were, still haunted heavily in his memory.

They'd danced together on this stage. Once, maybe twice. In masks, in costume, or in the cover of night. When no one could watch them. Where no one else could touch them. To separate life from death, it was a tragedy. One could not exist without the other, and they were never meant to touch.

But Jaskier, as he would come to know him, was more than just a ghost. He was a man of flesh and blood, and at times Geralt knew him to be tender and soft. Even sweet. But as soft as he could be, his trail of red death could not stop him from being hurt.

He'd been hurt too much.

The boxes were dark, the only light shone in from the collapsing roof, and still the aged dancer stepped in time with the music that forever relay in his head. The steps he'd practiced and perfected, over and over. And he found himself looking to box five, for his dearly departed. In the shadows, he thought to even imagine the masked face of an angel who watched over him.

Just as he did around the darkened corners of his home. The pale face of a man who loved him. Who, even now, uncertain of his whereabouts though confidently lost, held every part of Geralt's heart.

If he returned now, stepped out of the shadows and joined his half of a duet once more, he would gladly dance with death until the rest of the Teatr Wielki collapsed. And Geralt waited, humming the remnants of the melody he'd memorized.

He waited. And he waited.

His entire life, he'd waited for the ghost to return. To him back into that cold embrace. To challenge him forward, to demand those steps from him again. To adorn his dressing room with roses and to kiss the parts of him that were pricked with thorns.

The delicate feathers of his oilslick wings, the tufts of darkness that so often plucked from them as he'd taken Geralt to soar. His song, his demands, his everything. How the dancer wished to be whisked away by those beating extensions again.

To look above the continent and feel nothing but the love bestowed to him by the angel of music, the angel of death. By his Jaskier.

And Jaskier never came. His angel, it seemed, was truly gone.

Still, the old man chose to wait. To tuck himself into the corners of the stage, as he'd done as a boy, and wait for the angel to return.