Imagine if Ciri struggles with doing basic things, when Geralt first finds her. After all, she’s a princess, a noble—why would she have ever had to know how to wash or style her hair, mend her clothes, barter for items at the market?
It takes Geralt an embarrassingly long time to realize that she’s struggling with these things, and he probably never would have, if not for Jaskier’s help. Jaskier, who he stumbled upon in his travels and begged to come with him. Jaskier, who is already so much better with Ciri, showing her how to braid her hair and fix holes in her pants. Jaskier, who just always seemed to know these things, and Geralt’s never questioned it before, but now…
It’s as Jaskier and Geralt are sitting across from each other around the embers of their campfire, Ciri already fast asleep, that Geralt finally asks Jaskier who taught him all this stuff. Why he, as a viscount, wasn’t just as lost as Ciri was when Geralt met him.
And when Jaskier speaks, it is after enough time passing that Geralt has begun to wonder if the bard had fallen asleep sitting up with his eyes open. And it would be humorous, truly, but Geralt knows when Jaskier is conscious and silent, he ought to be concerned.
It was a lesson he learned painfully early on.
Jaskier eventually speaks though, which is good, but Geralt gets the distinct feeling the bard wishes he wasn’t telling this story. That he would have been happier, if Geralt had continued to be ignorant about this aspect of the bard’s life.
And it hits Geralt, suddenly, that if even after over two decades together, Jaskier has not told him this story, it must be for a reason. Likely a good one.
But Geralt was never taught how to re-bury unearthed pains, not in any way that truly works, so he forces himself instead to listen as Jaskier speaks of a caravan of travelers and forbidden friendships. Of a boy with eyes like the earth who visited each winter and left in the spring, bags laden with whatever sweet treats Jaskier was able to nab from the kitchen.
He hears more than sees Jaskier’s smile as he speaks of playing hide and seek in the woods, building bedrolls from stolen linens, and naming constellations without a care for the way their vapored breaths blocked their views.
And they were happy. That mattered, it did, even if it wasn’t a grand happiness. They were children, they had no need for anything but that small happiness.
But then the one winter the boy came back empty. Taller and stronger and eyes a brilliant yellow-green. But gone, in all the ways that mattered.
(And it did. Matter, that is. Even if it was only to one other little boy, it mattered. It wasn’t enough to change anything, to make a difference, but it still—he, the boy they’d taken, he still—)
The next winter was worse, because the boy came back with a broken arm. And even though he wasn’t the boy Jaskier once knew, when he snuck this new boy into his own bath, made attempt after attempt to braid his hair, and played his lute for him, his smile was still there. Not as strong, not as bright, but it was—Jaskier had seen it, it had been there, and it mattered.
Mattered when the boy left in the spring, a small upturn of his lips just for Jaskier.
Mattered when the caravan came back the next year, and the boy was gone.
Gone in a way Jaskier couldn’t bring back this time.
Geralt watches as the bard lays down, fingers rubbing the bedroll underneath him as he looks up at the stars.
The witcher wonders if Jaskier approached him that day in Posada, thinking of the boy. If the reason Geralt is still alive is because the witcher-to-be taught a viscount’s son something as useless for him as how to use a needle and thread. If he owes his life to a fellow witcher’s death, one he never even got the chance to meet.
But Geralt doesn’t have the words for that, will never have the words for that.
He points up at the sky and whispers, voice low, that Orion’s Belt looks bright tonight.
The bard humms, a small upturn of his lips as he wordlessly agrees.
(It might not be the words of comfort Geralt wants to say, the hug he can’t bring himself to offer. But it’s what Geralt is able to give, and give freely.
And that…
That matters, too.)
