#jask writes

Caleb chokes back a sob at the sound of his voice. He turns his head, nose pressing into Essek’s neck painfully as he squeezes the wizard tight to him. It’s been far too long since he last heard Essek speak. The former shadowhand had always been silent on the dias, never pleading or begging for his life even on the few occasions Caleb had done so for him. He was always so resigned to his punishment, accepting his due with his head bowed and a silent scream as the spell struck him. 

“You’re okay,” Caleb reassures softly, though for Essek’s benefit or his own he couldn’t rightly say. 

Essek turns his head towards Caleb, struggling to put enough distance between them that he can catch Caleb’s eyes but Caleb’s grip is strong and Essek is weakened by weeks locked away before his public execution. 

“You fool!” Essek cries quietly against his skin, voice cracking like shattered glass. “You complete fool, they’ll kill you!”

Caleb chuckles into Essek’s neck, the sound hollow and as brittle as he feels his mind is. Like the thin sheet of ice across a pond, snapping and cracking under the slow pressure of a foot waiting to drag him down in the cold dark water beneath. 

“This is nothing to laugh at,” Essek scolds him.

“I’ve already died,” Caleb mutters, remembering the failed attempts and the few times he stood side by side with Essek upon the raised dais, fingers stretched out towards one another for the briefest touch of comfort.

“What?”

“Several times in fact.” Caleb continues in a matter of fact tone. 

“You’ve gone mad,” Essek rolls his eyes and Caleb shakes his head slowly, savouring the way their noses bump together softly. No doubt Essek is recalling the few times the Mighty Nein have stumbled and fallen in their adventures and not the one memorable time Caleb got tackled out of a window by an Echo Knight trying to save Essek’s life for the umptenth time. 

“I am stuck in some kind of loop, reliving this day over and over,” Caleb sighs and Essek tenses under him. He’s quiet for a long time. 

“What?”

“I have watched you die…” Caleb’s voice fails him and he rests his forehead against Essek’s letting the warmth of his skin and his soft breaths against Caleb’s lips pull him away from the teetering edge of his sanity. 

“Caleb,” Essek whispers, his voice full of concern as his hands slide up Caleb’s neck to cup his face gently. 

“Too many times schatz, too many,” Caleb finishes brokenly and Essek flinches as a tear drops against his cheek. He gently rubs away the tears that follow as his breaths come in shaky controlled bursts. 

“A time loop?”

“Ja.”

He’s quiet again as the implication settles in his academic mind and Caleb waits patiently for him. He has time, he has all the time in the world. He just can’t seem to do what he wants with it. 

“Help me up,” Essek demands quietly and Caleb can’t deny him anything though he doesn’t particalurly wish to lose the closeness. He stumbles to his feet, keeping a tight hold on Essek as they stand shakily in the evening light. The clearing is touched by morning frost that the day’s light hasn’t managed to melt and the mountain range in the distance is vaguely familiar to Caleb but he has no interest in finding out why. He’s more focussed on the man before him. Essek is thinner than he had been before the arrest, his skin a pale sickly lilic instead of it’s usual rich violet. Dark, violent splotches of deep red peek out from under the ill fitting uniform and Caleb shies away from the desire to burn the dungeons and its guards to ash. It would be so easy to seek revenge, so gratifying. 

The lack of consequences has been a temptation he has fought against for a while now, one that has only grown in strength the more times he’s been forced to watch Essek fall. Caleb isn’t sure how much longer he can last. How many more loops before he stops caring about the collateral damage? How many more before he stops being a man his friends can recognise? 

“You didn’t start this?” Caleb checks, though he’s long suspected a third party’s hand in this. 

Essek raises his manacled wrists, the runes etched into the dark silver cuffs catching the fading light, “I couldn’t even if I’d wanted to.”

“Then who?” Caleb groans, letting his forehead rest against Essek’s again. His fingers clench and relax around Essek’s biceps, marvelling at the twitch of the muscles and warmth of his skin through the threadbare prison clothes. Physical proof that Essek lives and breathes in his arms, if only for a moment. 

“An enemy? Someone who wants me to suffer,” Essek suggests.

“And me,” Caleb adds and Essek inhales shakily. 

“Caleb…”

“Yes?” Caleb asks, hopeful. 

For a moment the world pauses, possibility frozen on the edge of a cliff and all they have to do is step away from the solid ground beneath them to reach it. Essek’s mouth opens with intent before he thinks better of it, his fingers clench in a tight fist against Caleb’s chest. Touching but not grasping at him as he so clearly wants to do, “...We should figure out how to break this time loop,” he offers eventually, sounding defeated and frustrated with himself. 

Caleb feels a tendril of disappointment but he remembers that Essek does not have the benefit of time that Caleb has endured. For Essek it’s been a day, for Caleb, he’s had months to develop the courage to face the truth of his own heart. He simply needs time. Time Caleb so depesratly wants to give him. 

“I’ve been trying, nothing has worked.”

“Would my work be of any use?”

“Not even the Aurora Watch can get past your wards, it would take me-”

“The password is nein, speak it clearly and the door to my private study will open,” Essek’s cheeks darken as he avoids Caleb’s eyes. It warms Caleb’s heart that Essek trusts the Nein to protect his life’s work and then his heart cracks a little as he realises how they can’t even protect Essek’s life. 

“Ja, I can do that,” he says, swallowing thickly against the torrent of emotions storming his chest. 

Essek coughs, clearing his throat and the air of the momentairy vulnerability, “If that’s of no use then you’ll need to seek additional allies.” 

“I’ve already told the other’s, how do you think I got close enough to do this, this time?” Caleb smirks sharply, the day may be the same but the chaos his friends unleash every time is completely unique and somewhat enjoyable. 

“I meant experts,” Essek corrects softly with a fond small smile, no doubt recalling the circumstances around his escape. 

“You’re the expert.”

“And yet, I can not recall such a spell,” Essek admits, brow furrowed. 

“You expect others to know when you don’t?”

“It’s possible,” Essek says and he sounds as though he believes it as much as Caleb. 

“And if that fails?” Caleb asks because he can’t watch Essek turn to dust again, he can’t, he just can’t. He needs something, anything to keep him away from the dias.

Even though he knows he’ll go again and again so Essek won’t be alone. Because the thought of Essek standing there waiting for the end and thinking Caleb has forsaken him and convincing himself he deserves it in his final moments, is almost worse than the pain of watching him turn to ash to be caught in the wind. 

“Divine intervention?” Essek snorts and Caleb can’t help but feel a lead weight fall into his gut as even Essek struggles to find more than a couple of vague ideas and a possible dead end. 

“If that’s what it takes,” Caleb whispers and it sounds like a promise. 

“Caleb,” Essek says, like the prayer of a man with no faith in any god, just faith in the man before him. It feels like benediction. It feels like false hope. An empty temple with cold pews. Caleb has failed so many times, so many people, that Essek standing before him feels more like another sacrifice on a blood stained altar than a blessing. 

And yet he continues, hoping for a different outcome each time. 

“Sun’s down, time’s almost up,” Caleb says, feeling the cold settle in his bones again as the shadows grow around them. A silent scream full of dread lodges itself in his throat. 

Not again, not again, not again, please not again… he buries the words deep down and they claw and tear at him as he does. These wounds stay, even as the day resets and he knows eventually he’ll bleed out.

Essek clutches at him tightly, as though Caleb is going anywhere, “If you find a way to break this, do it.”

“I will,” Caleb promises and Essek shakes his head slowly.

“Even if I don’t survive this,” he says gently and Caleb recoils as though he’s been struck. 

“Nein-”

Essek holds fast, grabbing at Caleb’s face, the manacles clinking together like the chimes of a clock, “Yes, yes. I will not have you suffer needlessly for a lost cause.”

“Essek-”

“Promise me Caleb, promise me,” Essek begs and Caleb opens his eyes and stares into Essek’s. He lets him see the fire within, the rage and anguish and most importantly the steel core that will not bend, not even to Essek’s pleading. Caleb would rather lose himself than give up. 

“Nein,” Caleb growls firmly. 

“Caleb-” Essek’s voice catches and Caleb crushes Essek to him, slamming their lips together in a brutal kiss full of desperation and despair. He won’t make that promise. He can’t make that promise. Even if he’s crumbling under the weight of it all, he can not let Essek die. Not when there’s a chance, no matter how slim, that he can save him. Caleb can not and will not bury another person he loves. 

Essek struggles against him for a moment before surrendering with a choked sob, his fingers curling tightly in Caleb’s stained shirt as he kisses him back just as fiercely. Caleb ignores the tears they both shed, they have just a moment together and then…then Caleb has work to do. 

fancy sending me a cuppa?

Jaskier sighed, no wonder he had to practically start from scratch with Geralt’s communicating skills come spring. Spending an entire season with one brother who spent most of his time with his beloved goat and the other who’s vocabulary seemed to consist almost entirely of curses that would make a Islander blush, frankly it was a miracle his witcher hadn’t reverted back to grunts every spring. He loved them all dearly but given half a chance not a single one of them would interact with the local populace socially. 

“A word of advice, your everyday folk can’t smell emotions and don’t appreciate being told they stink,” Jaskier offered, slipping easily into his lecturer voice, usually reserved for his students. 

“Unlike the white wolf I don’t give a fuck about who I piss off,” Lambert muttered as he crossed his arms defensively over his chest. 

Jaskier recognised the youngest witcher’s growing discomfort and switched away from his teacher mode in favour of something that wouldn’t remind Lambert of darker childhood days within the keep, “So what have my emotions done to offend you?”

“You’re sad.”

“Am not,” Jaskier retorted childishly and Lambert chuckled. 

“You are, it’s annoying.”

Jaskier fumed over the futility of arguing with Lambert who could rival himself in the stubbornness department. Besides he wasn’t wrong per se, Jaskier wasn’t at his best. He loved Kaer Morhen and the witchers but he found his days a little… empty. There wasn’t much in the way he could offer as the inhumanly strong witchers had the annual repairs well in hand and Jaskier was more of a hindrance than a help. He was starting to wonder if Geralt regretted bringing him to the keep instead of leaving him at Oxenfurt as was their norm as there didn’t seem to be much he could contribute to Kaer Morhen’s general upkeep.  

“Listen, you can’t keep up. You’re human…we think,” he mumbled the last part quietly to himself but before Jaskier could question that particular little tid-bit, Lambert continued on, “and there’s enough dick measuring going on without adding your twig self into the midst. Geralt would get all upset if you got broken trying to ‘prove yourself’.”

“Is there a point here or are you attempting to rival Yen when it comes to cutting remarks?” Jaskier asked, his jaw stiff as he gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the sharp pain in his gut. 

“One; I’m more awesome than the witch any day of the week,” Lambert smirked cockily as he held up a finger. Jaskier snorted, he’d have liked to see Lambert say that in front of Yen, “and two; my point is I remembered this damn journal. Proof you aren’t the first fragile human to winter at our glorious castle.”

Jaskier faltered, “Wait, what?”

“The book dumbass, some witcher back in the day brought along his bardic friend,” Lambert waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Jaskier rolled his eyes at the unsubtle implication. 

“And this is important because?”

“It’s proof you’ve got your uses.”

“As a bed warmer?” Jaskier questioned, his voice rising towards a dangerous pitch. 

Lambert switched from teasing to freaking out in the blink of an eye as he looked around a little as though he expected Geralt to appear out of nowhere to defend Jaskier’s honour. Considering how often the witchers tackled one another from the shadows, it was a fair concern. 

“No asshole! That’s not what I meant,” Lambert shouted and Jaskier let the tension slip away, he had enough experience with witchers who struggled to get their thoughts across to hold a grudge against Lambert for some badly worded suggestions…yet. 

“Okay? Then what did you mean?”

“You’re…useful,” Lambert said bluntly and rather anticlimactically, looking a little dead in the eyes as though he wished to be anywhere but here. Jaskier could relate.

“Thank…you?” 

“Just read the damn thing and stop being mopey,” Lambert sighed and stormed off into the dark and drafty keep, leaving Jaskier confused but oddly touched by the exchange. He was starting to recognise it as the usual when it came to the most abrasive member of the wolf witchers. 

Jaskier shrugged and settled back into the overstuffed wingback chair that Geralt had dropped in front of the large roaring fire just for him. He opened the well worn journal and flipped through a couple of the dried pages a little blase before the words started to sink in. It took him a moment to realise just why they caught his attention. 

Lyrics. 

Actual lyrics. Albeit written out like a story instead of the traditional poetry format familiar to all in his field but still, a song. He hunched over the book, skimming with more focus. One, two, eight, ten. Each page had at least one distinct song dutifully scratched into the paper with a careful hand. Not a bard’s hand but a witcher, one who found the words worthy of remembering. 

It was clear from the blocky child-like scrawl that letters were not the unnamed witcher’s strong suit but there they were, pages upon pages of work to carefully document the fleeting life of his bardic companion. A truly epic love letter if Jaskier ever saw. 

Jaskier felt the tell-tale prickle of tears as he caught sight of the most recent entries, half way through the book. In fresh ink, each letter softly etched into the rough parchment, where his own words. His own lyrics. Saved for future readers perhaps centuries down the line. 

There was no mistaking the handwriting. Jaskier would know that hand anywhere, even without it’s usual almost illegible tilt. Geralt, doing his best to be neat and tidy and lovingly commit Jaskier’s life’s work into a journal that would more than likely outlive them all. 

The time and effort it took was worth more than all the standing ovations of his career and Jaskier felt warm to his very core.

“Jaskier?” 

Jaskier’s head snapped up. Speak of the devil, he thought to himself trying not to laugh out loud at the absurdity of the situation. Geralt watched him with a frown, clearly noting the tears that had slipped Jaskier’s notice. Not that he was surprised by them, he’d just been handed the very physical proof of Geralt’s often hidden feelings for him. 

“Are you alright?” Geralt asked and Jaskier gently shut the journal and set it aside, he stroked the soft leather before he stood. 

So the idea of going incognito had clearly failed in it’s execution and now Geralt is without his weapons in easy reach as the squelch of many heavy boots marching through the mud approach them from behind. 

Jaskier watches out of the corner of his eye as Geralt’s hand releases the reins for Roach’s bridle and skims along her flank to the hidden pommel slowly. Jaskier shakes his head in warning and thankfully the Witcher listens, stilling his hand. 

The last thing they need is more attention and Geralt beheading the local guardsmen would be like sending up a flare for Nilfgaard. 

Jaskier chews on his lip, racking his brain for a way out of their predicament. He see’s Geralt’s hand move again, not for the swords this time but to rest on Ciri’s shaking knee in comfort. The princess huddles under her cloak, shrinking away from the danger approaching them and Jaskier’s heart aches for her. The lingering trauma of being hunted has left a stain on the once happy princess that Jaskier and Geralt have tried their best to erase. But situations like these always undo that hard work in moments.  

Jaskier sighs at the loss of progress shrinking deeper into the folds of her cloak and decides on a course of action, one that might just avoid darkening that stain on Ciri’s heart. 

“Oi! You deaf?” Another voice yells and Jaskier straightens his spine and prepares to dazzle his audience into submission. 

He spins round dramatically, plastering a wide happy grin across his face. It’s not his most eye-catching outfit but he should be able to draw attention away from the Witcher and his child surprise well enough. Presentation is key for misdirection after all. 

Jaskier glances over the small patrol quickly, filing away the small details that he can use to his advantage. Just like any other ballroom or tavern he’s stepped foot in. Reading the room is how you own it and Jaskier wouldn’t be a famous bard if he couldn’t quickly and effectively discern the lay of the land. A loud tavern full of boisterous laughter needs dance music and bawdy songs, a noble wedding with dignified guests needs jaunty jigs with easy beats to dance to and when enough wine has been drunk, a few romantic epics to get everyone in the mood. The stage is a little different but the details are the same. 

He silently curses as he recognises the dark armour and golden sun stretching across it and prays to whatever deity likes Geralt in one piece in the vain hope that things will go smoothly. But for now, it's up to him and every skill he’s honed at every banquet and party he’s ever been to, to get them through this peacefully. 

“Fine gentlemen, what can I aid such noble soldiers with today?” he greets loudly as he skips forward putting himself between the approaching soldiers and Geralt. A few of the men flinch at his volume. Jaskier notes the overly red cheeks and bloodshot eyes, the slight sway in their stance. Too much patrolling the tavern rather than the streets and very recently too.  

He has to play this right. Be loud and obnoxious and they’ll want to get rid of him quickly to ease their aching heads. Too much though and he runs the risk of raising questions. It’ll be a fine line to tread, a thin tightrope between freedom and a noose but it’s something he’s managed before and for far lesser stakes. 

“Your friend, where does he hail from?” The Captain asks shrewdly, eyeing Geralt’s exposed white hair with narrowed eyes. Jaskier rocks on his heels full of nervous energy. 

“My cousin you mean? Well he and his daughter come from Lettenhove of course! As do I,” Jaskier bows deeply, throwing as much theatricality into his performance as possible, “Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove. A pleasure to meet you, good sir!”

He doesn’t often drag out his nobility but the situation calls for it. Perhaps enough for the men to back off, in fear of upsetting nobility. 

“And your...cousin’s white hair? A familial trait?” The captain asks skeptically. His title isn’t enough to brush away their questions but there is a touch more hesitancy than before so Jaskier counts it in his favour.  He still grimaces a little and racks his brain for a plausible lie to help them escape the situation with as little screaming and entrails as possible. Tiny streams in deep forests are not ideal for removing Nilfgaardian guts from a Witcher’s hair after all and after this fiasco getting Geralt to agree to enter any form of civilisation will be a nightmare. 

So Jaskier does what he does best. 

He tells a story. 

He lets his face drop into a more serious expression and sidles up closer, a little too close for comfort, for a not so much conspiratorial whisper, “No, no, my good sir. Not at all. You see, it's such a terrible thing. Truly terrible. A curse.”

At least two of the men take an involuntary step back as though such a thing could be catching. Good, Jaskier thinks snidely, superstitious morons swallow a lie father easier than a wise man. 

“Twas laid upon him by a spiteful sorceress. He’s quite sensitive over the whole thing as I’m sure you can imagine,” Jaskier placed a hand over his heart as he hammed up the performance a degree or two, “My poor dear sweet cousin spurned the witches advances you see, his heart already belonged to another. Fiona’s mother, she hailed from Nilfgaard, such a sweet woman. Not that it mattered to the spiteful witch! The sorceress was quite enraged by it all and so cursed my poor cousin to bear the likeness of the ugliest creature she knew, a Witcher.”

Jaskier winces internally and sends a silent apology to Geralt and hopes the man won’t take too much offence but there’s no other option for them. 

“How unfortunate,” one of the men comments in a heartfelt manner and Jaskier dabs at his dry eye in agreement.

“Yes it is and such happenstance that we should be looking for a Witcher,” the Captain says, unconvinced. But Jaskier has the rest of his audience on tenterhooks and a crowd can sway a single mind.

He scoff’s loudly and slams his hands onto his hips. 

“Nothing but trouble I say, for we’ve been stopped by every knight and good soldier from here to the Pontar! It’s made our journey to Oxenfurt doubly long and I’m due to begin teaching next week! The delay!” Jaskier wails dramatically and the men collectively wince at his volume and shrillness, “Thankfully with my tenured position the faculty will be most forgiving of my lateness! But truly it has been nothing but trouble!”

“Hmm,” the Captain wavers and Jaskier pushes his advantage, leaning in a touch too far again. 

“I shall tell you good sir the best way to tell a Witcher from my unfortunate cousin is the swords, for Witcher’s carry two on their backs and my dear sweet cousin can only swing a pitchfork!”

“Viscount’s right Captain, no swords,” one of the men speaks up and they all turn to look at Geralt’s back, covered in a muddy cape but bereft of the notable twin swords. 

“He could have thrown them,” the Captain suggests but quietly, not fully believing his own words and Jaskier tries not to let his relief show. 

“Thrown them?! Why my dear Captain, that would be a waste of fine silver and steel! Who in their right mind would throw away a silver sword! Pah! A fool, that’s who!” 

The Captain ruminates for a few moments and then nods, “Right you are, carry on m’lord.”

Jaskier’s knees feel a little weak as the men shuffle round and begin their march back up the street they came. He waves them off jauntily despite the nausea swirling in his gut. 

“Many blessings to you and safe journey my good men!”

As soon as the men are out of sight Jaskier stumbles as the relief falls on him like a ton of bricks. Geralt grips his bicep, pulling him back up as he stares down the street after the patrol. 

“Gone?” Jaskier asks and Geralt nods. 

“Thank Melitele,” Jaskier exhales and drops his head against Geralt’s shoulder heavily. 

“Ugliest creatures?” Geralt asks and Jaskier groans.

“Darling I apologise wholeheartedly for such a lie but how else was I to excuse your appearance?”

Geralt snorts, thankfully with more amusement than anger, “Good thinking.”

“Thank you love but might I suggest putting several fields between us and them before more questions are asked?” Jaskier points out and Geralt wraps an arm around Jaskier’s shoulders, squeezing him close for a moment before letting him stand on his own steadying legs. 

Geralt takes Roach’s reins once more as Jaskier falls into step next to him, he spares a glance over his shoulder at the near empty street behind them and hopes they can put enough road between the patrol and them before nightfall to breathe a little easier. 

“Are you really a viscount Jaskier?” Ciri questions quietly, hunched over under her heavy cape atop Roach. Jaskier startles at the sudden question but settles into a sardonic smile.

“Unfortunately so my darling, though the title does have its uses here and there.”

Ciri thankfully doesn’t press the issue as she flicks her gaze over her shoulder worridily. More concerned with the soldiers than his checkered past. 

“I didn’t think they’d leave so easily,” she mumbles and Jaskier reaches over to pat her leg softly. 

“Fear not my dear, they were easy to fool and won’t be following us anytime soon.”

“How can you be so sure?” Ciri asks, her tone skeptical and a little sharp. A princess on the run yes, but still a princess and one growing from a child into a woman and not shy about demanding she be treated as such. Jaskier chuckles. 

“Simple. I saw all I needed to, to lead them astray. I’ll teach you how to read men like open books soon enough darling,” Jaskier winks and Ciri worried at her bottom lip for a few quiet moments.

“Teach me now?” 

Jaskier shares a glance with Geralt, raising an eyebrow up in question and Geralt simply nods his permission. Well if his Witcher is okay with it then who is he to argue giving the young exiled princess another knife in her growing arsenal. 

“Very well, what did you notice about them?” 

She ponders for a moment, “There weren’t that many?” Ciri offers hesitantly. Jaskier beams encouragingly. 

“Well spotted! A small patrol left in an unremarkable town. Tells us quite a bit. These fools aren’t high on the pecking order. They aren’t given more responsibility or better yet aren’t trusted with more,” Jaskier explains and Ciri leans forward in rapt attention. “What else could you see?” 

“They hesitated,” Geralt says and Jaskier turns his attention on the Witcher’s soft smile. 

“Very good my love,” Jaskier pecks Geralt’s cheek in reward, earning a giggle from Ciri. 

“That matters?” she asks. 

“Indeed, a lack of confidence speaks to their inexperience or perhaps they’ve acted hastily in the past and been reprimanded making them hesitant to act similarly again,” Jaskier explains, falling into his old teaching habits easily. 

“What else did you see,” Ciri questions curiously and Jaskier hums thoughtfully. 

“Dented armour that hasn’t yet been fixed, means coin is tight or flowing elsewhere. Mud caked into clothes and bulging chest plates. These men have become lazy and spend more nights in a tavern than marching around town. Ruddy cheeks and bloodshot eyes tell me they enjoy their drink, a bit too much most likely. Given the hour it was either a heavy night of drinking with a spectacular hangover or they’ve just come from the tavern. Whichever it is, their minds and body long for beds not battle and that my fair girl is where you can take advantage,” Jaskier lists and Ciri looks suitably impressed with his observations. 

“Enough to confuse them?”

“Perhaps enough to lose them in a winding tale with dramatic flair,” Jaskier shrugs, remembering many a glazed drunken gaze and how he used it to his advantage in the past. 

“The loudness helped too,” Geralt offers slyly and Ciri laughs as Jaskier pretends to take offence though he preens at the small but fond smile on his Witcher’s face and the ease settling around Ciri’s shoulders once more.